Deep within us, there is a direct connection to the Divine. You are not who you think you are. But we let an image of ourselves be in the way. That is according to “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself”.
Clinging to your self-concept
If you dare to look, you will see that you live your entire life based on the model you built around yourself. But it is not who you are. It is just the thoughts you have pulled around yourself in an attempt to define yourself. It all comes down to understanding why we are clinging to our self-concept. We work hard to build a world within the confines of our inner walls, and we decorate our walls with the memories of our past experiences and with our dreams of the future.
You are in between walls
That is the visual: you are inside a house, totally sealed off from natural light, and the house is sitting in the middle of an open field full of brilliant light. Your house is made of your thoughts and emotions. The walls are made of your psyche. That’s what that house is. It is all your past experiences, thoughts, emotions, concepts, views, opinions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams that you have collected around yourself.
Break down the walls
Now imagine the walls crumbling down and the effortless release of consciousness expanding into the brilliance of what is and always was. Now give that experience a name—enlightenment. There should be no cage. The soul is infinite. Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes. If your edges happen to get hit, the mind doesn’t complain. It all just passes through. This is how great beings live. When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over.
You
You are not your thoughts; you are aware of your thoughts. You are not your emotions; you feel your emotions. You are not your body; you look at it in the mirror and experience this world through its eyes and ears. You are the conscious being who is aware that you are aware of all these inner and outer things.
The root to Self
This is the root of the Self. To attain inner freedom, one must continuously and sincerely ask, “Who am I?” This is more important than reading books, learning mantras, or going to holy places. Just ask, Who am I? Who sees when I see? Who hears when I hear? Who knows that I am aware? Who am I? Who sees when you see? Who hears when you hear? Who watches the dreams? Who looks at the image in the mirror? Who is it that is having all these experiences? The concept of “self” may turn out to be a bit more elusive than initially presumed. Who is the voice inside your head? If you’re smart, you’ll take the time to step back, examine this voice, and get to know it better. Ask it ceaselessly, constantly. Ask it, and you will notice that you are the answer. There is no intellectual answer—you are the answer. Be the answer, and everything will change.
You are locked in with a maniac
If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up. When left to its own, it just talks. The best way to free yourself from this incessant chatter is to step back and view it objectively. Don’t think about it; just notice it. You will start to realise that you’ve been locked in there with a maniac.
If you’re hearing it talk, it’s obviously not you. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it’s talking. There is nothing more important to true growth than realising that you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it. Eventually, you will see that the real cause of problems is the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems. It is actually narrating the world for you.
Be quiet
By watching your mind, you will notice that it is engaged in the process of trying to make everything okay. Do not fight it. Do not ever fight your mind. You will never win. Instead of fighting the mind, just don’t participate in it. When you see the mind telling you how to fix the world and everyone in it in order to suit yourself, just don’t listen. The key is to be quiet. It’s not that your mind has to be quiet. You be quiet.
A true spiritual being
If you go very deep, that is where you live. You live in the seat of consciousness. A true spiritual being lives there, without effort and without intent. The seat of Self. From that seat, you are aware that there are thoughts, emotions, and a world coming in through your senses. That is the seat of the Buddhist Self, the Hindu Atman, and the Judeo-Christian Soul. Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation. Your inner growth completely depends on the realisation that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself.
Getting there
If you want to achieve peace, you must understand why you perceive a particular situation as a problem. “Who is it that sees this? Who notices this inner disturbance?” Asking this is the solution to your every problem. The very fact that you can see the disturbance means that you are not it. Maintaining objective awareness of the inner problem is always better than losing yourself in the outer situation. When you are an aware being, you no longer become completely immersed in the events around you. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state.
Pain is the price
Pain is the price of freedom. Becoming familiar with this pain is part of your growth. Once you can face your disturbances, you will realise that there is a layer of pain seated deep in the core of your heart. An unfinished energy pattern is called a Samskara. This is a Sanskrit word meaning “impression,” In the yogic teachings, it is considered one of the most important influences affecting your life. A Samskara is a blockage, an impression from the past. It’s an unfinished energy pattern that ends up running your life. Samskara is a cycle of stored past energy patterns in a state of relative equilibrium. The point is that past impressions do get stimulated, even old ones, and they affect your life. When a Samskara is stimulated, it opens like a flower and begins to release the stored energy.
Pain bubbles in your heart
This pain is so uncomfortable, so challenging, and so destructive to the individual self that your entire life is spent avoiding it. Because the pain is at the core of the heart, it radiates out and affects everything you do. Your personality traits and behaviour patterns are all about avoiding this pain. To be free, you must learn not to be afraid of inner pain and disturbance. All this pain is stored in tiny energy bubbles within your heart.
