Manifesting Consciousness

Manifesting Consciousness

A Personal Journey Through The Awakening Process

Travis S. Dumont

Revised by:

Deniece Dumont

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Travis S. Dumont

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by The Awakening Workshop LLC

TheAwakeningWorkshop.com

Cover design by: AbsoluteCovers.com

Cover photo taken by: Travis S. Dumont

Cover photo of: Cathedral Rock, Sedona AZ

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

ISBN 978-0-9912857-1-6

Dedication:

Glory be to God

&

The Expansion of Human Consciousness

Contents

Forward

Preface

Ego Identity

The Gift

Reality Bites

Playing With Fire

A Simple Choice

What Now?

The Pit

Breaking All the Rules

Back to Reality

New Eyes

Love's Truth

Heaven on Earth

About the Author

Forward

The primary intention for writing this book is to share my personal experiences and insights in an effort to assist others, as well as myself, to embrace and cultivate self-awareness, Universal truth, and joy. Sharing my personal story allows the reader to see and experience how the awakening process can actually unfold in real life, providing a unique opportunity to understand the subtle and sometimes dramatic changes that take place on the journey towards enlightenment.

I have made every effort to tell my story as accurately as possible, keeping to the facts of any situation I chose to relate. Because this book is autobiographical in nature it naturally depicts information about people in my life such as family members, friends, and past romantic relationships. Although this information is included, it is merely added in an effort to illuminate what my own mindset was in any given situation, along with the corresponding changes that accompanied awakening. In no instance was there any malicious intent towards anyone in any way. It is my hope that through an honest account of interaction with the people in my life, I can demonstrate in greater detail the human dynamic, social conditioning, personality types and even the purpose those relationships have had in my life. The inclusion of certain stories, merely illustrates the transformation that has taken place within me, through relating my reactions to what I perceived to be dire circumstances. Therefore, each personal story within these pages is pivotal in portraying how it contributed to my own personal growth in some form or another.

Every person I've had interaction with has been for my great benefit and I harbor no ill will towards anyone introduced here. I have excluded real names, out of a deep respect for all who have been my Divine teachers. I believe I've been sent nothing but angels, and everyone who has played a role in my life has profoundly affected my ability to see myself as a Spiritual being. I wish to express immense gratitude for each person who has taken part in my journey towards happiness, peace, joy, and love.

Preface

What follows is a personal account of the way in which consciousness appeared in my life and how it has changed my perception of the world. As I continue my own passage towards enlightenment, I felt compelled to reach for a pen and share my story as an example to compare, validate, argue, refute, relate to, or glean insight from.

Ultimately, awakening is a solo journey. No other individual can do the work for us or give us the secret location of the elusive happiness we all seek. Only through searching deep within ourselves, can we find the answers for our own salvation. However, the significant fact that there are no new experiences, unique thoughts, or exclusive feelings, has come to light during my journey. The circumstances and details of our lives will likely differ, but at our core we are the same. As I tell my story, it may be discovered that the human race shares the same pain, stress, anxiety, heartbreak, joy, and confusion. Walking in my footsteps, you may connect to some of the ways in which you and I are similar, leading to validation for the way you feel about your own life.

Nothing in our physical world is real. My thoughts, experiences, and possessions, have nothing to do with who I really am. I am a spiritual being, having a physical experience. Most of what I was taught during my early years was not much more than personal opinion. Each individual has their own path, so the challenge is to become aware of who you really are so that you can consciously walk that path and not blindly follow the direction others have placed before you. In the end, the only thing we take with us is the understanding that comes from the life we have lived.

For thirty years I obligingly did what the ego and our society required of me, bringing me mostly misery, pain, isolation, and disappointment. Just at the point of falling into complete ruin and utter despair, I realized there must be a considerable flaw in my well-wrought plan. I was doing everything necessary to be a responsible, productive person and believed it would eventually bring me the peace and joy I so desperately desired, but any semblance of happiness had continued to elude me.

My first marriage was approaching the nine-year mark. I had a beautiful, three-year-old son. I was quickly building equity with a fifteen-year mortgage on our first home. I had a 401k-retirement plan. I owned my own remodeling business and was working towards real estate investment. My credit rating was golden, and I believed that I had all the answers for success. I felt sure that if I stuck to my plan, all my dreams would come true. There was just one tiny problem, I HATED MY LIFE!! And worse than that was the nagging realization that I felt trapped in a situation, I had put so much time and effort into, that I couldn't bare the thought of changing it.

