In the 80's a research group channeled Ra. Part of the information described the archetypical structure of experience and evolution. Below is an interpretation of what Ra describes.
You could think of yourself as a complex of a mind, a body and a spirit: three aspects of you.
Your spirit side could be understood as the 'sphere' or 'cloud' or 'spark' you are: Ra calls it your shuttle. Your mind would be your (emotional, mental and intuitive) intelligence - the part of you that creates, learns and transforms. Your body is your (physical) form or vehicle, being the creation and reflection of your mind.
In every experience you have, there is an interaction between your spirit, mind and body. They influence each other constantly. For instance, you have a thought to lift your hand and your body responds. Or your body senses smell and your mind interprets it as pizza. Your spirit influence and interaction is very powerful yet very subtle. For instance, your degree of freedom to follow your dreams would be a spirit level influence. Your level of faith and the degree of seeing truth also.
Each experience also goes through or is 'processed' in a cycle of 7 steps of evolution. These steps describe the origin of your experience and the final result of every experience - and the steps in between.
What Ra describes is how in every experience you go through these 7 steps and what in each step your mind-body-spirit interactions are. This gives you a template you can use to gain deeper understanding of your experiences: where they originate from and what impact they may have on you.
When you want to better understand your experience, think of these as pieces in your puzzle. Now that you better know what pieces make your experience puzzle, you can better identify what is influencing your experience - and how you might change the direction.
We start with a somewhat simplified description of the 7 steps to help you get a picture of the puzzle.
Think of every experience you have as follows:
you have an experience
you learn something from it or not
you have another experience
you learn something from it or not
and so forth.
So we have two steps to begin with:
Experience
Learn
This cycle of experiencing and learning is continuous. You experience, you learn, you experience, you learn, etc. If you don't learn something from your experiences, your experiences may stay somewhat the same. When you do learn something from your experiences, you and your experiences evolve.
The decision to learn from your experience is your choice. Choice is very central in the entire process. In every step there is a choice to make. You have free will.
Let's look at the choice you have in how you experience something. When two people watch a movie, their experience isn't the same. Something happens in that process. One may love the movie, and the other may not like it at all. From what appears on the screen, you make an experience based on your preferences, biases, believes, etc. When a storm hits your town - some people may have a panic attack while others remain unmoved. When the economy tanks some people sell all of their stock and others sit it out. Your personal response to an event is subjective and unique - based on your own past experiences and learning.
Therefore, the event (the movie, the economy, the storm, etc) and the experience (the joy, the misery, the panic, the actions, etc) are two separate steps in the process.
So we now have three steps:
Event
Experience
Learn
When you learn something from your experience, does that also mean you change? No. That's still a decision. You may learn something from it - for instance that drinking coffee keeps you up at night - and yet you may still continue to drink coffee because you like it so much. You did not change your habits, tendencies and behavior. To make a change, you need to make a decision to let go of something and chose a new way. This is the step of transformation. It is when you let go of a certain believe, preference, perspective, bias, habit, emotional attachment, etc.
We now have 4 steps.
Event
Experience
Learn
Transform
After the transformation step, you are who you are: still the old you or a (partly) new you. We'll call this step 'You' for now. This is considered the end result of the experience evolution process. You becoming you through experiences, learning and transformation.
We now have 5 steps.
Event
Experience
Learn
Transform
You
How did the event appear in your life? In your mind you perceived it. While you are 'awake', there is always something appearing before you. From the moment you get up until you go to bed, your day is filled with all kinds of appearances. How are these 'events' created?
According to Ra there are events that you created and events that 'happen'. In Tarot this is called the wheel of fortune. The world is a large interactive place - like a giant ocean - and while you swim in it, all kinds of things can happen, including events you have little influence on. Take the weather. Collectively we may influence the weather over time - however you probably have no or little influence on the weather today. The traffic accident, power outage or late night party at the neighbours is unlikely of your making. Meanwhile, your tripping over a branch, what you had for breakfast, the exciting discusion at work or afternoon headache may very well be your own making. This step of the process is the creation step. What comes out of the creation step is the 'event', which can be of your making or the 'world's' making.
The wheel of fortune represents the unpredictability of life - we do not have all the information available, we are not fully aware of all that is happening and everyone has free will. You may not control some events that appear in your life, and yet you have significant creation power.
We now have 6 steps.
