Imagine you’re twenty-one-years old. You’ve graduated from college or a trade school. Or maybe you’ve been doing some public service or you’re already out on your own.
You know who you are. You know what life is about. You understand the pitfalls of perception your body delivers—the deceptive message of separation from other people and life itself that your senses give you. And you know it’s not true.
You understand your fundamental union with all life. You see your family and friends, your neighbors and “others” in far off foreign lands not as “others” but as beings who are part of you—like the cells of one organism—sharing a deep bond of sisterhood and brotherhood.
You understand that the person you call “I” is not who you really are … Sally or Jose, Sage or Jonathan … five foot three or six foot four, Caucasian, African American, Jewish or Christian, female or male, straight or gay, bi or transgender. Those things are just qualities you’ve acquired living in a body that was born with certain genetics into certain circumstances … a body that then had certain experiences that molded you.
You enjoy the fruits of life’s programming—the “you” called Sally and Jonathan. But you are deeply aware that someone else is home: the great I Am presence—the spirit within—that gives the little “you” life … the opportunity to dance in the wind, feel the rain on your skin, to love and laugh and learn.
You understand that your thoughts are not who you are. There is no wild confusion in your brain … doubts and fears and turmoil. The mind is a tool you’ve been trained to skillfully use. And you know the logical mind can only get you so far.
You’ve been trained to listen to the still small voice within … your heart, your feelings, your gut. You know that 96% of Creation lies in unseen dimensions that can only be accessed through consciousness—that “seeing is believing” is a lie. You know that if you can imagine something there must be a way to create and experience it.
You’ve been taught to understand your emotions. You know the cycle—how your thoughts trigger chemical responses in the body that in turn trigger more thoughts matching the chemicals of emotion driving you … and you have been trained how to manage them.
You know life is about exploration … that you’re a soul on a journey of discovery, using the body as a vehicle to push the boundaries of the Unknown.
As a result of all this there are no feelings of awkward loneliness. No sense of isolation. Instead you feel the peace and comfort of being part of the community of Earth. You experience confidence knowing that your life’s mandate is to explore where curiosity leads you. Your dreams and visions and goals are supported.
Imagine!
Sounds impossible doesn’t it? But the only reason this scenario is impossible is because we don’t yet know who we really are.
We believe we are our personalities. We believe we’re our names and gender and sexual orientation. We believe we are the thoughts in our heads. We believe we are our emotions tossing us from pillar to post on a wild sea of uncertainty. We believe we are Catholic and Muslim, black and white, smart and stupid—isolated stand-alone units called human beings, forever separate from one another and life—stand alone units that must compete and struggle to survive—stand alone units that must fit into some sort of social program to be acceptable.
And we believe this because no one has taught us the practical aspects of life. No one has taught us what the ego is—an idea in our heads about who we are that isn’t real at all.
Which actually isn’t true! Lots of mystics have taught this over the past few thousand years! But we’ve stuck the Buddhas and Jesuses of the world up on pedestals and turned them into Gods to worship and pray to. And yet they were people just like us—people who figured life out. People who studied the mind and its phantoms and got the ego’s number. People who educated themselves and then went out to teach what they knew.
We don’t have to imagine this kind of life. It’s the life we are equal to … the life we are heir to. All we have to do to step into that life is to stop and decide to learn who we really are.