LIVING FROM BEING
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all!
JELALUDDIN RUMI1
Have you ever used a rope to swing from the shoreline out over a lake? Letting go of a rope swing can be frightening because we relinquish control of our grip on known safety in order to fly through the air and then drop into the water. Despite our trepidation, we jump and swing out over the lake, knowing how exhilarating the experience will be. Splashing into the lake, we realize the water doesn’t have the same qualities as the land we just left. Although our plunge into water brings joy and refreshment, at first there is also slight disorientation. Then, once we surface, we experience support and buoyancy provided by water.
This is very much how it feels to transition from ego-identification into Being. When we first discover Being, it’s a great relief. We can finally rest. There is nothing we need to do in order to be. We don’t need to think because Being is not dependent on thought. Being doesn’t need anything to change; it doesn’t have to get healed in order to be okay. Although we all have the natural capacity to abide as Being, most people find it disorienting at first. Because of this disorientation, ego-identification may attempt to reassert itself. It’s as if we’re being pulled back into ego-identification, back to the seemingly safe shoreline. Usually, we have to grab the rope and plunge into the water again and again before we can remain as Being, and eventually live from Being.
Don’t be surprised by the inner resistance you may encounter when you begin training to remain as Being. As we transition away from ego-identification to identification with Being, we’re switching from one operating system to another. The old programs related to the current operating system of ego-identification are designed for its survival. Ego-identification co-opts these survival programs so that we hear the voices of fear—like children telling us there are monsters under their beds. If we believe those voices, we could go into fight-or-flight mode—as if awakening were a threat. When you feel fear, you need to check to see whether it’s coming from the ego-identification system. With practice, you’ll be able to distinguish these voices. You’ll end up seeing them as kids with a backseat steering wheel pretending they’re actually driving the car! They just need reassurance that they’re safe so they can relax and enjoy the ride.
When we shift out of ego-identification, we feel free from perpetual dissatisfaction and separation. The absence of the mini-me leads to relief, relaxation, peace of mind, and freedom from striving. However, we cannot live our lives from absence. The initial stage of non-ego and not-knowing is not the destination of the water but the transition of letting go of the rope. We must discover the presence of the ground of Being and learn how to operate from there. A group of essential qualities arises as support from the ground of Being: joy, boundlessness, embodied presence, connection, open-hearted love, and creativity. The most important of these is the new knowing that doesn’t return to the everyday mind for a second opinion. This new “not-knowing that knows” has to be developed for us to stabilize our functional awakening. When we become familiar with the new awareness-based operating system, we can begin to live from Being.
When we’re seeing from open-hearted awareness, we find that thoughts, feelings, and sensations (both pleasant and unpleasant) still arise in embodied awareness, but there’s no separate self to attach to them or feel threatened by them. Therefore we can experience a level of basic goodness, equanimity, compassion, and unconditional love that’s not limited to the physical pain-pleasure system. Both our body and mind experience the freedom and bliss of presence. Then we need to stay with the process of rewiring the body-mind and learning how to create and relate from Being.
It’s very rare to live from Being after a single, initial glimpse. We can have recognition and even realization, but stabilization and expression take some unfolding because ego-identification and the default mode network have strongly established survival habits. It’s important to rest in aware presence and allow awakening to unfold by itself, but simply abiding doesn’t always lead to the capacity to live from open-hearted awareness. If we become too active in the unfolding process, the dangers are intellectualization or creating a spiritual ego. If we’re too passive, then the danger is remaining in meditation states of bliss, clarity, or stillness. We can learn to unite awake awareness with our human conditioning by actively and intentionally doing from Being. Shifting into awake awareness and then performing small actions from Being, like typing an email, is a way of building trust and new neural networks to support the unfolding of awakening.
The ego-identification’s misperceived need for safety continues to reconstitute old defenses that obscure awake awareness. If we are ego identified, we are contracted and our perceptions arise from this level of mind. When we shift out of ego-identification, we can recognize our own thoughts, feelings, and subpersonalities as changing contents of consciousness. If we get on board with the unfolding of awakening and become familiar with living from open-hearted awareness, our old, defensive conditioning will gradually become less dominant. The qualities of Being and the new knowing from open-hearted awareness will guide us, but we need to actively nurture the next stage of growth or else we may slide back.
A period of integration occurs as formless, awake awareness becomes embodied as presence and then connects to others through open-hearted awareness. You can allow yourself to be held and supported by the loving arms of awake awareness. From there, you’ll discover new motivation so you reach out to support others in need.
