How to Know Your True Self
Know that you in essence are consciousness., Relate with the model of the universe., Die before you die., Know your essence., Recognize and dissolve the Ego., Understand that it's like a dream., Be in the space of present moment., Feel the space...
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Know that you in essence are consciousness.
Ask yourself what doesn't change? Your thoughts change, your emotions change, your body changes, people around you change, your environment changes, weather changes; every "form" changes, except for the ever present formless space where these things occur.
You are that space of consciousness where every form comes and goes.
Its very nature of forms or content to be unstable and fleeting as they are bound by law of impermanence .
Take analogy of a room; a room is made up of walls but its the inner space of the room that we use, where people and things come and go, events occur and end, etc. "We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use." Tao Te Ching.
In the same way, you are that space of consciousness where thoughts and other forms(internally and externally) come and go. "Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go" Tao Te Ching.
You, the consciousness, are so lost in contentthat you don't even notice the space of awareness where every form comes and disappears.
Subsequently you think of yourself as a finite form and forms around you seem more rigid.
On a Macroscopic level of universe, even if you consider Big Bang, once it was all formless space and with the passage of time, different forms like stars, galaxies, planets, nebulas, etc. came into existence and disappeared, but it's the space where everything came and went that remained unchanged.
To get a glimpse of the space of awareness in yourself, read Practice 'Wheel of Awareness' Meditation. "There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born.
It is serene.
Empty.
Solitary.
Unchanging.
Infinite.
Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao." Tao Te Ching. -
Step 2: Relate with the model of the universe.
It has been hypothesized that if the mass of the universe became greater than the critical density then it will begin to collapse and it would become denser and hotter again, ending with a state similar to that in which it started .
Can you see this on a level of your own form's birth and death? Considering the miracle of birth, its the consciousness or the life that first comes in the womb and then human form begins to develop.
Human form grows stronger with time and as we become old it becomes weak and ultimately there is physical death of the form.
Does it seem similar to universe or objects in the universe? Can you also see the same pattern in breathing? Inhaling (expansion) and exhaling(contraction).
All "things" follow the same pattern because all things are bound and interconnected through the space in which they come and dissolve.
Read Understand the Interconnectedness of All Things for more insight. , Death is stripping away of who you are notStillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle, Pg 109</ref>.
While in the forest or park, have you notice broken trees, leaves, dead animals etc. facilitating the birth of new plants, grass and other organisms.
What can you learn from this? Death is not the opposite of life.
Life has no opposite.
Death is the most natural thing there is; the journey home.
The secret of life is to die before you die as death is only a form dissolving.
Once you realize this truth, you realize there is no death.
Its ok to die., It is a fact that atoms consist of
99.999999 percent empty space, consecutively molecules are more than 99 percent empty space.
Scientists have confirmed that on a molecular level its a pulsating energy frequency.Consecutively our own human form, earth and universe are more than 95 percent space.
Less than 5% of the Universe is ordinary matter, a relatively small contribution.
Its the illusion created by limited view of our sense perceptions and thinking that make the forms seem more rigid and firm.
Space consciousness.
Most people pay attention to the forms in the space but who pays attention to the space itself, which is the essence of all?Perhaps space is not interesting and mind looks for interesting 'things'.
Inner equivalent of external forms is thoughts and emotions in you.
The more your life is cluttered with external forms(tasks, noise, jobs, etc), the more likely your inner self will be cluttered with thoughts and emotions and vice versa.
It's cause world is just a reflection of your inner self.
Here's a practice to realize this:
Just look at the sky or listen to the silence, without adding any stories, and observe how mind activity stops or slows down.
That's the inner equivalent of space and silence within you.
Even if its noisy, you can still be aware of the underlying silence that enable the sounds to be.
So make a habit of becoming aware of the space from time to time, especially when you feel that you are getting lost in forms.
For example:
Become aware of inner body, sky, breath, silence etc.
It is highly recommended that you read Stay Rooted in Being for more depth on this.
When you are in touch with inner spaciousness within you, things lose their seriousness and rigidness, and that's when you truly enjoy life. , Ego is our identification with mind, emotions and form.
A false sense of self we try to get from the things in our life.
It's a dysfunction that most of the humanity is suffering from, to varying degrees.
Plus, it is so common that people think that it's normal.
We are so lost in forms(mental, emotional, material) that we are unaware of our essence, the consciousness that we are..
It is highly recommended that you read Dissolve the Ego (According to Eckhart Tolle's Teachings) for more depth. , Have you ever asked yourself if you could be in a dream right now? We, the consciousness, have been in the grip of ego for so long that we think this is our reality.
