The other day I was listening to a youtube video and there was a blip in the recording to where the words “me” and “ego” got mashed together and sounded like “mego.”

How perfect! An ego is like a mego! It’s like people have their own little mego’s running around. Do you have a mego?

Wait.. a mego? Amigo! A friend!

The ego is like your friend. He wants to keep you safe, give you advice, and alert you of danger in the world. He’s like a lookout, but sometimes he can be a bit overprotective and paranoid. Have you noticed that?

The problem is that we think we actually have to listen to our friend all the time. In fact, we’ve listened to him so much that we’ve forgotten that we are actually here listening to him independent of the words, and have effectively handed over our decision making to the chattery friend doling out protective advice!

The thing is though, we are not our friend. We are the one watching our friend talk. We are the one listening to our friend speak.

You are not your amigo. You are the one aware of your amigo being who he is.

Your amigo is your friend, here to help you separate yourself from perceived danger, but your amigo is not you. You don’t have to kill your amigo. Just recognize you’re not him and he’s not you.

Simple say, “Hey, I’m not that voice in my head. Not a single thing that the voice in my head says is actually me talking. Here I am, listening, and there is my friend, talking. If I want, I can simply stop listening and pay attention to something else, like the listening itself. I can be more interested in awareness itself, which is what I’m doing, than the words that are being spoken, for the words being spoken by someone else. The words I hear are never what I am! No thought or idea can ever actually be who I am. Here I am, regardless of if my amigo understands something or not! Here I am!”

That’s it. Complete and total disidentification with the little voice in your idea.

You are not your amigo.

You are that which is aware of your amigo.

Everything you’re seeing happened a fraction of a second ago or more. It takes time for light to travel from what you’re looking at to your eyes. Thus, you are not actually seeing the present, but the past. You’re seeing something as it existed some time ago.

When you look up in the sky at the sun, you’re not looking at where the sun is now, but where the sun was 8 minutes ago. When you look up at the stars at night, you’re not looking in the direction of where the stars are now (if they even still exist and haven’t exploded since), but where they were hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years ago!

The same applies for sound. It takes time for sound to travel through the air and vibrate your ear drums. So again, you are not perceiving the present, but the past.

What about taste and touch? Perhaps they’re different because in order to experience those senses, you have to be in physical contact with the object. Thus there’s no delay as the vibration travels through space to your body.

Well, it takes time for the nerve’s impulses to travel through your body to your brain so that they may be perceived by the mind. This process too takes time.

To recognize this more clearly, why is it that when you touch a hot stove, you almost instantly pull your hand back? That’s right. Reflexes. Your body knows to pull your hand away before the signal makes it up to your brain, is processed as pain and danger, and the brain then sends a signal back to your arm to pull your hand away. Thanks to our reflexes, physical responses can happen even before mental perception.

Perception takes time. What we perceive is actually the past. You can not perceive the present moment with your physical senses. It’s physically impossible.

Perceiving in Time and Space

With your senses, you’re clearly not perceiving the entire universe at once. It’s like you’re only perceiving a tiny fraction of all of time and space at a time.

What you perceive at any moment depends both on where you are and when you are there.

If you change when you are in a particular location or space, what you perceive in that space changes. You can’t just be in the right place, but you have to be at the right place at the right time.

Similarly, if you change where you are physically relative to any object, what you experience about that object at any point in time will be different. For example, if you’re far away from a loud noise, you’ll hear it later in time than if you were really close to it. Thus, when you experience something totally depends on where you are in space.

Time and space are inseparable. They truly depend on one another. This is why people call physical reality a time/space reality or refer to time more accurately as spacetime. You can’t have one without another.

What you are perceiving at any particular moment in time is not actually what is arising in the present, but your own version of the universe, depending on where in time and space you happen to exist at any moment. It’s almost like being in your own little world!

Thus, if you want to experience the Now as it is in its pure and undistorted essence, if you want to see Reality as it actually is, a deeper part of yourself must be awakened, a part of you that exists beyond time and space. It is what is Here and Now.