During the transitional period, you’ll see defense mechanisms arise that were created to help your ego personality thrive and survive during your formative years. These defenses need to be welcomed, liberated, and reconfigured. Even when you’re caught in the grip of old patterns such as fear, guilt, shame, and anger, you can learn to step back more easily into the awake awareness and then realize it is inherent within everything. Believe it or not, we can all feel a pervasive wellbeing—a basic goodness—that’s not grounded in the ongoing ups and downs of daily life. As awakening unfolds, you’ll naturally alternate between ego-identification, witnessing self-awareness, and living from Being. We can learn to make small shifts during this unfolding process that engender big changes.
A certain amount of emotional maturity and psychological insight is needed to prepare for embodying awareness. However, even the best psychological work from ego-identification can only take us so far. If our goal is to abide, create, and relate from Being, we need a different approach after awakening has begun. One reason it’s so difficult to deal with repressed emotions, shadow parts, and traumatic memories is that these energies are stronger than the mental pattern of ego-identification. For our emotional knots to dissolve, open-hearted awareness has to embrace traumatic feelings and liberate the corresponding subpersonalities that are trapped in the prison of our past memories. Our neural networks continually fire off memories of trauma until those traumatic patterns have been both welcomed and unburdened. Only when we’ve shifted into Being do we have the capacity to detox, liberate, transform, and love all repressed emotions, karmic patterns, and shadow parts of ourselves.
Vestiges of earlier developmental stages survive in the brain, and strong emotional experiences create preverbal knots of emotion in a child’s brain and sensitive nervous system. These neuronal imprints create not only emotional patterns, but also patterns of identity. Subpersonalities are brain habits formed around ways of coping with difficult emotional situations at an age when we had fewer resources and less cognitive capability. Although their aim is to maintain stability so that we can survive a trauma, they can unintentionally end up preserving childhood wounds.
From the beginning of Western psychology, there’s been an acknowledgment that various parts of ourselves can cause suffering when they dominate our identity. Sigmund Freud divided the psyche into three parts; id, ego, and superego. Carl Jung also developed a psychological theory with multiple parts, including personas, shadows, and archetypes; Jung considered the Self an archetype. Roberto Assagioli, another great thinker, mapped multiple interacting subpersonalities in a theory he called psychosynthesis. Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt therapy, asked clients to envision and talk with different self-aspects, most famously Top Dog, Underdog, internalized Parent, and inner Child. Richard Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), which acknowledges different inner parts as exiles, protectors, firefighters, and managers. One unique thing about IFS is the goal of working with subpersonalities to establish a non-ego-identified Self, similar to what I refer to as Being. Schwartz says the Self is talked about in esoteric traditions of religions as a “manifestation of the absolute ground of Being,” and he goes on to say that it “often doesn’t take years of meditative practice to access because it exists in all of us, just below the surface of our extreme parts. Once they [subpersonalities] agree to separate from us, we suddenly have access to who we really are.”2
When we experience a difficult life situation in the present, our nervous system may reactivate a part that feels victimized or a part that tries to protect us. The power of a neuronal habit (or subpersonality) is so compelling that when we are in its grip, we regress to the brain pattern forged at that age. We actually feel as though we are once again the defenseless child. Subpersonalities and hidden shadow parts can emerge when triggered and hijack us if we don’t bring them out into the light, where we can welcome and unburden them. Because these childhood hurts are hidden so deep within, many people believe that bad feelings are at their core. When they shift out of ego-identification, they begin to realize these bad feelings are just patterns of energy and belief systems that need to be liberated. As you wake in and learn how to live from Being, you can start including and liberating some of these exiled shadow parts.
Until you are seeing from Being and expressing from open-hearted awareness, you will be rotating through different subpersonalities—or more accurately, they will be rotating through you. Before waking-up, subpersonalities take turns in the driver’s seat of our identity. One subpersonality drives us too hard; another feels tentative, young, and confused. One part wants to be taken care of; another is fiercely independent. These subpersonalities are often in conflict with each other, and they battle for control. After initial awakening, subpersonalities and thinking patterns continue to arise and try to occupy the driver’s seat of identity. When a subpersonality sits in the seat of identity, it feels like it’s truly “me.” So the important new skill is heart mindfulness, to become aware of these arising patterns from open-hearted awareness, without becoming identified. Many people who have come to see me have said, “I have seen through the small self. It seems backwards to relate to these patterns of thought as if they were personalities.” This makes sense intellectually—and I have also tried to approach them this way. But this is the way they have formed and appear, so if we don’t meet them as they are, the subpersonalities can sneak up and cause havoc in our lives.