Your heart is the key
The heart is an energy centre, and it can open or close. The yogis call energy centres chakras. The flow of energy comes from the depth of your being. It’s been called by many names. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called Chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In the West, it is called Spirit. The heart is actually very simple to understand. It is one of the most beautiful and powerful energy centres and one that affects our daily lives. Very few people understand the heart. In truth, your heart is one of the masterpieces of creation. It has the potential to create vibrations and harmonies that are far beyond the beauty of pianos, strings, or flutes.
Open your heart
To feel great love and freedom, to find the presence of God within you, all of this stored pain must go. This is the core of spiritual work. When you are comfortable with pain passing through you, you will be free. Imagine if you were so fully present during each experience of life that it touched you to the depth of your being. That is the natural state of a healthy heart. To achieve this state, simply allow the experiences of life to come in and pass through your being. Just open, relax your heart, forgive, laugh, or do anything you want. Learn to be centred enough to just watch this stuff come up.
Relax and release
Once you sit deeply enough inside to stop fighting the stored energy patterns, they’ll come up constantly and pass right through you. They’ll come up during the day, and they’ll even come up in your dreams. Your heart will become accustomed to the process of releasing and cleansing. Just commit to not letting the energy draw you in. When you feel the pull, like somebody pulling on your heart, you just let go. You fall behind it. You simply relax and release. Your centre of consciousness is always stronger than the energy that is pulling on.
Tips
- Decide to use life to free yourself.
- Stay open
- Affirm that all you want is to be at peace and to appreciate life.
- Each shift in your perception should remind you to let go.
- Stop resisting.
- Relax and release.
- View inner pain as a temporary shift in your energy flow.
- When you feel pain, simply view it as energy.
- Do not rationalise, blame, or try to figure it out. Don’t do anything. Just let go immediately and allow the energy to return to the highest centre of consciousness it can achieve.
- The moment the energy moves, you simply relax and release.
- Remind yourself that you’re not going to get involved in your own melodrama.
- In order to understand clinging, we must first understand who clings.
- Events that happen in the moment belong to the moment.
- Once the thorn is removed, you are truly free of it.
You either let go, or you don’t
This path of letting go allows you to free your energies so that you can free yourself. You either let go, or you don’t. There isn’t anything in between. So let all of your blockages and disturbances become the fuel for the journey. That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up. You just have to be willing to take the ascent. Eventually, you will be able to sit in there quietly and consciously watch the mind. Once you reach that state, your problems with the mind are over. Just watch the mind talk, and keep relaxing and releasing. Fall behind the noise.
You are free
You do not care, if you are no longer afraid of yourself, you are free. You will then be able to walk through this world more vibrant and alive than ever before. You will feel everything at a deeper level. You will begin to have truly beautiful experiences rise within you. Then there will be a great peace, like nothing you’ve ever felt. You will be aware that there is no solidity, and you will become comfortable with that. You will be aware that each moment of each day is unfolding, and you neither have control nor crave it. You have no concepts, no hopes, no dreams, no beliefs, and no security. You are no longer building mental models of what’s going on. Now you see it happening. You see that your emotions and your mind are reacting to these moments that are coming through, and you’re doing nothing to stop it. You’re doing nothing to control it. You’re just letting life unfold, both outside and inside of you.
Spiritual growth
When you become truly spiritual, you are totally different from everybody else. Once you have passed through trial by fire, and you are thoroughly convinced that you will let go no matter what, then the veils of the human mind and heart will fall away. You will have reached tremendous spiritual growth. You’ll start to feel an enormous amount of energy awaken inside of you. You will have reached Tao.
Tao
So, where is the Tao? The Tao is in the middle. It’s the place where there is no energy pushing in either direction. Everything has its yin and yang. The way is the place in which these forces balance quietly. As you centre by not participating in the swings, the energies will naturally find their balance. You will become much clearer because so much energy is flowing up in you. The experience of being present in each moment will become your natural state.
Perfect balance
For the being who is in the Tao, events take place and last just as long as they are taking place. When you move in the Tao, you are always present. Life becomes absolutely simple. In the Tao, it’s easy to see what’s happening in life—it’s unfolding right in front of you. You take off with a perfect feeling of balance. Then the wind shifts, and you adjust to it. You, the wind, the sail, and the water are one. All the forces are in harmony.
You
As you go deeper and deeper, you will start noticing a phenomenal thing—you are no longer judging. The process of judging has simply stopped. There is just appreciating and honouring. There is a force that is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent; a force that is aware of all things at all times, equally. It is universally conscious. It is transcendental love. It is divine, unconditional, selfless love. It is you.
