“Once you awaken, that is when your spiritual life begins.”From El refugio del corazón
After that seminar, for a second I believed I had become a yoga master. I thought that having witnessed that other reality, which is this very one, would keep me safe from every kind of experience. The months that followed were not what I expected. Nor did they have to be.
There was no doubt about who I really was. And even so, I saw things as if superimposed within me, yet the feeling persisted that they were different from me. Either I escaped from them, as if running away, or I accepted them fully, and that was that. There was no middle ground.
I told a friend who had lived his own awakening what was happening to me. To my great surprise, he confessed that he too had gone through a similar process: consciousness still had to recognize itself in all the forms that arose within it. He asked me to trust my process. “The Being is now in charge of everything,” he told me. “Allow the process to unfold naturally.” Those words fell like a balm on my heart.
More human
A great change began to take place in me, very gradually. I was more open to everything that happened in my existence, more authentic in my contact with the world, more centered in my Being. In my daily meditations I found ever deeper and subtler levels of silence.
But in the months that followed, I was also turning, little by little, into someone more fallible and more human. I came to think that it had all been an experience to make me more sensitive and a better human being. Some patterns and habits that had disappeared came back. And yet, every time I looked within, I knew that I was that which cannot be defined.
What now?
The realization of the Being is far from being the end of the path. On the contrary, it is like waking up to a beautiful sun-kissed morning of our nature, like waking up tucked into our own essence. When this awakening is given to you, you enter the process of understanding that you are everything, though one doubt will remain: what now?
The more you look into the Observer, the more the Observer looks into you. As you dwell more and more in Consciousness and in Presence, it begins to visit everything that is within you: your beliefs, your ways of thinking, your blocks and your veils. It does this to lead you, benevolently, into clarity. From then on, Divine Intelligence governs your process.
Although I had realized that I was consciousness and that I was one with everything, I saw that there were many limitations in my psyche, in my ways of thinking and feeling, and that I had to keep gaining clarity. It is believed that realization is a state of ecstatic happiness where nothing can affect you, but that is not what it is about. Realization also makes us more human and less foolish.
The best thing is that the mind can no longer fool us. Even if it cannot integrate the experience and makes us feel out of alignment with our Being, the changes keep happening, and we know they are happening.
Sustaining light
When you awaken, you realize that it is you yourself living, loving and transforming all the limitations of your psyche. The realization of the Being is the beginning of a true spiritual life: when the revelation comes to you that you are spirit, the path to illumination begins, and with it the process of sustaining light to draw in clarity and to shape all your energy and your heart.
You have to look at the garbage you have generated, at what your ancestors have handed down to you and at what the collective consciousness has loaded onto you. It is all part of you. It is hard work, but you have to start doing it now, in everything you do in your daily life. If you do not start now, then when will it be done?
That is how I have lived it throughout this whole process. Little by little, life has been showing it to me, and I have become aware of how my mind reacts to its environment and of the frequencies of different environments with different people. You are energy: learn how that energy relates to life and to the universe. The more the Observer becomes aware of this, the more it sees itself through you, to lead you to clarity.
Accept all that you are
One day I called my teacher and explained what was happening to me. He simply told me, in a kind and brotherly tone: “Accept all that you are; yes, you are that, but you are also all of this.” He was referring to my humanity, to my physical body and to my whole psyche.
I would look at myself in the mirror and see my body as a prison. But I also noticed that the more I avoided matter, the more it pursued me everywhere, with my family and with my friends. My teacher reminded me that I was still the same as always, and hearing his wise, warm words calmed me a great deal.
A beginning
I am still living this process of integration. Sometimes, when I sit down to read in my backyard, I stare off into the horizon and perceive a transparent manifestation of the universe, essentially empty, but not separate from that which I Am. My heart is still integrating it.
The fact that we are human allows us to perceive suffering, but the most important thing is to achieve mastery in order to transform it. Spiritual development has no end. The stronger God’s revelation in you, the smaller you feel before His grandeur, and you surrender.
Think of Divinity and build a relationship with it: this is a way of life, not a philosophy. Awakening is not the end of anything. It is the beginning of a closer relationship with God.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: El refugio del corazón · Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad · Illumination