Greetings brothers and sisters. Welcome to the first topic in our spiritual awakening course; “Who are you?”. I will start with this topic as it is the most important question you should ask yourself throughout your life, and it is a good introduction to the other topics we will discuss in this course. Who are you? Isn’t it amazing how much of our lives we go through without asking ourselves this question? Who am I?

You might tell me that I’m Jamie, I’m 32, I’m an accountant, I’m a father of 3. But these are just the experiences you are having in your life. Ask yourself who is it that is having these experiences?

You might tell me that you are the physical body that is standing right there. But your body is made out of atoms, and only 0.000001% of atoms is physical matter. So if you believe you are a physical body, you are ignoring 99.9999% of who you are. You might perhaps say you are consciousness which is derived in the brain. But my friends, there is no scientific proof that consciousness derives from the brain. In fact, near death experiences tell us that, even when the body and brain physically die, people still have very real experiences with their consciousness.

Some of us define who we are (perhaps not consciously) with our status, belongings, assets, power, popularity, but this means that you have identified yourself with things outside of you. You have ignored who you are inside, and looked outside of you to define yourself.

What if I told you that you were leading a double life? What if I told you that you have a false self and a true self? We have all created a false self, called the ego. The ego is the character that we play — it is what we think we are based on the experiences that we have had in our lives, like our upbringing, education, religious influences, social influences from colleagues, friends and society, cultural influences, and the media that we consume. As part of its character, the ego associates itself with the physical body and thinks it is separate from everyone else.

The ego is the thinking mind — it obsesses about the past or future but never thinks about the present. It compares itself to others as it likes putting things in hierarchical order. It is materialistic and always wants something it doesn’t have. It is competitive. It believes there are limits in this world and that there are needs for sacrifices. It believes it is a victim of life and feels self-pity. It is sometimes arrogant, thinking it knows everything about particular topics. It is responsible for any thoughts or emotions that unsettle you, such as guilt, shame, fear, anger, depression, anxiety, stress, boredom, loneliness and unworthiness. Any time you are feeling a low vibrational emotion like these, it can be linked to you believing that you or someone else is their ego.

However, the character you play changes year-in year-out based on the different experiences you have. What is true can never change. When someone tells you the truth about something, the story is always the same. When someone tells you a lie about something, the story changes each time you ask them about it. Only falseness can change, and only truth can be permanent. Scientific concepts, if true, will always stand the test of time. Those concepts and theories that are false disintegrate over time, like the flat earth theory. What is true is permanent, and what is false changes or eventually dies. So the ever-changing character you play cannot be your true self as it continually changes. Similarly, the physical body cannot be your true self because it eventually dies.

Think about times when you have committed acts that you regret. Why did you do those things if later you realised that you shouldn’t have? It is because the ego is a set of unconscious programs that reacts without your conscious control. That’s why you tell people that “you weren’t really thinking” or “it was a reaction”, or “I couldn’t control or help myself” or “I didn’t realise what I was doing”. But surely you only regret actions that you believe do not reflect who you truly are.

After hearing this, you might think “The ego sounds like a terrible being, why do we associate ourselves with it?”. Well this is what we have been brought up and taught to believe is who we are, and it is what everyone around us thinks they are. Our lives are so busy and require the use of the thinking mind so much that we simply do not have the time, energy or motivation to explore anything else. As part of this stage of our spiritual evolution, we all chose to put on ourselves a veil of forgetfulness before we incarnated so that we experience the false self. We then have the free will to eventually relinquish the ego and realise who we truly are — but more on this in future topics.

Think about what kind of life it has led you when you have believed that you are your ego. You are always fearful of death because you believe you are a physical body that dies. You are confused about who you are because the character you play always changes. You feel you are imperfect and so always feel guilt, shame and unworthiness. When you listen to the ego you constantly feel fear, anxiety, and depression. You feel you are separate from others, which leads to loneliness, anger at others, jealousy, wanting revenge. You believe you can be attacked and so you are always defending yourself. You are never satisfied with the present moment and always feel like you need something else to be happy. You rely on others for your self-worth and love.

But luckily, I’m here to tell you that this false self is simply an illusion you have created, a nightmare you are dreaming. Your true self is waiting quietly to be discovered, and when you discover it, your life transforms in a magnificent way. The truth shall set you free my friends.

Well then what are we if we are not our egos? Well, my friend, you are a divine, perfect, holy being that has chosen to forget who they are in order to re-discover yourself and have these experiences. The body is simply a tool you are using for this 3d human experience. You are a part of the infinite consciousness and awareness of the universe. You are all there is, ever was, and ever will be. You are part of God, and what is God but love? So, simply, you are love.

You might initially feel uncomfortable when I tell you that you are divine, blessed and perfect being but let me ask you this — think about the times you have shown love to someone or something. Perhaps being nice to a stranger, comforting a friend, feeding a pet — anything that was loving. Think about how that made you feel inside. Didn’t it feel good? Didn’t it feel right? Didn’t it feel like this was who you truly are? Did you ever regret doing these loving acts? You only regret things that you later feel are not who you are.

You might think, well I can’t be perfect because I have done many things I regret. But you committed these acts when you didn’t know who you truly were. You have simply forgotten your perfect self and associated yourself with an imperfect ego. You are a perfect being of love, one with God. However, the false self you have created is like a big dark cloud hiding your inner light.