Experiencing this world through limited view of sense perceptions and thinking.
While in true reality we could be trapped in some kind of a Matrix or pseudo reality.
Confusing? Try this: recall something what you did or experienced in reality.
Now recall something you did or experienced in a dream.
When you recalled both of the scenarios, did you notice any difference in the way the images or sounds from the experiences came? Most probably not; contextually they were both the same.
Some images and sounds.
For example: try to recall what you ate this morning? Now notice the representation of an image of the food that came up in your consciousness.
Was it an image or motion? Now recall what you ate in any of the dream.
How was the representation of the food in a dream? Meditate on this for sometime.
Have you noticed that normal ups and downs in a dream do not affect you that much and keep you asleep but its the nightmare that has the potential to wake you up? Same in reality.
Its the normal ups and downs that keep you in the grip of ego but when you face something which cannot be conceptualized and the world doesn't make sense anymore then you go through a living nightmare and you strive hard to wake up or get out of it.
Recognize the interconnection between inner and external world? Space of awareness.
What you are experiencing right now is the projection of the external world in your space of consciousness.
A collective dream experienced by people..
It's an illusion that what you are seeing or experiencing is 'outside'.
Doesn't make sense? While you are dreaming your mind populates the space of consciousness with content, sounds, people, environment, etc.
Have you experienced that in your dreams the events occur in a world created by your mind and these events seem like a real world? Its the space of consciousness, the substratum, that gets populated by mind.
Are you sure the world you are experiencing is exactly how you see and perceive through the limited view of your sense perceptions and thinking? , Your true self is inseparable from this present moment, that is timeless.
Often ask yourself questions like, "Who am I?"
"What at this moment is lacking?"
"What's the problem now?".
Read Live in the Present (Spiritual Way) and Surrender to the Present Moment to learn more.
Before the time was measured in seconds, hours or minutes, the time was always now.
Research has proven, that a 2-3 year old can identify the time as 'now' or 'not now' but as they grow up in this ego driven world, they get more lost in the construct of time and hence become farther from their true self.
Have you heard people or yourself saying "the day I achieve that I will be at peace and my future will be secure"
and that day usually never comes.
It's a mind made concept, which says happiness or peace lies in the future but of course future comes as present moment and whatever happened in the past happened in the present moment.
Consider this, if you are thinking of the past or future, you are thinking of it now. “Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion.
What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now.
That is precious indeed.
The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.” Eckhart Tolle . , If your introceptive and extroceptive sense perceptions(smell, sight, touch, taste, hearing) and thoughts were turned off, what would you be left with? Timeless space.
Meditate upon this by closing your eyes.
Can you feel the space inside and outside your body? Can you feel that body is an illusion created by sense perceptionsand all that there is just space? Can you observe that thoughts and emotions are no more than energy movements in the space of your body?, So far our evolution has been unconscious as we have been ego or mind driven.
We have learned enough from the ego, now we must take the next step to ensure our survival.
We are talking about a quantum leap into the futureas if we voluntarily relinquished the mental resistance and surrenderto what is, then we will get connected to the higher intelligence, our true self.
Far more intelligent than human mind.
Voluntary surrender or acceptance is like a shortcut as we wouldn't have to go through the phase of pain and suffering, which is a very slow way to become conscious.
However, do not doubt its efficacy, it still works , You may have this notion that your primary purpose is to get a good job or start a business, become a musician, get a partner, build a house etc....
No, this is all secondary.
Your primary purpose is to reconnect with your true self, the formless consciousness that wants to manifest itself through you.
Every other primary purpose is of the ego.
Even if it is to create heaven on earth, it's still of the ego. "For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." Romans 8:19" How to reconnect with your true self? By realizing your essence, disguised as a person.
Read Dissolve the Ego (According to Eckhart Tolle's Teachings) for more depth. "Only one thing is of absolute importance that is your connectedness with being" Eckhart tolle. , Despite being quite powerful, human mind's capabilities are limited.
It only sees the relative truth or one aspect of the truth.
For example:
Sun sets and rises everyday.
Its true but relatively.
As an absolute truth, Sun is there all the time, it never sets or rises, This feeling is the guiding principle of my work" Albert Einstein. , These words are pointing to the absolute truth that we in essence are formless consciousness or stillness.
The moment you tried to turn it into something, you will lose it.
You can talk about these pointers, teach others about it, write things about it but if you didn't realize what they point to, then what's the point? -
Step 3: Die before you die.
-
Step 4: Know your essence.
-
Step 5: Recognize and dissolve the Ego.
-
Step 6: Understand that it's like a dream.
-
Step 7: Be in the space of present moment.
