To Dave & All ,
Terri C. Benning posted something very insightful on another board, which has a group for discussing "Conscious Essence Contact," explaining:
"In the 80's I worked with both Jacob and Michael in the work I did with others and there were a group of students who worked with both of them as well. The way they explained it to us at the time, it cross-referenced thusly:
Integral Self Focus ~ Essence
Intrinsic Self Focus ~ Fragment
Distinct Self Focus ~ Personality
The Tao itself encompasses all three levels and would resonate to the "Spark" in the MTs.
We can shift our focus to greater and lesser percentage of awareness in each level at will, according to Jacob and Abraham. We all have constantly fluctuating percentages of our focus "attuned" to each level at each moment and we can consciously CHOOSE to place our focus in any of these levels at any time. It takes practice, but they are all within our reach if we choose to work with them in this way.
This single most damaging "assumption" or "belief" that most people hold about this "higher self" notion is that it somehow exists OUTSIDE of our "normal" waking state of awareness, or "Outside" of our bodies, and that we have all been somehow cast "OUT" from the Tao. In truth we have been cast INTO the Tao, not OUT FROM it. The Tao, or the IS, permeates all states and levels of our being, and we operate completely WITHIN it rather than It, or we, existing in some separate state from it.
They further explained that the INTEGRAL self focus has 360 degree "vision" or perhaps even more accurately, possesses a kind of spherical, or "holistic" awareness of all of it's parts, including concurrents, parallels, past, present and even future selves.
The INTRINSIC self focus is that level that many think of as the "higher self" focus, which is what they termed our "communicator" focus. This level of the self focus is aware of BOTH the Integral self focus and the Distinct self focus at the same time, and runs "AC/DC" meaning it serves to inform each of these "focuses" of the other's perspectives and experiences of things, each from their own perspective. So it is the part of us that does the actual "translation" and "transmission" of information from Essence, or Integral Self Focus, to Personality, or the Distinct Self Focus, and visa versa. It is the INTRINSIC self focus, or the FRAGMENT focus that is used to communicate information from "Higher Plane Sources", according to the perceptions of the Essence/Fragment/Personality "complex" structure, as RA might term it.
The DISTINCT Self Focus is, of course, that part of us which is focused primarily into the physical plane reality, and is what we might term our basic "personality" focus, as it would manifest through the specific overleaves for any given lifetime. The distinct self focus "orders" perceptions into single "units" of perception that allows for the perception of both time and space here on the physical plane. It orders experiences in a primarily linear fashion, and serves to "sequence" events that take place in our lives in an orderly manner. It is that level of perception and awareness that is most easily recognizable as "The Self" here on the physical plane.
Together, all three levels comprise what Jacob termed "The True Self" which exists encompassed WITHIN the Tao Itself."
I think this kind of wisdom goes a long way to explain HOW we function on the Physical Plane.
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