Commentary on Being Your Eternal Self
The focus of this talk is on knowing the eternal Self. I want to encourage being the eternal Self rather than thinking about knowing this eternal Self.
There’s this Witnessing Presence that can see our thoughts, feelings, and body, and that is the true, unchanging, eternal nature. You can’t see your true, unchanging, eternal nature, you could only be that. When you’re meditating, that’s giving you the chance to hold your awareness on a particular point so all the distractions can fall away. When you’re doing pranayama, when you’re doing mantra, when you’re simply being, it’s all moving you in that direction of being able to spontaneously exist, witnessing and being appropriate in the moment. If you can do that, you’ve got it all figured out.
There comes a time when you’ve meditated, you’ve prayed, called God into your life, and then It’s there. It shows up. And all It is is peace. And all It is is this moment that you’re in right now. But you’re still thinking about all these things that you want to tell God or you want God to be or how you would like life to be etc.
What I want to encourage you to do rather than thinking of yourself as a seeker trying to bring this divine Presence into your life, accept It as real right now. Pay attention to what you’re feeling right now: your body, the thoughts that are going through your mind, the expectations you might have. Accept that what you are experiencing is exactly what God, the Infinite, the Eternal is feeling. Sure, it’s couched within your personality, but that personality is also part of Its eternal nature. It is the eternally changing aspect.
What you experience is always changing. When you make peace with that, you can turn within and experience the Witnessing Presence which never changes. Once you can identify more fully with that, then this peace dawns.
When you’re meditating, when you’re practicing, when you’re living, rather than thinking about you and what you want, if you accept the moment the way it is, that opens up, unlocks, that ability to tap into that Infinite Consciousness right now, right here. Remember this when you meditate because if you can let go of this agenda that you might have within your mind and you can simply be there, this peace comes more naturally.
Keep that awareness as you go through this week. Be aware of the changes within your consciousness but don’t identify with them. Simply let them rise and let them fall. And when you’re meditating, sit quietly. Whatever arises, don’t worry about it. Just watch it because eventually it’s going to pass. Nothing that you can see is going to stay the same.
Everything that you see, everything you experience, is that eternal Self. When you can accept that, that brings peace in your life. It allows you to act appropriately within the world. Keep moving in that direction where no matter what comes, you’re fine with it. Then you really start to experience that inner peace that all the yogis and saints talk about. From day to day, from moment to moment, simply be the Witnessing Presence and interact appropriately. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get boring, old, and tired and you’re not going to have any fun. It just means that when you are having fun, you have fun and you don’t identify with it. You don’t attach to it.
In Vasistha’s Yoga, they say there are two mental modes that you can adopt which will allow you to wake up extremely quickly. You have to stick with one of them—you can’t bounce back and forth. The first one is that you are everything. If you can accept that you are everything, then you’re responsible for everything. Everything that happens is you, so what’s the problem?
The other way that you can experience this is by adopting the mental pattern that you are nothing. You are nothing, so whatever you see, whatever you experience, is not you. If it’s not you, then the changes won’t matter because you are not changing.
For this the duration of this week, I’d like to encourage you to think about this and accept one of those two thought patterns. You are everything. Therefore, everything that happens is you. Great. No reason to complain. Or, you are nothing. If you are nothing, no matter what happens, it doesn’t matter because it can’t touch you.
This week, let your spiritual practice be meditation at least once a day. And then, while you’re living, hold the state that you are everything or you are nothing and see what happens.
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