-
Step 8: Feel the space inside and outside.
-
Step 9: Take the next step into the evolution of consciousness.
-
Step 10: Know your Primary purpose.
-
Step 11: Understand relative truth.
-
Step 12: "The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural laws
-
Step 13: which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that in comparison with it all systematic thinking of human being is an utterly insignificant reflection.
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Step 14: Understand that these words are just pointers.
Detailed Guide
Ask yourself what doesn't change? Your thoughts change, your emotions change, your body changes, people around you change, your environment changes, weather changes; every "form" changes, except for the ever present formless space where these things occur.
You are that space of consciousness where every form comes and goes.
Its very nature of forms or content to be unstable and fleeting as they are bound by law of impermanence .
Take analogy of a room; a room is made up of walls but its the inner space of the room that we use, where people and things come and go, events occur and end, etc. "We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use." Tao Te Ching.
In the same way, you are that space of consciousness where thoughts and other forms(internally and externally) come and go. "Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go" Tao Te Ching.
You, the consciousness, are so lost in contentthat you don't even notice the space of awareness where every form comes and disappears.
Subsequently you think of yourself as a finite form and forms around you seem more rigid.
On a Macroscopic level of universe, even if you consider Big Bang, once it was all formless space and with the passage of time, different forms like stars, galaxies, planets, nebulas, etc. came into existence and disappeared, but it's the space where everything came and went that remained unchanged.
To get a glimpse of the space of awareness in yourself, read Practice 'Wheel of Awareness' Meditation. "There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born.
It is serene.
Empty.
Solitary.
Unchanging.
Infinite.
Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao." Tao Te Ching.
It has been hypothesized that if the mass of the universe became greater than the critical density then it will begin to collapse and it would become denser and hotter again, ending with a state similar to that in which it started .
Can you see this on a level of your own form's birth and death? Considering the miracle of birth, its the consciousness or the life that first comes in the womb and then human form begins to develop.
Human form grows stronger with time and as we become old it becomes weak and ultimately there is physical death of the form.
Does it seem similar to universe or objects in the universe? Can you also see the same pattern in breathing? Inhaling (expansion) and exhaling(contraction).
All "things" follow the same pattern because all things are bound and interconnected through the space in which they come and dissolve.
Read Understand the Interconnectedness of All Things for more insight. , Death is stripping away of who you are notStillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle, Pg 109</ref>.
While in the forest or park, have you notice broken trees, leaves, dead animals etc. facilitating the birth of new plants, grass and other organisms.
What can you learn from this? Death is not the opposite of life.
Life has no opposite.
Death is the most natural thing there is; the journey home.
The secret of life is to die before you die as death is only a form dissolving.
Once you realize this truth, you realize there is no death.
Its ok to die., It is a fact that atoms consist of
99.999999 percent empty space, consecutively molecules are more than 99 percent empty space.
Scientists have confirmed that on a molecular level its a pulsating energy frequency.Consecutively our own human form, earth and universe are more than 95 percent space.
Less than 5% of the Universe is ordinary matter, a relatively small contribution.
Its the illusion created by limited view of our sense perceptions and thinking that make the forms seem more rigid and firm.
Space consciousness.
Most people pay attention to the forms in the space but who pays attention to the space itself, which is the essence of all?Perhaps space is not interesting and mind looks for interesting 'things'.
Inner equivalent of external forms is thoughts and emotions in you.
The more your life is cluttered with external forms(tasks, noise, jobs, etc), the more likely your inner self will be cluttered with thoughts and emotions and vice versa.
It's cause world is just a reflection of your inner self.
Here's a practice to realize this:
Just look at the sky or listen to the silence, without adding any stories, and observe how mind activity stops or slows down.
That's the inner equivalent of space and silence within you.
Even if its noisy, you can still be aware of the underlying silence that enable the sounds to be.
So make a habit of becoming aware of the space from time to time, especially when you feel that you are getting lost in forms.
For example:
Become aware of inner body, sky, breath, silence etc.
It is highly recommended that you read Stay Rooted in Being for more depth on this.
When you are in touch with inner spaciousness within you, things lose their seriousness and rigidness, and that's when you truly enjoy life. , Ego is our identification with mind, emotions and form.
A false sense of self we try to get from the things in our life.
It's a dysfunction that most of the humanity is suffering from, to varying degrees.
Plus, it is so common that people think that it's normal.
We are so lost in forms(mental, emotional, material) that we are unaware of our essence, the consciousness that we are..
It is highly recommended that you read Dissolve the Ego (According to Eckhart Tolle's Teachings) for more depth. , Have you ever asked yourself if you could be in a dream right now? We, the consciousness, have been in the grip of ego for so long that we think this is our reality.
