Stages of Self Realization

Are you living your Best Life?
Free of anxiety?
Free of comparison?
Free of the need to be liked?

Are you living Your Life?
Uncompromising Serenity,
Unexpected Adventures,
Transcending All Challenges?

Are you living Life?
Flowing without Resistance,
Loving without Reservation,
Letting all Spontaneous Experiences happen Naturally?

Are you Life?
All happenings play and subside in You…
As you are the watcher, the non-doer, the stability of all movements.
You are the Light of Awareness that sees All.

You are LIFE

Follow Your Heart?

What does it actually mean – Follow Your Heart?

Is it an emotional experience?

Is it an anti-logical approach to life?

Or is it an intuitive relationship with your inner guidance (Your God-Consciousness)?

Whenever I tell people I can only follow my heart, few actually understand what I mean. They quickly jump into their own conclusion and place what they believe to be true onto my words. 

One man in particular, he asked to do a promotional video to feature me and I graciously declined. It wasn’t due to arrogance or disrespect towards him, nor due to any laziness or self-consciousness on my part, I just did not feel the pull towards that task. Each time he would ask, I would check-in, be still and intuitively feel. In fact, when I become quiet enough to truly feel, there is no energy nor a current flow into that direction. Even as I picture myself trying to get started on helping him, I get tired instantly. This is the point where I make a choice, do I continue to ignore my intuitive knowing or do I follow the guidance? 

I do realize that most people are like my early 20s self, who chose to ignore intuition and instead would act mostly from psychological cues produced in the mind. If someone asked me to attend a social function, instead of feeling if I would like to go or if there’s a current pulling me that direction, I would quickly enter into a psychological debate listing all the pros and cons. 

Pros – if I go I can dress up, I can eat yummy food, I can see my friends, I can network with more people, I might meet someone who can help me with my venture, etc…

Cons – I don’t have anything to wear, I might not fit in, I have a paper due the next day, I don’t have enough gas, My ex might show up at the same function, etc…

God knows I’ve mostly chosen the logical approach. Only by making the same mistakes over and over again, I realized that sometimes I just don’t feel like going – AND I don’t know why!

 

Now THAT has tremendous power. We are conditioned by society to always have to give an excuse when choosing the unpopular option. Yet oftentimes, intuitive power works in such a way that a “why” is never revealed. Hence the term “Follow Your Heart” – we opt-out of having to explain or make up excuses. This is when we often mix “heart” with “emotions” and become confused with the emotional-psychological reactions. Note, “heart” does not equate with “emotions”. To be able to sense a true intuitive guidance, we must become empty.

In the spiritual sense, there is a purity to “Follow Your Heart” – a vast space, a clear seeing, an equanimity in feeling. God-Consciousness is just such – to break out of the psychological chatters and enter into a vast space of clear seeing. 

I urge you to always “Follow Your Heart” – this is the only way to be in harmony with the greater existence – it asks you to step outside of limiting ego-self and step into the vast openness of God-Consciousness.

 

When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one’s spiritual realization one will find that He who resides in one’s heart, resides in the hearts of others as well. – Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna

You Want Intimacy?

What if we truly became intimate with love and life from moment to moment? What if we can break out from our old patterns and live in the present moment?

How many people out there want true love, intimacy, or be in a state of complete oneness? What’s standing in the way to our most innate desires?

Recently I’ve noticed something very interesting about human interactions. Most people are not capable of deep intimacy because they are not living in the present moment.

Not long ago a friend asked me how I am doing. I gladly told him the confusion I was experiencing after awakening snuck up on me a few months ago and stole all that I called “myself”. I felt like a computer crash when all the files I depended on disappeared over night. I was left with nothing. I became a big nothing. Nowadays sailing on an uncharted territory I feel like an airhead with no thoughts to grab onto or memories to rely on. Enjoying an unfiltered sense of humor, I giggled when I told him that all I can do is navigate my way around from moment to moment and I “warned” him that I might just blank out on him.

“Oh, don’t feel sorry for yourself!” He told me sharply without losing a beat.

Hmmm… What? It took me a few seconds to understand his reply. Then it took me even longer to realize that he wasn’t talking to me – he was talking to himself. From his perspective I sounded like I was a victim because from where he stands that is probably what he would’ve felt. He did not sense my joy and wonder, instead, he projected his own pain into my picture. He thought he was having a conversation with me but he really was responding to a part within himself. Then he went on to give me a lecture about how lonely I must feel and that I must seek out help. Hmmm… Interesting. And Frustrating. He wasn’t sharing the same point in space/time with me, instead, he was responding to his old programming. Needless to say, our conversation ended quickly. Later he told me how intimate and connected he always feels when we talk and he assured me that he completely understands where I am.

O.K. No comment.

Unfortunately this is how most humans interact. No wonder close friendships and romantic relationships are so difficult. Most of us have a record player in our head that plays old thoughts and conversations over and over again. Even when we interact with a new person or a new situation we are still plugged into the past. Behaviors are pre-determined by our past programming and we literally live in an endless loop like the movie Groundhog’s Day. We respond by selecting from memory a list of old patterns we possess. There is no room for anything new. Even when life brings something new for us to experience, our view can only be polluted by the same old thoughts, behaviors, and patterns.

Have you noticed that people who are more spiritually awaken have greater capacity for intimacy? They are available to love, to share, and to just be. They are not tied down into a story they tell themselves about what reality is. They live in reality. They live in the now. The only way to experience true intimacy is to live in the present moment anew – gazing with wondrous innocent eyes. In a way we must be willing to ditch the old record player and let the thoughts float away like balloons into the sky. When we are not identified with our thoughts our emotional body tends to free up equally. When our emotional body opens up then we are no longer unnecessarily contracting our energy or protecting ourselves. Only by not pulling back into our shells are we able to participate in a real and honest relationship. Would you rather talk to someone who truly listens to you at the deepest level or someone interprets your words with their own definition? Would you rather make love to someone tense and bottled-up or someone sensual and free?

In a way our spiritual path must be that of our own. We all walk alone in our own journey on the path towards matured enlightenment. When we awake we discover that there is only the One, and the One is perfectly eternally alone. Yet the One is never lonely. Being lonely is impossible when the whole entire universe is your lover – tenderly, intimately, in bliss.