A TREATISE ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT-I

TEACHINGS OF
BENTINHO MASSARO
BY
EDWARD MUZIKA

The following is a presentation about Consciousness, Self, and

reality by Bentinho Massaro, a really brilliant guy. It is a remarkable,
step by step experiential guide to becoming aware of Consciousness and
awareness, as well as that which is beyond both, which he calls the
Absolute after Nisargadatta.

The problem is that he presents his discoveries about his own

conscious/awareness in the same linear fashion as he originally found it,
and thus has too many steps. Later he adds ideas that borrow too much
from New Age teachings with concepts of creating your own reality by
intention, by, in a sense, by willing, without proving them in any way. I
think this distracts from both the elegance of his basic enlightenment
teaching, and from the enormous boost we get from discovering
something for our own self, as opposed to learning a spiritual ontology by
being spoon-fed interpretations of our experiences by means of a
philosophy of what those experiences mean. This is not really self-
discovery, but an interpretative story added onto our deepening
perceptions of our self-nature as a philosophy of enlightenment.

But Massaro’s introductory lessons on recognition and mediation are

brilliant, so I examine them here. What I do further in this discourse, is
to call him out on his over reaches and simplistic conflations of
experiences with conclusions.

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 There are three levels or teaching that Massoro presents here: The
Ramana Maharshi theory of Consciousness; the Nisargadatta amendment
of Nothingness and the Absolute which are absent in Ramana’s teaching in
any clear way; the New Age concepts of parallel worlds, intentionality,
vibration and frequency, alignment, resonance, and creation.

My analytic focus is entirely on the Ramana and especially the

Nisargadatta levels of Self-Realization-style enlightenment, and calling
the reader’s attention the New Age stuff which is irrelevant to the
experience of Self-Realization. I also focus on the excellent tools Massaro
clearly describes, but unfortunately, often uses interpretations outside of
the context actually revealed by that exercise. An example is when he
says becoming aware of our own beingness state throughout the day,
becoming aware of that open-emptiness-speciousness, is enlightenment.

It is not. In my estimation, it is only the first step towards true,

integrated Self-Realization of ourselves at all levels, from gritty everyday
human experiences of being a body mind in the world, to the empty-
spacious awareness or consciousness state, to the recognition that one is
the Absolute, the creator and perceiver of Consciousness as a whole as
well as being beyond it.

But I do tip my hat to Bentinho. His step by exposition is quite cool.

Also, startlingly, both of us, years apart, created diagrams showing the
levels of consciousness or awareness that are very much alike. I have
changed his famous 2-5 second recognition time to a half minute because
it is more powerful.
I think Mr. Massaro’s techniques could be very valuable for most any
beginner who can catch hold in themselves of the presence-existence-energy
that he writes about, but his attitude that self-realization is really simple, and
you are there after a few months of following his formulae, is naïve and
unrealistic. Just realizing deeply that you are consciousness itself and not the
body—the real first step towards enlightenment—may take years after first
discovered. He also misses the importance of explosive realization experiences,
Satoris, that mark major shifts in You.

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3
 THUS SAYETH MASSARO:

Recognition and meditation are your most precious innate abilities.

There is nothing you cannot bring into your experience by these means;
they are your gateway tools. Cherish them, value them, and most
importantly: utilize them. They will set you free.

Teachers are storytellers whose stories make you aware of the

existence of a gate that is said to lead into perfection. Their instruction is
the roadmap showing you the exact location of this gate. The choice to
apply this knowledge and to walk through the gate is yours to make.

The only way to make teachings truly yours—experiential instead of

intellectual—is to actually experience what is being pointed to.

This is still an introductory discourse, as well as being a bit of a

technical one, but understanding and applying this its contents will assist
you in any and all future lessons.

Table of Contents

1 The Importance of Direct Experience

2 The Art of Recognition

3 Here’s How it Works

4 The Art of Meditation

5 Create a Conducive Setting

6 How Do I Meditate?

6.1 1. Find a comfortable position.

6.2 2. Take a few cleansing breaths.

