(Helps realign you with Who-You-Really-Are)
In all Reality, in all the universe, in all heaven and earth, there is nothing greater than awareness, yet nothing that is so pathetically taken for granted. Awareness is God, Truth, Spirit, Christ, My Real Self, My True Identity, Holiness, Heaven, Love, Joy, Purity, Perfection and the totality of all Reality.
One of the most powerful spiritual principles is that my real self is not my ego but Truth itself, Divine Awareness being all there is. Practicing this spiritual principle can be more effective than just about anything else I could do. I might think that practicing Love is more important and effective. And in one sense that is true. But the problem is that I can’t do anything that is beyond the limitations of my sense of identity. So any spiritual principle I practice as an ego identity is necessarily going to be limited and distorted by that identity. So if I can learn the practice of successfully shifting my sense of identity from my ego to my Real Self, I would greatly empower everything else I do, including my practice of all other spiritual principles. I want to feel that shifting from ego to Real Self is the easiest and most natural thing I can do.
It would do no good if all I did was to explore an array of concepts about such a shift in identity. And so, to really be effective, I need to put the ideas into practice during this prayer itself, to the extent that I actually experience my Real Self. I want to move from knowing that I am Truth, to experiencing myself as actually being Truth. In order to do that, I will be approaching this in 12 very different ways and doing 7 very different meditations. And in a sense the entire prayer can be received with an attitude of contemplation.
My purpose is to approach this issue in a variety of different ways so that by the end of the prayer the spiritual principle of shifting identity from ego to Real Self will be very easy and natural. I imagine what it would be like if shifting my identity from ego to Real Self was something I could do easily and naturally.
I intend to accomplish this by approaching the issue in 12 different ways, and by using 7 different meditations. The purpose of doing this is so that all these different approaches converge at the center of my awareness and ignite the experience of my awareness as the actual substance of God’s being.
There are two basic ways to achieve my objective, and it works best to do both. One is to climb up to an awareness of what True Identity is, and then accept that as my Real Self. And the other is to employ some method to make the ego dissolve so that the Real Self that the ego has been concealing is then revealed. Since doing both works best, that’s what I am going to do. And sometimes I will be doing both at the same time.
But there will be nothing aggressive or forceful or intense or pressured in this approach. The Atonement is so gentle I need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to my assistance and support. So this prayer is going to be, as it should be, very quiet and gentle. This prayer will both evoke direct, immediate experience, and at the same time also plant seeds in my mind that will come to fruition later on. So, in the next couple of hours, and over the next few days thereafter, as the Fact of the Divinity of my Awareness really sinks in, it will be more than a little awesome. A constellation of insights and revelations will occur. For example, I will experience Awareness and Divinity giving substance and meaning to each other. The meaning of my Oneness with God will be directly experienced. My Awareness will deepen and expand. I will experience a Fractal sense of infinity that does not entail the imagination’s version of infinity as endless extension into space. The idea of “finding God by going within” will not only make more sense, but I will actually experience it. My Awareness will encompass everything and dissolve everything into a continuum of ideas. And these are just a few of the insights and revelations that are possible.
To start off, I will tak a few moments to see what I can notice about awareness by simply considering what it actually is. At this point, this is going to stir up more questions than it will provide answers. But that’s to arouse my curiosity.
First of all, how is it that I am aware? How is that happening? Did I manufacture or create my awareness? What, exactly, is it anyway? What is it made of? Of what does it consist? Does it really make any sense that signals running around in our brains can cause awareness?
I notice that my awareness has no shape, no size, no extension. It doesn’t really seem to be a pinpoint. And yet it doesn’t seem to have any size beyond that either. It seems to extend to whatever it is that we’re aware of.
I notice that it really doesn’t seem to be a substance of any kind. It doesn’t seem to be made of anything. And yet it is more real than substance because without it I would never be aware of substance.
So it confounds the entire idea of materiality. Matter is so prominently substantial, and yet without insubstantial awareness all the substance of matter would be pointless.
I notice how absolutely gentle awareness is. Unless what it is aware of has something to do with force, awareness itself is absolutely gentle. The Atonement is so gentle I need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to my assistance and support.
