Chapter 7. Your Inner Awakening
7.1. Are you ready to turn the switch? If so, you are about to experience the most important moment and the ultimate success in life. Do you want it? If you aren’t sure, please stop reading and return to this book when you are ready. If you are ready, then take a moment to congratulate yourself.
Do not expect anything supernatural to happen. There will probably be no crescendo and nothing dramatic; just a sense of perfect peace. If you do not think you care about perfect peace, it is only because you haven’t experienced it. Now that you are about to experience it, you will find out that peace is what you want.
Before you go any further, ask yourself, do you feel pretty good right now? Are you tired? If so, first take a nap. Are you stressed? If so, first do something you enjoy that will put you in a better state.
If you are going through any sort of crisis, then the idea of awakening may seem to be more difficult. However, a crisis is the ideal time to make a drastic change. Regardless of your state, you can always find a quiet place, perhaps lay on your back in bed all alone, and surrender completely to whatever it is you do feel.
If your state seems beyond repair, then surrender to it completely. Just let the suffering be. Keep going into it until it feels a bit better; until it feels manageable.
Now, when you are sure that you are ready to continue and you are completely open to this enjoyable teaching, you can start by remembering that you are not guilty.
7.2.1. If you have made any errors, they will now easily be corrected. You no longer need to live with the burden of all that garbage. You will correct any past errors. For now, just set aside any situation that is bothering you and let it be. The correction of error will happen naturally after you awaken.
Now go within. Feel your inner dimension, notice your chest.
Can you find a place inside of you where you know that nothing is wrong with you? Can you feel it, even vaguely? Can you remember and know that nothing is wrong with you? If so, you are starting to love yourself.
All the love that you desire comes from within you. The source of love arises from that place inside where you feel that nothing is wrong with you. Use that place to let love arise from within and fill you. Feel yourself loving yourself.
At first, this may feel a bit strange. All this time, you’ve depended upon a man or woman to give you this feeling of love. Maybe you thought that learning to love yourself was a cliché, and never took the idea very seriously.
That love you want to give to a romantic partner, or to your children—can you try to give that love to yourself? If you are starting to feel it, then remember this wonderful moment. If not, set this book aside for as long as it takes until you feel some love for yourself arising from within you.
You can either close your eyes or keep them open; but just be still and don’t move anything. Relax your body. Give it some time. Allow yourself to start feeling good.
Think about the love within. Feel the range of emotions.
Think about what you mean by love, how it feels for you, and try turning that feeling of love toward yourself. Another person is not required for you to experience love. You can do it alone.
7.2.2. Now that you have begun to learn how to love yourself, you are freeing yourself from the need to worry about getting love from someone else. This makes you feel a lot more comfortable telling the truth and accepting all of life unconditionally. You no longer need to experience the absence of love in your life.
You may still be deeply concerned about losing a relationship; but now you know that, even if your relationship fails, you will always have the love you need and that it comes from within.
Now, maybe for the first time in your life, you are ready to properly love another person. Love isn’t something you get, and it is certainly not something that can be negotiated through a set of rules or behaviors. Love flows from within you. It seems to originate in your heart, and it flows outward from there. It wants to flow through you—extending as far and wide as possible.
In this practice of self-love, you will begin to feel so much love flowing from you that you may not want to limit it to just one person. Just see where love takes you and feel that freedom.
You may want to become free to love anyone and everyone, and to allow that love to take so many different forms. In love, you can allow yourself to do and to experience whatever inspires you. Love sets you free.
7.3.1. There are times when you drive yourself crazy, right? Read that sentence again and ask yourself: who is the “you” and who is the “yourself”? Are there two of you? If so, which one is real?
To even have this thought means that there is a self who does or does not like what the other self is doing.
The thing about this dream of life is that you were born with a mind that never stops thinking. There is a voice in your head that sounds like your actual voice. It easily convinces you that it is you. For this reason, you begin to believe that every thought you have is to be taken seriously—that your thoughts are you. This isn’t true.
Spiritual gurus talk about stopping thought, but this is very difficult for most people. Either way, it doesn’t matter all that much and your awakening does not depend upon your ability to not think.
Instead, you can realize that the voice in your head—your constantly active mind—is just that: your mind. Like the body, the mind is just a tool that you have learned to use to help you navigate this life on Earth. It is a wonderful, perfect tool, but only once you know that it isn’t your identity. To know your identity is to escape from ego. So, then what is your identity?
You are the observer of your mind. You are the dreamer of the dream. You are beyond your thoughts and words. You are watching your thoughts, watching the world around you, observing it all and just taking it in.