Working with various inner parts helps overcome the illusion of a single, solid, separate self. Overcoming this illusion is necessary for awakening and growing up. For instance, in couples’ therapy, one partner is able to say: “One part of me is really angry that you don’t want to go to my sister’s house this weekend, and another part is able to hear why you don’t want to go. Can I tell you about the angry part first?” This allows the individuals to maintain their loving connection—and not feel attacked—even when the partner is expressing strong emotions. Noticing inner parts allows us to take a step back out of ego-identification into an observing self, and then we can lean forward again to open-hearted awareness, which embraces all our many aspects. After initial awakening, the ability to include all parts is one of the most important developments toward stabilization. From open-hearted awareness, we have the capability to perceive these subpersonalities as parts of us instead of our primary identity.
I have found that it’s possible to start from working with subpersonalities and reach the ground of Being. But more often I begin by introducing people directly to the ground of being and then encourage them to welcome, relate to, and unburden their subpersonalities. These parts may feel needy, fearful, and hostile, but no part is inherently bad. All parts are trying their best, from their limited perspective, to be safe and find love. When we actually meet the shadow parts we’ve fearfully avoided, we realize they’re only scared, hurt, or angry subpersonalities expressing their upset about not being seen or heard. Ego-identification lacks the capacity to give these parts the love they need. But even shadow parts that seem most injured or hateful can be unburdened when embraced by unconditional love from being. What started as a wounded inner child—frozen in time, continuously fearful in a traumatic movie scene—can eventually evolve into a contributing, playful part in an energetic human life. During the awakening process, subpersonalities continuously arise as pretenders to the throne of identity; Being can welcome and integrate them all with open-hearted awareness.
Simply abiding in Being may permit painful emotions, beliefs, and strong subpersonalities to begin arising spontaneously to liberate themselves. Three images often used for spontaneous liberation are: 1) when an old emotion arises, you begin to feel like you’re seeing the face of an old friend; 2) uncomfortable emotions can also spontaneously unburden themselves in the way a coiled snake simply unfurls; 3) emotions arise, but there’s no one to react to them—as though thieves were breaking into an empty house.
Your new sense of Being is exactly what your wounded inner parts have been looking for all along. When these subpersonalities feel seen and loved, they can finally be unburdened, and their destructive and painful habits lose fuel and motivation. When subpersonalities are repressed, denied, or attacked, they interpret the intense energies of the physical body as a threat to their existence, co-opting the “flight,” “fight,” “freeze,” and “please” instinctive responses. These defensive strategies end up creating more painful mental and emotional layers on top of the original pain signal. From Being, we can practice heart mindfulness and cultivate the ability to detect the influence of strong thoughts, emotions, and subpersonalities before—or soon after—identifying with them.
One of the most important ways to support living from Being is by recognizing the difference between subpersonalities and personas. Personas (masks or functional roles) can be natural and helpful in daily life. However, they’re not the source of our identity. We have various personas that come front and center at appropriate times. Consider the worker, the friend, the family member, and the significant-other personas. These roles help us get along in the world, but we can learn to wear them like clothes we change to suit the occasion, without becoming identified. When we’re comfortable with our emotions, personality, and personas, we don’t have to worry that awakening will limit us to one role or a single expression of identity. In fact, the reverse is true; as we grow more comfortable and less at the mercy of our emotions, we gain greater personal range and flexibility.
Some of our core stories are intricately embedded within us. When we access these stories, emotional soreness results. Further, when anything difficult or unpleasant happens, a dualistic split of me-versus-them arises. Typical core negative beliefs are: “Something’s wrong with me or them,” “I’m bad or they’re bad,” “I’m worthless or they’re worthless,” “I’m unlovable or they’re unlovable,” “I’m stupid or they’re stupid,” and infinite other variations on shame, blame, guilt, and hatred. When we take on ego-identified positions with their accompanying feelings and beliefs (such as “I’m worthless”), we merge with them. We mistakenly experience these beliefs and emotions as who we are, instead of feelings we have. It can seem as if there’s no way out, allowing us to wallow in negativity. Or we can develop methods for splitting off from negative thoughts and defending ourselves against the feelings they bring up.
In contrast, from Being, we are insightful and show compassion for our subpersonalities without becoming seduced by their arguments. The issue is not the intensity of these energies, but who or what these energies are rising to. We don’t need to flee from strong emotions once we find the vast, embodied sense of Being that comes with open-hearted awareness. The key to handling the disorientation, detox, and growing pains of awakening is to develop familiarity and trust in the ground of being and the process of unfolding. When subpersonalities arise to open-hearted awareness, previously disowned childhood feelings and experiences can be accepted, liberated, and integrated. The wisdom of open-hearted awareness understands how ignorance and confusion caused the hurtful actions that coalesced subpersonalities in the first place. When we are living from Being, those previously split-off, unfulfilled basic human needs such as “I want to be seen” or “I want to be valued” can be addressed and satisfied. We come to realize: “I am valuable and unique . . . just like everyone else.” With this profound shift in perspective, the remaining emotional energy from a core wound or knot is returned to the individual as life force and creativity.