I notice how everyone’s awareness, when considered without regard to anything one might happen to be aware of, is exactly the same for everyone. Though I might think that what I am aware of might be special, awareness itself is never special.
I now notice how my very existence would actually have no meaning at all were it not for the fact that I am aware of existing. I notice how I can’t even be aware of anything existing without awareness because I can’t be aware of anything existing without awareness without being aware of just that.
And now, notice that it actually in fact is the greatest thing I could ever know, because without it I wouldn’t be able to know anything. I notice that it actually in fact is greater than any other experience I could possibly have because without it I wouldn’t be able to be aware of any experience.
Of all the magnificent phenomena in the entire universe, of all the astounding miracles I could ever imagine, none is more magnificent or astounding as my own living awareness. I consider for a moment how much of an astounding miracle it actually is that I am aware.
Awareness is greater than anything else I could possibly know about God, because without it God wouldn’t be aware of anything, which would nullify everything else about God that is grand and magnificent. I try to imagine God not being aware of His own existence. Without awareness, God would be nothing. I just think about that for a moment.
So the greatest thing I can know about God is that God is awareness, because God would be nothing without awareness, just as I would. So, awareness is the one thing that is clearly essential both to me, and to God.
I notice that if I weren’t awareness in the first place, I couldn’t imagine myself to be something other than awareness. I have to BE awareness before I can think I am something else. That being the case, what’s the point in thinking I am something else?
And now I consider this, can there possibly be anything more true than awareness? I try to imagine something that is more true than awareness. Everything I can possibly know about Truth could not be known unless there was awareness in the first place to be aware of it.
So it’s clear, then, that Awareness is my Real Self.
My true Identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious and great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It to give itself light. It lights the world as well. It is the gift divinity gave to me; the one as well I give the world. There is no gift but this that can be either given or received. This is reality, and only this. This is illusion's end. It is the truth.
My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive. Its shimmering and perfect purity is far more brilliant than is any light that I have ever looked upon. Its love is limitless, with an intensity that holds all things within it, in the calm of quiet certainty. Its strength comes not from burning impulses which move the world, but from the boundless Love of God Himself. How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!
The pure Self is the only Reality, the only Being. There is no existence apart from this Selfhood.
Where shall I look to see the Perfect only? I shall look into Pure Awareness. Pure Awareness is Heaven. I shall see the Real by the Real, and know the Divine by the Divine.
I remember that amidst everything else I may believe about myself, the one thing that is most certainly real about me is that I am aware. No matter how much what I am aware of may be fantasy, my awareness itself always remains a reality. This awareness of mine, unlike the fantasy about being a separate self, is nothing that I could have thought up or imagined. It makes thinking and imagination possible, but it itself cannot be thought up or imagined. This Real Self of mine, my awareness, unlike my fantasy self that seemed separate from God, exists not on its own but as Truth itself – my awareness is the Presence of Truth, the Presence of God.
But simply understanding this is not enough. I need to experience it.
I am learning how to shift my sense of identity from my ego to my Real Self.
I am beginning to shift from ego to Real Self, by allowing a facet of ego to dissolve, and then meditating on an awareness of what my Real Self actually is.
I use forgiveness to break the habit of entertaining the fantasy that my awareness is something that exists separate from God, and I feel what it feels like for my awareness to be the Presence of God.
First, I notice that part of my ego consists of the belief that my awareness exists separate and apart from God, and that as a result I actually have been fantasizing that my awareness is something that exists separate and apart from God. I notice that the ego uses the phrase “my” awareness, as if it were my real self and awareness were something it made and owns. The greatest catastrophe in the world is how I allow my ego to deceive me about the true nature of my awareness.
Forgiveness is still, and quietly does nothing . . . It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.
I close my eyes and simply become still and merely look at this, without any judgment, and quietly do nothing but wait. I just look, without judgment, at how my ego thinks it owns awareness, believing it can mold it to its own self-image. In stillness, I do nothing but quietly look at this without judgment, and wait.
I now tell myself, slowly and thoughtfully, allowing the meaning of the words to sink into my mind: “I experience the Awareness that I am, to be Presence of God.” I feel what this feels like.