As you contemplate this, perhaps there was a short moment of no thought? During that moment, could you feel that you were still present? You did not disappear because you had no thoughts for a moment. Of course not, you would have been even more present without your mind getting in the way.
If you did not experience a moment of no thought, here’s another approach. Watch your mind and wait for your next thought to appear.
It probably took a moment before your next thought arose. During that moment, you were conscious, but there was no actual thought about anything.
This exercise is only important so that you learn to observe your thoughts—to watch them. You can learn to always watch your thoughts and not take them so seriously.
7.3.2. What is the force called “life” that fills your body? Think of how it is the same life that fills every living thing in this world.
When a living creature dies, the mass of its body stays the same. The life has left, but the part that left isn’t measurable and weighs nothing. That’s because life is not material. It is invisible, non-matter, not a thing.
Your physical form arose from nothing and will return to nothing. You probably don’t pay much attention to nothing . You may not think about empty space or silence. The mind is preoccupied with only that which can be observed. That’s what the mind is for. It is the bridge between your essence and your experience of life on Earth.
The vast majority of the universe is empty space. It is nothing. What most people don’t know is that the empty space within you is proportionate to the empty space to matter ratio throughout the entire universe. There is an inner universe within you—on a tiny, molecular level—that scales just as small as the outer universe scales big. This is beyond the natural perception of your senses; but has been observed with the help of science.
You are almost entirely empty space, and this is the same realm from which you came and to which you will return. With all that empty space within, you never left the expansive dimension of nothing—even as you are here in this body and in this physical dimension.
Pay attention to empty space. Herein lies all truth. The matter in the universe (the stuff) is constantly changing. That’s one of the laws of nature: matter moves and changes. All things in the universe are unstable. That which changes cannot be truth because truth cannot change. Only nothingness remains the same. It cannot be threatened or changed. It is beyond all that; and as such it is eternal.
Your real identity, as truth, is found in the perfect oneness of nothingness. The truth about you is the same as the truth about the universe. You are part of the universe and, in this universe, only the emptiness is unchanging. Nothingness is the realm from where you came, the realm that continues to exist within you and all around, and the realm to where you will return. Your identity is rooted in the nothingness —in the unchanging truth.
Of course, for practical purposes, now you are also physical form. You are a human being. The human part is your form, the being is your identity. Nobody can identify or point to exactly where you are as the dreamer, the observer of the mind, the being. That’s because being is in the nothingness, of the nothingness, and connected seamlessly and eternally with all the nothingness in the entire universe.
Knowing this, you no longer need to take every thought very seriously. The mind is only a thing producing thought-forms. You can also stop taking the details of your life as seriously. Your mind will continue doing what the mind does and things will be as they are, but now you can sort of just observe it all and smile at it. You no longer need to fear anything because you, the being, are beyond threat. You are eternal. You are safe. Take a deep breath.
This realization can be expressed as “I am”. You can rest in the truth that you are.
7.4.1. If you can conceptualize how your being is rooted in the empty space, then contemplate for a moment how all the empty space within the universe and even within you is all connected as one.
The nothingness that surrounds and pervades all things is connected. Things move through it, but do not break it or change it. There is no gap between it. The eternal blackness is one thing; except it isn’t a thing. No thing can be one because it has parts. Only empty space can be one.
As an individual human—physical form—you are clearly separate from others and different in many ways. But matter doesn’t really matter because it changes, breaks down, and dies. But as a being, you are eternal and are the same as others. Your real identity is in this oneness.
Why is it that every person craves love? Why does everyone want to feel safe, to feel understood, to feel good, to feel joy, bliss, and to enjoy life? This is what everyone values and wants most—far beyond possessions, status or things. The only reason anyone chases possessions and status is for this deeper fulfillment and satisfaction.
Everything you most deeply want and desire is immaterial and imperceptible. Love, happiness, feeling good, excitement, inspiration—it all exists in the invisible realm and cannot be observed or measured. Of course, your body reveals clues about your internal state of being—but your state of being is in the inner, deeper self that is beyond physical form.
As self-love flows from within you, it changes you on a physical level. When the needs of being are met, you become youthful, radiant, and healthy. A person who has awakened looks good even into old age, while a person still in the grip of ego looks older, ill, and worn down. Of course, the reason for this is that fear causes stress—which derails the normal functioning of the body and causes all sorts of illness and sickness.
7.4.2. To feel safe in telling the truth, it is important to understand that every human is also a being—and on the level of being, everyone is the same. By recognizing this, you can remind yourself to see past the differences between people on the material, physical level. You can know, without any doubt, that on the level of being everyone is exactly like you. Everyone has the same core needs—though most people use dishonesty to hide this.
