This is the process of the clarification of the personality: Each time you understand an issue or an identification with a past conflict or a now unnecessary defense, you discharge feelings associated with the issue and work through the feelings and the beliefs about it. As you have seen many times, working through an issue—which involves ceasing to be identified with it—typically allows the arising of an essential state. In this process of working through an issue related to any essential quality, the personality confronts the part of its structure that substitutes and compensates for the lack of that true quality. For example, issues around essential strength will uncover the false strength of the personality. When this compensation is seen through and the essential strength is freed, there is no more need for the personality structure of the false strength.

A certain understanding will unfold in this book, which here we state in summary: In several different traditional systems and philosophies, human beings, along with the rest of creation, are seen to “come out of” or to be manifestations of “higher” realms of Being. In the actual experience of these realms there is not any sense of “higher,” but there are definite perceptions of the phenomenal realm arising from something that can be called “nonphenomenal.” And this coming out is not a random appearance of the various physical, organic and mental phenomena, discontinuous with the other realms, but rather more a structured “unfolding.” There is a pattern to this unfolding, and it reflects the structuring of Being on the level that is called in some traditions the Divine Names, and in others qualities of Essence; in Tantric Buddhism as well as in Taoism there is an appreciation of this structuring of the qualities of creation, and in certain Indian traditions this also may be found.

Our experience of flow can go deeper, which can help us understand the previous levels of flow within a more comprehensive and fundamental view. We can feel the flow as combining the previous two kinds of experience, but integrated into one gestalt. We can experience flow as the stream of experiences, without these experiences being disconnected. At the same time the flow is not a displacement of medium from one location to another. The whole field feels flowing, but not spatially, not horizontally. We feel the flow of experiences as a fountain or a bubbling spring, instead of a river or a stream. This is a more subtle perception than the stream image, and is more accurate regarding the source of the impression of flow. There is neither destination nor source, but merely the flow outward of the arising of experience as a continuous flowing fountain of conscious presence. The fountain effect is a sensation, a feeling, an impression of flowing. The streaming fountain is a bubbling stream of experiences, where the bubbles and eddies are the forms experience is taking.

Inner content does not enter consciousness from somewhere else. It arises in the field of consciousness itself, as the field modifying itself at the particular region the content arises. In other words, content arises within the field of consciousness as part of the field. Content is composed of particular forms the consciousness assumes at certain regions of its presence. Such a form could be a feeling, like warm kindness or anger. It can be a thought, a word, or a string of words. It can be an image, with or without colors. It can be inner movement, as in the kinesthetic sense. It can be inner sounds, tastes, or smells, as in imagination or memory. All these are inner forms that arise in our consciousness. We normally think of them as entering our consciousness, happening to us, or that we actively produce them. We do not see them as forms arising through our inner field of consciousness plastically changing itself to create them out of its very substance. We do not see this process of inner creation because we are not in touch with the field directly, so we end up perceiving only the forms it takes. By coming in touch with the inner field of presence, we have the wonderful opportunity of seeing how our consciousness functions to create its own inner forms.

We will discuss here the arising of space as a crucial step in the process of change and inner transformation. According to our observations, the arising of space always precedes change. This step is only rarely mentioned or specifically acknowledged in psychological circles. Some of the spiritual teachings acknowledge it, refer to it, and sometimes describe it, but usually only from the most basic and general perspective. As the material in this book indicates, we see the subject of space as crucial in these matters and thus deserving more specific and detailed study and understanding.

If there is something arising from within you that is natural and spontaneous and deep, that is not seeking. You’re being can flow in a certain direction, and be acting, without it being ego activity…a great deal of knowledge and understanding can arise out of such authentic activity, and became integrated as true understanding. This is why two people can read a Book and understand it at different levels of depth. The difference is not that one is smarter, but that he is really into it – the impulse toward the understanding comes from his heart.

Then we are perceiving what is truly arising in the situation, and our understanding is the discernment of the truth of what is arising or unfolding. Then neither our understanding nor our perception is colored by our subjectivity.