When I was a child I had a premonition, that by the age of thirty I would be wildly successful, which to my young mind meant I would become a millionaire. The experience was so impactful that it remains vivid in my memory to this day. I was determined from that tender age to accomplish that dream, because something in that version of my future left me looking happy and content.

I didn't have a million dollars in the bank by my thirtieth birthday, nor was I even close, but I did feel I was headed in the right direction and was well on my way toward realizing the American Dream. Considering the excellent progress I had made, I wondered why I wasn't happy or at least somewhat satisfied with my present achievements. I'd been doing everything I could to produce a happy life, but to no avail. What I was experiencing was intense inner turmoil that I couldn't explain, but as I celebrated my thirtieth birthday the answers to my questions would begin to reveal themselves. I didn't know it yet, but I was about to receive the best gift of my adult life and it had nothing to do with money or material goods.

Some years after that fateful day, my life held little resemblance to the life I had back then. My golden credit rating was shot. My marriage had ended. I was allowed no contact with my only child. My 401K, was depleted. I had no savings. I was residing in my second wife's ex-husband's house. I owed over forty thousand dollars in unpaid child support, which resulted in the suspension of my driver's license. I'd accrued thousands of dollars in credit card dept. I had few possessions. I'd had minimal contact with extended family members, and in most cases the world would have seen my life as a complete failure, or at the very least, a cautionary tale. In truth, I would have agreed with this assessment if I hadn't been the one living the story.

Since then I have come to see how these circumstances have been perfect for my spiritual growth. Through taking responsibility for all of my unconscious, ego-driven choices, I empowered myself to make the changes that would result in greater freedom from the chains that keep the human heart bound to resistance and misery. Now, at forty-six years of age, my life continues to blossom as I embrace each fresh emergence of truth, broadening my understanding of why we are compelled to behave the way we do. With deeper self-awareness, I am left feeling happy and at peace for the majority of the time. The pain, misery, and isolation I once felt, has virtually vanished allowing the space for a new state of being to surface.

I am a common man with ordinary struggles and challenges, who is going through an extraordinary transformation! Emerging consciousness has helped me to see, understand, and experience everything in a new light, causing my life to take unpredicted turns and leading to controversial choices that have struck great fear into the hearts of the unconscious. However, I don't see these new choices as being better or worse than the one's I used to make, just different and more aligned with spirit. In the following chapters I detail those pivotal, life-altering moments, along with the insights and challenges that accompanied them.

I want to make it clear, that this is not a how-to manual or a guide book for spiritual students. It is merely a personal account of awakening as it has unfolded in my own life. The insights and opinions expressed in this book come from my personal experience and perceptions. I have no interest in convincing anyone of anything, nor do I expect anyone to share my understandings. Each of us has our own perfect path to follow and only God knows what that will be.

Throughout, I spoke to reflect the relative mindset I had when a particular event took place. In other words, I tried to accurately tell the story from what I understood to be true at the time, in order to show how one's life can be turned upside down, as his perceptions change. I strive to show how my experience of life was altered as consciousness continued to increase and I became clearer.

Ultimately, mine is a love story, as I began to see a different man in the mirror. Instead of the broken, damaged, unworthy individual I thought I was, a new man was reflected back to me. By clearing away the illusions and misconceptions I had about myself, I exposed the beautiful, loving, confident, compassionate, accepting person who had been there all along.

Inside every human there is an enlightened being waiting to be discovered, which has merely been covered over by attaching to unhealthy thoughts created by social conditioning and the construct of the ego. As we break through this superficial, illusory layer, we reconnect with our true spiritual selves, leaving us free to experience our lives here on Earth as a heavenly paradise filled with love and beauty, rather than the hellish nightmare so many of us trudge through on a daily basis. This is the reality the ego has blinded us to, and this reality is accessible to everyone, no matter what their circumstances may suggest. Mankind's search for happiness is intrinsic to our nature, and the experience of Heaven on Earth is not only possible, it is our God given right as human beings.

Chapter One

Ego Identity

The Creation of Insecurities, Shame, and Fear

My awakening process has been a long, arduous journey. As a young boy I heard stories in church about prophets in the bible who spoke to God and had visions of the future. These great men were visited by heavenly angels and personally instructed by Deity, where to go, what to say and what to do in the service of God. I remember magical stories of how people were instantly transformed into somebody entirely different. The way I understood the spiritual path was that it was a magnificent journey free from pain, fear and doubt. No worries or problems would ever have had a chance of infiltrating your spiritual armor and you'd find yourself in a state that was carefree and somewhat like skipping happily through fields of daisies. Maybe my idea was naïve, but I really thought that if one chose to follow God, everything in life would magically drop at your feet. Although that sounds wonderful, it hasn't been the reality of my experience at all. In fact, my life has proven to be quite the opposite, most especially my early years.

