Three Articles on Avatar

by Harry Palmer

The following three articles are reprinted from Volume IV, Issue 4 of the Avatar Journal.

THE ABILITY TO CREATE SELF

We’ve all had the experience of reading a good book or watching a good drama and for a while assuming some aspect of one of the characters. Maybe we pick up a new expression or a new way of dressing; maybe we pick up a swagger or an intriguing opinion. It feels good to explore the new viewpoint.

In our hearts we know it’s only play-acting and soon our real self reappears, but what if...?

On the negative side, most of us have had the experience of recognizing some aspect—from someone we didn’t particularly admire—as part of our self. Maybe we catch ourselves treating a child like someone once treated us or expressing an opinion whose only basis is that we resisted it when we heard somebody else express it.

Even more alarming, we may discover we have the same illness or infirmity of body that some other person we knew had—some other self we may not have treated as well as we should have. And try as we might to suppress this resisted aspect, it reappears, but what if...?

When we begin to study what is known about the structure of the self, we find it consists of preferences (beliefs) and a relative time-space location from which the preferences are asserted. The preferences are like the semi-transparent overlays that turn the white light of a projector into an image on a screen. Some of the overlays we cannot easily remove because they contain a forgotten recording of events that automatically assert the overlay as the ONLY choice. The image projected through these overlays onto the screen is sensed as, “Here I am, this is me.”

Most of this is pretty standard phil-ligion-ology (PHIL-osophy, reLIGION, psych-OLOGY) and is understood by most of the more clever schools.

But since each school is subject to its own belief system overlays, there are wide disagreements as to which overlays are preferable. A common denominator is that almost every school will argue for some and against others.

The goal of installing, removing or modifying the overlays is the principal task addressed by most of the doctrines, scriptures, or technologies generated by these schools. The means differ (as well as which overlays are to be addressed), but the determination to change something is remarkably analogous.

The most basic means of modifying an overlay, and probably the least dangerous, consists of reacquainting the individual with the recordings of forgotten events that are causing him to assert the overlay. The hope is that he will draw new conclusions and alter his own overlay, thereby achieving a change in self.

The major difficulty with such an approach is illustrated by the fact that when white light is projected through both a blue overlay and a yellow overlay, it will appear on the screen as green. If we determine to eliminate the green light, we will probably go looking for a green overlay which in this case doesn’t exist. If the green light represents a psychosomatic illness or a state of depression or an unacceptable behavior, we might have some difficulty in locating the exact combination of overlays that is responsible for the condition’s creation.
This stumbling block has left many of us wishing that we could remove all the overlays, insuring that the condition is eliminated. Then on a blank screen, we could replace selected overlays to generate the self that would interest the people we wish to attract, or to generate the self that would align with what we want to achieve—deliberately creating ourselves.

And literally, that is what The Avatar Course allows us to do.

One of the results we experience on Avatar is the ability to closely approach identityless-ness. In other words, to experience a self that is without aspect or location. That state is true self, the AVATAR. It is an enlightening, an in-every- moment ability, to make any choice or none, to select our own overlays.

Avatar offers us the opportunity to create the image of life that we prefer.

The first task we face as new Avatars is to integrate the efforts that have previously obstructed our choices. The world obligingly presents them. To many of us, this integration is an even greater challenge than the exercises on the course, but who would turn their back when the gift of standing at the helm of life is offered?

Could anyone have ever dreamed what an incredible opportunity the Avatar Materials present?

THE VALUE OF AVATAR

There are moments on The Avatar Course when all thought processes stop, and one becomes aware of existence without creating any reaction or response to it. Awareness moves beyond the scope of daily concerns, slips time and definition, and realizes itself as the descriptionless source from which all things, real or imagined, have their beginnings.

This is the transcendental experience, the divine ground. This is the source from which all differences arise and to which all differences ultimately return to be integrated. It is the eternal moment in which the seer and the seen, the knower and the known, share the same root.

In this state there is no conflict between the good of others and benefits for oneself as one clearly perceives the unified nature of awareness.

In this state there is no need to seek or reject anything or anyone, as one clearly perceives the arbitrary structures of preferences and judgments.

