Yogi infinite

Steve Harrison interviewed by Natalie Dekel. Part 5 of 5.

Part 5. Go to Part 1. 2. 3. 4.

Natalie Dekel: What happens when people pray? Not just mumbling or using somebody else’s text. I mean if you’re genuinely requesting help and then you kind of let it in.

Steve Harrison: You allow yourself to become an instrument and that can be very powerful. And essentially, if you’re in an open space in yourself, you’ve released from the grip of the ego and identity and you’re existing as a presence, then any wandering thing that comes through your consciousness at that time will be blessed.

So it’s totally possible to call in someone into your prayer or into your meditation and they’ll then reside in your energy with you for a little time.

Natalie: I was never quite sure when people said that you call on your ascended master or you call the angels. I thought, well why call them? They’re floating around anyway. How is it going to help? They’re standing here watching us.

Steve: It is good for us in any case to open up to something bigger than just ourselves. I’ve found it very helpful and rather ego-bashing to recognize that there are other beings, there are other human beings in a human body that are functioning at a quite different level of consciousness to what Steve might be right now. And their consciousness may be far vaster and more expanded than Steve right now, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, it’s out of range at the moment.

What if you open up and somebody who’s not at a high level of consciousness is passing by?

Everything is essentially drawing up. And if we feel ourselves being pulled down, then we know it. We have the choice to release the grip if we feel there’s too much in it.

Some people assume they need to put protection against so-called ‘bad energy’.

I’ve never experienced it. If we’re still susceptible to such things, then again there’s a good challenge to strengthen, root in, ground into ourselves and not be so easily influenced by people’s moods.

So, susceptibility to so-called negative energy is a matter of attitude – a mental construction.

Yes.

Basically, you could open to love and to a higher level of consciousness when we tune in into that awareness.

Yes, and then it will be unacceptable to be dragged down to any other level. It just won’t fit us anymore. It won’t feel right. It will feel like we’ve stepped out of our true nature and now we’re functioning in somebody else. But nobody’s really done that to us; we’ve taken the hook; we’ve taken the bait.

If somebody came and cursed me now and scolded and blamed; whether I take that or not is also a choice in me, isn’t it? Whether I take that on myself and burden myself with it, or whether I stand in myself and simply allow it to pass through.

There has to be some identity for it to latch onto you. There has to be some Steve here that can be insulted or blamed. But if there’s no Steve here, if I don’t attach myself to any identity then that can’t stick to nothing, can it? If I’m nothing, it can’t stick. It simply passes through. But if I have a strong identity to defend, then of course praise will have a big effect on my identity, it feels happy, and blame will feel very agitating to my identity.

Setting ourselves free of that, you essentially become untouchable, unshakable.

Fear can only affect you when there is an identity?

Fear only exists with an identity… and our greatest fear is the loss of our identity, isn’t it?

If I want to get rid of the fears. Where do I start?

Don’t worry, life will give you endless opportunities to encounter your fears…

…I don’t want to wait for life to bash me…

The best way is falling back from the ‘me’ – the ‘me’ as a separate image, a separate idea and identity. Doing this progressively and feeling the joy of your expansiveness.

When you sink into yourself for a moment, there’s no fear. When you go back into identity and get attached to that again then fears can start to manifest. We have to encounter those fears in a way that we witness them, rather than being intimated by them.

So fear is great energy and just needs liberating. The ego is a great energy too. It’s a powerful energy in that we’ve poured of our life power into manufacturing this image of ourselves. Contained within that image is all the energy that our heart needs, our soul needs in order to give our soul expression in the world. That image has to be sucked like a vampire; it has to be drawn back to ourselves. So the first thing is to stop feeding it with so much of our energy and then to come back to the source.

Rather than projecting a self-image, self-created out of our fears and inadequacies and ego, we can allow our soul to express freely with our authentic energy.

There’s a point of contact where the infinite touches the body. And where that contact occurs between the infinite and finite or the un-manifest and the manifestation of this body, there’s a touch point. In my experience, it’s in the heart. And with that touch comes the body.

So if you bring all the body energies and mental energies back to the source, you’ll feel a sense of “I”, the self or the soul. But again, if the energy’s withdrawn it just returns back to the infinite.

Is that why when people die it kind of hits you in the heart area?

Everything is about the heart, most of the time. We know anyway where we abide. When you point to yourself, you will point here, at your heart. So we intuitively know where the location of the soul is, if we use that term.

You’re a spirit that’s taken a body. You learn to be human more than anything else. That’s quite something to do, become a being, become a human, a spirit taking form.

Being out of that body, trying to become spirit when you’re already this. But you try and come to terms with being in a body, which initially feels like a confusing state to be in, I think.

I want to tell people who you are – what would I say? This being…

…this being playing within Steve, playing within this yoga teacher and currently residing at the yoga sanctuary… We all remain a kind of unfolding mystery. I don’t really even feel like I can say who I am because the moment I say who I am, I am limiting my being.

I guess we have to use words but it feels like just being really happy with the mystery. It’s just a great unfolding mystery rather than trying to be a knower of everything. I feel very happy in the mystery; I feel quite at peace in the mystery. Out of that, there seems to be what’s arisen.

End of Part 5. Go to Part 1. 2. 3. 4.

7 May 2014.

Exclusive publishing rights © Natalie Dekel and Gil Dekel. Images © Gil Dekel. Text editor: Gil Dekel. Interview conducted on 29 April 2014 in Southampton. Steve is based in Southampton, UK. Natalie is based in the UK. Steve’s Website. Natalie’s art.