Awareness, Here and Now

As long as we approach the the Present moment through the content that arises in the present, we will always perceive the past. We won’t be experiencing the Now.

Even if we think about the future, we’re looking at a thought that arose in the past, but we’re looking at it now. The looking happens now. What we are looking at happened in the past.

Let me repeat this because this is so important.

The looking happens now.

What we are looking at happened in the past.

As long as we look to experiences, memories, or perceptions, we’re not seeing the Now itself, but rather the mind’s stuff that happened in the past. The mind exists in past and future, and yet awareness is seeing whatever it is seeing, right now.

The content was created in the past, but awareness is seeing it now.

Right now, Awareness is looking at these words, regardless of when they were typed or when they showed up on your computer screen.

Awareness is aware of this moment. There is a big difference between awareness which is aware, here and now, and the content and experiences that arise within awareness.

Awareness is present. Awareness is always present. It is impossible for awareness to not be present.

The only thing awareness can be aware of is what is, here and now.

It’s not something to think about. It’s not something to understand. Thinking and understanding are all more mind-stuff that arise within time, are subject to time, and exist simply as passing content within awareness.

All satori moments, glimpses into your true nature, sudden realizations, feelings of oneness or love.. they’re all experiences that arise within awareness. None of that is what you are. None of that is it.

Connecting with Who You Are

To connect with who and what you truly are,  just be.

Be still.

Rest as awareness.

It sounds utterly simple, and it really is.

Just rest as the timeless awareness that is here and now, for that is what you already are anyways.

By looking consciousness straight in the eye, it will come to know itself clearly.

This remembrance, this reconnection to the I Am that I Am, this is the foundation of awakening.

Consciousness is peering into this world, but it is not of this world.

Awareness is like this witnessing presence that is looking through this body/mind, like a watcher of a movie looks at the screen of a movie and is immersed in the sounds and colors.

But awareness is completely independent of the movie.

Rest as awareness.

There is nothing to understand. There is nothing to figure out. Just simply be. Be who you really are. Be still. Be.

So, being. What is it anyways?

Let’s start this post off with Adyashanti going up to bat first. Batter up!

Adyashanti – What Is Being?

(Can’t embed this video, so you gotta clicka the linka.)

He describes being as the You you’ve always been. The You that you really really are, regardless of how old you are, if you’re enlightened or not, if even you’re doing the whole spiritual shebang or not.

One critical thing he points out is that “being” is “form without a particular attribute.”

This is so key.

Being vs. A Being

Typically when we think of being, we think of a being. For example, a person is a type of being. Cats are beings. Dogs are beings. There are lots of living beings and maybe even some non-physical beings running around this place like ghosts or guardian angels and whatnot.

So the word “being” is thought of as a pointer to a particular creature of some sort. An individual.

But this is not what the word “being” is pointing to when we talk about what you really are. It’s not about this being or that being. In fact, it’s not about any particular being at all!

It’s just about being. Not individualized or part of any particular living thing.

It’s not so much a thing, like a human being, but more a presence. It’s existence. It’s just here, whatever the heck it is. It’s just here.

Look to your own experience. This is easily confirmed and verified if you look within and see for yourself instead of trying to wrap your mind around some words and theory.

Look within.

Exploring Being

Being is here within.

Does it have any attributes that make it human? Do you own a human being as opposed to a cat being? Where does being end? Does it have any boundaries that you can locate? Does it have an age? Does it have a size? A color? A shape?

The living beingness that is here is formless. It is nameless. It’s just a presence that is here. and it’s always here.

It’s so obviously here that it’s totally overlooked as we make our way through life.

Connecting With Another

It is what is seen when you gaze into the eyes of any other living being. Again, being not as in an object with any particular attributes, history, personality, or any of that superficial stuff… but just living beingness. Aliveness. It is Life itself peering through the eyes of another.