To be honest is to express those needs, those desires, those feelings that you know every person has. Of course, there are also many desires every human has on the level of form: the need to eat, to be comfortable, to sleep, to have sex, to laugh and so many others. Not only in being, but even on the level of physical form, everyone is alike in far more ways than anyone is different.
Minds contain different content because everyone has a different experience of life. Bodies are different, languages, ages, and so on. The ego is mainly concerned with those differences—always seeking to become better than others or proving superiority through those differences.
To the unexamined mind that has been conditioned by the world, these insignificant differences seem to be all that matters. But, when you think about what really matters (love, feeling good, being understood, etc.), everyone has the same needs and here there are no differences.
Your ego cannot survive if you admit that you are one with all your brothers and sisters. After your ego dies, which it does the moment you understand anything presented in this book, your mind will still be used as a practical tool to perceive differences and to help you function in this world. But now, you will begin to look more deeply and see beyond the obvious. You will be able to see past differences. You will recognize the oneness that exists both within and even beyond material observation.
To be honest, open, and to unconditionally accept others is to back away from judgement and to allow a comfortable space where oneness can be expressed and shared. This is perfect forgiveness.
7.5.1. Now let us look at the concept of time from a different perspective.
On the most basic level, time is only the movement of matter. The planet rotates once, that’s a day. It moves around the sun once, that’s a year. All matter is moving, and this is all that time really measures. If nothing moved, there would be no time. Time, as they say, would stand still.
You were there, now you are here. Next, you will go somewhere else. Just like you, all physical matter in the universe is moving. When the mind observes this, it is called time. But all this movement is always taking place in the present moment.
There was never a moment of existence that was not now. Everything that ever happened or ever will happen—it all happened in the present moment. The planet is moving, but it is always moving in the present moment. Nothing comes from the past and moves to the future. It is always here, just moving and changing.
The mind perceives time as past, present and future. But in truth, the past is held by the mind as a memory and the future is what you imagine will happen. Neither are exactly real.
7.5.2. The past is real only to the extent that it is a memory you have now. Perhaps you are looking at an old photograph. The photograph is only real in the sense that you are seeing reflections of light now. The light, the dark, and the colors symbolize how things looked when everything was in a different position.
The mind is an extraordinary tool that can fairly accurately recall how things were when things were in a different position—and not every life form has this ability—but the problem with taking the concept of past too seriously is that, oftentimes, your stories and experiences become your identity. You may become unable to experience the present moment fully because your mind limits you with stories, images, and lessons of the past. The concept of the past can work against you.
The unobserved mind is usually wrong about things. It doesn’t know what’s good or bad because reality is too complex. That said, do you think your memory is all that reliable? Memories always involve interpretation. Oftentimes, memories are just vague images combined with stories you tell yourself about yourself, about other people, and about the nature of circumstances and situations you went through.
You can learn from the past, but it shouldn’t be taken so seriously.
7.5.3. Now contemplate the future. The mind’s idea of time is that it defines the future largely according to the past. If there is something in the past that you judge as good, then you probably want more of it in the future. If you want something from the past to change, then you probably expect it to change in the future.
The fundamental problem is that the future doesn’t exist. It is a mere concept. So, if you are waiting for change in the future, change will never come.
What you perceive as a better future, if it is to be so at all, will occur as something that must happen in the present moment. So, rather than waiting for the future, the way to change your life situation is to do so now.
Of course, doing something often takes many steps. You first do this, then that, then travel there, then talk with someone, then do some work on your own. This all feels like a long time, and in a practical sense of course this is true, but all the while it is always the present moment.
When you perceive your body aging, or sense that time is running out, it is because your body is slowly growing old in the present moment. All physical form changes. You will only last on this Earth for so many rotations around the sun. That’s a law of nature and it’s how you are meant to experience this dimension. But you are eternal. Time is never running out. It is always now.
If you are letting the past define who you are, it is an illusion—an untruth. You are as you are in this moment—totally independent from your past failures, experiences, and stories. In this way, you are entirely free from your life situation. Almost no life situation can restrict your freedom to do, make, say, think or feel in the now. Your freedom comes only from within and depends upon nothing external.
Of course, if you are in prison or homeless, then your life situation is probably causing significant challenges and limiting you in very real ways. But, even in such a worst-case scenario life situation, you can awaken to the present moment. You can still go within to heal and even begin to transform your very difficult situation into something else.
The concept of the present moment is not referring to, for example, the balance in your bank account, the mess in your living room, whether your car needs repair or whether you are in a relationship. This is only your life situation.