There is a part of yourself that hasn’t changed since you were a small kid. In fact, you are likely to have been more of your true self when you were a young kid as you had not yet undergone experiences that would condition you and shape your ego. Innocent, loving, creative, always in the present moment, in awe of life, simple, spontaneous — this is why children are such a joy to watch. Think about what I’m saying here — isn’t there a part of you that has always been the same. It is your awareness that has always stayed the same. The being of light that is observing life and having all these experiences stays the same at all times. This is you, this is your glorious true self.

So your true self is pure joy and love. It is always fearless and lives permanently in the present. It is divine. It acts through the heart and intuition, and so is often spontaneous. It feels one with everything and sees no separation.

Let’s look at what spiritual texts and scientific studies say about this topic:

· Christianity — When Jesus was being tricked to appear as if he was blasphemous and was asked if he was God, Jesus replied saying “did I not tell you all that you are all Gods?”. Jesus also said the phrase “your body is a temple”. But think about what that means for a second. A temple is a place where you connect with God. What Jesus was really saying was that within your body lies your true self, your Godliness, your connection with God. When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied saying “the kingdom of God is within you now”.

· Zoroastrianism — The oldest religion in the world tells us that although we have individual souls, all beings and all things have the divine spark of God within them. They also believe that all souls come from God, and at the end of time, all souls will return to God.

· Gnosticism — The Gnostics believe that God brought forth from within himself all there is in the world. They also believe that humans have a divine spark within themselves, but many are ignorant of this.

· Hinduism — Most Hindus worship one Being of ultimate oneness, Brahman, through infinite representations of gods and goddesses. However, they also believe that one’s spirit or soul — the true “self” of each person, called the ātman — is eternal. This Atman ultimately is indistinct from Brahman, the supreme spirit. Their goal of life, is to realize that one’s ātman is identical to Brahman. The Upanishads state that whoever becomes fully aware of the ātman as the innermost core of one’s own self realizes their identity with Brahman and then reaches moksha (liberation or freedom).

· Islam — Muslims believe that God breathed into humans a spirit, which exists before and after the body is created. They also believe that those who believe in God emanate a light of divine Oneness. This supports the other spiritual texts in that those who believe in their Godliness relinquish the ego to reveal the inner love/light that they are. Once you relinquish the ego, you recognise that separation is an illusion and so you view everything as one.

· New Agers — New Agers generally believe in an impersonal deity that is present in all beings. Since each human being contains elements of God, New Agers look to develop that divine spark and their awareness of it.

· The Law of One — This book is one of the best recent spiritual downloads we have been gifted. It was channelled from a very advanced spiritual collective, called Ra. It teaches us that we are all mind-body-spirit complexes. The mind and body are used for the sensory experiences of 3d life, but your spirit is what is creating, observing, learning and interacting with these experiences. It says that we are all individual manifestations of the one infinite creator. That we all started as the one infinite creator before time, and we broke off into individual souls to go out, experience, learn about ourselves and re-discover who we are. Then eventually as all souls fully realise who they truly are, we join and return to being the one infinite creator. It explains how we were created from the universal energy of love and often describes us as love/light. It refers to the physical body as an illusion. The book perfectly summarises it in this quote: “It shall be understood that any portion [of the universe], no matter how small……. Contains, as in the holographic picture, the One Infinite Creator which is infinity”.

· A course in miracles — This is the other best recent spiritual download we have in my opinion. It goes into depth as to what the ego is, how we created it, and how the ego is a dream of separation from the one father.

· It emphasises how we are all part of God and our true selves are holy, divine and perfect beings. It explains how discovering your true self, relinquishing the ego and viewing the body as nothing more than a physical tool will lead to salvation.

· Science — The big bang theory tells us that the universe started from a hot, small, dense single point of energy, which expanded out and created everything we see in the universe today, including light. We also know from Einstein that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. So as the universe expanded from the big bang, nothing new was being created, everything is just part of the initial energy. What exists now; the galaxies, stars, planets, beings — it was already there at the beginning of time, the energy has just been transformed. This seems to support the spiritual theory of everything starting from and emanating from an initial Source, which many like to call God. And so we were created from this initial source, and we are part of it. Collectively, everything in the universe makes up this Source.

While we can discuss and debate who you truly are, the only way to really know is to experience it yourself. You are so glorious that words are limiting in describing who you are. So how can you discover your true self? Through practicing meditation, you can identify what parts of you are your ego, and you can then choose to disassociate with those parts to discover your true self.

However, when we are consumed with a stressful life, we do not have the time to think about who we truly are, and we easily slip into the automatic reactions of the ego and associating ourselves with the false self because this is all we have been taught to know in our lives. To discover who we truly are, we must be still, present, and we must quiet down the ego, the thinking mind. The best way to do this is through meditation. I have created two free guided meditations to specifically help you quiet down the ego and discover your true self. Both of these meditations can be found below:

So remember, you are the dreamer of your particular dream — the dream being your false self. But once you awaken, just like a bad nightmare, you feel an immediate sense of relief once you realise your true self and true reality. And brothers and sisters, awakening from the nightmare and discovering your true self is the whole purpose of life. Nothing can be more rewarding.

Thank you for reading, I hope this has helped answer important questions for you. Let me know if you have any questions or comments below. If you would like to find out about the free spiritual support or healing sessions that I do then please visit my website on www.highvibelivin.co.uk.