As awakening began to materialize, the dawning took me from an unconscious dreamlike state, to a shocking and nightmarish look at my life as it really was. While fully unconscious I thought I was completely in charge of everything in my life, but as I began to awaken, that unstable illusion of control started to slip away, as I desperately clung to the security of the daydream! When I finally raised my head up out of the sand and started to look around, my delusions began to dissipate and the perception I had of my life changed from a sunny field of flowers, into something a kin to smoke rising from a war torn battlefield! This wasn't my idea of how awakening was supposed to work. Wasn't waking up to the truth supposed to make life better in some way, happier or at least easier? Instead, I was waking up to a seemingly endless pile of mud that contained horrific truths and harsh realities about my life's circumstances. This wasn't a carefree place at all, this was a place that was dark and frightening but I knew the only way to change it was to face it head on and start the hard work of taking responsibility for everything that had led me down that road in the first place.

Given this understanding, one might ask the question, Why would anyone want to wake up? The answer is simply that most people don't. As soon as the slightest bit of reality begins to seep in, most people immediately retreat from consciousness by distracting themselves in any way they can. Many of the everyday activities in our lives are established for this very purpose. Of course we aren't aware that we are scrambling away from awareness at every turn. We have convinced ourselves that we are taking care of our responsibilities, after all, there are things in life that need attention, but the fact remains that so much of what we engage in works as a distraction and has little to do with being responsible. We are unconsciously running from one thing to the next, jumping through every hoop the ego lays before us in an attempt at keeping our illusions alive.

The purpose of the ego, and the only way it can survive, is to keep our attention focused on anything but reality, most of which is negative. Most of us have experienced someone who complains incessantly, or only sees what is wrong or bad about a given situation, that would be the ego at work. We have all personally experienced the ego at play within our own lives, but the question is; do we realize it's the ego or are we so unaware that we are unable to separate ourselves from it?

Throughout history there have been relatively few enlightened beings on the planet, clearly awakening has not been a widely chosen path. Fortunately, I believe that is all destined to change. We don't even need to be aware of this change because it is taking place with, or without our conscious participation. Conscious participation merely speeds up the process in our individual lives. The truth is that each of us is heading towards enlightenment because there is no other possible destination. Overcoming the ego is the primary purpose to our lives on earth. As we become conscious we may realize that the intention of physical existence is transcendence, and when that can be accomplished, life as we know it will come to an end, and something new will have the space to emerge in its place.

Everything physical, including our bodies, has a finite existence, so everything physical or solid will eventually come to an end and turn to dust. You can't take any of it with you and yet we act as if it's all there is. This is what Jesus meant when he said, store up your treasures in heaven, because all treasures of love, peace, and joy born of rising consciousness are everlasting, nothing physical has the power to survive death. Some things bring us pleasure for a moment, but pleasure is short lived and lacks any real substance and is void of any true benefit. When the pleasure fades, as it inevitably will, the subsequent loss leads us to seek the next physical pleasure, and we continue the cycle as we perpetually attempt to find happiness in a place where it can't be found.

True joy is a state of being that does not have its source in the physical world. Only when we remember the Divinity of who we are, do we experience the joy that we all search for. The longing will never be satisfied until we turn our search inward. The awakening process is worth the initial discomfort because the rewards far-out-weigh the pain, and each physical pleasure pales by comparison, to the glory of finding what you've been looking for all along.

Of course most people simply aren't ready to consciously choose the path to awakening, but for those who are, buckle your seat belts because you're in for a wild ride! The awakening that is taking place on our planet at this time is what Christian religion would call the second coming of Christ or in other words the coming of Christ consciousness. I don't find a literal interpretation in this passage in the bible. I see a metaphorical representation that Christ's message will come again and we will be saved because the truth will rise within us and set us free.

Over the years, the intellect of mankind has greatly surpassed our level of consciousness, putting us in a precarious position since we clearly have the technology to destroy ourselves. Consequently, if our consciousness doesn't rise up to meet our intelligence, it may lead us to our own demise.