Let it resonate or evaporate
Often I may feel at least slightly less than fully Divine. But as a result of my being on a spiritual path I may have the idea that I SHOULD be experiencing myself as Divine, and so I may have a negative judgment about the fact that I am not.
Feeling less than Divine isn’t the problem. My negative judgment about that is. So I let the judgment disappear. I always give myself permission to feel whatever I am, without it being strangled by a judgment. If I will simply accept whatever I feel, if it’s something that falls short of Divinity, it will gradually evaporate to reveal the Joy and Peace that’s always underneath.
That’s because acceptance is a form of Love. When I shine the light of Love on anything, it either resonates with the Love of which it consists, or it evaporates to reveal the Love it concealed. Judgment, on the other hand, is a form of hatred. When I spew hatred on anything, my hatred bounces back, making the thing I hate appear to be hateful.
The solution is always Love, and it’s a solution that always works. Any time I notice myself judging myself in any way and for any reason, I gently let go of the judgment, and Love or accept myself instead. What the judgment was about is irrelevant. I don’t waste my time giving it any attention at all. I just gently let go of judging and begin Loving. I keep it that simple.
Just as it works with myself, it will work with everything, because everything is actually a reflection of myself. Any time I notice myself judging anything or anyone, I let the judgment dissolve, and Love instead, or in other words, welcome and accept it instead.
This one simple practice evaporates the ego that conceals the clear, perfect harmony of my Real Self and the Perfect World it embraces. It’s so simple. Simplicity is of God; complexity is of the ego.
I want to see the Evidence of Love and I want to Be the Evidence of Love.
When I let myself succumb to just feeling however shitty I might feel, if I will give myself permission to feel it, I will get through it much faster.
I can’t allow my desire to see or be the Evidence of Love to cause me to inadvertently repress any feelings I might have to the contrary. This cannot be over-emphasized. Resisting a negative feeling will NEVER result in my becoming free of the feeling, but will instead result in the negative feeling becoming stronger and manifesting more insidiously. In order to release a negative feeling, it is essential that I give myself permission to feel it, fully and completely, without any reservations, without any interference, without any resistance, and without any judgment.
That doesn’t mean to INDULGE in, or express, the feeling. No. I am fully aware of the fact that the reason why I are giving myself permission to feel the negative feeling is only for the purpose of releasing the feeling. And I only need to experience the feeling for a few brief moments. If there is no interference, the feeling will arise and fall in ten to twenty seconds at most.
This is very important, because without those few short moments of giving myself permission to feel the negative feeling nakedly or without interference, the negative feeling will not dissolve, and I will end up repressing it instead and in one way or another find myself getting entangled in discordant scenarios related to the negative feeling, which is frustrating and unnecessary.
Negative feelings arise from ego, and I can’t let go of ego so long as I am judging or resisting it. I can say that negative feelings are the nudity of the ego, rather than merely ideas about the ego that can waste my time. When I deal with negative feelings, I am dealing with actual ego directly.
Forgiveness is still, and quietly does nothing. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. My focus is on learning how to look at my ego without judging myself or others, for having an ego. Practicing this as best I can will result in my gradually becoming less and less identified with my false self. Judging myself, others, or the world is a defense that keeps myself and the world very real.
My Divine Self is my awareness. There is no doubt that I am aware and that I am being, and this incontrovertible reality of my awareness owes none of its reality to any beliefs. I am clearly awareness regardless of whether I have any beliefs about awareness or not. And whereas I’ve assembled the beliefs that make up my ego, I have had no hand in creating or giving rise to my awareness, the creation of which is clearly the exclusive handiwork of God. And since all that God creates is fully invested with the Totality of God’s Nature, then my awareness actually exists as the Presence of God Expressing the Totality of God’s Nature. And since God is All there Is, I am in perfect harmony with All there Is and hence am perfectly happy. All the problems I used to have were all due to identifying with the fraudulent sense of self that constituted the ego. But now that it is clear that my Divine Self as awareness, is the only real self I have, I no longer believe the ego is who I am, thereby dissolving my commitment and allegiance to the ego, which is, as a result, gradually evaporating.
