Receiving What Is Yours by Kathleen Sutherland
Are you resisting awakening? This may seem a strange question for an earnest seeker, one who ardently longs to know his or her true nature. But perhaps pursuing our true self only makes it that much more elusive. After all, if you are in search of your true self, what does that make you? Something false, a fictitious self—an illusion. And how could an illusion discover anything true? Could the dream character discover the dreamer? Only the dreamer, by awakening, can discover the dream character. Your true self can find you, but you will never find it.
The dream character might even fear the awakening of the dreamer, for this would reduce it to all but a wispy memory. In the same way, when our identity as a separate character in this material world is compelling and strong, we might fear the awakening of our true self. It will reduce us to a hologram. We won’t feel very solid, very real, as an individual. This can be frightening. One way to resist this is to continue searching. The search will always be within the dream, as our personal mind cannot access beyond this dimension. Thus the very act of searching ensures we remain asleep. To awaken, we must have the courage to be still and allow our true self to recognize its own creation. When truth finds us, our fictitious self dissolves. We recognize who we truly are—who we’ve been all along.
Of course, your true self doesn’t actually need to find you. It already knows exactly where you are. It is right here with you, within and without, only waiting to be acknowledged. Let your guard down. Let go of the searching, with its false premise that there is something beyond this.
Don’t search, but do explore. It’s all here before you, but you are accustomed to disregarding it. Look into it carefully. Notice the light flowing off of things. Notice the seamless continuity of perceived space and objects. Notice all that arises within a day, the ordinary and extraordinary. Notice the character’s resistance to this and that. It follows certain patterns, but never disturbs the Self, who is untouched by such vacillation.
Allow your discoveries to unfold as they will. Be ever curious, but not demanding. There is no need to demand what you already have. You have it all. But you will only see as much as you need to see, know what you need to know in any given moment. Knowledge and perception will gradually deepen and expand; enjoy the process. It is exquisitely tailored just for you; this journey is uniquely yours. Trust that you wouldn’t have it any other way. You and the absolute together are creating and exploring the here and now. There is nothing to seek, but so much to receive. Simply be and see, relax and receive. Receive all this—all this that is already yours.
Kathleen Sutherland is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program, and is the editor of ACN. She lives in Iowa.
October 13, 2017 @ 2:51 pm
Wonderful focusing (like a binocular). And kind of opposite, as the whole field is what gets “focused”, instead of the object of concern. My character’s tensing is noticed, so that becomes a relaxing, unless I’m still more invested, so it becomes more tensing, but now that’s the limit of my investing, so that level of tensing (out of focus) is where I notice, and let the dial relax back into focus. If I think I’m in control of the relaxing (still invested, but trying to hide it as “not being invested”), then I’ll handle that dial and over shoot it in the other direction.
And it’s the field that’s doing this, no separate binocular! The field so loved itself, it just got a little over focused! Thank’s to Kathleen for being the object of my focus that reminds me to relax again.
Open wide! Mike
October 13, 2017 @ 2:59 pm
? Kathleen
October 14, 2017 @ 12:41 pm
Thank-you Kathleen, so much kindness…Joyce F. ?
October 14, 2017 @ 2:07 pm
?K
October 15, 2017 @ 5:46 pm
Beautifully expressed! Keep on writing…..
October 15, 2017 @ 5:52 pm
Thanks, Barb! ? K
October 15, 2017 @ 11:46 pm
Today’s satsang was wonderful .
When Julee mentioned that she had had enough of reading spiritual books,
It brought attention to the instant I said the same thing . Enough of reading and reading these books I need to be these teachings.and so proceeedwd so to speak to keep one “stepping of awareness” in the present moment continuously so as to keep focus connected. It has and is helping with non attachment to things from a personal level . Greatly freeing!!
Derek
October 16, 2017 @ 12:14 am
Derek, remain open to a possible return pull to reading. I went through a period like Julee is talking about, and then the pull to read returned. And then it went away. And then it came back. You can’t actually make a decision to “not read”. There’s no one there to make it. You can notice that the unit is currently reading or not reading. I read less than I’d like to, but more than most people. These days it’s not always nondual stuff. It might be comic books! Or classic fiction.
Yet Maharaj is never far from my hand, nor the ancient Greeks, or the American Transcendentalists, and others. I don’t use reading as a seeking mechanism, I use it as a broadening mechanism. Of course the real reason I read is that I can’t not. Except when I can.
October 19, 2017 @ 9:16 am
Thank you, Kathleen. Beautifully articulated and profound. We talked about teaching in the last Satsang. You are the teaching.
love, Joyce