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 6.3 3. State your intention for this meditation.

6.4 How to Meditate –

7 Recognition or Meditation—Which Practice is Best for Me?

8 Role of Tools (practices and techniques) in Your Self-Realization

Journey

9 Summary

9.1 Homework

The Importance of Direct Experience

The terms “recognition” and “meditation” point to your innate

ability to recognize, in various ways, the fact that you exist.

If you could pour your dedication and practice—your heart—into

only one tool or ability, I recommend that you pour it into mastering the
arts of recognition and meditation. These are the tools that will lead you
into the direct experience of what you’re looking for, rather than filling
your mind with concepts about what you’re looking for.

Take each pointer and utilize its power to propel you, until the
dryness of the pointer is transcended and replaced with direct
experience.

Ultimately, you don’t want a pointer. You want tools that will give
you direct, experiential access to truth. Only that will set you free and
satisfy the core of your being. Nothing else will do. If you seek such
direct experience, Recognition and Meditation are your gateway tools.

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 The Art of Recognition

Whenever recognition is suggested as a practice, it refers to taking

a half minute or more away from your thinking mind and naturally
recognizing the space of the Here and Now itself—which becomes obvious
when you choose to remain uninterested in thoughts for a brief moment.

In just a half minute or more of complete dedication to ignoring

thoughts and instead noticing/recognizing the aliveness that is already
here, a great deal can be accomplished towards Self-Realization,
especially if these moments are repeated throughout the flow of your
day.

I recommend 12 or more moments of recognition each day. In total,

this means a minimum of six minutes per day that I encourage you to
spend on honoring your existence—on recognizing the simple but brilliant
truth of Now, seated right here, beyond the realm of the busy thinking
mind. Not too much to ask for, right?

Recognition is your best friend in the hustle and bustle of everyday

life. Practice it while following your joy, while occupying yourself with
activities of all kinds, while dealing with deadlines, and so on.

It doesn’t require you to be proficient at stopping thoughts, it

doesn’t require you to cancel your appointments, and it doesn’t require
you to make major sacrifices. In fact, it doesn’t require you to change
yourself in any way!

The art of recognition simply requires that you sincerely relax your
attention from all mental activity for a brief, but profound a half minute
or more—a minimum of 12 times per day—to help you realize that you
always already exist, with or without thoughts.

Here’s How it Works

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 Why don’t you practice with me, now?

Simply take a deep breath, then sigh/exhale, and withdraw your

consciousness from the suggestions being fed to you by your mind’s
constant stream of thoughts and words.

Basically, you decide you want a break from your own inner
chatter for a few seconds and, instead, you want to see clearly into
the space that suddenly opens up—that space that has remained
unaffected by all the thoughts and activities of your day.

In that moment of determined relaxation from your thoughts

(however long it lasts), you will be resting in your natural state of
awareness-of-being.

It is in this naturally restful place of being centered here and

now, that the innate spaciousness, ease, silence, presence, vastness,
and aliveness of your true being starts to become apparent.

When applied with dedication, this is all there really is to

Enlightenment. Direct recognition of what is always already here is a
short cut—only needed because, in the quest for enlightenment, we’ve
invented so many winding roads to get us to where we already are! Where
we truly are, in essence, is natural and obvious: we are already here,
right now.

(Comment: This is not enlightenment in any classic sense, but it

is an introduction to Zen’s No-Mind or emptiness, aka as Clear Mind
by Seung Sahn, and allows you eventually full access to hidden
emotions, fears, desires, etc., for their release and integration into
one’s own fragile sense of self, as well as access to an always
peaceful place.)

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 You can apply a moment of recognition at any time; this is what
makes it such an appealing and modern-day-friendly option. It really does
become your best friend, and for many, this method is the favorite to
pour their dedication and practice into. It blends well with the lifestyle
most of us have created: active and occupied with “things.”

Just make it a habit to take a break from focusing on things, and

instead rest your attention on the clear sense of being here now—awake,
alive, and free. And give yourself permission to enjoy it!

