Timothy Conway will be a retreat leader at the Awakening Together Satsang Retreat in Santa Barbara from September 12-14, 2014. He will also lead a Satsang at the ‘Soak in the Beauty’ retreat at the same location from September 14-18, 2014. In preparation for the retreat, I am sharing a series of questions answered by Timothy. To read the full series, click here. And now, here is today’s question:
Q: I feel lots of energy coming through me and certain powers. How can I become a “co-creator” with God?
This question arises when one believes that there are two Selves, God’s and “mine.” But there is only the nondual Self. Sagely tradition argues here for total humility, clarity and transparency to preempt narcissism, pride, and megalomania. All that is meant to appear will spontaneously happen in and through the various selves as the Self’s play. One need not push the river or add legs to a snake, as Zen says.
Q: I feel an expanded sense of Awareness in meditation and especially here in satsang/therapy, but then I lose it at other times, like at work. I feel I’m only aware of being Awareness some of the time, not all of the time. How to have more consistency?
This very common concern presumes that Awareness is a special state of mind coming and going in time and can somehow be made “constant” by some special discipline, when in fact Awareness is timelessly/always the Constant Substratum of the dream or movie of life. Our Real Nature is this Self-evident, Obvious ISNESS, the only non-changing aspect of our life. All else changes but THIS. And, as Shankara and Ramana Maharshi frequently pointed out, people already know they are constantly the Self and really don’t doubt it. Otherwise, if they were only their changing mind-states with no continuity, they would be incessantly shocked, over and over, moment by moment, by the sudden re-appearance of discrete, discontinuous bodymind states.
So we all know, deep down, subconsciously, that we are the One Self-Awareness. All that’s “needed” is to stop presuming that we are the changing, limited states of the bodymind and stop searching for some special new bodymind state called “enlightenment.” The only way we miss Spiritual Truth is by searching for it on the “object”-ive level of body, mind or psychic-soul.
The fact is that the God-Self—Infinite, Unborn Awareness—is equally present in human confusion and clarity, struggle and ease, failure and success, misery and joy, just as present as when one is on the meditation-seat, the car-seat or toilet-seat. Where else could God be but right HERE? When could God be but right NOW?
Wisely knowing-being this grand yet simple Truth is what allows for deep relaxation, real freedom, blissful peace, and all-embracing love.