Looking into the eyes of another, when you do this without labeling, categorizing, or in any way adding additional mental processing, you’re seeing Life itself. It is Life connecting with Life. Awareness seeing Awareness. Being being with Being.

No identity is necessary. No person. No man. No woman. No story superimposed upon what arises. None of that. Just Being.

There is no separation when Being connects with Being.

There’s no “me” in the way of being. There is nothing to cloud the unification.

There is simply Being with Being.

This unity we call Love.

It is One without a second.

In these videos he shares a wonderful discussion on such topics as why enlightenment isn’t something to get, how it’s not something the mind can ever get, the importance of resting as nonconceptual awareness, and how thought is not your enemy.

Some people advocate believing in God, believing that unconditional love is better than suffering, believing that we’re all one, believing that you are the creator of your own reality, and so on. These belief systems can all have very powerful and helpful effects in your life. You’re probably familiar with the power of the mind and how much of an impact it has upon the reality you experience.

At the same time, other people recommend looking past beliefs entirely because they limit your knowingness. This too can be a very helpful process, and yet it seems to contradict the other way of life which uses beliefs as a tool to really impact your life.

You can believe in your beliefs so strongly that you effectively become them, yet you are not your beliefs if you are not your thoughts. What’s the dealio? If we’re doing the whole spiritual thing, should we have beliefs or not?

Marie Levit, author of Healing God, recently posted a video about this subject, discussing how beliefs fit into one’s spiritual evolution.

The past few days I’ve allowed myself to be in my ego. To be angry. To feel my deep sadness. To experience this energy that for so long I’ve been trying to run away from, transcend, transform, heal, or in any way shape or form change. This egoic presence something I haven’t experienced in quite a long time, much less embraced.

I’ve decided to stop running from anything that is within me. Whether this fear is me or not me is not of primary importance right now. It is here, and I’m not going to run from it.

Diving into my own anger, I’m noticing one fear arising in particular: If I allow myself to experience my darkness, I’ll somehow slide back into my ego and become totally unconscious again, like some sort of crazed psycho killer or something. (Gotta love how the mind works…) A high degree of unconsciousness basically the complete failure for what one would call a spiritual person.

Looking at this more closely, we see that this fear is actually afraid of itself. It’s fear afraid of fear. The ego afraid of itself. It is a self-sustaining and self-reinforcing mechanism.

If you’re afraid of experiencing you’re own fear, noticing your existing fear will bring up more fear, which will create more, which will create more, and so on.

Acceptance of All of Yourself

Recognizing that I am All That Is, I want to be comfortable embracing the totality of my being. I want to be comfortable with both comfort and discomfort, at peace with both peace and stress. No matter what aspect of myself that is arising, I want to be okay with it.

I’m talking complete, full, and deep acceptance of all that I Am, the good and the bad.

Amazingly, (this amazes me every time it happens) the more I’m willing to sit with my own darkness, whether it takes the form of fear, anger, sadness, frustration, depression, anxiety, or whatever else, the more I can sit with it and notice it as presence, the more it seemingly just evaporates and dissolves right before my eyes.

Nothing needs to be done to fix, change, or rise above darkness. It just kinda takes care of itself.

Again, the following quote is proving itself to be the case:

Your task in life is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and remove all the barriers that you have built against love.

–Rumi

Awareness itself is transformative. The presence of conscious awareness is itself healing.

Unconsciousness is nothing more than not being aware. When you’re aware of whatever processes or fears you were previously unconscious to, those patterns no longer run on unconscious autopilot. Awareness disengages those processes.

The great thing about anger is that you don’t have to go digging deep to find the root of your crud. It’s like it comes to the surface for you and becomes incredibly obvious. What a gift, this anger!

It’s almost like resistance itself is what sustains our inner darkness and demons. As counter-intuitive as it may seem at first, if we allow our darkness to be an integral part of us and give it just as much importance and permission to be here as our light, the darkness just blows away like dust in the wind and transforms into light. The two become one.