The present moment only includes what you are actually doing now—exactly what you are experiencing. In this instant is eternity. It is all there is. No matter the life situation, always pay attention to this instant. This is where everything exists, everything happens, and where everything is possible.
To let go of the past and to realize the future isn’t real is to direct all your attention to the field where all life is and always has been; this moment. What, in this instant, is impossible for you to live with? What is here right now (or in any other moment) that you can’t handle if your attention is fully here?
All chance of failure comes either from guilt and regret you are carrying from the past or fears you have about the future. The mind has been crippling you and blinding you to what is here in this instant. This is a tragic condition, considering that the present moment is all there ever was and ever will be.
7.5.1. The ego cannot survive in the present moment, just as it cannot survive when you learn to love yourself, or when you know your true identity, or when you understand the one emptiness that connects everything. To awaken is to expand your understanding of truth beyond the relative smallness and pettiness of what the mind cares about.
None of the ideas presented in this section are original. They have been taught in different ways over many centuries. But if you understand the truths presented in this section, you may become aware of a different, deeper kind of understanding. It is a knowing that cannot be grasped in the same way as other knowledge. Just when you know it fully, it eludes you a bit.
Spiritual truths must, therefore, be remembered each day. This is a different kind of learning and a different kind of remembering.
To awaken is to remember that truth is in the unchanging empty space, and that all the stuff of this life is surrounded by it and contained within it. You are observing it all, through a mind and body, but what you observe is only part of what is real. In a relative sense, what you observe isn’t real at all because it is material, and therefore always unstable and changing.
Now you can observe all that you perceive, and learn to enjoy it, from this deeper perspective of knowing that also encompasses the truth about what you cannot see.
7.6.1. Perhaps you have not yet believed in your perfect authority because you have not yet trusted yourself. Flailing about in a world that seems meaningless and dangerous, where everything appears to be arbitrarily happening to you, you have been afraid and confused.
The ego is always certain of everything, until the very next moment when it becomes entirely certain of something else. With its six different and conflicting roles and a thought system that creates only chaos and drama, the ego is confusion.
There can be no authority in confusion, and the ego ought not have any authority. Because of the ego’s confusion, you have rightly doubted yourself but have wrongly given authority to those who would claim it over you.
The problem is that those who have claimed authority over your life also have no legitimate claim on it. They too are very confused. The state of this world is dishonesty; a confusion about reality that leads only to drama, chaos, suffering and even war.
While you have been honest enough with yourself that you have denied the legitimacy of your own authority, those who have claimed it instead of you are egos who are very unwell. Because you have given legitimacy to their authority over you, they have made the error of believing in their own legitimacy. Your compliance has gone to their heads and must be withdrawn for healing to occur.
By entrusting them as your authority, you have made them very wealthy and have created the illusion that they are powerful. They have tricked you by creating fantastic illusions: systems that seem bigger and more real than you. All the systems of the world—the governments, the schools, the religions, the corporations, and other institutions—they were created and are maintained, in sacrifice, by humans no less confused than you who have been simply doing as instructed by those who you have given authority.
7.6.2. When you have clearly seen the problem of false authority—and perhaps, at times, you may have even resisted and fought back in some form—you have perceived some threat of punishment. Precisely because their authority is not legitimate, they must always eventually resort to punishment to force your compliance.
Punishments have seemed very real, and so you have learned to comply. It is in this compliance that you have been forced to learn the thought system of dishonesty.
You are disturbed by the cognitive dissonance resulting from your compliance with what you do not agree with. Your mind, therefore, tries very hard to agree with what you are told must be agreed to. This always fails because your being knows otherwise and your body always responds accordingly.
This is the cause of your fear, your depression, your frustration, your anger and all other negative emotions that are blocking you. The mind may argue that it is being honest, even that there is nothing you have ever done that is dishonest, but your being has been telling you otherwise and your body tends to agree.
By deciding that confusion has no authority, you now effortlessly allow all false authority to fall away from your thought system. You now see that authority does not belong outside you. This isn’t a battle of any kind, just a decision that you are now free to easily make as part of your inner awakening.
7.6.3. Even as false, egoic authority has threatened you with reward and punishment, nobody has successfully taken away your power to think in truth and to tell the truth. In this simple realization, you claim all authority back, to where it belongs, in your awakened inner dimension.
You will still deal with the corrupt, confused systems of false authority in this world. On some level, you are forced to comply with their rules to avoid any further escalation of violence they would impose upon you. But, particularly in their confused violence, it is quite clear that their claim of authority over you is false.
By the time you finish this book, you will no longer fear external, false authority in the same way. You will no longer blame anyone for your lack of freedom, and you will no longer feel any need to fight back. To fight back against that which is false is to make i