A student once told me about a small incident at work that made her feel ignored: she was not invited to lunch with some colleagues. When she saw them laughing as they walked out the door, a strong emotion began to overwhelm her. Because she’d been practicing small glimpses many times, she was able to return to Being quickly. She immediately unhooked and returned to open-hearted awareness, even as the feeling of “being ignored” became stronger. Then she heard the feeling speak with the voice of an inner child: “I’m unlovable. Nobody sees me. Why should I even try?” Staying with this feeling, she discerned the response from her loving presence of Being. A compassionate voice emerged to address the hurt inner child: “Okay, sweetheart, I’m here. Tell me more.”
At first, this invitation made the wounded inner child even more indignant: “Everybody ignores me! Nobody listens to me!” But from Being, she was able to respond with empathy: “Yes, I’m here. I hear what you’re saying about how nobody listens to you.” She felt her wounded inner child begin another protest and then stop, realizing it had finally been met with compassionate listening from Being. She was able to be with deep, uncomfortable sadness fully—for the first time. Something deep inside her softened and began to shift. At this point, she felt that her real identity was the loving presence of Being, grounded in the unconditional love that even embraced the “unlovable” parts of herself. She later explained that she felt as though she “was love itself”; only her old habits of identifying with past pain had previously prevented her from realizing this. The weight of an ancient pattern began to lift. In subsequent months and years, the thought patterns “I’m unlovable” and “Nobody listens to me” continued to arise periodically, but they no longer had the power to possess her. Upon arising, these thoughts were recognized and liberated, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but with increasing ease.
Open-hearted awareness allows us to begin to wake out into creative expression and relationships with others. Open-hearted awareness means not only the ability to rest as Being but also to create and live an awakened life. It’s the new way of knowing from Being. Shifting into open-hearted awareness releases subpersonalities from the burden of acting as our primary identity. Patterns of thought untangle; the emotions and story that kept cycles of suffering in place eventually loosen and unravel. Open-hearted awareness is the beginning of a process of emotional reintegration. Shifting into living from Being opens us to a level of emotional sensitivity that wasn’t available before.
Once we learn to begin by shifting, what has traditionally been called a “dark night of the soul” becomes a period of detox. As awake awareness becomes embodied, there can be a period of necessary mourning, or what I call “good grief” in honor of the Peanuts character Charlie Brown. We’ve all had losses: the death of a loved one, divorced parents, the end of a life dream, a romantic breakup. A common occurrence when people reach the stage of open-hearted awareness is the discovery of heart mindfulness and the capacity to allow previously frozen, unresolved grief to thaw, process, and dissolve.
Many people talk about experiencing a new feeling of “sweet sadness” or tenderhearted intimacy when entering this stage. Others describe feeling like their hearts are breaking for no reason. However, upon inquiry, we discover that our hearts are not breaking! Rather, the defenses around our hearts are breaking open. The emotions that were too big for ego-identification to handle can now be fully experienced. With the support of open-hearted awareness, we can feel great grief, while remaining both vulnerable and courageous.
We may initially experience Being as resting in silence or stillness, but in order to remain primary, Being must get to know itself. That means avoiding getting stuck in stillness or spaced-out in the detached, mindful witness. Instead of staying in a transcendent state, we can learn how to allow formless awareness to mix with our bodily form and provide support for our detox.
We can detox on all the levels: physical, mental, energetic, emotional, and spiritual. To stay with the detox process, it’s important to distinguish between two types of pain: There are pain signals that point to real danger and need an immediate response—for example, the bolt of fear when you step into the street and see an oncoming car. Then there are growing pains. With growing pains, we may experience a pain signal, but there’s no real threat—it’s like the sore muscles you get after a workout. This kind of pain signals that improvement is occurring because you’re intentionally breaking down your muscles as one step in the larger process of making them stronger.
The pain of detox or the melting of repressed emotions signals that we’re taking a step toward becoming stronger. When we come in from freezing outdoor temperatures and feel the pain of our hands thawing out, we don’t try to relieve it by putting our hands back into the cold. Recognizing that we’re thawing out allows us not to shut down during the detox process. Instead we can learn how to be with the positive, yet painful, process of our body coming back into full life. Learning to be with painful emotions during “detox” changes your relationship to your whole emotional life.
