Nature of Attachment

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

Look around at the objects in your house, in your life. Look inside your closets. See what's there. Examine the emotional and psychological content of all these things. Is their vibration positive, having come about through generosity or love, or is it negative, having come from an attachment or aversion?



Perhaps many of your clothes are an attachment to an identity you seek to maintain, a way you thought of yourself at one point in your life, but which doesn't represent you now. You may not have worn many of your clothes in a long time, but they remind you of a good period in your life, and you don't want to give them up. So it goes with all your possessions.



It's actually easier to get rid of these things, remove them from your life, and clear up that psychic space; because you're connected to them, and even though you don't recognize it consciously, the connection holds you in the grip of all of those emotional states from the past.

Nature of Attachment

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

The poisons of attachment, aversion, and delusion produce an endless stream of negative behavior. The karma generated by this behavior is like an enshrouding blanket of negativity, making it impossible to see the truth of a given situation.



What was your thinking like the last time you felt anger, jealousy, envy, greed? What were you like when you were under their spell? You always ended up acting like some kind of demon. And afterwards, what did you feel? You felt shame, you felt guilt. And now you had to carry that around. Nothing is furthered by this kind of negative behavior.



The quality of love, all the higher angels of behavior, draws you into life with incredible force, and you see clearly. Your life becomes fantasy-free; you no longer live in some kind of fairy tale. You see the truth of things as they are.

Moving to a Condition of Clarity and Awakening

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

All negative thoughts, emotions, and behavior arise from one of three states: attachment, aversion, or delusion. Attachment is grasping, aversion is a form of fear, and delusion is a form of ignorance. These three dynamics define the separation between oneself and all others.



All the higher angels of behavior have as their essence love: the infinite power of attraction; the inclusion of oneself and all others into one's own identity. Any act of kindness, generosity, patience, compassion, or humility leads to the dissolution of the barrier of the false identity that separates us.



Over time, as you include these positive angels of behavior within yourself, and eliminate the poisons of attachment, aversion, and delusion, you will move from a condition of madness and insanity, to a condition of clarity and awakening.

Give Rise to Love

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

When you recognize the suffering of another, that knowledge can go in one of two ways.



You can be judgmental and feel that the person is getting what they deserve. When you do this you give rise to a lower, base energy. Whatever it is that this person has done or that they're going through, you've certainly gone through the same thing yourself. But through a process of self-denial, you refuse to see the interconnection of all life as it resists the forces of ignorance and struggles toward the light.



The person can be just on the verge of coming to some new understanding of themselves and their suffering, and you slam them with judgment, locking down the situation and knocking them back into their pattern of behavior. Their moment of awakening is lost.



Or, through an act of will, you can give rise to love. Giving rise to love can be something as simple as not giving way to judgment. Judgment is a heavy load, both for the person who judges and the judged. Not passing any judgment gives the situation an opportunity to breath and produces a kind of spiritual uplifting.

Love is an act of will

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

Love is an act of will, and it takes skill to be able to remember to give rise to it in all conditions. You have to practice it. You'll find yourself giving way to negative habitual behavior more frequently than you'd think, especially when you start to watch for it.



When you give rise to the lower energies, you commit the totality of your being to that energy, and you transmit it to everyone around you, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. This is how we all hold ourselves collectively in a state of darkness and obscuration.

The Witness

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

The impressions of everything we have ever done over countless lives are stored within us and act like an encumbrance upon our system of consciousness, locking us into a wheel of cyclic repetition. This is the fruit of behavior that is founded on the desire-based patterns of confusion, obscuration, fear, and ignorance.



There's a spiritual state known as the Witness wherein you engage and observe these patterns of your behavior. Over time, you learn to recognize and become familiar with all the chemical, biological, and energetic changes that occur within yourself and give rise to an endless stream of habitual responses.



Having gained access to a higher source of light through your spiritual practice, you must learn how to assert your will upon that point which you recognize as the seed of a negative pattern of habitual behavior; you learn to resist and transform it into a positive movement of energy towards the higher angels of your nature.

Karma

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

The seed emotions and thoughts of everything you have ever done are stored within you. These seeds, through the medium of your personal will, gave rise to an action which in turn became the seed for more action. This is the endless cycle of cause and effect, karma. And all this is stored in you. This is the basis for memory and is what is responsible for the habitual patterns of your behavior.



The entire point of spiritual life is to gain access to a new source of light outside of the system of your own karma in order to offset the force of these habitual behavior patterns. The transmission of grace introduces large quantities of light into your system that physically clear the karma from you. This process is called purification.