Asking the Deeper Questions
Who are you when the labels fall away? When you are no longer your profession, your relationships, your successes, your failures, or the story you’ve told yourself for years? Much of our fear, frustration, and anxiety begins when we over-identify with one small aspect of ourselves (and never establish or lose connection with the deeper, unchanging awareness beneath it). When you shine the light of awareness at yourself when you are in a quiet, concentrated space, who is there? Are you a body? Are you your thoughts? Are you your experiences and past? Are you your neurology? Are you your hopes? Your DNA? Are you your family of origin? Are you a spirit? The closer you look, the more “you” remain elusive. This is freedom. To be spontaneously recreated each moment, and having the capacity, and wisdom, to be “alive” for the ride.
Who are you?
Like a beautiful storm that can’t be located in the rainbow, the wind, or the rain, you too are a set of conditions. The conditions in your life have created the “you” of this moment. In 10 minutes, a week, or 20 years, new conditions will present in your life that will create a new arising, a new specter of you. Even if you believe in an undying soul or spirit, this surely isn’t all you are. Like a rainbow, you change with present conditions and there is no solid you outside the conditions that form your identity.
When we loosen our grip around elements that we think comprise our essence, we can effectively watch with more intelligence, interest, and clarity. Instead of being controlled by unwanted thoughts, for example, you can experience those same thoughts as one temporary arising of your being. Instead of feeling antagonism toward your thoughts, you could instead use those thoughts as the bridge to start being more conscious.
“Each moment has the potential to lead you directly into the heart of life itself.”
You are Perfect Now
.
In this way, you are already whole and perfect in this moment, not at some imagined point in the future, and not only after certain thoughts or feelings disappear, but now. Every experience that arises, whether pleasant, painful, or seemingly neutral, can become part of your spiritual growth and deepen your mindfulness. Each moment has the potential to lead you directly into the heart of life itself. In this space, there is freedom, because no experience has to trigger an automatic or conditioned response. You are no longer bound to react unconsciously; instead, you are free to meet life with awareness and presence.
Becoming Free
Those old pains or hurts, those old habits, those persistent thoughts can be seen anew. They can trigger no reaction or only wholesome reactions instead of habits. If you are willing to see what arises as it arises and to be with what leaves as it leaves, you can be free. Now you are the watcher, ever at peace, not swept into believing momentary experiences are “real,” that they comprise you in some fundamental way. You, my friend, aren’t what you think, you aren’t what you feel…unless you do these things half-asleep, without conscious awareness, they become your destiny.
If you are conscious, your rough or undesirable parts can be seen as endearing, human, and even a source of amusement. “Oh, I see you my old friend fear. I see you, but I don’t have to go with you today.” By being warm toward ourselves, and all aspects of ourselves, we immediately set up a friendly environment. Instead of endless internal fighting, why not lay the sword down and reside in the big mind, the peaceful stream of conscious awareness?
At SpiritQuest, find the quiet time on a Sedona Spiritual Retreat to learn to align yourself with conscious awareness, or Spirit. We offer custom-made private experiences and dynamic group retreats. There is something for everyone!