Unconsciousness is responsible for all the atrocities that have taken place in human history. We like to say that it's hatred or jealousy or any number of other dark attributes but awareness heals them all. Genocide, prejudice, war, starvation and murder have been prevalent as far back as our history will take us, and are all byproducts of unconscious living. Hatred cannot exist where consciousness resides because it brings with it the awareness that we are one, and you may be less likely to hate a part of your own blessed self. We will eventually realize that peace and joy are not brought about in such ways; war and hatred only create death, destruction, and division. To engage in such behavior only reinforces and strengthens the ego's presence in our lives because the ego feeds on fear and separation. As we become conscious, we will find life affirming ways to address our concerns, without conflict and destruction. Until that time comes, we must accept this behavior in others and, forgive them for they know not what they do. Most of us are simply not conscious of the consequences our actions carry.

Every crime against humanity that has ever been committed has taken place only because we didn't know any better. If we knew another way, we would have chosen it. Everything from minor offenses such as lying and bullying, to the annihilation of entire races and cultures, occur because we think it's the best way, or the only way to address our differences. Through consciousness we are shown the insanity of that belief. I trust that we now have enough experience to reevaluate and discover alternative ways to achieve what we say we want. Once we are able to achieve that, a new standard will begin to emerge, a standard that reflects our true nature and not the one the ego has created. One that is free from fear, one that promotes life and celebrates our differences, instead of destroying life and striving to crush what is unique.

The majority of the population, to differing degrees, unconsciously let the ego run the show and operate from a place of fear and illusion. It's what we know and is the reason the acquisition of material wealth has become so important to us. The ego tells us that we are primarily physical beings and that we should value anything that would promote us as such. In fact, we place so much importance in the physical that we have learned to completely identify ourselves with it. Our bodies, cars, jobs, homes, children, neighborhoods, countries, religions, money, spouses and education, are just a few of the things we rely on to validate ourselves. We believe we are our jobs and that what we produce determines our worth, and as a result, this misguided belief becomes the cause of pain and suffering. You can't possibly produce enough to prove value in one's self because even if you have always been a great producer, everything physical eventually changes and falls away. Nothing tangible is permanent. The ego puts so much effort into trying to convince us of the value in the physical because if it didn't, we would never believe something so ludicrous.

As we transcend the ego and the belief in the significance of the physical, it ceases to have power over us. The ego wants us to believe that the more we have, the better we are. The importance of more money, more control, and ultimately more power, is an illusion. We think that when we acquire things, we will be happy. However, the reality is that after the initial contentment and novelty wear off, we are typically more miserable and most desperately search for the next acquisition to relieve our anxiety. Misery is caused by the attachment to acquisitions and the resulting disappointment when we find they do not hold the key to lasting contentment. If we change our awareness around the concept of acquiring more, we can finally be in the world and not of it.

For thirty years the ego was in control of my life and it was my identity. I believed with every fiber of my being that to be successful and happy one had to have material wealth and power. After all, that's the American way, isn't it? It's certainly what I was led to believe and until my thirtieth birthday it was my religion, and my goal.

Unfortunately, as I reached the age of thirty, although I'd enjoyed some success, any semblance of happiness had still eluded me. Furthermore, I was haunted by an unexplainable experience that I'd had as a young child. Around the age of twelve, a quiet knowing completely consumed me, and somehow I just knew that by the time I reached the age of thirty I would be enormously successful! As a twelve-year-old boy growing up on welfare, I interpreted success as monetary, and from that day forward I lived every day believing that I would someday become a millionaire. The experience was so powerful and I believed it so fully that I couldn't keep it to myself and was compelled to reveal my secret to my identical twin brother and a couple of our closest friends. To my surprise, my brother and my friends were all quite entertained by how susceptible I was and mocked me relentlessly for my gullibility, but even their cruel ridicule couldn't dismiss my unwavering belief, and I spent the next eighteen years determined to see the dream come true.

My mother alone raised me because my parents were divorced when I was two and my father moved to a different state and was virtually non-existent in my rearing. After being diagnosed with cancer, my mother was too sick to work and was forced to depend on government assistance to make ends meet. Her cancer led to her having a major surgery that she never seemed to fully recover from. She healed physically but it seemed to rob her of her zest for life. Even after her health was restored she suffered from depression and turned to food for comfort. Because her weight significantly increased, in addition to other medical problems such as epilepsy and narcolepsy, she spent the majority of her days lying on the living room sofa leaving my brother and I to see to many of the household duties. In many ways, we were left much to our own devises from a very early age.

Having little adult supervision, coupled with our natural precocious nature, equaled independent children who learned about life without the benefit of mature wisdom or temperance. It wasn't an easy life but having little else to compare it to, I acknowledged the reality of the situation and even felt fairly good about the state of our lives right up until the time I started school.