Your natural state is free, and its ease can be deeply enjoyed, if
you so choose.

The Art of Meditation

Meditation is the self-gift of taking a more extended and intentional
chunk of time out of your day to connect with the silence within, to
explore the clarity of awareness and the presence of Now, and to become
more attuned to your existence beyond the realm of thoughts, concepts,
and words.

Meditation is the art of fully offering yourself space to unwind, a

gentle retreat from everyday life, so you can move more fully into your
own rhythm and center on being.

Meditation usually consists of nothing more than short moments of

recognition, one after the other, for a period of time set aside for this
purpose only. In other words, you give yourself the gift of ceremony—of
spending time with nothing but your own Self.

Note: Ceremonial and durational aspects aside, meditation and

recognition are essentially the same act, each being applied in a different
setting and with a somewhat different attitude.

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 The very act of sitting down for 10 to 30 minutes to explore the Self
inspires your consciousness to take more frequent moments of recognition
during the meditation time frame.

(Comment: There is far, far more to Self than revealed

here, the silence, emptiness, and clarity. The deeper
aspects will be revealed later.)

When you get distracted from the recognition of awake Beingness

and your attention is drawn back to the “world of things,” the intentional
meditation setting quickly reminds you of your intention to recognize
your Self: your body’s position, the environment, the time period, and
your attitude all naturally remind you of your desire to recognize who and
what you are as Self.

Outside of this meditation setting, “the world” you are aware of in

your “normal” state of consciousness usually consists of things that do not
remind you to recognize your essence beyond thoughts and emotions. In
fact, they usually remind us of more things to attend to within the world
of mental chatter.

Both recognition and meditation facilitate withdrawing your

consciousness from the world created in your own mind by words and
concepts, and allow your attention to merge within its essence. Both
ways allow you to rest in recognition of the obvious presence of your
existence: your Life beyond thoughts.

In a moment of pure Here-and-Now recognition, the idea and sense

of there being “a world out there” vanishes—even if just for a half minute
or more. As a result, we taste a real ease, a homecoming of sorts, even
joy—as well as centeredness, truthfulness, and clarity. But when our
attention shifts back to awareness of “the world,” it often creates a
feeling of loss of ease, especially to the untrained practitioner.

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 Create a Conducive Setting

In the practice of meditation, we selectively control the things that

make up “our world,” such as the intention to set aside time, the sitting
position we assume, and perhaps various artifacts that resonate with us
and symbolize Self-Realization to us (a Buddha statue, incense,
harmonizing music, etc.) in a way that helps us remember again and
again our intention to recognize what’s always already here: Beingness.

Note: You don’t have to use such symbols, or even a special

meditation space, but some people find them helpful as reminders of
their intention to explore the qualities of their beingness.

The meditation setting increases the chances of your attention

naturally repeating the art of recognition more frequently within a
shorter period of time. This allows the clarity to build upon itself and
take root in different, and sometimes deeper, ways than it does when we
recognize Presence in the middle of, say, a business meeting.

In many, many ways there has been the dedication to devotion of

the beloved One-your true, deepest self. There has been time set aside
to tabernacle with the Creator, to come in from the desert of everyday
life into the oasis of grace and mercy; to enter the tent of prayer and to
rest in silence with the Beloved, blind to the world, open to the spirit.

It’s really only the ambiance, or intentionality, that differentiates

the art of meditation from the art of recognition. The heart of these two
practices is the same: meditation is nothing more than being dedicated to
applying the gateway tool of recognition repeatedly within a certain time
frame—more frequently than your regular life, at least currently, inspires
you to do.

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 And although meditation practice is typically performed in a rather
motionless sitting or lying down position, with some practice you’ll find
you can “conjure up” the same centeredness experienced during
meditation, pretty much anywhere and at any time, by repeatedly
returning to the recognition of the Now that’s always here.

To summarize: Recognition practice will help you see more clearly

in everyday moments by creating little spark-like openings in the cloudy
sky of your mind. Over time, this practice will allow the sun to shine
continuously in your open sky, with full conviction. Meditation practice
will help you to discover this more profoundly, more immediately, and
with fewer perceived distractions.

