The Way of Awakening

In this moment, are you present or are in your mind? If you are truly present, then you are an awakened being, at least for this moment. If you wander off into your mind, you are entering a world of past remembering and future imagining. You are entering a world of illusion, made up of memory, imagining, concepts, thoughts, ideas and beliefs. You are entering a world of separation in the sense that you have separated yourself from the truth of life revealed through the present moment. You have separated from the truth of who you are, which is that dimension of you that is of the present moment. You have separated yourself from the truth of love, acceptance, power and compassion. You have separated yourself from God and Heaven on Earth.

You have abandoned the world of here now for the world of not here.

It is quite possible that you have become completely absorbed into the world of the mind, and once this happens it is very difficult to find your way out. This is what has happened to humanity. Almost the whole of humanity is imprisoned within the world of the mind, unaware that they are lost in a dream and that awakening out of the dream is a real possibility.

To awaken out of the dream means to awaken fully into the moment of NOW. It means you are here, in this moment and you are nowhere else. This moment is enough. You feel whole and complete. There is nothing missing. And if you become fundamentally established in the present moment, so that you are no longer involuntarily pulled back into the world of the mind, then you are fundamentally awake.

Of course you can still think, but now you think consciously. You are present, consciously choosing to think but you don’t get lost in your thoughts or absorbed into past memories or future imaginings. When you are done consciously thinking you just naturally return to the present moment. You play in the world of time, but that is not the world you live in. Your true home is the world of NOW.

How can we free ourselves from the world of the mind, and its endless chattering thought? How can we overcome all the obstacles to our awakening? Humans have been on a path of awakening for thousands of years and yet very few have managed to awaken. Now that must change. We cannot continue living unconsciously upon this planet. Our technology has become too advanced for us to continue living unconsciously upon this planet. We are too destructive in our unconsciousness, not only to ourselves, but to each other, the world of nature and the environment. If we are not careful, we will render this planet uninhabitable for humans. For those who are ready, it is time to awaken.

Is there a clear and simple way of awakening? First you have to recognize that your mind is rarely silent which means that you are living mostly within the mind. You will have to find your way to a path of liberation that is simple clear and direct, one that can lead you very simply out of the maze that is the world of the mind into the world of NOW.

There are two significant steps on the path of awakening. The first step is to learn the art of being present. You will be surprised how easy it is to be present. But it is not so easy to remain present as you live your life.

The second step involves bringing to awareness all the ways that you are pulled out of Presence. This is as simple as noticing it when it happens. Your ego is very skilled at pulling you out of Presence into the past or future. It uses the energy of resentment, blame, judgment, anger, guilt, and revenge to hold you in the past. If you believe in the thoughts and feelings woven into these energies, the ego will succeed in keeping you in the past and out of Presence. The ego has easily imprisoned the whole of humanity in the imagined future with a very simple trick, the promise of future fulfillment.

In order to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ego, we need answers to the following questions. What is the ego? What is its role in your life? Why does it resist Presence? How can we overcome its resistance? You will have to come into right relationship with the ego. Only then will the ego relax and stop pulling you out of Presence, and right relationship is only possible when you are present.

When you are living within the mind, it is as if you are living within a story made up of all your past experiences, future imaginings and all your repressed feelings and limiting beliefs. You will have to bring the story to consciousness. What is the story that you are lost in? Who have you become in the story? Who you have become in the story is quite different than the truth of who you are when you are present. When you ar e present, you are love acceptance and compassion. You are empowered from within. You exist in the realization of Oneness.

In the story, you feel alone and separate and you spend your whole life tying to escape this feeling. You feel unloved or not good enough and you spend your whole life looking for love or trying to prove that you are good enough. In the story, you live with unfulfilled needs and repressed emotions. In the story, you live with fear and if you look deeply enough within yourself, you will see that you are afraid of dying, but more than that, you are afraid of the emptiness within. You are afraid to be alone.  You are afraid of the nothingness.

Another essential part of the second step is to take responsibility for the feelings repressed within you. You will have to go through a process of liberating these repressed feelings and allowing them to complete their journey through you. If you are able to allow these repressed feelings into conscious and responsible expression, without believing in the story woven into the feelings, then the feelings will be quickly released. Let me make it perfectly clear. You are not trying to get rid of the feelings, but rather you are coming into right relationship with the feelings and allowing the feelings to surface within an inner environment of Presence.

The final aspect of the second step is to bring awareness to all the ways you lose yourself in others. If I need you to agree with me, I am losing myself in you. The truth is that you are a free being. You are free to agree or disagree. It has nothing to do with me. If I need you to love or accept me, I am losing myself in you. It is quite literal. A significant part of me is leaving me and getting mixed up in you. It is an energetic phenomenon. The truth is that you are free to love me or hate me. If you love me, that is a statement about you, not me. If you hate me, that is a statement about you, not me. It is the same with judgment. If you judge me, it has nothing to do with me. It simply means that you are caught in the energy of judgment and if I do not take it on, then I can feel compassion for you. And why would I take on your energy of judgment. The answer lies with the need for acceptance. If I need your acceptance, I open myself to your judgment. But if I am not seeking your acceptance, then your judgment cannot touch me.

Finally, you will have to take responsibility for the judgments that arise within you. Whether you are judging yourself, others or some life event, judgment will keep you in the separation. How can you free yourself from judgment? It is simple. Just notice whenever judgment arises within you. Don’t reject it. Don’t judge it. Simply acknowledge it as it arises within you. Be kind, light hearted, almost whimsical as you witness judgment arising within you. Own, acknowledge and confess it, but do not believe in it. It is just a trick of the ego to keep you imprisoned within the separation.

The first step leads will lead you into the present moment. It will feel like the present moment is your home. You will open into love, truth, acceptance, power and compassion. You will awaken into Oneness. At the deepest level of Presence, you might experience the Presence of God in all things present. You might discover that you are the revealer of Heaven on Earth, which is your true purpose in being here.

The first step leads to Presence. The second step leads to mastery of the mind and ego. Both steps are essential for true awakening.