This integration process allows for equal value to ALL aspects of the infinite, yet still provides a space for you to choose what aspect of yourself you wish to experience out of your own free will.

In a similar way, all men are created equal, yet you can still choose with whom you wish to interact.

In the Sedona Method, one of the end goals, if you wanna think of it that way, is imperturbability, which is basically not being uprooted by anything that happens in the world. It’s deeply being centered in who you are so that you’re okay no matter what happens. This is what I’m talking about.

It’s about being okay with everything in this world, everyone in this world, and everything inside of you.

Deep acceptance of All That Is.

I go out hiking 1-2 times a week minimum these days. Water hikes are my favorite. Where I went today, at the top of the waterfalls there was this rope swing. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to ride one of those! For this one you climb up a tree, swing from a branch, and get launched towards the water at least a good 15 feet up above the surface. Basically, AWESOME. Did I do it?

YOU BET I DID! Over and over and over again!

To be honest, I’m getting tired of trying to be spiritual all the time and living up to some ideal called loving, non-attached, peaceful, open to what is, or whatever the heck we’re “supposed” to be when we’ve gone beyond our ego. If whatever this is is our natural state, why the heck am I trying so hard to accomplish it!? Seriously!

The transition I’m making now is to really EXPERIENCE life. FEEL it. Let it MOVE me.

Emotions

If you’re happy, be ecstatic! Why the heck would you half-ass it? Really.. WHY?

If you’re upset, be angry! Let the anger show you what you’re not okay with, what really IS NOT YOU, what you tend to overlook when things feel honky dory. In the forums I was recently doing just that, and BOY was it helpful for me to get clear on where I’m out of integrity.

If you’re feeling emotional, cry! As a guy, it feels GOOD to cry! I tear up at movies now which I haven’t done for YEARS and it makes for such a RICHER experience of life. I’ve been missing this aspect of emotional expression for far too long…

If you want to judge, judge the heck out of people, Byron Katie style. If you KNOW that everything you’re judging about others is really something about YOU, the more you can judge others and then consciously look at how YOU are not at peace with those energies. Then everyone who pisses you off and gets under your skin suddenly becomes your greatest teachers! Thank God for idiots, assholes, and retards!

If you want to be peaceful, allow yourself to be peaceful. Nothing outside of you has to change. You can just be. at peace. Set everything down and meditate quietly or pick up whatever you want and bring peaceful energy into that. Whatever. Just be the presence of peace in whatever you do.

If you’re feeling insecure in public, allow yourself to be the most insecure person ever. Maybe it’s reverse psychology or something, but when you allow your ego to be itself without resisting it, somehow its crap just dissolves right then and there before your very eyes and you naturally wind up at rest again.

Holding Back, Letting Go

I could get into how society doesn’t expect us to embrace ourselves fully. “How are you? Fine.” or “Don’t cry! Suck it up and don’t do whine around me. Be a big boy or girl!” I could talk about the tendency to not be too happy in case it makes other people uncomfortable with their own crap. But it’s not about that. It’s about ME taking FULL responsibility for who I choose to be.

And on one level, this character is not really who I am in my very essence. “Ariel, you used the word me. But, but, there is no me there! AHHHH!” I know that. Blah blah blah. Don’t miss what’s being said because it conflicts with some spiritual idea. I’m talking about how deeply is life LIVING itself in this moment? How freely is your energy flowing without self-imposed limitations?

Is this the ideal way of living when we’re super enlightened and walking on water? I don’t really care. This is how this energy wants to experience itself now and by golly it feels great to let go of yet another layer of bullshit and limitation.

Am I the most passionate person on the planet now? I don’t care! Doesn’t matter one way or another. I’m just experiencing whatever life has to offer right here, right now.

Am I fully open? I’ve noticed more and more areas in life that I still have yet to open up to and embrace, definitely, but it’s not about the past. It’s about NOW. Is there openness to life IN THIS MOMENT?

Is the way I’m living right now what I’m recommending to you? Nope. You do what you want. It’s your life and you are wherever you are on your path. This is simply where I’m at now.