How Do I Meditate?

If you are really new to spiritual awakening, you may not have
studied the art of meditation before. So, although meditation is a very
flexible practice, and there is no right or wrong way to do it, I will give
you a simple template to start from. As always, feel free to dismiss or
tweak it according to what works best for you.

As a general template, I recommend a sitting position for

meditation because it tends to keep one more alert.

1. Find a comfortable position.

Sit down in a comfortable chair, preferably with a straight back that

supports the spine. Personally, I prefer not to use the chair back, but
instead keep my spine straight with good posture. Alternatively, you can
sit on a meditation cushion on the floor and cross your legs in whatever
manner makes you most comfortable in the upright position.

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 Is a straight spinal cord absolutely necessary? It is moderately
helpful, but not crucial. It tends to allow for a better flow of the subtle
and physical energies that help relax, align, and balance your body and
its energy centers, but it doesn’t change Presence or your ability to
recognize it.

(Comment: But rigorous sitting in a Lotus or half Lotus posture

can lead to a place where body and mind disappear and you BECOME
presence rather than just witness it. You become bodiless, with no
inner and outer, where the external world fills your emptiness, and
you are thought free in the most delightful, light, and supremely
happy place identified with the totality of consciousness, and not as a
human. At the same time, there is a lagging noticing that there is a
you separate from this experience of oneness with consciousness. I do
not know of any way to have this experience other than in intense,
motionless, Lotus sitting such as in a Zen monastery.)

2. Take a few cleansing breaths.

Once you find a comfortable, upright position, take 3 to 7 deep,

relaxing, slow breaths.

Tip: I find it immensely relaxing, and even blissful to my body and

its energy system, if I breathe in deeper than I normally would, sucking in
extra air at the end and holding it for a few seconds.

Then, I use my tongue to slow down the exhalation, so that I don’t

have to control it with my diaphragm muscle—allowing me to relax my
chest and abdomen muscles more fully.

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 To use this technique, simply relax the muscles around your lungs
completely upon the exhalation, but place your tongue against the top of
your mouth or the back of your top row of teeth. The exhalation will
most likely make a hissing sound. That’s fine. You can experiment with
different mouth and tongue positions. You can also partially close your
throat, instead of using your tongue. Each technique offers slightly
different energetic effects on the body, which you will notice.

3. State your intention for this meditation.

For about 30 seconds, remind yourself—out loud if you wish—of your

intention for this sitting. I find that saying it out loud can sometimes be
tremendously powerful in creating a single-mindedness around the
intention and its execution.

The intention for your meditation can be anything; it completely

depends on what your unique desire for this meditation is. However, I will
give you an example that goes well with the goals of this first course of
the Enlightenment teaching.

You could say to yourself (internally and/or out loud) something like
this:

It is my intention, for the next 15 minutes, to relax deeply into my

true Self. It is my intention to withdraw my interest from useless mental
chatter, and to instead observe it as it floats by and remain unaffected
by it—I’m more interested in Presence than I am interested in thoughts.

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It is my intention and joy to place my attention on the obvious presence
of the Here-and-Now, on my existence itself—the fact that I exist.

(Comment: There is too much intentionality in this setup. You are

already accepting as truth things you have not yet discovered for
yourself. I advise just to relax and sit and experience what you
experience, finding what arises by itself without intent of seeing
something someone else suggests is there. Of course, you can practice
both ways, with and without intent and see what works best for you.)

When I get distracted by thoughts, I will simply choose—with no

judgment whatsoever and in my own good time—to return to a spark-like
moment of recognizing that I AM, already free, here and now—and enjoy
that moment of clear presence when it occurs.

(Comment: I never, ever found an I Am when meditating on the

emptiness and light within. I saw thoughts, including the I-thought,
to come and go into emptiness, but the I Am sensation escaped me
until I clearly experience the life force (Shakti), which I discovered
also to be in me, and who lived through me as an embodied human.
That discovery came after shifting my focus of investigation from
“looking” within, to “feeling” within, which focused on feeling the
experience of Am-ness rather than just witnessing it. But the
description provided by the author is good for beginners. But never,
ever accept as absolute truth what the author is saying about one’s
own inner experience of being momentarily mindless.)

