The Universal Self

If you’ve practiced daily meditation for several weeks, perhaps you’ve noticed an extraordinary relationship between your good meditations and the improvement of your life and activities in the outer world. Likely, various inner resources are becoming available to you — greater persistence, concentration, clarity, peace of mind, and understanding.

A Habit Of Good Will

The good will you are practicing in your daily life makes it easier to relate well with other people and, happily, it’s easier to sit down and meditate. Hopefully, you have a habit of good will and whenever you sit to meditate you feel a strong surge of good will flowing from you into the meditation object. Keep in mind that if you’re not able to sense a definite flow of good will each day, something is definitely amiss. A review of all previous lessons and discourses, ideally along with the contact of a qualified and enlightened teacher, is most decidedly indicated. (Again, an enlightened teacher is one who can consciously contact higher consciousness at will; or even better lives in higher consciousness, and/or lives continually conscious of the presence of God.)

Concerning your next stage of development — the Universal Self — have you noticed that your good will makes you more sensitive to others? You become more capable of knowing what other people are thinking and feeling as your good will develops your nature. Your good will holds so much appreciation for others that you become a conscious sharer in life with one and all.

Profound Interrelationships

The lives of others are always bombarding you, whether you’ve been conscious of it or not. Now, as a person developing higher consciousness, you become aware of the profound interrelationships between people.

A sure sign of your good will is greater empathy with others. You are capable, at a deeper and deeper level, of understanding others and having compassion for what they are going through. You more readily share their triumphs and sorrows. You are sincerely concerned about what they are concerned about, but you don’t allow yourself to become mentally ill through accumulating the worries of others to the point you break apart.

You are sympathetic; you are empathetic. But you live from a position of strength, from a deep well of devotion which does not deplete itself but grows as you care about the well being of others.

This increasing sympathy and empathy is crucial to the next development of your awareness.

Let Your Good Will Expand

To discover this next level of your higher consciousness, proceed into meditation as you did in previous Lessons. Stretch. Sit comfortably. Take a few deep breaths. Increase your consciousness of good will. Then direct your good will into your meditation object. As your good will becomes a continual flow, calmly view or hold the thought of your meditation object. Witness the object until the surge of good will overcomes all other thoughts and feelings.

When you enter Good Will Witness awareness, enjoy it. But be open to something greater, a new dimension may be experienced. You can’t force yourself into the next level of awareness, but you can lovingly cooperate with it. Don’t let your mind go blank. Stay alert and let your good will swell. Be very conscious of good will, not vacant minded. As best you can, let your good will now expand in all directions. No longer focus on your meditation object, unless, as in some cases, the object begins to expand (in your mind’s eye).

As you maintain the Good Will Witness consciousness, you can, through development, feel so much good will that your ego sense gives up its limitations!

You Are a Part of All Living Things

Suddenly, in a mellow way, before you notice it and have time to comprehend this great phenomenon, you will no longer feel confined to your body. You will feel that in this vast good will you have dropped off your small sense of self. You will feel — to put it simply — you are a part of all living things.

Or, you may suddenly realize there is one life, one sustaining life, which not only sustains your individual life but the lives of other people and all living things. In this expanded state of good will you perceive that you are consciousness. Further, you are the same consciousness that abides in and sustains the lives of others.

You are experiencing the sublime Universal Self in the essence of your stillness. You feel that you are working through all hands, seeing through all eyes. You feel your life is beating in all hearts, you are laughing through all throats, crying through all sorrows, dancing in everyone.

Unspeakable Exaltation

In this rare, expanded view you see the underlying unity of life. You realize that, in good will, your individual life is but a part of this universal life. You have become capable of experiencing not only your individual life but the universal life. You can deeply experience the source of life, the empowering consciousness which enables every living thing to breathe and move, which empowers thought and feeling.

In your expanded good will you have temporarily untied the limiting knot of personal ego sense. No longer confined to your body’s small dimensions, you have discovered your universal sense of self. This experience is beyond description, so humbling and so moving that you walk the earth forever changed.

All Lives Are Precious To You

After returning to individual consciousness you remember. You remember that the life force and energy expressing in another person’s conversation or any activity is something which comes from a source all people share. That energy, that world out there, is an expression of the same living power which is sustaining each pulsation of your heart. Good will has become universal sympathy and universal sympathy has become the unspeakable exaltation of knowing the Universal Self.

After your experience of the Universal Self, your eyes become very calm and you see no strangers. All people are kindred, whether conscious of it or not, whether they behave like it or not. You know, profoundly, their lives are precious to you. Even your enemy is part of you and a friend in disguise.

So, with the development of good will and the faithful practice of some form of meditation — as outlined in the Good Will Witness — you can know how magnificent it is to be a living being. You can know how utterly worthwhile is your quest for higher consciousness. And even the Universal Self cannot possibly convey to you the beauty and glory of the next states of higher consciousness.