Could my perspective change in the next moment? Sure!

Could I discover one day in the future that we’re meant to be totally zombied out, experiencing no extremes in emotion whatsoever, positive or negative? Sure! I’m totally open to experiencing life in new ways, discarding my old truths, and discovering something deeper. There’s no attachment to what I’m experiencing now or how it’s being experienced. It’s simply another way.

I don’t care about what’s to come in the future. Right NOW it’s about NOW. Nothing to accomplish or realize. Nothing to become, including enlightened! Just experiencing life NOW. It’s THAT SIMPLE.

LIVING NOW.

Thank you and goodnight.

Everyone is You

First and foremost, everyone and everything is literally seen to be the same whatever-this-is that you are. Everything, including whatever it is that would be referred to as yourself, is this same nameless presence. Truly can not be named. It just is. It’s a presence. It has no more substance than the fact that it exists. It is formless isness.

This is fundamental. This is clear. There is no such thing as anything else when all is this isness. Everything is. Nothing else is. There are many faces to this one isness. It is this isness that is now at the forefront, not the masks that the isness wears.

Seeing the masks, it’s almost like you can look at everyone you see playing their roles, and you can smile and give them a knowing wink, recognizing who they REALLY are despite external experiences.

A Distinct Lack of Fear

Now that this isness is present, no longer is there anything or anyone to be afraid of. If it’s all you, what else is there to be afraid of? There is ONLY you.

No longer is there the intimidation of people whose labels and roles include things such as hot girl, celebrity, president, criminal, homeless guy, police officer, famous person, or whatever else a person could be that could be a cause for fear, worry, anxiety, discomfort, or dis-ease.

You see through external appearances, recognizing the innate beauty equally present in all beings.

There is an immense appreciation and love of self, and by extension for all “others” for all others are one with what you are.

All others are simply new ways for you to experience yourself. That’s it. Nothing more than that. The entire universe is simply a huge playground of possibilities for the One to experience itself by interacting with itself.

Social Freedom

There is also a dropping away of worrying what others think, about judgment, about looking good in front of others, or in any way trying to compromise yourself so that you fit in. The sense of judgment just doesn’t seem to come up much anymore. All that stuff exists on a layer of mental abstraction that is a layer above pure being. Everything is being. Mental stuff is on a totally different realm, and doesn’t really get accessed much anymore, though it certainly may occasionally without being taken as seriously since it is beingness that is at the root of experience, not judgment and mental perception.

Not only is there no “me” to build up and look cool without a distinct lack of separate self, as discussed previously, but there’s no one to live by the traditional rules of social dynamics and how life “should be.”

This isn’t to say that all rules are broken entirely, no, but there’s an easing up happening on the limits one places upon themselves on how they “should” act and a freedom to act in a way that is more natural, light, fun, and free. There is a space to truly just BE  YOURSELF, in whatever way life chooses to expresses itself in this moment. In this life here, life is moving to experience itself in a few fun new ways. For example,

Wanna jump into a pool with your clothes on? DO IT!

Wanna walk into a place wearing something comfortable and casual instead of something appropriately formal yet uncomfortable? GO FOR IT!

Wanna smile and relax instead of be uptight when the socially acceptable thing is to be stressed out and serious? ENJOY YOURSELF!

Sure you may not necessarily “fit in” with how others think you should act. Sure you may even get kicked out of certain places. (haha… :D )

What happens is that you start to find your groove and you begin to notice the difference between people and situations that ARE in harmony with you versus people and situations that ARE NOT in harmony with you. So you begin to create around yourself a world that is in sync with this new sense of freedom and vitality that is radiating from your presence.

Some old friends may leave you. Sure. You’ll probably make new friends. There can certainly be a lot of rearrangement in relationships once you start being more genuinely yourself and free, finding that this “new you” is compatible with different energies as compared to the “old you.”

No Expectations

What we would call success is no longer measured in results or expectations being met. No no.