In terms of identity, we grow from ego to witnessing Self to Being. When we’re ego-identified, we’re in chaos and denial, and we’re struggling with or overwhelmed by disturbing emotions and situations. When we step back to the witnessing Self, we have the space to observe, but we’re detached from the fullness of life. When we discover presence, we can be embodied while witnessing from within. At a certain point, we will see that Being is welcoming all our feelings, knowing they’re not a real threat. Being is like a wise grandmother who can stay with a screaming two-year-old child, allowing him to move through his tantrum without overreacting.
As our primal energies release, we may feel as though something inside is literally being shaken free, as if we are knocking the dirt off our boots or wringing out a rag. We may feel as though the heat of our released energy is slowly baking us, purifying us to our essence. During this period of detox, we may feel unusually strong emotions: not just anger, but rage and even murderous rage; not just fear, but terror. Sometimes a personal situation or traumatic memory goes with the strong feeling and sometimes not. In somatic experiencing, the healing trauma work developed by Peter Levine, it is recommended that you titrate, or regulate, the amount of energy you release, and that you resource yourself with something supportive. We can resource ourselves within the source of awake awareness and utilize intentional choice to regulate the detox process, although it can sometimes take on a life of its own. When we realize—as Being—that there’s a feeling of terror but no real threat, we can face what previously seemed unbearable without needing to resist or identify. Within open-hearted awareness, it’s important to find and nurture the qualities of courage, guided by our heart’s desire to be free.
Several years ago, I was undergoing a detox phase. While sitting in a café with a cup of tea, listening to pleasant background music, and speaking with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while, my body was suddenly flooded with primal terror. I felt the need to flee. I didn’t notice anything happening in the restaurant that could trigger this response, so I searched my mind to see if there was a memory or recent emotional situation that was particularly frightening. Then I realized that the experience of terror was part of my ongoing detox. My whole life I had been defending against intense feelings such as rage, terror, and loneliness. This detox was thawing out my deeply repressed emotions. You know how we say, “I’ll deal with that later”? Well, later was now. This realization changed everything for me. I decided to take a “Dog Zen” approach to my terror. Just stay, sta-a-a-yyy, I thought. Don’t control, don’t resist, don’t identify.
My friend must have seen the sweat dripping down my face, because he asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s something I’m feeling. It’s nothing personal.” When I heard myself say, “It’s nothing personal,” I laughed. This terror wasn’t a personal response to anything my friend said; in fact, the strong emotion wasn’t even a personal threat to me. My friend went back to telling his story, and I continued to breathe as the terror moved through me.
I call this type of detox “shake-and-bake.” The pain I felt was a normal growing pain. The energy that first shook me like a rag next opened me to a vitality I’d never felt before. A kind of fearlessness and courage followed and became more available to me. It’s pretty typical that some subpersonalities think they’re going to lose control and “die” when this kind of intense feeling occurs. When subpersonalities fear their own death and we’re identified with them, we also feel as though we’re going to physically perish or remain in a “hell” of unchanging pain. By contrast, when we live from Being, subpersonalities and life energies, even strong ones, are not a threat.
A student undergoing her own shake-and-bake detox reported that while talking to her boss at work, she felt a strong impulse rise from her belly. The impulse traveled up her spine, into her jaw and shoulders, and even into her eyes before triggering a fight response. She identified this fierce feeling as a need to be right, even though her boss wasn’t implying that she was wrong. She recognized familiar, childhood feelings of being dismissed, unseen, hurt, and mocked. She then noticed a subpersonality who was defending against these feelings—the very feelings that had also driven her to succeed in life. In a moment, she was able to shift into Being. From Being, she spoke to this childhood part: “You don’t have to be in charge anymore, sweetheart.” Her whole body softened. After that she was able to articulate her opinion to her boss in a simple, clear, and heartfelt way.
The identity that begins the journey is not who we know ourselves to be upon awakening. But, because we initially can’t conceive of how we’d live without our ego as the manager, living from Being seems like an impossible project. It is not. You do need to recognize the rebound effect that can bounce you back in different ways. Many people who have begun the journey of awakening have reported feeling “scared back to the mind” or “bored back to the mind.” Sitting with not-knowing and non-ego can trigger strong fear signals and corresponding responses from ego defenses. As strange as it may seem, you must be willing to feel bored by peace at first. Because we’re used to a lot of stimuli from emotional drama and mental fascination, getting accustomed to peace and wellbeing can be a big transition—even though that’s what we truly want. (We just don’t want to be seduced along the way and remain in the eddy of peace, stillness, and calm.) There can be a pull back up to ego-identification to “be somebody” right after we let go of our old identity. We may be “overwhelmed back to the mind” if we cannot bear the detox and the slow transition of rewiring. Being is able to bear the fears and protests of the old programs and know that our emotions are real, but what they are saying is not true.