In this state there is no permanence and no impermanence as these are qualities, and this state
is without quality, without characteristic.

The Buddhist calls this state of awareness quiet abiding. The Brahmin labels it the descriptionless void. The Christian mystic calls it the eye of Jehovah (I am that I am). The Muslim calls it the formless and unnamed God. In Avatar we refer to it as SOURCE.

No words or symbols can contain this state, for as the source of description, it is itself always beyond description.

But, it can be experienced!

The value of Avatar, and I suspect the reason for its worldwide popularity, lies not in the written materials but in the ease and efficiency with which a trained Avatar Master can lead a student to repeatedly achieve an experience of this long-sought state of being.

As source, the Avatar student is behind or outside the filters of the intellect, behind or outside belief systems, and behind or outside of any conflict with any other identity.

In this here and now, the student has a non-judgmental, compassionate view of his own creation of reality. If he chooses, he can return his awareness through the same old belief filters and watch as his creation of the world re-arises with its freedoms (opportunities) and limitations (problems), its truths and facts, its allies and enemies.

Or if he chooses, with the assistance of his Master, he can discreate the old filters and redirect his awareness through new filters of his own creation and watch a new world arise.

Perhaps the student will choose to alter a belief and turn a limitation into an opportunity to explore a new experience. Perhaps the student will choose to change a belief that was causing the projection of an enemy and create a friend or ally instead.

Source has no limitation that it does not choose, no freedom that it does not create.

Returning to source is the path of experiencing. Returning to the world is the path of creating.
The Avatar learns to walk both paths deliberately.

BEYOND AVATAR
(From a January 1989 lecture)

...Either after the initiation session in Section III of The Avatar Course, or somewhere on the Section IV Master Course, a student begins to discover his or her own patterns of creation. It is quite a remarkable discovery and opens a very private and personal door to the templates of one’s own existence.

This is the path that awaits beyond the Avatar materials; it goes beyond Star’s Edge, and there are no maps and no footprints to follow. The final instruction, the last guidepost before the gate, which will appear to some as the blessing of source and to others as the curse of blame, says simply, “YOU are a more fundamental reality than any aspect the world can reflect!”

At this threshold, the uninitiated turn back to the world to logic for explanations and seek reasons why. But the trained Avatar student will pass beyond any need of instruction and directly experience the inexpressible that gives rise to the patterns that shape his or her existence. This plateau of awareness is quite a relief for the sincere seeker of enlightenment. From it, one sees how the actions and events of his or her life align with a higher consciousness desire to explore life’s potential.

It is with a mixture of amusement and amazement that one recognizes the incredible conservation of effort behind every life’s event and every changing moment to offer the perfect lesson for unfoldment. The struggles with life, the resistances and fixed ideas, are replaced by a willingness to experience and a natural alignment of one’s own efforts with the efforts of a higher universal consciousness.

This is undoubtedly what the great Chinese I CHING refers to as being in harmony with the Tao.

Without reflection or calculation, one acts in perfect harmony with the template of one’s own higher design. At last, there is the feeling that one is where one ought to be! There are no unpaid obligations, no accounts due. It is an end to the struggle between self and the world.

Beyond this is the final fulfillment of the deep, haunting desire to again exist as unity. It is the inseparable that one truly is, the no-boundary space that hosts the circus of life and death. It is the infectious gleam of joy in your own eye reflected in the Avatar Master’s eye. It is source awareness.

Not from the world, but here, now, from this inexpressible beyond, arise the blueprints that determine one’s role in existence. Using the tools of Avatar one is, of course, free to modify and to continue to explore potentials.

An Avatar Master understands that beyond the lessons he can teach awaits a private and personal world path that only the self-honesty of his student can reveal. He does not burden nor comfort the student with his own or others’ belief systems. He does not delay the student with hidden fees in the form of worship, homage, enforced loyalties to a cause or enforce agreement with a creation. He asks for some form of currency for his service and nothing more.

The Avatar Master equips; the Avatar Master trains; the Avatar Master points; but then, the Avatar Master moves aside.

It is this ability of the Avatar Master to know when at last to step aside that makes the Avatar training so powerfully liberating.

 

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