This intention, and the time set aside for it to blossom, is enough in
itself to facilitate a genuine meditation.

(Comment: Why intend? Why not just sit and look within to see
what you can see? Intentionality is too much added weight and
direction.)

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 Additionally—especially if you don’t have a meditation room—you
might place an item in front of you that reminds you to recognize the
truth of your Being beyond thoughts. Keep it fresh and light-hearted;
inserting humor into your practices is a great way to avoid cycles of self-
judgment. It doesn’t matter whether this item is a funny note or a
picture of your deceased and beloved guru; what matters is that it has a
strong inspirational quality for you or that it is very pragmatic and literal
in pointing you back to your Self.

As a side note to this, feel free to place little reminders around

your house, in your car, on your phone, on your computer, and at your
work place. These reminders can be subtle and, quite frankly, you can
make anything into a reminder if you choose to program yourself to
respond to the item in that way.

These reminders will aid you in triggering a genuine moment of

recognition for a half minute or more, 12 times or more throughout the
day.

How to Meditate – In Short

Get comfortably seated.

Take a few relaxing breaths.

Clearly state/view the intention for the meditation focus.

(Comment: I suggest the intention of just looking and feeling

within and experience what you will experience. You are a new
explorer of your inner unknown, rather than just retracing his well-
marked route. Be brave, be willing to go inside on your own without a
guide that marks out the places he has been, which you then make
yours, for his own path may not be complete.)

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 Then simply keep returning your attention to the intended
recognition for the intended duration of your meditation.

In general, for regular meditations I recommend a duration of

around 20 minutes.

Recognition or Meditation—Which Practice is Best for Me?

(Comment: To me there is no difference except the duration of

inward attention, and whether it is a formal sitting as opposed to
pauses in one’s day. The actual practice is to look within and getting
“under” the mind.)

Why not at least try both for a couple of weeks and see which one
works best? Maybe they both benefit you greatly.

It is my experience that each one complements and deepens the

other.

Some people find the Art of Recognition more useful on a constant

basis; others prefer the Art of Meditation. Whichever appeals to you most
in that moment is the one to pour your dedication and practice into at
that time. Get a feeling for both.

In general, I tailor my teachings predominantly around the art of

the half-minute second relaxation/recognition exercise, because it’s so
universally applicable and user-friendly. I feel there’s a greater chance
that people will actually use it to integrate the teachings into their
everyday life. I recommend that you practice this simplest of all gateway
tools at least 12 times per day.

In fact, I encourage you to make this simple exercise your new best
friend—no matter what—while also utilizing the meditation gateway tool
whenever it particularly resonates for you to do so, or when you wish to
unwind more deeply or explore new territory.

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 I have found that the discoveries I make in meditation carry over
into my everyday experience more powerfully and contribute to those
spark-like moments of clear recognition, adding new dimensions to them.

The simple science behind it all is this: each moment of recognition

is like digging deeper into an already existing hole that you’re making in
the ground. With repeated shovelfuls (recognition 12 times per day) you
reach greater depths; but in between, a bit of dirt may slide back into
the hole, because you are so occupied with other things. But ultimately,
your hole will reach deep into the Earth.

The cumulative impact of repeated recognitions can also be likened

to starting a fire with a flint stone: each moment of clear recognition is
like a strike of sparks added to the kindling. The immature flame may
initially decrease a little in power while waiting for the next strike of the
flint and its shower of sparks, but ultimately, the many sparks combined
in repetition together create a self-sustaining fire that will keep itself
burning naturally.

When there is a sincere yearning, a deep longing, to meditate (not

just the feeling that you have to meditate), less dirt seems to slide back
into the dug-up hole between each recognition; the flame recedes less
between each stroke of sparks, because the moments of recognition are
closer together and more carefully attended to.