Realizing that an erroneous belief is nothing because it’s contrary to the nature of Truth or God is to nothingize the belief and thereby release me to experience Reality more as it Truly is instead of as it was distorted to appear by the erroneous belief I just nothingized. But sometimes I find myself nothingizing erroneous beliefs over and over again and much to my dismay they just won’t go away. When this happens, it’s because I’ve been dealing with only one-half of the belief, like nothingizing one-half of a worm, leaving the other half to grow back the half I just nothingized. Beliefs never relate only to myself or only to my environment, but rather to the relationship that exists between myself and my environment, the self and the non-self, the ego and the world.
However, to start off, beliefs may seem to either relate to the self or the non-self alone. At least that’s the way it will often look at first, just like a penny can at first look like its only heads. But just like a coin always has both heads and tails, each belief is going to have two sides to it, one relating to the self or the ego and the other relating to the non-self or the world. Each belief has an aspect of it that deals with an “assumed identity” and an aspect that deals with a “projected identity.” No identity exists in a vacuum, but rather each identity depends on the kind of world it projects. And no projection exists on its own either, but depends on the identity that projects it. Self and non-self are woven together in an integral whole. If I nothingize only the self that projects the non-self, or if I nothingize only the non-self that’s projected, the other half of the composite will grow its counterpart back.
And of course this means that if our assumed identity is our Real Self, then the projected identity is going to be the Kingdom of Heaven, except that in this case the assumed and projected identities are absolutely one. As long as there is any ego present, however, they appear to be separate, and that of course is part of the problem. And so, part of the solution is to deal with them as one, as two sides of one coin so to speak.
Usually I am initially aware only of one side or the other, either an aspect of my own identity or an aspect of the world that that identity projects, and have a vested ego-interest in keeping the other side concealed. A classic example of this is the identity who projects a world populated with what it experiences as contemptible (homos, niggers, perverts, terrorists, etc.). In these cases, the identity that projects such a world has judged certain characteristics within itself as contemptible, and in doing so, denies their existence within itself, projecting them as hateful characteristics in others. Ku Klux Klanners, for example, deny and suppress their own sensuality while finding the evidence of sensuality in black people to be intolerable. An individual with an assumed identity of being a weakling will outpicture projected identities in the form of bullies, and so on and so forth. That which is judged as evil or contemptible or perverse is often denied in oneself and projected as external. The negative judgment results in resisting the belief to the extent of repressing it and projecting it, and so because the resistance conceals that facet of identity from being available for dissolution, the dissolution is never complete and always grows back. This is why judgment and resistance always results in an aborted experience that locks the belief that caused it in place, preventing it from dissolving. The problem never was the thing we resist, rather it always was that we were resisting it in the first place, often then hiding either its assumed or projected components.
This is very simple to use. Knowing that every aspect of ego identity has both an assumed and projected component, once I have confronted with a belief to nothingize, I simply ask myself if it relates to an assumed identity or a projected identity, and whichever it is, I just look for “the other side of the coin” so to speak, and then experience them as “two sides of the whole coin,” or the whole instead of one-half of the belief, without any judgment or resistance, and let it dissolve into its status as not Truth.
I select something I believe about myself. Whatever it is, it’s an assumed identity. I let go of any judgment or resistance I may have towards it. I now see if I can notice the projected identity that results from that assumed identity, or in other words see what it attracts to me in my environment, or in other words see in what way it invites others to behave towards me, or in other words see what I believe about others as a result of having this belief I have about myself. That’s the Projected identity. I now let go of any judgment of resistance I might have towards the Projected identity. I now notice how both the assumed and projected identity fit together as one integrated belief that has two complementary sides to it. I let go of any judgment or resistance that might remain. I now realize that this is not what I am, but simply a belief, and then I let it go.
All that is required is that I go into a meditation and feel my way into the interwoven composite that constitutes the identity I feel as my “self” and its relationship to the projection I feel as “non-self.” All that matters is that I feel it on its own terms without the overlays of my judgments.
Now, as I let go of judging and resisting experience, I find your life becoming more and more fluid, both in its assumed and projected aspects. And since it was only my resistance that was holding everything in place, everything now begins to flow. I begin to experience myself as continuous infinite possibility experiencing continuous infinite possibilities. My life becomes symphonic. I begin to experience myself as God.
