We Are Spirit in a Spiritual World by Kathleen Sutherland

I had always considered the adage that we are spirit having a human experience to be a good pointer. I knew that there was no person here (only spirit), but I would acknowledge – it seemed indisputable – that I was still having the experience of being a person. But was this really true, or might it be an unquestioned presumption?

I brought the matter to inquiry. Is it really my experience that I am a Kathleen, living Kathleen’s life? I came to conclude that it is an experience, but it is not a direct experience. It is an experience created by group consensus: what we are taught from birth by our culture, and then the jelling of our own ideas around these constructed individual identities. It is the experience of believing a story. Going to a movie or reading a novel is an experience, certainly, but it is not your experience.

We often say that though there is no person, there is a “sense” of a person. But only a few minutes of meditation (such as our practice at the beginning of satsang) reveals to me that there is only a sense of being. Period – not a sense of being a person. There is no direct sense of “Kathleen.” The Kathleen experience is the product of thought and concepts layered upon the sense of being. We’re the icing on the cake – sticky and sweet, but certainly not essential. I’m just a frothy concoction!

It’s interesting that a person can be described as having a big or small ego, i.e., a sense of individualized self. If we really were individuals, factually, wouldn’t we all have the same sized ego? But we don’t because the ego is merely a construct of thought, and as such, it can expand or contract according to our conditioning, values, therapy, spiritual development, etc. In fact, it can entirely disappear!

There is no sense of Kathleen. There are ideas and constructs of Kathleen layered upon the fundamental sense of being. I’m purely a product of thinking, not sensing. So, alas (says the ego) there is no direct human experience. There is direct spiritual experience, and many wonderful stories of many wonderful humans. But we are never other than what we are, even in our dreams. We are spirit having a spiritual experience. Only vicariously, through the magic of language and creativity (“In the beginning was the Word…”) are we able to enjoy the drama of the human experience.

I like the simplicity of that. I also like that this means we don’t have to do anything to be awakeness. We don’t have to get away from being human to realize our divinity because “we are [already] that.” But of course, we already knew that!

Kathleen Sutherland is a student of The Living Method and is editor of ACN.