Submitted by anaditeaching on Mon, 08/05/2013 - 13:51.

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In our teaching, we use words in a way that can be challenging for some people. It is not that our terminology is particularly complicated: the building blocks of the language that we use are simple, but they are subtle. To go deeply into our teaching is a journey of self-discovery and one has to be able to open to new things, new terms, new concepts and an entirely new perception. This teaching is not a philosophy but a very direct and exceedingly precise description of the inner reality and of who we really are in our ultimate simplicity and complexity.

One of the fundamental terms that we use is ‘me’. Everybody uses this word in different contexts, but they do so without any understanding of what it means. If the nature of me is not understood, there is simply no way to grasp the nature of the spiritual path: one cannot meet the light of I am if one has not first of all met one’s very me. Those who expand into various altered states of consciousness may assume that they have transcended their separate self. But if they were to examine their experience more deeply, they would see that their ego-structure has remained intact. Being temporarily spaced-out from their ordinary consciousness, they may lose the sense of being separated and suffering, but sooner or later they will land back in the same condition as before.

I often come across seekers who have gone through various awakening experiences or a long process of meditation practice and yet continue to suffer and remain incomplete on so many levels. Why? To understand this matter, we must have the correct model of human evolution and the proper understanding of what makes a human being whole.

First of all, we need to understand what awakening really means. Any awakening, if it is real, is an actualization of an aspect of our higher self. Our higher self, our soul, has several dimensions or components that need to be realized for her to become complete. What makes the matter more complex is the fact that for awakening to be valid, there has to be a meeting, a merging, between the personal and impersonal aspects within our inner existence. In our teaching, we speak about the meeting of the deepest dimension of me – pure me – with the light of I am. If one has expanded into a higher state but that meeting has not taken place, this kind of expansion is not an awakening; one merely has access to the impersonal energy. Because there was no meeting between me and I am, the soul has not been awakened and the state cannot be embodied. Only when a state is embodied, and hence fully realized as one’s higher identity, can we speak about awakening.

One can be in a very deep state, such as the absolute state – unity with the source realized through the doorway of tan t’ien – and yet not be awakened in the proper sense of this term, meaning one still doesn’t have a soul. To awaken is much more than to expand into impersonal energy; it is actually very personal, very intimate. One not only needs to expand into the light of I am, one’s identity has to shift into that new dimension for the soul to be realized.

One may ask which or whose identity needs to shift? If our old identity is what we want to transcend or get rid of, who is shifting? One of the greatest and gravest errors of past teachings is the idea that our relative human consciousness – ego, I, me – is all false or illusory. Unless we create a positive relationship with our me, unless that very me begins to honor and love itself, it will keep living in self-denial in the name of being on some kind of path to enlightenment. It is that self-denial that will jeopardize any chance for transformation and evolution into our higher self.

It is not our me that is the issue, it is its absence. What most experience as me is a me which is lost in the mind, which has no substance and no continuity of self. That thing which has been called ego and criticized by so many as something evil is in fact divine – its essence is light. However, for that light to be realized, not only does me have to evolve into its own pure subjectivity – to extricate itself from the mind-construct – it must be reunited and integrated with the light of I am, with the impersonal aspect of its existence. So the one who shifts into our higher identity is the same one who was living all along in the lower identity of the personal self. Through its own awakening and surrender to the impersonal light of I am, our old self becomes our new self, our soul. The soul is our higher identity, our higher individuality that lives in a natural state of unity with the universal existence.

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For a glossary of the terminology used in this teaching and for further resources, please refer to our website www.anaditeaching.com