So, within a shorter period of “time” one can potentially dig deeper
and burn brighter in meditation than by means of single moments of
recognition spaced out throughout the day.

Meditation can also offer experiences of greater contrast to your

“normal” daily operating mode. One may therefore feel “suddenly more
enlightened,” or changed. This is great, but it can also lead to periodic
confusion about your “spiritual progress,” due to the ups and downs that
these contrasting states can seemingly create.

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 This is less likely to happen when moments of recognition are strung
together organically throughout the day, allowing for a more gradual
blending of the heightened clarity into your everyday default mode of
being—with perhaps less contrast or “difference in enlightenment” being
experienced.

Inspire yourself to keep recognizing the deeper truth of your Being,

and let the world of appearances and ideas become unimportant for a
moment, but at the same time, don’t feel like you have to “get
somewhere” you’re not already fundamentally at.

All of this being said, I’ve never been consistent with meditation
myself, partly because very soon I didn’t see the need—since what we’re
looking for is always already here. So why meditate?

Well, even though what we’re seeking is always already here, our
goal here is to discover this as fully as we can, to embody this to a great
extent, so that the truth of Existence can cleanse our vision, balance out
our life, and heighten our vibrational state of being.

Using these tools will take us to unimaginable heights of conscious

awareness of the fact that we already are the omnipresent perfection
and beauty that we’re looking for.

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 So yes, structurally speaking, we are already enlightened, aware,
conscious, and existent, and we can never truly become more or less of
what we are. And yet, experientially, there is a process of never ending
exploration and deepening into this truth. This is where
dedication/practice and recognition/meditation become such invaluable
tools.

(Comment: Again, oversimplifying. One is not “enlightened”

until one loses one’s primary identity as body/mind. Before that,
what you are learning is only philosophy and exploring thoughtless
awareness which frees one from concepts.)

The truth doesn’t require us to change in order to be worthy of it,

but if we desire greater clarity of heart and mind regarding what is
already ours, if we wish to vibrate more fully in alignment with the
vibration of truth, freedom, bliss, and unconditional love, then we have
to apply some dedication/application to the arts of
recognition/meditation. Otherwise, the realization of what’s always
already here simply remains too shallow to reach the deep wells of true
inner satisfaction, and too intellectual to fuel the bright fire of clarity.

So, my goal with is to show you how to dig deep—until you reach
the fountain of life, the fountain of joy, the fountain of unconditional
love. I’m here to show you how to fuel your fire until everything you
experience starts to count as firewood, feeding the flames until your fire
is self-sustaining—burning naturally by itself.

At some point in your practice of recognition and meditation,

everything that appears to you starts adding to—not distracting from—
your recognition, your meditation, your Self-Realization.

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 Summary

Recognition is the art of noticing one’s vast existence beyond the

realm of thoughts, for brief moments, several times a day, integrated
into everyday life.

Meditation is the art of gracing oneself with a period of time/space

with no other intention than to repeatedly recognize what’s within.

Try out both, experiment with the different approaches provided to

you in this lesson; each approach offers a slightly different way to the
same realization.

Dedicate/Apply. Recognize/Meditate.

Applying these Tools allows you to transcend intellectual

understanding and enhance it with the direct experience that the
information was merely a pointer to in the first place.

Everything has Presence

When we refrain from mentally labeling something—even if just for

a half minute or more—we learn to see beyond our mind and into the
essence of the actual object. What shines forth is beyond thought and
word: It is the very Presence of the thing itself, not the name we are
conditioned to give it.

It will help us discover how Presence applies not only to our

personal existence, but to everything that exists.

It will help blur the imaginary lines between here versus there, now
versus then, me versus you, Presence versus things, and reveal that all
things are made out of the same Beingness.

Table of Contents

1 What is a “Thing”?
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 2 Two Ways to See Things

3 Your Presence Is Not Separate from Life’s Presence

4 Explanation/Philosophy

What is a “Thing”?

Pick an object.