Experiencing this world through limited view of sense perceptions and thinking.
While in true reality we could be trapped in some kind of a Matrix or pseudo reality.
Confusing? Try this: recall something what you did or experienced in reality.
Now recall something you did or experienced in a dream.
When you recalled both of the scenarios, did you notice any difference in the way the images or sounds from the experiences came? Most probably not; contextually they were both the same.
Some images and sounds.
For example: try to recall what you ate this morning? Now notice the representation of an image of the food that came up in your consciousness.
Was it an image or motion? Now recall what you ate in any of the dream.
How was the representation of the food in a dream? Meditate on this for sometime.
Have you noticed that normal ups and downs in a dream do not affect you that much and keep you asleep but its the nightmare that has the potential to wake you up? Same in reality.
Its the normal ups and downs that keep you in the grip of ego but when you face something which cannot be conceptualized and the world doesn't make sense anymore then you go through a living nightmare and you strive hard to wake up or get out of it.
Recognize the interconnection between inner and external world? Space of awareness.
What you are experiencing right now is the projection of the external world in your space of consciousness.
A collective dream experienced by people..
It's an illusion that what you are seeing or experiencing is 'outside'.
Doesn't make sense? While you are dreaming your mind populates the space of consciousness with content, sounds, people, environment, etc.
Have you experienced that in your dreams the events occur in a world created by your mind and these events seem like a real world? Its the space of consciousness, the substratum, that gets populated by mind.
Are you sure the world you are experiencing is exactly how you see and perceive through the limited view of your sense perceptions and thinking? , Your true self is inseparable from this present moment, that is timeless.
Often ask yourself questions like, "Who am I?"
"What at this moment is lacking?"
"What's the problem now?".
Read Live in the Present (Spiritual Way) and Surrender to the Present Moment to learn more.
Before the time was measured in seconds, hours or minutes, the time was always now.
Research has proven, that a 2-3 year old can identify the time as 'now' or 'not now' but as they grow up in this ego driven world, they get more lost in the construct of time and hence become farther from their true self.
Have you heard people or yourself saying "the day I achieve that I will be at peace and my future will be secure"
and that day usually never comes.
It's a mind made concept, which says happiness or peace lies in the future but of course future comes as present moment and whatever happened in the past happened in the present moment.
Consider this, if you are thinking of the past or future, you are thinking of it now. “Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion.
What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now.
That is precious indeed.
The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.” Eckhart Tolle . , If your introceptive and extroceptive sense perceptions(smell, sight, touch, taste, hearing) and thoughts were turned off, what would you be left with? Timeless space.
Meditate upon this by closing your eyes.
Can you feel the space inside and outside your body? Can you feel that body is an illusion created by sense perceptionsand all that there is just space? Can you observe that thoughts and emotions are no more than energy movements in the space of your body?, So far our evolution has been unconscious as we have been ego or mind driven.
We have learned enough from the ego, now we must take the next step to ensure our survival.
We are talking about a quantum leap into the futureas if we voluntarily relinquished the mental resistance and surrenderto what is, then we will get connected to the higher intelligence, our true self.
Far more intelligent than human mind.
Voluntary surrender or acceptance is like a shortcut as we wouldn't have to go through the phase of pain and suffering, which is a very slow way to become conscious.
However, do not doubt its efficacy, it still works , You may have this notion that your primary purpose is to get a good job or start a business, become a musician, get a partner, build a house etc....
No, this is all secondary.
Your primary purpose is to reconnect with your true self, the formless consciousness that wants to manifest itself through you.
Every other primary purpose is of the ego.
Even if it is to create heaven on earth, it's still of the ego. "For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." Romans 8:19" How to reconnect with your true self? By realizing your essence, disguised as a person.
Read Dissolve the Ego (According to Eckhart Tolle's Teachings) for more depth. "Only one thing is of absolute importance that is your connectedness with being" Eckhart tolle. , Despite being quite powerful, human mind's capabilities are limited.
It only sees the relative truth or one aspect of the truth.
For example:
Sun sets and rises everyday.
Its true but relatively.
As an absolute truth, Sun is there all the time, it never sets or rises, This feeling is the guiding principle of my work" Albert Einstein. , These words are pointing to the absolute truth that we in essence are formless consciousness or stillness.
The moment you tried to turn it into something, you will lose it.
You can talk about these pointers, teach others about it, write things about it but if you didn't realize what they point to, then what's the point?
About the Author
Melissa Mendoza
Writer and educator with a focus on practical organization knowledge.
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