Just WHO do you think you are?
Here is the answer most people give to this question. “Well,” they might say,”My name is Jane Doe. I live at x address. I am x years old. I was born in x town. I went to x school. I am a (fill in what you do — a doctor, a plumber, a housewife, a yoga instructor, etc.) My hobby is x. I am married to x and have x children. I am single. Etc. Etc.
You are describing who you are in the world. But is this who you really are?
LESSON EIGHTEEN
THE TRUE SELF
In yoga and the spiritual world, those descriptions are interesting but not indicative of who you are at the core of your being, on a transcendent level. Those answers are good to know if you are at a party and someone asks who you are. You would probably not say, in the mix of meeting new people at some social function, to your inquiring new acquaintance, these words. “Well, I am a transcendent and eternal being, completely perfect and bathed in the Light of Consciousness and God.” Your new acquaintance would more than likely excuse himself rather quickly and move onto the next person and avoid you for the rest of the evening. You might want to stick to the conventional answers discussed earlier.
But what if the answer I just described (the spiritual one) is actually who you are? What if you are, in some way, both of these? As a human being in the world , you are the commonly described one who performs functions in the world. But, on another level, you are much more than this? Could you imagine that you are the first one, we will call the small “self”, and at the same time you are also the Eternal Self? And knowing this to be true, you can be in both dimensions.
Does this all sound a little crazy? It certainly did to me, in the beginning. What does it mean if you thought of yourself as only the one you believed yourself to be all those years, (the small self) when you are actually, in truth, something far greater and luminous than you could have ever imagined? There was a time when I would have seen this as total nonsense. During one of my many readings in The Yoga Sutras, the classic book that defines the true essence of yoga, I actually GOT this reality, but it was not easy. I remember wailing and crying and trying to figure out just who this “Deanne” was and what it meant if that was not who I was. I grieved for her and wondered what everything meant. Then, by some odd twist (or maybe it was Grace), I fell silent and into an exquisite state of unfathomable peace. Some might call it a peace which passed all human understanding.
Swami Muktananda wrote:
You, the traveler, are what you are seeking.
Everything is within you.
The supreme inner stillness…is your destination.
It is God,
The Self,
Consciousness.
In his excellent best selling book, Proof of Heaven, Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who was steeped in scientific theory, writes of his unexpectedly long and vivid near death experience. He encounters realms of existence and consciousness he could never have fathomed. After his recovery, he courageously examined what happened to him and comes to the conclusion that the “lessons” he was given, while out of his body and which can be applied to all of us, were essentially these:
You are loved and cherished.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong.
These, I would call, lessons that describe true consciousness, the Supreme Self, which is who we are — far beyond our names, what we do, where we went to school and how much we have “accomplished” in the world.
Think on these ideas and take them to heart. Don’t start judging them. Just for now, accept them at face value.
-
I am loved and cherished just as I am right now.
- I have absolutely nothing to fear.
- I am already perfect at the core of my being. There is nothing I can do wrong.
Just try these ideas on for size. Imagine that the YOU who lives in this reality is always the YOU every day and minute.
Can you possibly love and accept yourself this much? Maybe you should get used to thinking this way. What would happen then? Maybe YOU, yourself are perfect, just as you are right now.
I think you are!
With love and namaste, Deanne
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