“I Am that and I Am this; there is no one else; I am not one particular thing; even so, I am all things.”From Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad
I had gone fishing with a Jamaican friend in the Cayman Islands, on that sea I have always loved because its grandeur and its infinity captivate me. We caught some fish that made a curious sound as they came out of the water. When we got back, he started cooking them and I went out to the dock. It was night, and the moon was lighting up the sea.
What happened there resolved a dilemma that still remained in me. But to tell you about it, I have to begin a little earlier.
Witness to everything
My first awakening consisted in realizing that I Am pure consciousness. I felt myself to be the witness of everything I was living and feeling. But deep in my consciousness a dilemma still remained: if I am consciousness, then what is this body? It was not a rational process. It arose in a subtle, intuitive way, and it led me to question the reality of my body and of everything I was living.
Once the grace of realization comes, the next step is integration: realizing that this whole material, physical world is also part of you. For me, that step came in the Cayman Islands, when I truly fit into all of this.
Why not allow myself to be human?
Until one very simple understanding changed my whole perspective: nothing is permanent, so why not allow my Being the experience of being me? If I am eternal, absolute, if I am the Divine Presence, why not allow myself to be a human being, mortal and worldly?
It was like validating my human experience, with everything that means for an incarnate spirit. Allowing myself to be my being was like taking an aspirin for a headache. The conflict between the One and the Other began to fade.
I knew there had to be a resolution, and that it would come in the peaceful setting of the heart. It did not depend on the mind or on any technique, not even a spiritual one. When would it happen? When I was ready for it. It was an answer that came from the depths of my soul, questioned and in love with the truth.
The night on the dock
That night came a few months after my awakening. I began to feel something strange in my chest, as if my heart were falling, as if the floor had dropped out from under it. I thought it was seasickness from the boat, but I knew it was something deep inside me, a process of a spiritual nature. So I relaxed and trusted my being completely.
On the dock, I suddenly felt my heart opening like an infinite hole, a bottomless point in the middle of my chest that, even so, was nothing material. I stopped to contemplate the night landscape, and my own Being opened out in front of me. Looking at the sea, I felt a knot come loose in front of my heart, and consciousness moved forward.
My being was reborn into this physical world. I felt myself merging with all things and all beings, in a communion at the level of the heart. In that moment I broke with the sense of duality. My heart recognized that all of creation, even my own body, was also part of my consciousness. I realized that things are to consciousness what ice is to water.
I Am in form.
Like ice and water
I was no longer only the witness who lived through everything. I also accepted and reintegrated everything around me as part of myself. Everything was part of me and I was part of everything; now everything fit within my being.
I felt a pristine clarity, without any dilemma at all. I felt whole. The dilemma of separation had been resolved. I Am whole and I am Unity.
Ice has form, and it is still water. That is what things are to consciousness, and what your body is to your Being.
Afterward, my mind began to rationalize what I had lived. It understood the revelation that I was part of the universe and that the Divinity was the essence of my very self, and also that the human being living this experience was deeply ignorant. It is our Being that knows, that realizes and breaks with all this duality, not the mind; our human part is incapable of understanding and reasoning out this whole experience of who we are. This experience of unity is impossible to reason out from the head. It comes about through a process.
Some realized yogis prefer to regard all this materiality as something illusory. And although that is true, it is also true that everything we live is energy we have created as part of ourselves, and that is why it is also part of us. Otherwise, where does all of this come from?
Allow yourself to be human
This process did not end on that dock. Even as I write these words, the process keeps unfolding, each day in subtler dimensions of myself. Life always brings me what is needed to continue it, day by day, moment by moment.
The feeling of separation has faded away, and a sense of peace permeates each instant of my life more and more. As more veils are drawn back, the learning grows greater, and so does the sense of belonging to the world and the universe. Peace is there, setting its seal on my life.
The more you accept and love your humanity, the more you dissolve the idea of separation. You don’t need to become sanctimonious; what you need is clarity and compassion. That will lead you to be a person of integrity and devotion.
So don’t run away from your body or from your everyday life. Allow your Being the experience of being you.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad · El refugio del corazón