Question 33

In my experience the following passage from your book, Words from Silence is perfect...

"On the level of Being you are already complete and whole.
You don't have to grow into it or fix yourself up.
You just have to tune into it. You just have to wake up.

During my awakening experiences, I realized that emotional healing work had nothing to do with awakening. It neither helped or caused the event of awakening, and in fact the need for healing was nothing more than the ego's need for 'perfection' and was just another part of the ego's endless search for happiness, even though on a human level it helped ease pain.

In your books and web site, you speak about the need for the healing of the past. I can't understand what healing has to do with awakening? Can you please help me to understand?

Answer

Once again, if you are fully awake in the moment of now, there is nothing to heal, simply because in the fullness of the present moment, there is no past.

But if you find it difficult to remain present, then you will have to attend to the past. Many of us are carrying repressed emotions within us from childhood. Many of us are carrying repressed memories of unhealed emotional wounds or traumas from childhood and sometimes from past lives.

As long as these things are repressed within you, they will be activated from time to time, pulling you out of Presence or simply preventing you from being present.

The ego will be constantly on alert to protect you against a recurrence of these painful experiences. And if the ego is on alert, it will keep you in the world of the mind.

These emotions and memories need to be allowed to surface into the light of consciousness for healing and release. When this occurs, we can say that the past is released from you and you are released from the past. This allows you to deepen and settle into the present moment.

If you can remain present in all the activities of your daily life and in your relationships with others, so that you are constantly in a state of silence, love, acceptance, peace and inner harmony, then obviously there is no need for healing. If your ego is largely surrendered and inactive, so that it no longer insists on being in control of your life, there is no need for healing. If you have absolutely no fear arising and no desire that takes you out of the present moment, then there is no need for healing. If you exist without any kind of judgment, either towards yourself or others, then there is no need for healing.

There is a tendency on the part of those who have had a profound experience of enlightenment to deny the human aspects of their existence. The real question is not whether you have had an enlightenment experience, but whether you are able to remain awake in all the circumstances of your life. If you are not, it means that you must attend to the healing of the past.

It does not mean that your awakening was not full, whole and complete. What you experienced was total liberation and the truth of life and God. Everything that was revealed to you was true. There is no separate self. There is no need for healing. There is no choice. There is only the moment of now and the eternal Presence of God and oneness.

But that is only true when you are fully awake in the moment of now.

If you find yourself back in the world of the mind, then a different set of laws apply and an entirely different approach is necessary. Healing is necessary. Right understanding is necessary. Right relationship with the ego is necessary. Right relationship with the past is necessary. It is all necessary if you are to become fully and permanently established in the awakened state of Presence.

You have to own who you at the level of mind/ego if you want to own the truth of who you really are in Presence and Oneness. This is extremely paradoxical, because when you are fully awake, the world of the mind and ego is revealed as illusory in nature.

The paradox is best expressed in the following sentence.

"We are on a journey of becoming that which we already are."

Our task is to resolve this impossible paradox.

Be grateful that God has given you an experience of the awakened state and has revealed the truth of who you really are. Now you have to do the work.

I do not see healing as being in any way a psychological process. It is important to realize that in the process of healing and release, you are not trying to get rid of anything. You are not trying to analyze anything. You are not even trying to fix anything.

All that is really happening is that you are allowing to surface into consciousness all those painful emotions and memories that have been repressed by you because they were too painful to experience at the time. Everything in existence has a right to exist, including feelings of hurt and anger. If in the past, you denied those feelings their right to exist, then you must correct that and allow those feeling to surface into conscious expression. Then they will relax. They will dissolve. And you will be released from the past into deeper levels of Presence.

In the process of awakening, nothing can remain hidden. Every aspect of your ego, including the so-called negative traits must be brought to consciousness and owned, accepted and confessed if you are to gain liberation from domination of the ego. In other words, you must own who you are not, if you are to awaken into the truth of who you are. This is another impossible paradox!