Know Yourself
Let’s start by looking at what's eventually realised through meditation. Life is experienced relative to a constant background of well-being, or what I refer to as unconditional happiness, uncaused happiness, unreasonable happiness or simply Happiness. Other names used to describe this constant, unchanging quality are bliss, ecstasy, enlightenment or love. The process of meditation is one in which we come to know the reality of our existence through direct investigation.
If you wish to know about something objective (something that is not you) you study it and observe it. If you wish to know about yourself, you must study and observe yourself. Some of you may have already noticed that the last statement seems to loop back on itself. For who is it that will be doing the observing, surely it will be you, and yet that is what you want to investigate. So the process of meditation is not as simply as at first it appears! The process can best be described as a falling back into ourselves until eventually, the loop we observed earlier completes itself. This falling back into ourselves has been started by many and yet those who complete the process is relatively few. When the loop completes itself, it’s as if you disappear and yet you very obviously remain, however the world never looks the same again. The process of falling back upon ourselves could be likened to peeling off the layers of an onion. Indeed, it’s also comparable in that when the last layer is peeled off no onion is left!
When you ask the question “what is consciousness?”, “who am I?”, etc., you are constantly bringing yourself back to yourself. Instead of going outwards and creating a whole complex world, bring yourself back to that which is creating the complex world. If you continually bring yourself back to yourself, then gradually something begins to become obvious about yourself. If you continue to bring yourself back to yourself, you will gradually get to know yourself, you will feel yourself more profoundly, and you will feel into yourself more then you’ve ever done. Our awareness of ourselves is generally fairly superficial, we’re basically only aware of the tip of the iceberg. We are, in truth, far more than we presently assume ourselves to be.
The feeling of being is the context of all other feelings. It is the container of all feelings. All feelings arise within the feeling of being. Feel, or locate, the feeling that is the feeling of being - where you get your feeling of existing from. That feeling is the origin of your sense of “me”, of “I am”. We get our feeling of existing, of being, of I-ness, of am-ness, of I-am-ness from consciousness, consciousness is that feeling. To live as consciousness we must relax our striving. Life continues without us striving and it can then be enjoyed. Life in all its great variety can only be fully enjoyed from the position of consciousness. The position of consciousness is impartial relative to experience and exists purely as enjoyment. Life takes on a natural, creative flow when allowed to be, without hindrance from ourselves. Do you dare to do that? If you don’t do it, it’s because you have so much invested in the psychology of a separate individual. It’s not possible to have both. Yet at a certain point, to live as consciousness, free of the bondage of a separate and separative life is a great release and most welcome.
. When we awaken as consciousness, it’s consciousness awakening to itself. When consciousness awakens as itself there’s no feeling of superiority, there’s more a feeling of equality. All beings are alive, all beings exist within consciousness and because there is this feeling of equality, love can be freely present.