How to awaken is not some closely guarded secret. There is also no mystery that God, the Universe or anyone else has conjured to make awakening a perplexing conundrum. No one is withholding information to make this difficult.
Awakening is simple, and yet... for almost everyone maddeningly illusive, vaporous, sometimes difficult and even frightening. We might find ourselves in despair at ever attaining anything, let alone being completely identified with and then mastered by what we know the truth of in our heart. I know this personally as it took 10 years of close work with a teacher to finally let go, and here I am always at the beginning, no matter where I am.
As I said in a previous post, the completeness of the foundation we build as we get to know ourselves is critical. Every stone in your foundation is to be turned over and integrated and then the entire house, representing your being, is to be integrated. Everything of your person and self is to be integrated into the all that you are. Everything you have been, done, thought, felt, realized in this life of yours is to be fully integrated, taken responsibility for. Nothing is left behind. Sometimes this is pleasant and sometimes it isn't. None of that matters. What matters is what you are being right now, and right now, and right now. What matters is what you are willing to give it.
The four cornerstones of your foundation are openness, kindness, softness and honesty. Train yourself to be these qualities, first with yourself and then with everyone and everything. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, or fall down. What matters is how you get up. Be kind to yourself as you get up.
Phrases like "I am my own worst enemy" and "I'm too hard on myself" have no place in this conversation. Self criticism instantly shuts down every cornerstone and there is an experience of trying to get back to what you know. You may experience tightness in your body. You may get a sore throat or a cold. Your sense of connection and relatedness to what you love will be gone. For me when this happened it was like trying to get back by scratching my way through a glass wall; I could see it, but could not touch it, or be it. Just simply stop everything and drop down into deep quietude. Let everything go, nothing is more important than what you know is most profoundly true. It is still right there waiting for you. You can do this.
Not listening to the voice in your head, and letting in what you discover, may be a very slow process in the beginning and that is for your own protection, otherwise you would begin to know and see things you cannot yet be responsible for. Every once in awhile, we might inadvertently step into something or somewhere we do not yet belong, and we know we do not belong there. We know we do not have the appropriate context or foundation to deal with it well. This can be applied to both positive or negative experiences. When I was 20 years old, I was visiting a friend and late one evening a poltergeist took her entire kitchen and bathroom apart in 10 seconds. There were other events of a positive nature, but I still did not how to make sense of it all. So for 25 years I ran from anything other than mere dabbling and fooling around with spiritual subjects. Subjects were chosen based on their potential to make me feel good. Obviously, I was not open; I was just scared because I had previously gotten in over my head.
If you were to instantly know everything you are looking for with nothing held back, you would come face to face with what you most love and most fear. It would be completely overwhelming and there would be little ability to integrate it.
Imagine for a moment though you could see and know the entirety of whatever spiritual knowledge you put your attention on. Would you be tempted even a little bit to impress anyone, to look good, to use it to get ahead in life, to compare how you are doing with someone else's progress, to feel really good about yourself, to be right about your path, even to pull back in fear because you did not have the foundation in place to integrate what you are knowing? Every single person has made these kinds of mistakes and being the qualities of kindness, softness, openness and honesty really does help you move forward.
As we develop ourselves and let go of old internal patterns we encounter thresholds to get across. Each one we step through has pitfalls and a new level of mastery has to take place before the next threshold appears. You have to be entirely absorbed by, give yourself to the current level of awareness. When you have mastered the current level, the next threshold naturally appears. Life will always bring you what you next need to know. Knowing truth is easy, implementing it in our everyday life is not so easy. This is where we get to see how well we have integrated what we know, "where the rubber meets the road".
When I met John De Ruiter, my teacher, that is when my work began in earnest and it took ten years and will continue to unfold through eternity. It won't be rushed; it is what it is. The only reason it takes so long is because of what we have to let go of, and our resistance to letting go.
Dying to oneself is a subject spiritual teachers have been addressing for ages. It is littered throughout the Bible. It simply means letting go of everything that has to do with living one's life for oneself. When one dies to that... what is truly alive within is free to awaken and move forward, to make itself known in you, as you, and then a whole new world opens up. It is what awe comes from.
The love I have for God pulls me into communion. It is a love from God that will not be denied. It is a love which shines so radiantly from God that when I turn my attention onto humanity, I can only see the extraordinary creation we are. In experiencing the profound love God has for me and all of humanity, I also experience a profound love for humanity and all that exists.
"If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed." --Alan Watts (1915-1973)
"We are God's creation and when we say 'I love/ it is really God loving God. We are reflecting back that which was given us. The state of oneness we experience is nothing less than the soul communing with the Beloved and we know instantly our place in the world." --Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1882-1927)
Peace and love.....
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