“We are not this body that we inhabit and with which we move through the coordinates of time and space: we are much more than that.”From Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad
When I began my process of awakening, the teachers I learned from, most of them Westerners, always told me the same thing: “You are not the mind, you are not the body, you are not what you feel…” Those words have a very clear purpose.
The idea is for you to disconnect from whatever makes it hard for you to reach what you really are, so that you can recognize it. That is why, to go deeper, they lead you to discard everything else that you are not, until you reach your own consciousness. There, an innate knowledge is revealed, which is part of your Being. It is not one more theory. It is a simple knowing that it is so.
I invite you to walk that path with me, step by step and calmly. The point is not to take anything away from you, but for you to see what has always been there.
Seeing first what is not
Whoever sets out on a spiritual path begins to see clearly what is not, because they are still unable to see what really is. That is why this path begins by discarding.
Start with what is closest. You are not your arm, or your leg, or your head, or any other object, because you are simply you. When you truly understand this, your body is no longer able to contain your identity.
It sounds simple, but it is hard for us. We have become masters at deceiving ourselves, believing that all we are is this body we live in. By identifying with the body, we perceive ourselves as someone apart, and we identify with whatever is “mine.” There is no need to make yourself the owner of anything. Even by taking those ideas as “yours,” you are accepting something mistaken: the idea of a separate individual.
What comes and goes
Just as you are not your body, your thoughts cannot define you either. They come and go; consequently, none of them is capable of containing your essence in full. The same thing happens with your feelings, whether good or bad: they cannot encompass your being either, because they also come and go.
Seeing yourself through the body, you presume that what are supposed to be your thoughts arise somewhere in your brain. But all of it, your body and your thoughts, is energy moving in Consciousness.
Look at this calmly. What comes and goes cannot contain you, because you are still there when it has gone. We all are spiritual beings, and there is no mind in the spirit.
Not even energy
Some people insist we are pure energy. But energy too is transformed: it passes through different states of vibration, from one end to the other. That leads us to the conclusion that we are not that either.
I know this is harder to understand, so I will take it a bit further. So that you can say there is light, a conscious being must stand firmly behind it. Light itself arises from a universal consciousness, capable of generating it from its own essence.
Thus, in the process of awakening, you need to observe if you are anything in particular. By doing so, you will see who the witness is.
What remains
Let me ask you a very simple question. If we removed all the objects, things and beings from the universe, what would remain?
The answer is not vague, or complex, or bewildering. Not for the Being. What would remain is the knower.
That knower is you. You are not one more thing among things, but that which is aware of all of them: of the body, of thoughts, of feelings and of energy, without being any of them. We are indefinable, perhaps, and ungraspable: nothing can capture us completely.
And you are not going to discover it by reasoning: it does not come as a conclusion of the mind. It is a revelation that happens on its own, and in it God will tell you that you have finally found it.
Discarding, then embracing
I want you to understand the meaning of all this well, because it is easy to get confused. Discarding what you are not does not mean despising your body, or fighting with your thoughts or your emotions.
Once you realize what you are, after discarding everything else to reach that essence, your Being seeks a reconciliation with all the aspects that belong to it. You are the universal spirit and you have no fixed place, but there is also everything sensory and material that the Being is experiencing. The abstract and the concrete are part of that duality, and our Being also needs to reconcile them.
And then you discover something more: you are also in everyone, because the Divinity lives through all of us. That lived experience of unity is not an experience of the senses, much less something your mind can justify. It is much simpler than all that. It is a deep and innate knowing, but not an intellectual one: knowing that you are in everything and in everyone. And once it happens, you do not go back to what came before.
Our Being is so pure that, even after realizing all that it is, it keeps seeking that clarity ever more deeply. We are made of the essence of the Divinity. Your Being, not your body, although your body is also part of that Divinity.
Your own Being is worthy of the Divinity. The belief in the opposite is the burden our psyche has been programmed with, that is, our mind and our emotions. That is why I tell you: do not see yourself through the dark glass of your mind. Open the windows and look at everything without filters, from your innocence and from the humbleness of your own spirit. Let your intuition take you, little by little, toward what your being, and not your mind, wants.
The knower is here right now, while you are reading these words. And once you have seen it, even for an instant, never forget it.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: Illumination · El refugio del corazón · Devoción · Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad