Knowing
The True Self
(This is an excerpt from University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Many of us have had moments of experiencing the nature of the true Self, even if we are not yet fully awakened. Ellen Grace O’Brian states in A Single Blade Of Grass: Finding The Sacred In Everyday Life (2002) that “because spiritual awareness is a natural state of consciousness, most people have experienced it at some time.” (3) O’Brian says that the feelings of oneness with all, peace, and pure clarity mark such a moment. For some people, this comes through watching the birth of a baby or through being in nature. These moments of spiritual awareness, or awakening to the true Self, are often remembered as peak moments in our lives. Many people devote themselves to a path of spirituality as a way of connecting to the true Self more often than such fleeting experiences here and there. Those fleeting experiences of true Self awareness keep us on the spiritual path like nothing else can.
Ellen Grace O’Brian defines the spiritual life as putting God first. In this way it is very simple, and at the same time extremely difficult because we are not used to doing so. In this very moment, doesn’t it seem reasonable to allow our focus to fall upon our true Self? If we look at our lives as a string of such moments, we can see that each moment is full with the question of whether we want to focus our minds on awakening or not. What is truly most important to us? When our minds center on self-realization, our actions then come as an expression of our desire for awakening and our spiritual growth quickens. Roy Eugene Davis states in The Eternal Way: The Inner Meaning Of The Bhagavad Gita (1996), “Responding joyously to the soul’s innate urge to have awareness restored to conscious wholeness or oneness assures rapid, authentic spiritual growth.” (53)
In addition to focusing our minds on knowing the true Self, we can cultivate the spiritual energy that resides in our bodies. Such energy is called prana and kundalini in the yogic system of spirituality and wellness; it is called chi in the Chinese system of wellness. T’ai chi and chi qong are physical practices from the Chinese system of health that are used to increase one’s chi. The path of yoga (meaning union with the Divine) includes meditation, breathing exercises, and physical poses. These practices are designed to awaken the energy centers (called nadis and chakras) of the body. When people become self-realized, their kundalini rises from where it resides at the base of the spine to the crown chakra at the top of the head. They then become fully awakened to the true Self, or Divine. In order for a kundalini awakening to occur, one’s channel through the chakras needs to be clear and a great deal of spiritual energy needs to be cultivated.
Many spiritual traditions and teachers encourage those who want to know the true Self to meditate. According to Swami Muktananda in Where Are You Going? A Guide To The Spiritual Journey (1981), the Self cannot be seen, heard, tasted, or spoken of. It cannot be understood by the mind or the senses. “Yet when the inner psychic instruments are purified through meditation, it reveals itself on its own.” (28) Meditation is a way to step back from the turbulent currents of our everyday thoughts. “Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.” (9) states Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life (1994). Meditation helps the mind to become still, and in such stillness, we can come to experience the subtle nature of the Divine.
The benefits of meditation ripple out to touch all moments in our lives, helping us to gain awareness and inner stillness in our daily lives. However, when we bring stillness to whatever thoughts and emotions arise throughout the day, there is a habitual pull within our minds to go into these thoughts and emotions. In the book You Are That! Satsang With Gangaji, Volume II (1996) Gangaji states, “When the conditioned tendencies to move away from a state or toward a state arise, relax your mind. Surrender the activity of mind to what is before and after all activity of mind.” (71) Watching our thoughts allows us to take a step back from the thinking identity and realize that we are something else. In The Power Of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment (1999) Eckhart Tolle states, “You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter (beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace) arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.” (14)
Through
stillness we can learn to more fully experience each moment of life. Ellen
Grace O’Brian states in A Single Blade Of Grass: Finding The Sacred
In Everyday Life (2002), “We discover the spiritual law of our life
by being completely present where we are with our family, work, and spiritual
practice. Sometimes there is an expectation that our spiritual purpose
or duty will be more significant or glamorous than our life is now. But
God is no more present in one place than another.” (12) As we surrender
and open to the present moment, we let go of old ideas and feelings that
we have held onto as parts of our identities. Ellen Grace O’Brian speaks of the process of letting go false identities in order to open
ourselves to the true Self in A Single Blade Of Grass: Finding The Sacred
In Everyday Life (2002). “God is an open door, welcoming all. Anyone
may enter, regardless of the name they call out at the doorway. The only
requirement is willingness to leave behind the baggage of self-will and
self-importance. Only those emptied of self may cross the threshold.”
(80) When we empty ourselves of our ideas of ourselves and God, we are
ready to be filled with the truth of our being. Ellen Grace O’Brian
states, “When we slough off all the things we are not, it is spirituality
that remains.” (78) And what are we not? We are not the identities
of self that we try to contain within any boundaries that our minds construct.
We are much more than these limited perspectives that are continuously
changing. In Seven Lessons In Conscious Living (2000) Roy Davis offers
us the following quote:
"God
is the ocean of Spirit; we are like waves that rise and fall on the ocean’s
surface.
To one involved in the drama of relative life who is attached to success
and fearful of failure, attached to good health and fearful of illness,
attached to physical existence and fearful of death,
human experiences appear to be the only reality.
To one who is established in nonattachment,
everything is perceived as God." (65)
-Paramahansa Yogananda