Why Wake Up From Conditioning To Who You Truly Are?

In this segment from an interview by Paul Samuel Dolman on his "What Matters Most" podcast, I talk about the shift anyone can make from mistaken identification with thoughts, emotions, and the world of form, which is the source of all human suffering, to the spiritual Truth of who we are. It's a shift from the illusion of separateness to the spiritual reality of oneness, while we retain a provisional individuality sufficient to be able to be in the world of form as an expression of the One Life.

Transcript

As you begin to notice your thoughts and question them,

Notice your emotions without trying to hide from them or distract yourself from them or suppress them,

You know,

Or only focus on the good ones and try to push away the bad ones,

None of these strategies work.

As we begin to notice that we're the awareness that's noticing these thoughts popping up,

We're the awareness that's noticing this emotion that's popped up.

We're the awareness that's noticing what I'm perceiving,

That I'm noticing that chair over there or I'm noticing my cat over there stretching in the sunshine.

I'm the awareness noticing these things that are going on.

Then what comes to the fore,

Kind of bubbles up within our consciousness,

Is this sense of presence,

This reality of who we are.

So there's an acronym that I mentioned toward the end of the book that helps people to be reminded about these things,

About noticing your thoughts and noticing that you can't know for certain that they're true.

When you notice then your present experience,

You can feel at peace with it because anything that you've been annoyed about and most of us are kind of,

Most of the time,

Working on fixing something that we feel is wrong with our present experience.

So most of the time when people are in a particular moment having a particular experience,

We're kind of feeling like we want to get away from that and fix it,

Make it,

Improve it or achieve something different so that my experience becomes something better than what it is right now.

We feel that our present experience,

Even if it's a very subtle kind of a background thought,

There's this assumption that I want something better than what I'm experiencing right now.

But when we notice that the only thing that's making us feel like our present experience is insufficient or should be something better or different,

The only thing is a thought that we're believing.

If we question the thought and then just notice where I am and what's going on without believing a thought that something is bad,

Which only exists in imagination,

If we look at the reality of our present moment experience,

We can see that there is no good or bad.

There's just what is.

So another thing that people can do is,

And it takes a bit more explaining,

But when we question our thoughts and we question and allow to dissolve these emotions,

We come back to a kind of a sensing of a very peaceful subtle energy in and around the body.

This is such a subtle thing that it's not really,

As we were saying before,

It's not really me experiencing such and such,

It's more of a sense of here's my beingness,

I'm present here with this very fine,

Subtle,

Pleasant energy.

So when it helps to be a little bit of an anchor also to coming back into who we truly are.

And then as we do that and we look around at the world around us,

What we're reading or what we're hearing on the news or somebody that's with us that we're having an interaction with or we're just sitting and we're observing or listening to something,

Any of this we can notice without the distortions that usually operate out of our conditioned patterns of operation.

So we can see things more as they are in reality without our agendas and our prejudices and our hopes and fears kind of interfering and distorting our perception.

We're better able to see what's real.

Wow,

I just,

The way you said that,

I am just in awe of your ability to communicate these concepts and you obviously are a natural teacher.

And what I'm thinking,

Which is interesting,

Is what do you feel in you or any of the spiritual teachers that inspires,

Guides and motivates you personally to go and share and try to help rather than let it just be and just be a beautiful passive,

Not passive,

But just an observant presence rather than go reach out,

Write books and try to help other people's souls realize the reality of what they're really experiencing right now,

Just they're unaware of it.

It's kind of,

Both things exist.

For me now,

There's no longer a need to achieve anything because I don't feel that anything is missing or wrong,

If I can put it in those terms.

I'm not attached to,

Here's a term that's often used these days associated with another term that's often used,

You know,

Finding your passion.

And so there's this other term about making a difference.

I actually don't feel any attachment to a need to make a difference anymore.

Earlier in my life at different times I kind of did.

And I don't feel an attachment to a passion for any particular thing,

For achieving any particular thing in the way that I might have done before.

Even though a different sense of passion begins to operate in my life,

I would switch to a word enthusiasm and subtle difference perhaps,

But the difference for me is in again,

Not having any need to achieve anything in particular,

Because I don't have a conceptual sense of self that needs to be reinforced by me achieving anything.

So I can achieve it and say,

Wow,

I feel better as a person because I've achieved that.

I don't need to feel that anymore because no conceptual view,

Mine or anybody else's,

About who I am is anything at all to do with who I am.

I'm this formless awareness.

But yes,

Then there's this still acting in the world.

Now this helps me to make a lovely connection,

Hopefully for some of your listeners Paul,

With this question that you've asked.

Because when we see through the conditioned patterns of operating in the world,

And it was very surprising to me and for most people it becomes actually quite surprising to notice how much of our actual operation is pretty much automatic and conditioned.

This is the initial thing that this is the inevitable experience of being a human being coming into the world,

But the opportunity is there eventually then to question that and dissolve that conditioning so that we become aware of presence.

Now as we then question our conditioned thoughts and behavioral patterns and emotional patterns,

And we become more and more often and more and more as it were tangibly this peace-filled presence,

What is that peace-filled presence?

It's not other than life.

It's not other than the essence of life.

It's not other than the consciousness or intelligence that guides and orchestrates all of life.

So as you come back then to allowing this bubbling up or freeing up the ability of this bubbling up of presence to be the beingness that you truly are,

You begin to find then that your life becomes an expression of that essence of life.