Before she fell ill and couldn't work, my mother, in an attempt to give us a better start in life, moved us to a wealthy suburb of Seattle, Washington. She felt we could get a better education in a wealthier school district, which may have been true, but my brother and I stood out in the new school, not in a good way. There was a gaping financial disparity between us and our peers, which made it blatantly obvious that we were the underprivileged, neglected kids and would remain so from the first day we darkened the door of grade school, all the way through our high school years. There was little our mother could do to help us improve the image, so I did the best I could to accept my lot in life. Unfortunately, sometimes children can be cruel and my brother and I became easy targets for torment and ridicule.

The first pivotal, life-altering moment in my life, came outside of school when my brother and I were waiting in line at the grocery store with our meager selection, while our mother waited outside in the car. As a very young child, going to the store alone was already a difficult responsibility and as we thumbed through our food stamps to pay the debt, I over heard two older ladies behind us commenting about our circumstance. One of them said loudly, Those kids are going to grow up to be welfare bums just like their mother! I was shocked by the judgment and even more by the venom in her voice and as I turned to look at them, my eyes met the one that had spoken and her facial expression said it all! I had never seen such disgust and revulsion in the eyes of an adult before, and it confused me because I didn't understand how someone could detest me so much when she didn't even know me. I was just eight years old, naive, innocent and impressionable and they were looking at me as if I were the lowest scum of the human race! I was embarrassed to use food stamps in the first place and utterly humiliated when we miscalculated and needed assistance from the cashier to help us decide what to put back, yet it's difficult to even express the shame I felt when I was the object of that kind of negative scorn. I frantically looked away, keeping my eyes on the floor, wishing at that moment to find a hole I could crawl into. I tried to keep my composure, but the longer I stood there, the harder it became to contain my emotions, and eventually hot tears burst free and began to roll down my cheeks. When the cashier finally finished the transaction, I hastily grabbed the receipt from her, scooped up my goods, and raced for the exit!

The experience left quite an impression on me. At first I just wanted to pretend that it hadn't happened, but as feelings of overwhelming humiliation bombarded my tiny being, a new belief was born. For the first time in my life I understood that other people were better than we were. I already knew that most people had more money, but after that day I realized there was more to it than that. Clearly, we were damaged merchandise and shame became my constant companion. Now that I knew that other people were better than us, I finally understood the look on my mother's face anytime we were away from the protection of our home. It was the same one I now saw staring back at me from the mirror. No wonder she rarely wanted to come into the store with us and preferred to wait outside in the parking lot. She was ashamed of who she was, and now, so was I.

I was enormously troubled by the experience and I spent most of my childhood trying to prove to myself that those ladies were wrong about me. It actually worked for a period of time, prodding me to keep my grades up, but when puberty hit, my low self-esteem would begin to take control of my life. I had unhealthy thoughts like, I'm just kidding myself, everyone knows I'm no good and, those ladies were clearly right about me. Over the years I saw countless examples that validated their opinion and to escape the horrible feelings of self-loathing, I began using drugs and alcohol. Whatever I could do to avoid my pain, I did. I was a misfit in every way and with each passing year it became more and more evident to me that I wasn't good enough. My attitude got so bad that during my last two years of high school I had numerous encounters with the police and school authorities.

My mother's influence had taught me how to live in shame and fear. It wasn't her fault, but it was part of the example she had set for her children and we tend to learn what we live. There was hardly a time in our house when all the doors and windows weren't locked and the blinds weren't drawn, causing the effect of living in a darkened cave. And her fear of everyone from neighbors and family members, to strangers and people in authority, taught me that almost everyone out there was the bad guy and I had to protect myself from them.

My mother's experience with men wasn't positive either and consequently neither was her attitude toward them. She inadvertently taught me that men were the lesser sex and that women should always be placed on a pedestal, no matter the circumstance. She often advised me to tell my future wife that the dinner she had prepared was wonderful, even if it wasn't to my liking, and that I should always treat her like a queen, no matter how she treated me. In short, I should revere all women, even at the expense of my own self-worth. I felt like her advice was retribution for every bad relationship my mother had ever gone through. As a consequence, I learned to put women's feelings ahead of my own, even if I had to lie to do it. Clearly the message was that girls were better than boys and since my mother was the only parental figure in my life, her perspective was the one I readily adopted.

One of the many things I respected about my mother and took a lesson from was her strong relationship with God. She spoke to Him as if she were talking to any ordinary person. That included raising her voice and even some arguing, depending on how