The Inner Core
by
Robert L. Marshall
Chapter 2 — The Frontiers
There are no more frontiers!” one friend complained to another. Both had been intrigued by stories of bold, independent people from past generations who had gone into the wilderness, homesteaded land, and carved their corner of the Earth into something of real value, far from the confines of civilization.
In that day and age, one could always “go West.” What about Daniel Boone? Legend says he kept moving west every time he could see his neighbors chimney smoke. What an exciting challenge to pioneer new land ... to be the foundation of a new world in the making.
The conversation continued: “Here we are, aspiring pioneers with no wilderness left to pit ourselves against. Antarctica is the only truly uninhabited continent, and without a polar shift to melt the ice, it will have to remain that way. Past generations had the New World, even Africa and Indonesia. The future will have space travel. I guess we are just in between with no frontiers available to us.”
So often, the very thing we desire lies right in front of us, yet we don’t recognize it because it takes a different form than we expect. Disappointed would-be pioneers need only lift their sights a little to find pristine, unexplored continents awaiting within themselves.
The future will look back on this generation as an exciting time when a bold, independent few broke through the barriers and explored inner realms of heart, mind, and Spirit, creating whole new lives that would change the very shape of civilization. They will yearn, “Oh, to have been one of those early pioneers, developing the very energies that are the foundation of life as we know it today.”
No frontiers! Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is the most exciting time humankind has ever experienced on this planet. Frontiers are everywhere, and finally, we can see them.
For those who aren’t entirely clear what spiritual frontiers need to be explored, I’m going to outline a short tour of a few that I can see. The list will obviously be incomplete and objectives rather cursory, but maybe the tour will get you thinking. Sometimes I might mention an unfamiliar term or practice, but your looking it up is part of your exploration.
Some areas will hit you as being rather secular, while others will seem quite sacred. Who knows what piece of consciousness development you will recognize as your assignment. You might find something here that sparks a resonance in your soul. Or you may hear something calling to you that lies beyond the areas mentioned.
Opening the Heart: I mention this first because, from personal experience, I know the possibilities available to you through this door are unlimited. Concentrate on your heart, and you will break through to realms of feeling and knowing that allow you to see far beyond the confines of mental processes, to place power behind thoughts and prayers, to encounter spiritual experience directly rather than constantly feel removed from it. Whatever you are doing, try to do it with your heart and you will see big changes in your results. The heart is an exciting ride to almost anywhere within the spiritual realms.
Healing: Healing has always been one of the spiritual frontiers. It still is. Research here may include some of the multitude of healing techniques, learning the tools until you can achieve consistent results. Yet I hope some of you will reach beyond the tools to isolate the basic healing Life Force that does all healing no matter what technique is employed. This is the energy the woman experienced who was healed by touching the hem of Jesus’ robe (metaphysically meaning his consciousness) as he passed. The ultimate healing excursion would be to incorporate this energy so strongly into your consciousness that others could become aware of this energy in themselves just by encountering it in you.
Guidance and Intuition: Divine Mind already has every answer you could ever want. How can we tap in? Explore how guidance comes to you. Learn to distinguish that still, small (accurate) voice from the clamoring personality voices that surround it. Devise all manner of ways to consult guidance and then check out whether it is right or wrong. I once set about using investments as an experiment in guidance. I could always check my results in the paper the next day. I learned a pendulum wouldn’t work for me. Neither would applied kinesiology. I learned there is a quiet inner knowing that is always right, and the voices of greed or fear, which feel a little different, are always wrong. I learned you must develop a love for what you want to know. When you make the important decisions of life, you need to know wisdom is showing you your way.
Christ Qualities: Everything you have ever wanted or needed in this life can be related back to a basic, primal spiritual energy available within yourself. Love, abundance, life, peace, joy, beauty ... these are what we really seek. The outer things are all designed to give us one of these energies. But they are really available only from within. We hope the outer attainment will spark the inner energy. I call the inner energies Christ qualities. Why not short-circuit the process and generate them within yourself without need of an outer stimulus? Choose a quality. Meditate on it. Affirm it. Concentrate on it throughout your day until it becomes a natural part of your consciousness. Then see how your outer life has shifted to reflect what you are naturally generating.
Self-Esteem Building: To truly become a Christ being, you are first going to have to build a consciousness that believes it is worthy of being a higher Self. Explore ways to feel your inner majesty as a child of God while you walk through life. Along the way, you will have to learn to distinguish between self-esteem with a small “s” and Self-esteem with a large “S.” Future generations will grow up in these patterns of high Self-esteem.