Life becomes able then to move through you as you,

But it's no longer the illusory conceptualized self-identity that is setting goals and wanting to achieve things and feeling bad when it fails to and these sorts of things.

It actually becomes then I'm one with or I am this life that's expressing as me,

And it's this that then leads to,

In my case just now having written this book.

You might remember Paul that in the preface of the book I relate how early in 2018,

Because I've been feeling for a number of years that I wanted to write this book,

And early in 2018 I kind of wanted to and I tried to start.

I had various messages that it wasn't quite time yet,

But I'd like to write this book.

And so I wrote down various things that I wanted to say in the book and laid them out on a table on different sheets of paper and nothing would flow.

It just wouldn't come.

And so I just had to say,

Oh well gosh,

Not yet then,

You know,

It can't be the right time.

And then it was about a year later that something else happened I came across and it again just prompted me to have this feeling,

Oh gosh,

I really would like to write this book,

There's a need for this book,

You know.

And then I started having these thoughts related to the previous attempt pop up,

You know,

Oh yeah well that's okay but maybe I'm not ready yet,

You know,

Maybe it's still not right time,

You know.

But then I began to get messages that said,

No,

Write it now.

And as I began to write,

I was really amazed at how it flowed.

And I would go on what's usually for me is a morning walk of about an hour,

But quite often I'd have to take a shortcut home halfway because three ideas that popped into my mind,

You know,

That I wanted to put in the book and I didn't want to forget them,

So I raced back home and scribbled them down and started working again.

So it really began to flow.

So it wasn't in a sense Andrew Seton,

The self-concept person that wrote this book.

It was more the ability that I'd come to have to be free enough and open enough that yes,

I could use my mind and I used lots of experiences and understandings that I'd come across in earlier in my life,

But my mind was being used as a tool by the essence of me as life coming through into the expression of this book.

Again,

Well stated.

I love that you have transcended the personal aspect of who you are and now you are just divinity,

Mystery,

Phenomenon,

Whatever words we want to couch it,

Moving through this beautiful carbon star suit that is constructed from stars that were here billions and billions of years ago.

It's such a mystery.

It's a miracle.

And then in that,

There is just the impulse to love,

Serve,

And create peace,

And it's coming from that place rather than a need to falsely expand the mind ego,

Which I feel the same way about the show and everything I'm doing because I realize there's nothing I can do,

Say,

Become,

Achieve,

No war I can win that will increase the size and the infinite presence of what I already am.

So I just choose things I do for love or if I'm guided.

My prayer every day is,

What do you want me to do next?

I don't even need a long-term plan because I'm not worried about anything.

It's just the next step and then the next thing,

And it can only work out.

Or at least in you,

I see a mirror,

Just another version,

The down under version of what matters most.

So I love it.

And I mean,

Our little time here has just flown by.

It was like not even a moment because these are timeless concepts.

But I love the book and I highly recommend it to everybody who's listening.

It's so easy to pick up and put down.

Is there anything in closing you'd like to say to these people around the world?

It's just you,

Me,

And the listener.

It's kind of personal,

Even though it's global.

Well,

In this book,

Spiritual Awakening Made Simple,

I've tried to give people a very concise and methodical and experiential way into finding who they truly are.

And it's actually so simple because who people truly are,

They already truly are.

So here's one thing I want to say in closing,

And that is that there's a lot of talk out there,

A lot of widely held assumptions about spiritual awakening and spiritual development as a long journey.

It's not a long journey and it doesn't involve fixing yourself because there's nothing wrong with you.

It doesn't involve becoming more than you already are because this formless awareness that is your true nature,

You already are that.

There's nothing to create,

There's nothing to evolve into,

And there's nothing to fix because there's nothing wrong with you.

So it's all there.

The other thing I want to just say in closing that picks up on just some things I was talking about only about five minutes ago,

About being the expression of life rather than the kind of egoic conceptual sense of self,

Is that I don't want your listeners to feel they need to kind of think a lot about that.

It's easy then to get in a trap.

The mind itself can then play a game of trying to,

As it were,

Eliminate the self-concept.

In the book in chapter seven,

The second last chapter of my book,

I talk about six traps that people can and very often do get caught in on this road of self-discovery.

The conceptual sense of self,

The egoic sense of self,

Will play all kinds of mind games to keep us identified with the mind and with form,

With concepts.

So I don't want your listeners to go away with any sense that they need to,

As it were,

Wipe out their individuality.

Don't be concerned about that.

Don't be concerned about,

Don't let your mind play a game of trying to shut down who you are as an individual.

Yes,

Our individuality in this world is just a provisional kind of construction.

Who we are as an individual,

The separateness is an illusion,

And yet it is intended to be this way because I need this provisional construction of being an individual to come into the world and play in the world of form.

But don't get overly concerned,

I would say to your listeners,

About getting rid of your individuality.

Simply cultivate presence.

Allow this peace-filled awareness that is your true nature to be there as you,

As often as you like to,

As often as you can,

Especially by questioning the thoughts that you identify with,

The emotions that you identify with.

Then life takes care of the process of transforming your sense of separate self into an expression of the universal without wiping out in an artificial way this sense of individuality.

That is just an absolutely excellent final tip.

Reviews

Thank you for the reminder not to identify with experience!