Success, if there even was such a thing, would be a way to denote how deeply one can truly be WHO THEY ARE. How deeply can you shine your light? Literally right now. In the moment. THIS moment. It’s here and now, being yourself. It has nothing to do with the results of being yourself, and everything to do the degree of transparency of self, allowing for the presence of Self.

and I don’t mean to set this up as some sort of measurement system or goal to reach. A sun shining with only a teensy weensy cloud in the way is in no way better than a sun shining through a completely overcast sky. Not at all. One view of the sun is simply more pure and unobstructed when viewed from a point on earth than another view of the sun. That’s all. Not better or worse. Just less distorted.

Without worrying about how others will perceive you, there is a space to be unbelievably vulnerable and truthful, both with yourself and with others. and the funny thing is most of us are thinking the same thing anyways! You know, the pink elephant in the room. You can say things that are going on for you and others will laugh because they’re thinking them too! It’s just a matter of opening up and being real with yourself and others.

Allowing Others to Be

Along with the freedom to be yourself comes the space to allow others to be whoever they’re choosing to be.

Being yourself is its own reward. No longer getting caught up in the drama of others is its own reward. The freedom to just BE, my goodness… how liberating!

In no way do you need anyone else to change or see the world the way you do. If anything, you’d rather them simply be who THEY are. In this, there is the space created for others to remember who they are and to let go of their self-imposed limitations.

You are literally being the change you wish to see in the world, a living model of social freedom. Yet you are not doing it to prove anything to anyone, but because it just feels so RIGHT to be the infinite free being that you are in your very essence.

There’s no need for others to be like you, but a space created for others to be like THEM.

You be who you really are. I’ll be who I really am. And all the details will take care of themselves thanks to the magic called synchronicity and divine flow.

Freedom. Truly just freedom…

Share Your Experiences

I know many of you are going through your transformations into Oneness. What changes have you noticed with respect to relationships and how you interact with others?

Have you ever noticed how the ego really likes to juice negative situations? It’s like it derives a certain sense of satisfaction out of stewing in anger about a situation, regretting the past, worrying about the future, wallowing in sadness or self-pity, exacting revenge on another, and so on. You know.. typical ego “stuff.” It’s almost like a “guilty pleasure,” in a sense. If we’re honest with ourselves, even though we know it’s bad, on another level it can still feel oh so good…

Yet even though this “bad” stuff is happening, Unconditional Love is always here. This Presence, whatever it is, is undeniable.

Because it becomes so obvious and everpresent, it may begin to feel like a burden to the ego, like a thorn that just won’t go away. No longer can you sit in your own self-created pile of poo, ignoring Love. Logically we wouldn’t want to do that of course, but it can feel comforting to rest in our ego. There’s a sense of familiarity in it if it’s what we’re used to.

With sincere devotion to Truth/God/Love, it’s like its presence can no longer be suppressed and will continue to power its way through your crap, as if it is here burn through your junk. No longer do you have the luxury of ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t exist. And this is so fortunate, as uncomfortable as it may be to surrender away yet another layer of crud.

This Unconditional Love that arises is not really a choice. It’s not a decision. It’s neither logical nor illogical. It simply Loves because that’s what Unconditional Love does. It is its nature. There is no other option. This Love just powers its way through what you think you are, transmuting everything into itself. In shines from within, transforming everything it touches as it radiates both through your body and out into the world. This Love is not always soft and quiet. No no. It can also be quite intense and powerful as well.

Unconditional Love itself, its very presence, is very upending to one’s ego. It’s like it’s shaking the ego from its comfortable position on its throne. Who’s gonna get to sit in the throne? Love or fear?

If you surrender and let this game of fear vs. love happen, well, let’s just say that love is a big girl and she can take care of herself.

Yet another experiential thingy that can be experienced in this singular timeless moment.

When you say, “I want to be free,” WHO wants to be free? If it’s suddenly realized that there’s no one to be free and there’s nothing other than what you are to be free of, what then?