Create
Event
Experience
Learn
Transform
You
What is the 'input' for the creation? Let's say you are a painter, where do you start? There is some idea or intent that starts the creation/painting process. You 'want' to paint something. The wanting and what you want, your intent, is the 'input' for the creation step.
We now have 7 steps.
Want
Create
Event
Experience
Learn
Transform
You
Let's take an example for all 7 steps:
want: you love concerts and want to go to a concert
create: you buy tickets to a concert
event: you arrive at the concert
experience: you love the experience at the concert
learn: you learn that concerts is something you really love
transform: you decide to go to concerts more often
you: you are a bigger lover of concerts
or:
want: you love concerts and want to go to a concert
create: you buy tickets to a concert
event: you arrive at the concert
experience: you don't love the experience at the concert
learn: you learn that going to concerts isn't really your thing after all
transform: you decide not to go to concerts for a while
you: you are a lesser lover of concerts
The possibilities are endless.
To gain insight into what is going on when you experience something, you could look at decisions you have made at each step in the process.
What did I want?
What in me created it this way or was this outside of my influence?
What is the 'event' or 'outcome'?
What experience do I make from the 'event'?
What do I learn from the experience?
Do I choose to change/transform?
My new or old me.
A few things to consider in each step.
Step 1: Want
You are not always aware of what you want. Many desires are subconscious. Your taste for coffee might not be something you think about. Your need for safety, attention, success and health are generally not on your mind all day long. There is no need for being aware of everything all the time. There is nothing wrong with cruising on autopilot as long as you are not crashing into things. However, you may be so much on autopilot that you can't even remember what you want in life (we have written other articles about how to reconnect with knowing what you want in life). When you are having experiences that you don't like - going back to step 1 - examining what you do want - can help you solve the puzzle.
Step 2: Create
Your creation process is often also happening on a subconscious level. You've said, done and perceived something before you've had time to think it through. You may run into conflict at work often, run out of money all the time, have frequent car accidents, have pain in your knee, win the lottery three times in a row - how you did it or even the notion that you did it - you don't really know. This step is often happening outside of your awareness and you only are aware of the outcome (step 3). You create at a conscious or subconscious level. At your body level this is for instance in the form of cells, health, sensations, heart rate, illness and so forth. At your mind level this is in the forms of thoughts, feelings and actions.
Illness for instance is created by your body. What else would create something in your body? The challenge is that we don't know why. What caused the illness? Why would your body create an illness? Is it because of genetics, environment or your mental/emotional state? You were perhaps not (fully) aware of your body creating the illness, just like you are generally not aware of your body digesting food or creating new cells. You become aware of your hair growing at some point, but you are not aware of the process of hair cell creation.
Similarly, the thoughts, emotions and actions also seem to come out of nowhere in you. You may be aware of the thoughts you are having, but at that point it has already been created - and it's already in step 3. Whether you will speak your thoughts you generally have a bit more control over - although you probably recognize the moment you say something you wish you hadn't said, or say something and wonder where that came from. And even in that moment of creating what you say, so much is happening. Your facial expression, tone of voice, choice of words, body language - it's a complex process and you are mostly only partly 'in control' of it. You create all this at your subconscious level using your programming. To change any of it, you will need to change the programming itself (step 5 Learn en step 6 Transform).
Step 3: Event (outcome)
You won or lost a game. You got the job or did not. You did the dishes or did not. The sun shines or doesn't. You are at the movies or not. You are having Chinese for diner or something else. Sometimes you know exactly what you did to get that outcome, sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you see your own role in the creation, sometimes you blame someones else even though you are the main creator of the outcome, and sometimes you really did not have much influence on it at all. Whatever may have happened in step 2, in step 3 it's a fact. The outcome is what it is. It's now in the past already. The decision was made, the outcome created.
It is helpful to realize that what appears in your awareness about a situation or event is a fraction of the total reality. Your senses (smell, vision, etc) are processing a limited amount of information of the total available information. You know this from experience when two people recall different details of the same event. The 'observer' in you determines what you perceive of the event - what information you 'receive'.
Events happen constantly in your life. What's on the news, being diagnosed with ADHD, your exam results, a new city regulation - its endless. Just by what you pay attention to in the world, you exercise 'choice'.
