What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit is a term that points to spiritual intuition. Yesterday we read about spiritual intuition in an excerpt from The Teachings of Inner Ramana. That excerpt said:
One who listens to guidance … realizes truth even as he experiences perception. He listens to knowledge because he knows that one who sees perception cannot truly see, but one who is not attached can be guided. Non-attachment and realization are one.
While contemplating our last special theme, we learned about equanimity. Equanimity is abiding in the qualities of Christ-consciousness—acceptance of what is, openness, non-attachment, and unconditional trust.
When we accept that we are consciousness, we abide in equanimity, because we realize we are unaffected by the outside world.
When we abide in equanimity, we are able to feel spiritual intuition more easily, because “one who is not attached can be guided.”
I live in the high desert of Colorado. Tumbleweeds are common here. However, we only see tumbleweeds in the winter. During the summer, tumble weeds are rooted firmly into the ground. The wind cannot blow the tumbleweeds about when they are attached to the ground.
In the winter, the tumbleweed’s roots die. That frees the tumbleweeds from the ground, and then the wind can blow them about freely.
Spiritual intuition is like the wind. When we abide in equanimity, we are like the tumbleweeds in the winter. We allow spiritual intuition to guide us without any attachment to the ground of our thoughts.
This is the goal of the Holy Spirit’s teaching. It is to free us from attachment to our thinking.
Once we are freed from our habitual thinking, we can be guided by spiritual intuition, and the Holy Spirit “becomes the means to go beyond itself, to be replaced by the eternal truth.”
As we’ve already seen, the Holy Sprit is the means to awakening. Once we awaken to truth, we are beyond the Holy Spirit. What we are is the home of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual intuition emanates from awakened consciousness.
Although what we are is the source that spiritual intuition emanates from, until we genuinely awaken to our Self, we do well to be surrendered to spiritual intuition. Through surrender, we let our true voice guide us back to the realization of what we are.
One mistake that people make when they understand intellectually that the Holy Spirit is their true voice, but they don’t have the genuine experience of themselves as consciousness, is listening to the ego thought system while saying, “But the Holy Spirit is me.” In other words, they think their thinking and their will is the same as the Holy Spirit’s thinking and its will.
Your thinking and spiritual intuition are not the same thing. Thinking is the voice of the ego, and it will keep you attached to the idea that you are a person in a body.
If you really want to awaken to your truth, it is critical that you put your own thinking aside and tune into spiritual intuition. Spiritual intuition is the means to awakening, not your thinking. You need to free yourself from the ground of your thoughts in order to genuinely follow spiritual intuition.
My true identity abides in You.
The prayer in today’s workbook lesson begins with, “Father, I made an image of myself, and it is this I call the Son of God. Yet is creation as it always was, for Your creation is unchangeable. Let me not worship idols.”
Most people do not call themselves the “Son of God.” Most people in the world today think of Jesus as the “Son of God.” Yet, they may think of themselves as the children of God.
Why is it an error to think of yourself, the person, as the Son or child of God?
When you think of yourself, the person, as the Son or child of God, you remain identified with yourself as the person. You remain identified with the mind’s thoughts as your thoughts. You are not the person, and the mind’s thoughts are not your thoughts, so the error is a mistake in identification.
It is much more helpful to think of yourself as consciousness, and to realize that consciousness is the Son or child of God. Consciousness is the direct creation or extension of the source.
Nisargdatta Maharaj said:
Keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas. Do it patiently and with conviction and you will surely come to the direct vision of yourself as the source of being—knowing—loving, eternal, all-embracing, all-pervading. You are the infinite focused in a body. Now you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see the infinite only.
Today, we will take Nisargadatta’s advice and “keep on remembering” by noticing repeatedly throughout the day that we are awareness.
We will also practice the Loving All Method today. As we do, we will remind ourselves that the essence of everything is the essence that we are. As our lesson says, “Now are we One in shared Identity, … And so we offer blessing to all things, uniting lovingly with all the world, …”
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