Jesus’ Footsteps: Can you immerse yourself in the consciousness of Jesus Christ? Affirm and meditate on his presence until you can feel a deep kinship with it and know that Jesus is your teacher and you, his disciple. Work on this intensely enough and you may have an encounter that will dramatically change your life. Contemplate what it would be like to be the man who said: “The Father and I are one” (RSV), “I am the light of the world,” “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (RSV), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (RSV), “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Use Jesus’ power statements until you can sense what it felt like to carry his consciousness through physical life. Imitation of the Master is the oldest path to enlightenment.
Silence: Mastering silence is one of the most important expeditions on the spiritual path. Much of higher perception is communicated in silence. Start by getting comfortable with silence. Sit silently with someone and enjoy a sunset. Feel the silent bond that exists with nature. Learn to enjoy aloneness. Use silence to generate energy behind your words or actions. And of course, meditate, striving to reach the silence. You may want to employ the spiritual practice of retreat, arranging to be completely alone for an extended period without escapes like TV, radio, or books. One cannot comprehend the strength that comes from spending several days, weeks, or even months in silent retreat.
Mastering Abundance: It is one thing to apply prosperity techniques to get what you want and entirely another to sculpt a consciousness of abundance that naturally surrounds you and to have that energy flowing so strongly that those you come in contact with automatically wake up to abundance within themselves. There’s plenty of material and practices out there. Just remember it is not an outer result you are looking for. That is a by-product. You are looking for a divine energy and ways to sew it into your everyday garment of consciousness. If I could put a name on this energy, I would call it gratefulness. A shortcut is to build as much gratefulness into your daily life as possible.
Imagination: Tapping the power of imagination can be as much fun as work. This path investigates creating with our imaging faculty. It may start with a “treasure map” of pictures of the things you want to demonstrate in life or daily imagery of that car you want to own, but the frontier runs much deeper. Here we learn that reality is not static, but in motion and that we can alter the picture by participating in the drawing process. Learning to bend reality in all manner of directions through constant use of our imaginative faculty will change the whole way humanity perceives life. You may have to begin by bringing into awareness the ways we are already participating in this creative process and how one accepts or rejects the gathered images of past generations still latent in the human-race mind.
Creativity: This is the process by which one plugs low-voltage human mind into high voltage from the higher realms and turns out art, music, ideas, writings, inventions, problemsolving techniques, and on and on, all of which may seem far beyond his or her seeming capabilities. Creativity involves a quantum leap to higher functioning of mind. We need creativity to survive and be happy. Experiment with different ways to plug in. What is required to make the connection? How does the higher voltage feel in your body? How can you learn to trust it more? Can you devise techniques for bypassing human limits and touching creativity directly? An artist’s example is painting your feelings with your eyes blindfolded to see what images take form. In each area, learning to let go and to let the energy flow is essential. Humanity thirsts for creativity, in any of its forms.
Mastering Personality: At this stage in human evolution, our personalities are in charge. In the future, the Higher Being, the Christ Self, will be master of his or her personality. Many of the personal challenges we face set up a course of study whereby we could learn to take control of ourselves rather than letting personality run wild like a spoiled child. The strength gained from the struggle is necessary for one to function as the Christ Self. Emotional mastery is the first hurdle, learning to switch emotional states on cue for the greater benefit of the being, then generating whatever emotion we choose. More advanced lessons include accepting the unacceptable. The common spiritual student avoids taking responsibility for his or her every personal reaction, desire, decision, or pattern. The frontier lies in becoming master of oneself, and everyday life provides the perfect testing ground.
Purification: This carries the last concept a little further in a specific direction. The path of purification rests upon the realization that the amount of light shining through a dirty kerosene lamp increases relative to the amount of black soot one cleans from the globe. Illumination is achieved by wiping away all the dirt. The pioneer in this area pours intense effort into clearing all personal negativity, vulgarity, fear, anger, resentment, and selfish desire. One watches his or her words, thoughts, feelings, and actions with the intention of creating a clear vessel for Spirit to use. A simple, healthy diet and body habits become the outer symbol of inner cleansing work. One might pursue contemplation of past experiences that still have negative emotional reactions connected to them. Go through your life and relive a past experience from your present consciousness, changing it, and remembering you are not still that same person. You have evolved. You need not carry it further. Purify yourself. Simplify your life. Then observe how your light seems to shine more clearly.
Light: Working with light directly opens amazing doors. Meditate on light. Imagine yourself glowing in light until it is no longer an image you hold. You actually are aware that you are glowing in light. Then observe how the world around you seems to change after a session in the light. If you can’t see light, then concentrate on the color white until it comes easier. Start sending light to people. Anytime something needs protection, surround it in light. Lower a shield of light around you each morning that will reflect all harm while allowing everything else to flow through freely. Light has always been symbolic of God—all that is good. When you concentrate on light, you awaken awareness of God—or Light. In the end, we are beings of Light. It is a powerful area to develop.
The Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit is God in action, the Spirit that sets up the whole learning program of life. In this area of exploration, we strive to set up a firm connection with the Holy Spirit and work with It directly. This is the Spirit that Jesus said he would send to teach us all we need to know. Begin by affirming the Holy Spirit active in your life. Begin looking at each experience as something set up for you by the Holy Spirit. Commit to serving Spirit. Meditate on the rush of the wind that is often described along with the flow of the Holy Spirit. Develop your own ways to touch Spirit. A real connection forged here should produce major observable results.
Christ Self: For those who want to “go for the gold,” set your sights firmly on becoming your Christ Self. This is following in Jesus’ footsteps to the fullest. This mountain seems off in the distance through an unexplored wilderness. Start by affirming: I am the Christ, the son!daughter of God! Keep at it until the words lose their emptiness and start to resonate within you. Realize that a higher Self exists within you and start trying to communicate with it. Set up a working relationship with your higher Self, trusting it to do the real work while your outer self does the best it can or simply entertains. Finally, start the process of merging with this awe-inspiring Being within.
Nature: For many, communicating with nature is the perfect spiritual adventure. Explore the power of prayer on plants. As a gardener, I’ve seen roses do the seemingly impossible in order to cooperate with my desires, once I set up a deep relationship with them. Meditate on a tree until you understand “tree-ness.” Communicate, heart-to-heart, with animals, or learn to hear their telepathy. Feel the spirit of the land you live on. Explore Native American approaches. I’ve seen the wind and animals from the wild respond in miraculous ways during Native American ceremonies. On your own, merge with the wind. Take the power of the storm into your being. Become one with the forces of nature until they seem to accept you, even cradle you, rather than tear against you.
Relationship Work: This laboratory has all the lessons necessary for the advanced being. Search for the spiritual connection that each relationship—mother, father, child, mate, family, friend—provides. Identify and realize the importance of your spiritual family. Discover the difference between your positive attractions and your negative attractions. Pursue couple’s practices for spiritually attuning yourself to someone else. Master silent consciousness encounters and the spiritual energies exchanged. Make them conscious, thus taking responsibility for a higher outcome. Through experience, we learn the higher spiritual laws of relationship. Future generations will need to learn them early in order not to get bogged down.
Oneness: It sounds easy enough. Many claim to have explored it but few really have. “I love the whole world. Its just the people I can’t stand,” does not qualify. Truly absorbing that everyone and everything is part of me is a large assignment. Becoming part of the whole is where it begins, but the jump to oneness consciousness from individual consciousness is a big one. Reach for direct communication with “the One.” Stretch yourself very high to an intelligence that intimately knows and loves everything in the universe and countless dimensions beyond, while we struggle to keep our little lives in order. Imagine a thought trying to communicate with the mind as a whole.
Youth Consciousness: I know of individuals banded together to uncover spiritual principles for extending healthy life in the body. They are exploring nutrients, lifestyles, stress control, exercise and, most important, thought patterns, emotional patterns, meditation exercises, and spiritual principles lor keeping our bodies young and extending our lives. Future generations will do this. Possibly, you’d like to help break ground now.
Divine Power: Have you ever stood on that high ground where for a few moments you knew that if you told the mountain to move, it would move because you (and everyone else) were connected directly to Divine Power? Getting to that space is a warrior’s journey. What is required to merge with the power of God and perform seeming miracles? If you set your sights on this task, you will learn to step aside and let something else do the work through you. You will discover that Divine Power uses us. We don’t use it. You will excitedly explore a realm where earthly limits don’t mean a thing. To have lull access to power and use it only as God directs is an art that requires its own brand of intense self-discipline.
Spiritual Business Principles: Can you imagine a business world run strictly on spiritual principles? It begins with a few willing to commit their lives to proving that a business run by spiritual law will prosper more than the best one run by dog-eat-dog business rules. When God is your partner, certain practices are off-limits. However, higher unseen forces come to your assistance. This will have to be proven with physical evidence. Step-by-step guidance will have to be recorded to show exactly how one goes about setting up this business relationship with the Divine. This work will transform the face of the marketplace.
Dream Work: This is one of those exciting areas that capture the imagination. It is a whole other world that we haphazardly enter each night. Master it and your life seems to double. Learn to remember your dreams, to dream true, and to see the symbolism. Isolate the feelings and preparations that invite prophetic dreaming. Strive for increased frequency and accuracy. Study how you can learn something in the dream state and carry the lessons into your outer life too. The real fun begins when you enter into lucid dreaming. You realize you are dreaming and take the reins. There are places to go, new realms to explore. This work comes full circle when you realize that Earth life is nothing more than a solidified dream state. If you can loosen your grip on reality, you can change your outer life in exactly the same way you direct your dreams.
Letting Go: Begin by learning the difference between releasing and submerging. There is an art to letting go and an illusive energy state always present when release truly takes place. Letting go is its own path into the Divine. Let go of everything you hang on to for support, one by one. Fear will challenge you every step of the way. At the far end of this path, you will come to a cliff. Walk to the edge. Fear will try to drive you back. Don’t let it. Jump. Abandon yourself into the unknown of God. Then come back and tell us how to follow. Tell us how it changed your life.
Meditation Journeys: There are thousands of meditation techniques taking one to millions of spiritual states. Explore as many as you can. Determine which ones create the most unusual and dramatic results for you. Then teach others how to get there faster than you did. Have you ever spent four hours a day in meditation on an extended basis? Those who have can share the dramatic results their lives produced.
Color: We are just now doing serious groundbreaking on the spiritual stimulation that color has in our lives. Schools are using color therapy in their classrooms. Meditate on red or green, yellow or blue. Feel the different energies these colors channel into your being. Using stained glass or colored light-bulbs, experiment with the energies you feel in your body when bathed in different colored lights. Then devise ways to apply the information you’ve gleaned to outer life.
Sound and Music: What is the spiritual impact of sound or music? Both have been used throughout the ages to encourage spiritual experience. Musicians can create music to inspire certain states of consciousness. Music lovers can experiment with recorded music in meditation. Sound itself vibrates spiritual energy centers. Sound can heal, break up areas of consciousness where we are blocked. The spiritual science of sound is ancient, yet relatively undeveloped in the modern sense.
Spiritual Energy Centers: Concentration on the seven chakras or the physical locations for the twelve powers will catapult you forward. It’s like doing a body workout. You can’t relate anything directly to the exercises you do every day, but the regimen changes the whole way you feel about life, your energy level, and thus, everything you do. A spiritual workout on the energy centers strengthens your consciousness and, thus, your whole spiritual life. Things start to happen that you weren’t strong enough to experience before. Sound, affirmation, light, and concentration are excellent tools to start the work on these centers.
Regeneration: This is the development of the spiritual body and the slow but sure transfer of your body reality from the physical to this higher level. Energy-center concentration is a contribution to this realm. However, the process is much more universal. Every time you make an affirmation, pray, depend on guidance, or reach out with your heart to touch someone, you are embodying yourself more clearly within your spiritual body. We need to bring the process out of unconsciousness. We need to see the transfer of body identity taking place. The field is wide open if you want to take it on.
Breathwork: Breathing techniques have been a part of the spiritual path for thousands of years. After all, the breath is an excellent physical rheostat for changing consciousness. There are countless studies in different types of breathwork. Learn to slow the breath and experience the changes. At one point, I learned to breathe fifteen full, deep breaths in fifteen minutes. The change in consciousness was dramatic. Different types of breathing (for example, in through the nose and out through the mouth, or in through the nose and out through the nose) create different types of spiritual energy within the being. Then we have the deep, rapid, continuous breath that can bring on emotional cleansing or stimulate advanced spiritual experience. Once again the instructions are to experiment, master, and teach.
Body Mastery: It’s like training a horse. A disciplined body can serve you well on this spiritual journey. At our present stage of human development, the body is still in charge. We need to master the body and put the intangible being in charge. Place your body in training. Work with diet or fasting. Teach it to be hot or cold on command. Take control of your heart so you can slow it at will. Use spiritual practices to create instant strength or instill health. Practice with any unusual body capability you choose until you master it. The body of the future will respond to the driver like a sports car, not the “clunker” most of us drive around in today.
Spiritual Sexuality: It’s time to take sexual activity out of the physical closet and recognize it as the spiritual experience it was always meant to be. Surprisingly enough, this can start with an excursion into celibacy. Nothing can teach you more about the nonphysical side of sexuality than removing its physical counterpart. Study and isolate nonphysical sexual exchanges. They are subtle, but once highlighted, they can become fulfilling. Concentrate on your bottom chakra until sexual energy is released. Then learn to lift it by observing it, yet not allowing it to flow sexually. When you add the physical and nonphysical back together, explore some tantra techniques. Create your own techniques for merging spiritually and not being swept away by the physical and emotional passions.