Step 4: Experience
Losing or winning a game, getting or not getting a job, being diagnosed with a disorder, etc - these are all events that you can experience in very different ways. Some people really don't mind losing a game - others feel terrible. Winning a game may boost your confidence, yet for others is was just a game. To one person, the doctor's diagnoses is accepted as a fact - while someone else may not agree with the opinion. Your entire being is at work in the experience making step: all your believes, emotions, thoughts, knowledge and responses are touched and moved by the event. You have a lot of freedom of choice in this step - yet here too it is often a subconscious automatic process. You're not aware of why you experience it the way you do - it just happens to you.
Step 5: Learn
The most basic conclusion from any experience is whether you liked it or not. Did it make you feel good or not? And what does that tell you? If it does not make you feel good, you don't want to repeat the experience. If you don't understand what happened, you don't know what to learn from it - and chances are you will experience it again. When you burned your finger on the stove, you know you don't want to do that again. The learning is clear: watch out for a hot stove. There is a lot of learning happening in experiences, even if you are not fully aware of it. When someones says something about the way you look - you learn something. When you say something and you get a strong negative of positive reaction - you learn something. These experiences make an impression - and that learning may go into your memory in the transformation step.
You have experienced a lot in life, and therefore you have learned a lot. Much of what you have learned, you don't even remember. And yet, these learnings have made you who you are today. That structure forms your experiences constantly and often automatically. It's so quick, your experience is already a reality before you've had a chance to interfere. This can feel like you are always behind the facts and may feel overwhelming and complex to gain any control over the process.
You can also look at it differently. The powerful being that you are creates all these experiences on the fly and in a heart beat - yet it is completely of service to you. This part of you is still you. It's not an enemy. It is more like an instrument or program that executes what you tell it to. Now, it is a very powerful instrument and requires training to operate. You need to learn to experience, and how to create the experiences you truly want. It takes practice. It takes experience. You learn from your experiences how to master the powerful instrument that you are. You can't fix an engine if you have no idea of what components it is made of and how they function. To learn is to study yourself and your experiences. To understand the components in you and how to operate them so they give you the experiences you are looking for. Self-knowledge, study and awareness is needed to become a more masterful mechanic, operator and experiencer. Increased self-knowledge lets you modify yourself - without it your autopilot runs your life based on what you have learned in the past.
Step 6: Transformation
It is your decision what you learn from an experience, whether you make that decision consciously or subconsciously. It is also your decision if that learning leads to change in you. This too can happen outside of your awareness. Especially in your early childhood, a lot of learning leads to change in your believes, preferences and self-knowledge. And this continuous in your life at more or lesser levels of awareness. You can see how you might want to be aware of what is happening in this step too. What happens in this step truly changes how you are.
Step 7: You
All these steps make who you are. You are your experiences, what you have learned from them and how that has changed you. These three steps (4, 5, 6) are the 'informers' and strong influencers in your life and can make you a different person. Step 7 becomes the 'input' for step 1, and so it continues. You can see how who you are or have become in step 7, drives or inspires what you want in life (step 1) and what you create (step 2 and 3), and also how you then experience (4), learn (5) and transform (6).
If there is something in life you are experiencing that you don't like, how do you change it?
You could start at step 4. Is the way you experience the 'event' the best way to look at it? Could you experience it in a different way?
Then, what is there to learn from the experience, especially your role in it, so you can break the cycle?
Then, do you make the change? Do you let go the old belief, tendency or emotion? Do you accept a new point of view?
Simply said, taking a good look at your experiences is a way to transform yourself and break the cycle of unwanted experiences. Even though it may seem overwhelming at times - your 'instrument' runs most aspects of your life without flaw. You digest, you speak, you think, you move. It's really those specific obstacles that require your attention. And just realize that given the powerful complex being that you are with the free will to manifest what did not exist before - you are in training to learn how to master it.
Another option to modify your experiences is to start with step 1 going back to what you actually want instead of the experience you are having. This can be an even stronger way to bring change. At the end, it is all about what you want in life. Keeping your focus on what you want is a way of thinking we call integrative resonance (more on that in another article). Where attention goes, energy flow. When you invest your energy in experiences you don't want, you may end up with more of those experiences. It may be that while moving toward with what you want you experience obstacles, in which case you need to take a closer look at the obstacle and still evaluate steps 4 to 6. But because you started with what you want, your attention stays on what you want while you learn how to make that happen instead of getting somewhat lost in past experiences.
This is a first somewhat simplified interpretation of the evolution process as described by Ra. We'll go into the mind-boy-spirit interactions in each step in the next article.