…”Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel very much alone, like there is no God, no spirit, nothing! It’s just me lying there, totally alone in the universe. I try to reach out to God or some spiritual essence, and I get nothing in response. I have to ask you, because you seem like someone who might have an an-swer. Why do many of us feel so lost and alone, even after a lifetime of seeking? Why would God, if God even exists, leave us feeling this way, without any direct communication? If God exists, why don’t we know it, constantly? Why don’t we really know when we really need to?”
First of all, God does not exist—not in the way you want him to. I say ‘him’, masculine, to emphasize the non-existent quality. God does not exist as an outside benefactor, some ascendant personage, waiting to attend your needs, ready to answer questions or calm your fears. However, as I’ve pointed out before, the creative, intelligent quality of the Cosmos does exist. It is Conscious Evolution, and it exists within the essence of your very awareness. Nothing exists outside of this awareness.
“But this is my point. I’m not aware of it when I want to be aware of it.”
Yes, indeed, you are not aware of it. But you know it. The prob-lem re-stated, is this: You are not aware of your own inner knowing. I’m talking about the essence of your awareness. This knowing is a deep instinct, hidden from your current waking mind. I understand your frustration, now more than I did at the beginning. The problem, for all humans, is one of alignment with your authentic being.
“I have recurring fears that I am not connected to anything. That is my real question. Is my sense of self and appreciation, to use your term, part of some larger consciousness that goes on after I die? Does that sense of self-awareness go on? Is there anything in me now that will continue, or go back into spirit? Has my life expe-rience contributed to that something? Or will it all just fade and dis-solve away into nothing at the end? This is my fear in a nutshell.”
The fact that you even have the fear of losing your awareness, or of being abandoned and meaningless in the greater sphere of creation, is evidence of the inner knowing I refer to. It is likewise evidence of your disconnection from it. Without the inner sensitiv-ity, the question would never be raised. Without the inner connec-tion you would not be having this conversation with me. I am an example of what you seek, right in front of you. But what you are really searching for is not assurance of your existence after death. You really want to know whether you truly exist at all, right now!
“That’s absurd. Of course, I exist!”
But you don’t, you see. You are just a figment of Cosmic imagi-nation. We all are. We are a projection from Source, out onto the screen of illusion that it has created to experience separation from oneness. We individuals are the embodied experience of divine de-tachment—a synonym for ‘projection’ in this case. The vigilan sense of appreciation is, at its root, this knowing of paradox; it is acceptance of separation in the midst of oneness, and individuality within an undivided whole. But understanding of this is hidden from the human being. That is why you ask about continuation of your awareness after death. You, the thinking individual—ego and mind—exist only ephemerally, as an illusion. The real you lies hid-den within the formlessness.
The awakening process of evolution is entirely about this ques-tion, the uncovering of your hidden awareness. Here is the way it works: You are God, my friend. We all are, universally, and in par-ticular. The energy of collective awareness that pervades and incu-bates the Cosmos in us, is what you are calling God. For the pur-pose of answering you, I will use your term God, though it is a name I rarely use.
God, if it’s any consolation to you, is in the same boat you’re in. The infinite divine intelligence took on aloneness and separation as a great experiment; Conscious Evolution has done this for the sake of its own awakening and feeling. That was a major turning point. God, as homo sapiens, broke off from its own divine being and sense of oneness to immerse itself here. The motivation behind this was a desire for feeling—the avenue into awakened presence…
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Potter
Letters From 500 