How strong the ego has become these many millennia. We’ve become so enchained by its presence that we have forgotten our true self. This is madness.
I draw your attention to a quote I found in today’s New York Times. The article entitled “Sizing Up Obama, in Real Life” takes the reader on the President’s visit to Edison, NJ, a hub of working class, middle class America. A quote from a local police lieutenant sums up the ignorance and ego-centric attitude living in all of us today.
“Maybe he’s not a true socialist, but his ideals and ideas are — this kumbaya thing where everyone gets the same health care and the same benefits. And most of the health care is going to go to immigrants. Well, the country wasn’t built that way.”
Wow, that kind of sums it up for us all. Are we that void of love, compassion and human kindness. Is it just all about me? Do you think Thomas Jefferson would agree with that man? Hmm!
Imagine walking down the street and passing a homeless person. As we pass a voice calls out, ‘I am God.’ We turn to see only the homeless person before us and wonder where that voice could have come from. We ask, ‘did you say something’ and the homeless person replies ‘yes, I said I am God.’ A chuckle stirs from behind our breath and we stand amazed at the audacity of this misfortuned being. No sooner do we begin to utter our disapproval at this heresy does this being begin to glow with a golden aura. At once we notice a transformation both in him and in our self. Our ignorance mind sees through the veil and becomes enlightened and our recognition of this absolute truth becomes evident.
Now this allegory seems simplistic I know, but there is truth behind these words. If we could just immerse ourselves in the void for just a dot of time we would sense the realness of Divine Oneness.
Among my favorite passages from “Letters” is one in Letter Fourteen “Sides of Oneness.” I bring it back to you now. Meditate on it a while. It holds a knowing that can help make you free.
© 2010 cosmicobserver
“Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel very much alone, like there is no God, no spirit, no 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 answer. 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 very essence of all 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 problem 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 experience contributed to that something? Or will it all just fade and dissolve 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 sensitivity, the question would never be raised. Without the inner connection 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 imagination. 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 detachment—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 hidden within the formlessness.
The awakening process of evolution is entirely about this question—the uncovering of your hidden awareness. Here is the way it works: You are God, my friend. We all are, universally, and in particular. The energy of collective awareness that pervades and incubates the Cosmos in us, is what you are calling God. For the purpose 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.
“I’m not sure your explanation is helping. It does serve to distract me from my fear. But it doesn’t quell my fear.”
Distracting is the same as quelling, for your state of mind. I am giving you a means to remove your awareness from its attachment to mental musings. My explanation will not remove your emotions though, if that’s what you’re looking for. But it will give you a way of feeling through your predicament—and God’s.
“All right. Proceed.”
Consciousness cannot truly desire to be anything it already is. The awareness-of-oneness had to break apart, if it was to reveal itself, to itself; it needed a mirror. That is the essence of being and feeling lonely and separated. Your kind, my sapiens friend, was a great trial in separative awareness and the form-identified intellect. The feelings of aloneness and emptiness you described are perfectly natural to your species.
“Nice!”
Humans always felt cut off, unfulfilled, like there was something enormous missing from their lives. There was. The awareness of connection to divinity was missing. This disconnect was embedded in your genetic structure, and it gave you the feeling of aloneness any time you paused to reflect on your fate. Still, this genetic passage was a necessary evil, if the intellect and hominid evolution were to proceed.
“So, I’m perfectly natural to be feeling meaningless and hopeless. That’s a big help!”
Believe it or not, I am helping you—into freedom. Feeling the emptiness and the desire for what was missing within was in fact the driving force in your entire evolutionary history. It was that sensation of abandonment in the midst of abundance, and emptiness in the presence of everything, that moved you to become who you are. Out of that feeling arose your mind and ego—and your identity as a species. All the coping and defense mechanisms of homo sapiens grew from this root.
In the human race, God was missing from its own being. The divine essence contrived to abandon itself, to separate from and divide its own integrity. This is, of course, an impossibility—hence the illusion of it all. But nevertheless, the infinite intelligence determined that illusion was worth the price.
God developed a craving for what it could not have—a process of its own awakening. To accomplish this, it contrived to not know itself. That desire was so profound that God was willing to sacrifice its natural sense of well-being and oneness, in order to experience separation. This was the only way it could know itself fully—from without and from within. All the isolation, pain and anxiety in the world is a product of God’s craving for this experience…
Copyright © 2010 by Robert Lee Potter
Letters From 500 