Once you recognize the truth,
That's then the beginning of a life of devotion to yourself,
Devotion to the truth in the face of whatever shows up to tell you otherwise.
The invitation is to check for yourself,
To question and to find the answer.
And when you find what you're looking for here and now,
Beyond doubt,
Beyond thought,
Beyond belief,
Beyond name and beyond form,
Then you give yourself to it.
You give yourself to yourself.
It doesn't mean the challenges have ended,
Which is another hope of the egoic identity that enlightenment will end the challenges of this life.
I'm so sorry to be the bearer of this news.
It's not that.
It's that you lose your personal identification with what's happening and recognize yourself to be what's always here.
Challenges are still here.
Feelings will still come.
Emotions will still come.
Circumstances will still test you.
Thoughts will still come.
And the temptation for most of us,
You know,
Some people are lucky.
I've said that they can have this great big moment where they face themselves really and see through the illusion of this storytelling of where I've come from,
Where I am and where I'm going and discover this timeless reality.
And it can happen to them in one evening,
In one moment,
And it's gone,
These lucky ones.
But for most of us,
We have this true glimpse,
Seat next to God,
I've heard it described,
Where we see through the veils all the way through to this infinite clarity,
Alive presence and recognize that as who we are and it can be so blissful.
And then tests come back the momentum of the past egoic movements and not even your past egoic movements.
You know,
Your family walks in,
That's the momentum of your karmic existence.
Your family walks in and with that will potentially trigger your identity as they project their projections of you onto you.
Or as it triggers memories of being a child,
Being told you're bad or being told you're good.
And so that once you recognize the truth,
That's then the beginning of a life of devotion to yourself,
Devotion to the truth in the face of whatever shows up to tell you otherwise.
And I would say most of us are in that circumstance.
Most of us,
That's our Dharma.
That's the holy work of facing the waves of identification that have been hidden and stored in our cells,
In our DNA,
In our subconscious.
And as the bubbles of identity arise,
We can meet them and inquire in that moment and we can check and see and we can go deeper.
And so this has been my experience and it continues to be my experience.
And I continue to meet old patterns that show up that imply that there's a somebody who's afraid of something or wants something or thinks something's wrong with him.
And it creates waves,
Waves of suffering,
Waves of discomfort.
And because not because I should and not because of anything other than the fact that I love the truth and I love,
Love,
And I love the self,
I love presence and consciousness.
And because I have recognized somewhere along the line,
I recognize that that is the deepest truth of who I am and that what I want more than anything is to be completely absorbed in that and to live a life and to show up as a human in this world.
Because I meet you right now playing a role,
Willing to talk,
But still,
Doubtless about who I am.
And so in that I have the tests come and I meet them just like you.
And you either fail the test and re-identify and cause suffering for yourself and others.
And then at some point you realize you either get a very strong reflection from your partner or from the world or from your teacher if you're lucky.
And that gives you this moment to stop and examine yourself and tell the truth.
And that takes you deeper.
It's not an opportunity to berate yourself or to judge yourself.
It doesn't mean anything that you happen to have gone with a wave of identification or caused suffering in some way.
It doesn't mean anything.
Finally,
Nothing means anything because the truth is always true.
So that that feeling of fear or that feeling of anger or that feeling of I'm not good enough for the story you just told or the fact that you did something that was bad objectively or subjectively,
It doesn't change the deepest truth.
It only strengthens your resolve to be true to yourself.
Or at least that's my encouragement.
That's my experience and I encourage you to take the signals that come from your body and come from your circumstances and come from your relationships.
These signals as a gift that they are like mirrors pointing back to where you are perhaps believing a story of somebody that doesn't even exist.
And if you use it like that,
Use it well,
Then your life is an ongoing continual discovery and rediscovery and fresh discovery of what's alive and true.