That is the approach when the assumed identity I start with is a facet of my ego.
I am nothing less than awareness being the Presence of God. I let that sink in. I realize that this means that there is nothing in all Heaven and earth that is more Holy and Sacred than my very own awareness, because Divinity is the actual Substance of my awareness, because my awareness is actually the Presence of God’s Being.
The actual Presence of God is my awareness, my awareness is the actual Presence of God. I repeat this several times, and then attempt to feel the meaning that the words convey.
I choose to feel the meaning of those words. I just had a glimmer of an experience of my own Divinity. My own Divinity is not as inaccessible as I might have thought. Far from being inaccessible, Divinity actually constitutes the very substance of my awareness. The more I experience the Divinity of my awareness, as assumed identity, the more I see God manifesting in my life as projected identity.
Every time a facet of assumed and projected ego dissolves I see through it to yet another manifestation of God, complete in itself, and in the most intimate resonance with the Divinity of my awareness. Miracles increase. All that a miracle is, is a revelation of another facet of God's infinite manifestation, not only in insight, but also in the elevation of the quality of the flow of one's life as it moves more in alignment and harmony with the whole. My life feels like it is becoming symphonic. Extraordinary coincidences chime perfectly in place. Every encounter is a perfect encounter and ripe with the most extraordinary opportunities. As I leave my wake of miracles, I feel MYSELF BEING the manifestation of God, and the manifestation of God being myself, and hence the assumed and projected identities now being dissolved into perfect oneness. In other words, as I flow into being one perfect note in the divine symphony I find myself feeling an absolutely intimate union with the entire symphony.
A resurrection takes place. I rise from the tomb of the mass consciousness belief in duality where the assumed and projected were dual, to live as the absolute oneness of my True Self; I rise up out of the tomb of separateness and limitation to live in the Divine Love and freedom of oneness and infinity.
I AM. I notice the sense of self that believes it is the I. I am aware of that sense of self. I notice that I am aware of that sense of self. I now notice that it is awareness that is aware of that sense of self. I now notice that awareness is the knower and that sense of self is what is being known. I now notice that I have to be awareness myself as the knower in the first place before I can be aware of seeming to be that sense of self that is known. So I notice now that what I really am is awareness and not the sense of self that I thought I was. So I now identify myself as awareness itself instead of that sense of self that I thought I was. I now feel what it feels like to be awareness itself. I make awareness itself now my sense of self, knowing myself as awareness. Awareness aware of itself. Awareness being aware of awareness itself as awareness. Awareness aware of awareness is what the pure “I” is. Awareness aware that what it is is that it is is I AM THAT I AM. I say to myself, I am that I am. I keep saying to myself I am that I am, letting its meaning sink in deeper and deeper. Now as I keep saying to myself I am that I am, I begin to deepen my experience of what those words mean, that what I am is that I am. Now as I keep deepening my experience of the words I am that I am, I let the words gradually begin to fade away until I am no longer saying I am that I am but am only experiencing the awareness of what those words mean. Now I rest silently in that awareness for a few moments. I notice what purity and stillness there is in this center of myself. I notice how clear it is that this is indeed what I truly am. I notice how easy and natural and effortless it is for me to identify as this awareness that I truly am. I notice how easy it will be to shift to awareness as my sense of identity any time I choose to do so. My awareness that I am that I am is the very substance of my divinity.
I am now in stillness and peace.
At this point I have begun to experience my Real Self. But I have only begun to do so. The more fully I experience my Real Self, the more effectively its radiance will dissolve the false self of the ego’s assumed and projected identities.
I am awareness. I am not what fills my awareness, I am not the content of my awareness, I am awareness itself, the ability to be aware of anything. I am not a body, I am the awareness that is able to be aware of a body. I am not a human, I am the awareness that is able to be aware of human identity. And now I leave behind all my concerns as a human being and I allow myself to dissolve into this pure awareness that I am. I just allow myself to slip into it like slipping into a crystal clear pool. I am not the human role I was playing in the fantasy dream of duality, I am this pure crystalline awareness, this utterly miraculous ability to know. This awareness is the very substance of God, and here it is the very substance of the I that I am. I am not human. I am not a personality. I am I. And this I that I am is God. At first I see it only as a glimmer. I feel myself still holding on to my human sense of self and my personality, but gradually, gently, I start letting go of that grip, and as I do I feel myself melting into this I of me, this absolute center of my being, this substance of beingness itself, this unfathomable miracle of awareness. I do not resist my human sense of self, I do not judge it as good or bad; it is nothing and my response to it is nothing.