As we establish an ability to abide in the ground of being, the fabric of love we sense leads us to engage in compassionate, creative action and expression. When awake awareness meets our humanity, four qualities interweave; these are loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These essential qualities allow awake awareness to incarnate as the love and interconnection that permeate our body. The four qualities of love are known in Pali as brahma viharas, “houses of the Divine” or “highest dwellings.” When formless awareness comes into forms of consciousness, these four qualities manifest, revealing themselves to be essential structures and natural capacities of love.
There is a Chinese term called wu wei, which can be translated as “spontaneity” or “effortless action.” Wu wei does not mean passively waiting around, but actively recognizing that spontaneous action is already occurring, without being conducted by an ego-identified “doer.” Being is always already naturally here, but we aren’t yet wired to function from Being. Functioning from Being means interacting, responding, and creating from a panoramic flow state where we feel free of self-centeredness and ego-identification, yet retain full access to our memory and learned skills. Most of us who aren’t living in a monastery or cave—or who aren’t meditating most of the day—must find a balance between doing and letting be. Therefore, we need to learn how to function in the world without going back to the doer. Awake awareness as the ground of Being has intentionality and the ability to choose.
The discovery of local awareness and the intentionality of open-hearted awareness enable us to trust the spontaneous action that arises from Being. In order to move from abiding to stabilizing, and from stabilizing to expressing, we need to learn the paradoxical dance of doing from Being. Ultimately, doing from Being is much easier and more comfortable than acting from our overwhelmed and frightened ego-identification. The more we act from the ground of Being instead of ego-identification, the easier it gets. Eventually, acting from Being becomes the new habit and happens by itself.
Not doing, in the sense of effortlessness, doesn’t mean doing nothing; wu wei is about not identifying with the old “doer.” However, holding the fixed belief “there is nothing to do” can mistakenly reinforce inertia. Compared to wu wei, the old doer program of ego-identification may feel compulsive, like a dog digging obsessively for a bone. In shifting out of willful, ego-identified subpersonalities, we begin to experience effortless action as we connect with a spontaneous, alive intelligence that is a hallmark of the awakened life. We may feel supported and contented, like a child on a summer day, enjoying a liberated sense of playfulness and curiosity. Additionally, we can feel the power to act and the freedom of choice. Paradoxically, we are surrendering our personal will to a power greater than our ego; yet in so doing, we gain true freedom and response-ability.
When living from open-hearted awareness is our new normal, our motivation, intention, willingness, and dedication spring forth from a new place. The ground of Being is not limited to our individual identity; it sees itself in others. As a result, a sense of communion and communication arises on many levels between people and within groups. When we see others as ourselves, we are free to live from a new ethic based on the common good, instead of being driven by fear of deficiency or a list of “shoulds.”
A student who was doing a series of phone sessions with me reported that she’d begun to access a felt sense of Being. “It’s incredible, the openness I feel,” she said. “But I’m a little afraid to continue with this awakening because I don’t want to lose my passion for creating art, which has always been the love of my life.”
“What thoughts are making you believe you might lose your passion?” I asked.
“If I think that everything’s okay the way it is, I worry I’ll lose all my motivation and drive. I won’t create. It’s almost like, ‘Why bother?’ My thoughts are telling me that satisfaction will lead to lethargy.”
“You’re describing the first stage of discovering Being: resting as Being,” I said. “Being does not rely on doing or thinking. In order to be who you are, you don’t need to do anything.” I concluded, “As Being becomes the source of your identity, a new rewiring occurs that allows life energy to bubble up. If you can wait and trust, you’ll be freshly inspired to act and to do in a new way.”
I suggested my student inquire: “What would it be like right now if your primary motivation for creating art were based upon your sense of wellbeing, curiosity, and energy?” My student took this inquiry to heart. Three months later, she phoned me to report that her artwork had taken a new direction, and that she’d been commissioned to create an installation in a public park.
