The Self, with a Capital ‘S’ – March 26 2020

The Self, with a Capital ‘S’ – March 26 2020

The Self, with a capital ‘S’ is not something you need to pursue-to achieve or try to get. ‘Cause that’s the way the ego thinks. On the contrary, it’s only necessary to remove the barriers. To remove the barriers. To stop identifying with the false self. By inner awareness and inner knowledge one discovers that there is shining forth from within oneself an intense radiation of aliveness-the whole source of the energy of life itself. And that source, when it’s experienced, is beyond time. 

Most commonly in our society I think that is experienced in the near-death experience, because advanced mystics are extremely rare in our society… The most commonly experienced revelation of the presence of God as the source of one’s existence, I think, is the near-death experience. And people have reported, of course, over time how it totally transformed their life.

David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.,

from the recording 

The Discovery 

The truth of what we are lies beyond all our ideas of who we are. Almost without exception, those who have experienced near-death report a feeling of peace and comfort and ease; a release from worry, pain, fear, need; a feeling of freedom and of great joy. Many have said it was only reluctantly that they allowed themselves to be pulled back into the body.

What happens in these experiences is freedom from the ego. Freedom from identity with the false self. If, in a moment, we could free ourselves from our false ideas of self, we, too, would experience this freedom and all that it entails. Unfortunately, we have spent our lives clinging to our ideas of self and our ideas of what we need and who we need to be, so it is rare, without the help of an almost-death, to let go into the deeper truth of Self.

But what we have instead is meditation – a way each day to step beyond self to an experience of Self. And in this practice of meditation we are able to experience, at least to some degree each time, the release from worry, pain, fear and need and the experience of freedom and joy. And as we continue forward, day after day after day, giving ourselves this gift, the cumulative effect is the ever-growing knowledge of our identity as the Self – that which never changes, which is at one with God, which is our very Source.

Today I will meditate twice, morning and evening, and during the rest of my day I will find the still, small place within where I know the truth of my being, the Self, and I will let this knowledge of what I am give me permission to let go of all the cares and worries of what I am not, of the self.

Narasingha, Meditating, wet plate collodion, Studio City, CA