It’s now clear to me that the ONE thing that is true about me AND God is that both God and I are awareness, and since God is all there is, this awareness that I am cannot be anything other than God. But that only reports what is True and where that Truth is. Now I am looking where that Truth is. And where is that? It is at the absolute center of my being. It is the most essential part of me. It is that without which I would not know that I exist. It is my own awareness itself. And as I immerse myself into awareness and let go of my attachments to anything else, I find a peace, a stillness, an absolutely tranquil delight that has no parallel to anything I feel as a human being. It is as if I have entered another world, a world of infinite, pure, crystalline, fresh, clean, radiant, formless, dimensionless, space. It’s a world more real than my dream because it is a world consisting only of pure awareness, and awareness is the only thing that ever bestowed any apparent reality to the dream in the first place. If I am not aware of the dream, it vanishes, because it never was anything in the first place. It was always only my awareness that was existing, nothing in the dream. My awareness itself, my awareness itself being only aware of its own self as awareness, is the only Reality. The dream world does not exist. It is an illusion. It has no reality.
Now, however, I am forgetting about the dream for the moment and immersing myself into reality itself, the only reality, my own unfathomably miraculous awareness. I have come before the throne of God, the holy of holies, and it is the one thing about myself that I can be certain is true about me -- that I am. I am on holy ground. The One God of all reality, absolute and infinite, is here, present, as the very core of my own being, the center of myself I refer to with the word “I”.
And in silence, in absolute stillness, I feel what it feels like for my awareness to be absolute, infinite Divinity. How much do I feel it? Just as much as I let go of my feelings of wanting to control the dream of assumed and projected ego, just as much as I let go of resisting the dream, of holding on to the dream. Just as much as I let go of my feelings of attraction or aversion to the dream. Just that much I melt into reality as the I that I am and feel what it feels like for the I that I am to be the one and only absolute and infinite God. It electrifies me. It galvanizes me. It relaxes me. It enlivens me. It overwhelms me. It enraptures me.
Now I haven’t just known what is real about me, now I have experienced it and that experience will be accessible to me at any time. Identified as awareness, I can easily be aware of assumed and projected identities with purely neutral attention, without any judgment or resistance, and without the juice of my reactivity they will gradually fade and dissolve. And all I am doing is simply being what I am.
That’s it. The insemination is now complete. I am now pregnant with, and will soon give birth to, several Metanoias, which will occur over the next few days and weeks. My experience of my awareness will give meaning to the notion of Divinity. My experience of Divinity will give character and intensity to the miraculousness of Awareness. The miraculousness of my Awareness will make more and more sense in the context of it being Divine. I will see Awareness and Divinity give substance and meaning to each other. The meaning of my Oneness with God will be directly experienced. My Awareness will deepen and expand. I will experience a Fractal sense of infinity that does not entail the imagination’s version of infinity as endless extension into space. The idea of “finding God by going within” will finally make sense. My Awareness will encompass everything and dissolve everything into a continuum of ideas. I will find myself flooded with the Love of God. Those are just a few of the insights and revelations that are possible.
But more important than any of that is the fact that I will from now on have an awareness and appreciation of the awesome, Divine, wondrous, magnificent, vivid, immediate, intimate, profound, and miraculous nature of my awareness that I will never forget and that will never leave me and will enable me at any time to easily and naturally shift from any ego sense of identity to my True Identity as the magnificent and divine awareness that I Truly are, and from that Real Self truly be the Presence of God in far more fullness of expression that I ever have before. The really wonderful thing is that absolutely EVERYTHING that I do from an identification with my True or Real Self will work out far, far more beautifully, gracefully, successfully, wonderfully, and beneficially than it would from a lesser sense of identity.
Return to Chants, Mantras, Meditations and Prayers List