As we go through rewiring and detoxification, some people take the opportunity to change aspects of their lives. But many continue with the same relationships, professions, and outer lives. The initial time of rest, non-doing, or unhooking from the drive of will is important to recognize, and this process is often necessary before the new doing kicks in. Just as adolescents often sleep more than children, undergoing growth spurts can make us sleepy. The dropping away of our old motivations may briefly reduce our active drive as we rewire and transition to our new operating system. Some people’s minds become quiet during this time. Others start to energetically thaw out, perhaps experiencing necessary grief as they unfreeze their emotional lives. For some people, thawing out feels like the unclenching of emotional and physical knots in their bodies. It’s important to remember that the same ego defenses that protect against emotional pain also depress our natural life force. When these knots of emotion (and defenses against emotion) finally untangle, more spiritual, emotional, and physical energy becomes available to us than ever before.
As we allow defenses to arise, run through our bodies, and dissolve, some of our old belief systems call us back with threats and ancient tapes, such as: “You’re lazy!” or, “You’ll end up a no-good bum!” Because the big ocean liner of your life has been steaming along in one direction up to this point, it must come to a full stop before it can pivot and start in another direction. It may seem as though you’re slowing down and going nowhere, when, in fact, you’re in the midst of making the extremely important transition toward living from Being.
One of the reasons we don’t remain as Being is that the “new knowing” and development of “doing from Being” need both nurturing and practice. It’s easy to pause and get lost in transitional states like subtle-body bliss or meditative witnessing, because these states are free of the intense energies of life. It’s essential that we inhabit the next stage of open-hearted awareness and nonconceptual knowing. Without this foundation, we’ll find ourselves unable to function in the world without regressing back to ego-identification in order to get through the day. The new knowing from awake awareness can eventually rewire us so that ego function and memory are linked to Being.
After shifting into awake awareness and embodying it for a while, doing something new—like giving a presentation—may make you feel nervous, but there’s no underlying worry about failure. You will make mistakes as you experiment with doing from Being during this transitional stage, but you’ll be able to laugh about these mistakes and feel compassion for yourself. When you face a difficult task, you will not have to shut down or return to ego-identification because another quality of heart is available to you: a sense of courage and honesty. Being open-hearted and vulnerable is possible when you have the support of awake awareness. You can meet adversity or challenge without collapsing.
A couple, who owned their own business and had been involved in decades of different kinds of spiritual work, attended a week-long retreat that I led. They found that the open-hearted awareness approach immediately brought together everything they’d experienced before. After practicing a few months, they began to make important changes. They had previously felt trapped in a mandate to “always be positive,” which they reported had led them toward codependence and wishy-washy indecisiveness, especially with their employees. They had formerly let deadlines slide and allowed projects to fall off track for fear of hurting people’s feelings. They now realized that, because they’d previously been unable to communicate clearly and take appropriate risks, they’d sabotaged themselves.
The couple reported finding new courage, clarity, and willingness to act. One year later, their company was voted the Top Green Business in their state. The husband said: “We were freed to get out of our own way and communicate our needs to our employees. We had the courage to be honest and decisive.”
The wellbeing we’re talking about here is not just a physical, mental, emotional, or even psychological wellbeing; this is the wellbeing of your very essence—a true safety that cannot be hurt and a basic trust that is the foundation of the new identity. Because the identity is not based on ideas, actions, or anticipation, there’s a feeling of openness and a deep sense that all is well. The feeling of wellbeing is not limited to your own internal experience; it extends itself horizontally to the way you perceive other people and the world. This wellbeing isn’t based on belief or positive thinking but comes from a core realization that you and others are not separate.
As the unfolding of awakening continues down and in—to the well of Being—we reach a depth that brings refreshing waters of life to the darkest hidden parts of ourselves. Permeating all conscious and unconscious dimensions, it knows that feelings of shame, worthlessness, and being unlovable are not true. This extends to the root energy of survival. This vertical dimension of Being connects us to the subtle channels and energy centers of our body from top to bottom and back up again. There is an ability to feel at home in and with our own body and flesh.
Living from Being gives the rest and love we’ve all longed for. We know awake awareness, which has the pristine clarity of a vast, stunning morning sky. The ground of Being brings the balance of the night sky, where there’s a feeling of stillness deeper than sleep, yet wide awake, a primordial peace. As a student phrased it: “The ground of Being is the only thing that made the terror go away.” The fear of the fear of death is finally seen through. For the first time, we are able to feel two important truths simultaneously: that awake awareness as our ground of Being is unborn and cannot die or even be harmed; and that our precious human body is born, changes, and feels pain and love until one day it passes on. From the Now, we can feel both truths and know that all is well.
Open-hearted awareness establishes a new foundation of compassion and ethics in the way we treat other people. As we progress through the levels of mind, at every stage we gain benefits, such as the ability to make more rational choices and be considerate and mindful of others; however, there remain limitations if we don’t continue to grow. If we remain in the very subtle mind of the pure witness, we can be detached and may do a spiritual bypass of our emotions and those of others. We can end up in a state of ethical relativism where everything seems the same to us and we end up minimizing the pain and suffering in people’s everyday lives.
