Robert Simmons - Stones of the New Consciousness: Healing, Awakening, and Co-creating with Crystals, Minerals, and Gems

To the Stone Beings, and to the One who dwells within my heart, and every heart.

The author with two of his favorite Azeztulites.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M y heart calls out in gratitude to my friend Robert Sardello, who encouraged me in every possible way, helping me to reimagine the stones and our relationship with them. Robert, your ideas have inspired and awakened me, and they have led me to many treasured things. I stand beside you as a friend of Sophia.

To Cheryl Sardello, I offer deepest thanks for your friendship and openness, and your attention to the many details of running the School of Spiritual Psychology. You have made your home a welcoming place for me and for hundreds of people seeking the path of soul.

I am grateful to my friend and co-author of The Book of Stones, Naisha Ahsian. You have taught me, amazed me, tolerated me and made me laugh on numerous occasions. I know I am your brother, whatever planet that happened on.

Mr. Daniel Deardorff, a man on speaking terms with the Stone People, thanks for saving my life and holding me in your heart, as well as teaching me a thing or two about the living world and life outside the Wall.

To Margery Cantor, our dear friend and book designer, my deepest appreciation for fun times and Buddhism, for the beauty of your work and the loveliness of your soul. To my pal Dr. Bill Warnock, thanks for helping me with health and poetry, which belong together. To Hisae Matsuda and Kathy Glass, who contributed immeasurably to getting this monster to press, I bequeath a pair of first-class tickets to Valhalla, or the Divine realm of your choice. To Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough, thanks for being my friends, and for running a publishing house in a way that makes me proud to know you. To the staff of our company, Heaven and Earth, whose work, spirit and sense of humor make my life possible, more gratitude than I can say in words. You are all in my heart. For photographer and buddy John Goodman, my salute to a hero who is insufficiently sung. No one reading this book will be able to tell which pictures you took from the roof of the Nerd Center.

To everyone who reads my work, or who loves the stones, I extend my heartfelt appreciation. You are the pioneers of the New Consciousness.

I admit to having saved the best for last. To my beloved wife Kathy Helen Warner, I offer my all, forever. You have shared your life with me. You hugged me, helped me, healed me, consoled and encouraged me. You taught me truth by being true. You taught me love by loving. You are my best friend, my inspiration and my treasure.

Robert Simmons

INTRODUCTION

D ear readers, you are about to be amazed, moved, challenged and quite possibly radically transformed! The content of this book will do that if you allow it to. But, it is not the force of the content alone that will surge through you, prompting pleasurable inner upheaval and a rearrangement of who you are, placing you within the conscious possibility of experiencing much more vividly who you are intended to be as a spiritual human being. The internal fire of Robert Simmons warms this writingor, I should say, fires it up, so that you can see your lives in a new light and feel a new kind of love ignited.

At last count, the number of books on what crystals can do for you was beyond count. They pretty much all follow the same formata listing of minerals and crystals along with the characteristics they inspire. No one, no one, until this book, had developed a clear and persuasive framework for understanding why one would desire to work meditatively with crystals and minerals for other than what finally amounts to personal desire for improvement, healing or receiving qualities that one feels in need of. Spiritually seen, we have to say that a strong element of egotism follows the existing crystal path. Now, thanks to this writing, we are able to see that those many compendiums of stones and all the effort that so many people have put into working with stones has been a preparation for what is described in this writingthe potential for inner work with stones to be world-transformative! It is a matter ofutilizing the ground we stand on to change the ground we stand on.

The title of this book carries two meanings. It promises that there is a grouping of stones that can be of assistance in initiating a different and advanced mode of consciousness. This promise means that working with the stones described cannot be seen as another add-on to who you are. Spiritual interests often carry the assumption that, after all, we are pretty good and effective and important the way we are, but it would be nice to be able to be even more that way, and crystals can help fill in the gaps. Working that way with stones will not produce a new consciousness.

A second way of hearing the title is that the writing itself is exemplary of the new consciousness. This book could not have the title Stones of the New Consciousness while the writing is itself an example of old consciousness; that is, if the very tenor of the writing of this book were typical and usual, that would be a cause for some degree of suspicion on the part of the reader. The form of this writing does not disappoint, and thus it requires a degree of openness to enter fully into the flow, a willingness to release any concern of wondering where it might be going and, most importantly, the capacity to notice what is occurring inwardly as you read.

Of course, the title immediately brings up the question of what counts as old and what counts as new. The terms here are not about time per se. It is not so much a matter of what came earlier and what came later; in fact, one is urged to be cautious of that way of reading, for consciousness is always whole, and thus old and new cannot primarily be thought of linearly. If something is promised to be new as a consciousness, that means that the Whole has reconfigured. Thus, the writing itself is within this reconfiguration and is not merely a journalistic report about it. When you complete this book you will notice an ongoing reverberation, as if your consciousness, down to your toes, hums a new tune, one never heard nor felt before, but one that has been longed for without knowing what the longing was about.

The way into this book is to keep in mind that the author has been through everything that he speaks of within the writing. The authoritative voice herein comes from someone who has undergone radical transfiguration of being through work with stones. This transfiguration occurred without a road map. He did not know where he was in the process, for how can one foresee where the road is to come to at least a provisional stopping place if the road is not even there until being made, step by step by the inner practices described in this writing? Still, something of the nature of new consciousness did come to our author when he woke one morning to a voice that said that the new consciousness is blessing. This active word blessing, which is both a doing and a way of being as well as the very most intimate gesture of the world toward us, constitutes the path of this book.