Advanced Mind Powers: Here one might choose a partner and set up experiments in telepathy. Maybe you will pursue astral projection, the ability to leave your body and go somewhere else to observe or, in advanced stages, communicate with another. Experiment in psychometry, holding a physical object and sensing its owner or the experiences it has been through. You could start just by taking the time to feel the vibrations around you in life wherever you go and learning to use that information. Yes, these are mind games, instead of the deeper experience of connecting with God. But awakened children of God will use all of these faculties without giving them much thought. As long as we keep them in perspective, it wouldn’t hurt to start introducing humanity to them.
Using Thought Forms: Certain images have always been used to convey a spiritual energy or experience: sending a good dragon for protection or a unicorn to bring abundance, imagining Cupid creating romance, using thought forms in prayers. The pictures are nothing more than that—pictures. But when we concentrate on them with enough energy, we breathe life into them. Our ideas are our creations. That is how we are created in the image of God. The thought form thus created admirably acts as a container for the spiritual energy we pour into it. We do this unconsciously already. Learning to consciously and constructively use thought forms may seem gimmicky, but it’s a nice middle-ground step for those traveling from physical security to spiritual security. A number of mind-training groups already use it extensively with excellent results.
Mind Over Matter: Dissolving clouds, walking on hot coals, levitating, stilling the storm, and moving objects through telekinesis—all are exercises in mind over matter that different individuals are working with today. This falls into the realm of seeking after phenomena, but why not? One’s gut-level outlook on life changes dramatically the first time he or she participates in breaking physical laws. Once again, future generations will take this as a matter of course. Someone must start the process now.
Efficient Mental Processes: Memory techniques, triggering mechanisms, efficiency states of mind—all increase our effectiveness in our human lives. The mental machinery needs to be trained and refined just as the body needs to be.
Shamanic Spiritual Experience: } he aboriginal and native cultures of the world all have their own mechanisms for navigating the spiritual path. It can be an interesting experience to study them and travel a little of their ground. In the end, they can shed light on the paths we walk because their spirituality is based on experience, not philosophy.
Soul Memory: If past-life memory is important to you, you may want to explore some of the meditation techniques for going back. “Running,” “time tracking,” “soul travel”—all are names of processes that can bring other life memory. Use what information you gain to make this life better or else the exploration is useless. In the end, it doesn’t matter what eternity model you use—reincarnation, heaven and hell, or progression through other dimensions. All that matters is what you do with “now.” These models are designed for human understanding of something too vast for the human mind to grasp. Go back with purpose, not just for entertainment. And don’t get lost in going back or you will be sidetracked from your now experience.
Angels, Fairies, and Divas: God’s blessings are conveyed to the physical world by a variety of paths. People have seen angels for thousands of years and experienced miracles in their presence. Just as one can speak to the higher Self of a human being, we can surely communicate with the archetype or diva of the common garden pea. And those vortexes of energy that seem to be constantly nurturing the many forms nature takes, could they be fairies? I have close friends who have banded together to share their angel encounters and explore how we can encourage this type of contact with these higher energy expressions of God. Will the future open the doors between human expression and angelic expression, enabling us to work together fully?
Spiritual Technology: This is the perfect crossover for the engineers in our midst. Science is developing machinery to aid us in our journeys through consciousness. Brain wave measurement, biofeedback, the brain wave synchronizer, binaural wave generation and tapes, certain waves sent through the brain, electrical currents sent through nerve centers, and virtual reality meditation equipment are just the beginning. Someone needs to explore them all and determine what is truly helpful and what is not as well as what spiritual phenomenon is actually being produced in each instance.
Communicating With the Earth: Everything in the universe is alive. The planets and stars are not just dead rocks and fiery infernos. They are higher orders of life that lie almost beyond our comprehension. However, as children of the Earth, we can stretch out and touch the being we feed from in much the same way we stretch out to try to embrace the “oneness” of God.
Conclusions: This list of the frontiers is incomplete. In fact, it only scratches the surface. Some of the examples deal with deep core issues of the spiritual path and some deal with phenomena. Advanced beings will incorporate and use both in their daily lives.
The frontiers that include phenomena will include a lot of fantasy for most of us at this stage in our development. Spiritual explorers must learn to separate fantasy from expanded spiritual reality and then demonstrate how to create this experience in their lives.
I hope on the way through the list of frontiers that you got inspired. Maybe some area seemed to resonate within you or captured your imagination. Possibly you jumped to an idea that wasn’t mentioned. In either case, I hope you started to get a feel for what area you are drawn to. You can’t do it all. Shortly, you will have to make a choice as to what adventure to embark upon. Can you sense what frontier is calling to you?
© 2001, Robert L. Marshall
All rights reserved by the author.
Reprinted with permission.