By contrast, when we shift into living from open-hearted awareness, we’re able to feel others’ pain without shutting down or being overwhelmed by it because we also see the vast awakeness at the same time. Love is a unifying force. Open-hearted awareness sees from the unconditional love of our true nature that we are all interconnected.
At some point, we begin to feel liberated from habitual patterns of ego-identification. We begin experiencing the boundless ground of the infinite, invisible life source. Directly experiencing our interconnectedness, we begin to awaken to our heart’s intention and learn to put contemplation and action together. Our foundation at that point is unconditioned awareness and unconditional love. From open-hearted awareness, we also see the uniqueness and individuality of others. While feeling boundless, we also respect personal boundaries. We see other people’s strengths and weaknesses, and we learn to relate from respect and integrity.
Unconditional love flows through specific channels of respect, integrity, purpose, meaning, value, response-ability, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion—and these form the foundation of our new, naturally ethical lives. As awakening unfolds, we start to see that there are different types of love and respect, and each follows its own line, like different-colored electrical wires. There is friendship love, romantic love, brotherly love, sisterly love, parent-child love, child-parent love, student-teacher love, collegial or collaborative love, and employee-employer love. Each type of love has its own wire, and when unconditional love flows through the wire it can be full and strong, like a river to the sea. When the types of love stay inside respectful boundaries, and the lines don’t cross, there’s usually not any kind of confusion, seduction, or abuse.
From our conventional sense of self, our ethics are often imposed on us from outside, perhaps from a set of commandments, laws, or rules that we’re told we disobey under threat of punishment or guilt. How easily people will follow the ethics of a mob or a state that asserts an intellectual “right way” and defines dissenters or cultural subgroups as “wrong” and “other.”
From open-hearted awareness, we begin from a very different position; our potential to see compassionately and act spontaneously, and even courageously—both personally and socially—is a whole new dynamic. This is not something we can think about or can only create with effort. This new capacity helps us deal with external difficulties as well as the inner process of rewiring and detoxing our emotional lives. Once we’ve shifted levels of mind and heart, we begin to feel at home wherever we go.
Shifting allows us to step back to a new view that can profoundly change us. A lot of people experience something similar when they first see a picture of our precious blue planet taken from outer space. By each discovering our own inner truth and then joining together while respecting diversity in our unity, we can apply our hearts to act from unconditional love and transform the way we live together.
GLIMPSE Welcoming Shadow Parts
You can do this glimpse at the end of any practice session or at any time during your day when you feel you need some love and awareness or that part of you has re-created ego-identification. People who have had an initial awakening often deny or do not see these shadow parts because they think they’ve gone beyond their ego-identity for good. However, facing and including our shadow parts within our ground of Being is the way to stabilization and expression.
Begin by checking within and around your body to see if there are any subpersonalities or parts of you that you’re aware of. From open-hearted awareness, become curious about these parts of you. See if you can allow yourself to feel one of these parts clearly and distinctly.
1. Feel that who you are is seeing from Being. Ask yourself: “Am I aware of this part? What does this part look, sound, or feel like?” Let this part, inner child, persona, or commentator show itself fully—not just as a passing thought, belief, or attitude but as a personified pattern organized within you. Often this is a part that speaks as if it is you.
2. While you’re seeing this part more clearly, ask these questions: “Am I aware of this part from my head or my heart? From open-hearted awareness, how do I feel toward this part?” Feel that you are seeing from Being.
3. Then ask this part, “Are you aware of me? How do you feel about me being here and seeing you? Are you aware of my compassion toward you?”
4. Wait until you distinctly experience this separate part communicating with you.
5. Next, ask this part directly: “What do you want me to know about you?” and, “Is there something you are afraid of that has kept you hidden?” One part might say, “I feel alone. I don’t feel like anybody listens to me. I am afraid of being rejected.” If you are accepting of this part within you, if you’re listening from open-hearted awareness, then everything begins to change.
The first aim of this process is to see and relate to these parts as they arise so that they don’t take over the central seat of your identity and speak through you. The second aim of this process is to connect to the subpersonalities so they realize that they are unconditionally loved. “Unconditional” means no conditions at all. The subpersonalities are patterns just like ego-identification, which will often subconsciously take over our identity on the journey of awakening if they’re ignored or reduced to mere thoughts and feelings. A hidden part that is met with unconditional love can let go of its agenda. The shadow parts can then be seen, liberated, and their life energies returned so we can live from Being.