I Am, I Said

 But I got an emptiness deep inside

and I've tried
but it won't let me go.
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
but I never cared
for the sound of being alone.

(Neil Diamond, “I am, I said”)

 

Awakening is mostly amazing for those of us who discover one day a world we have never quite seen that way before and enjoy living in it. Yet sooner or later it occurs that we have a foot in two worlds, one, the old familiar life of conditioning and disappointment, and one, in a higher dimension of love, serenity and ease of living. How to proceed from there?

 

I find the working towards enlightenment thesis that many teachers and students seem to carry, naïve. Why is there the assumption that things will get better in the future? This conjecture seems to be at odds with the power of now. We can heal certain problem areas. We can remove some blind spots, but the force that “edges-God-out”—ego—will always cling to us.

 

So, what to do? Can we even do anything, given that the entity doing it is the one that stands in the Way. Can we be alert 24/7–mindful—on the doings and workings of the “body, mind, world” matrix? Can we reach out to the energy that is out there—the higher dimension—and appeal to it like Nisargadatta Maharaj did? Can we mind the mind, or can we be love only?

 

I wrote a book a few years ago titled, “Breaking Free—Lose the self, find

S (erenity) E (nergy) L (ove) F (low). The strength of the book was to look for the higher dimension in these four areas, the room for improvement is to outline how we can actually connect to this higher energy moment by moment, as some of our spiritual teachers seems to suggest we can.

 

Everyone tells the story that there are two events in the spiritual journey, the day something breaks open and we become aware of the “body, mind, world” matrix we have been trapped in, and partially break free, and the day when we entirely break free from it—enlightenment. There is an event missing in this, the day when our commitment to breaking free is total.

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj claimed that he spent his days reminding himself that he is “That”; that is, to be on constant watch-out for the prevailing higher energies while negating the interferences, “not this, not that”. I find this method intriguing given that these higher energies literally can be sensed. Still, it’s not my approach since the risk is projection when we look for God.

 

I found an in-between solution that is close to Nisargadatta’s approach without the downside of projecting “I am”. In the daily reminder of “I am”, we are open to anything that comes our way. Maybe we discover that we are jealous. At that moment we have to own that thought-feeling energy and see where it leads. The negation, “I am not this or that”, has to be earned.

 

At the same time, by reminding ourselves daily of the “I am” mantra, we are open to the four dimensions of being outside of the matrix, the silence, the energy, the love, and the flow of life; S-E-L-F. The simple mantra “I am” opens us up to both worlds, recognizing the world of bondage and conditioning and cutting the ties, and opening us up to the higher energies.