In my experience, it may be easier to start with an object that has

a fairly simple configuration and is somewhat homogeneous in nature
(made of a single, or simple, material) and has decent-sized surfaces. For
example: a glass instead of a toothpick (too small), or a rock over a
cooked meal (too complex).

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you pick, so don’t think about it

too long. (The example I’ll use here is a book.)

Now, place the object in front of you, or hold it in your hand.

You’re going to discover how that object consists of Presence/Beingness.

The following sentence is your direct access to the experience that

“everything has is-ness”:

Rule of thumb: Stop labeling what you see, and look at it as it is.

Two Ways to See Things

When I look at the book, I can either:

Look at it through the tunnel-vision of my ideas about it.

OR…

Notice my mind’s automatic labeling mechanism as it fires off words

and ideas about the book, but choose to ignore these entirely (just say
you’re not interested in labels anymore).

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 This second way of seeing—where I ignore the labels and words
about the book because I desire to see its true presence—allows me to
actually see beyond the haze of labels and words, until I sense the actual
presence of the book itself.

It’s a process of consciously “tuning into” the object until your

consciousness starts to match the frequency of the energy of the object,
allowing you to “sense” or “get a feel for it” much more clearly.

When we’re tuning into something, rather than thinking about it,
we get to experience the actual presence the object has, rather than be
blinded by a myriad of assumptions and pre-conditioned ideas, names,
and labels.

Can you see it? Can you sense the is-ness of your chosen object? Can
you sense that no matter what label you throw at it, it will never actually
touch the true presence of the object?

The object is free.

It is itself.

It is present Presence.

It is allowed to exist exactly as it is.

When you see the book like this, it is no longer really a book to you
(even though common sense lets you know that it is), because in order
for it to be a “book,” it needs to be perceived through the word
“book” first.

In a wordless state of perception, what shines forth most

predominantly from any object, is its immense, unique, and worthy
presence: its true beauty, its true identity.

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 The more you place your attention on seeing the actual presence of
the object, instead of talking about the object in your mind, you will find
it is much like when the clouds part, allowing the presence of the sun to
reveal its true glory.

“Thinking about something is the surest way to miss out on the

beauty of that actual something.”

None of your labels can survive the presence of the object itself.
The presence of the object itself is simply Is-ness-Energy: Existence
existing in the shape of that object, just as Existence is existing in the
shape of your own body.

To fully see the ridiculous nature of labeling things, just realize that
even a letter or a word is not actually “a letter” or “a word” because
those are also labels. Letters and words and, yes, labels—even thoughts—
are nothing but Presence-Energy!

(Comment: A cool discovery indeed for anyone. But thirty years ago,
if I had looked at an object, rather than presence, because of my own
immersion in Emptiness at the time rather than experiencing my own
“Presence,” I only experienced emptiness, formless space permeating the
object with no presence at all. But a beginner can come in from Massaro’s
direction without a dozen years of prior Zen focus on emptiness and the
Void, if indeed one actually finds a presence-energy within and without, as
opposed to Massaro’s statements of its presence. What he describes and
the interpretations he gives may not be your experience at all, and his
interpretations may not fit.)

23
 So, in reality, when we perceive an object through a thought-label,
we’re doing nothing more than perceiving energy distorted through more
energy. If you apply the same exercise I demonstrated with the book to
letters, words, labels, and thoughts, you will find they disappear from
view as “things” and shine forth simply as being Presence-Energy.

So you see, since every thing is actually Presence-Energy (Existence

itself), and since the very means we have to label things
(words/thoughts) are also Existence existing, there really is no escaping
the realization that Presence-Energy is the only “substance” in Creation;
everything is made out of it.

(Comment: This is a powerful beginning to a most deep

realization coming later that everything is only consciousness and
has no separate existence outside of you. The author builds on this
later.)

Presence is inescapable. It’s everywhere. It’s everything.

You will find, as you practice this simple exercise over and over
again, that the presence of objects starts to stand out to you more and
more, and your ideas about objects start to seem more unreal and
irrelevant, until they simply stop arising (unless they are relevant or
practical).

When your labels for the object of perception no longer fool you
into believing the word is the actual thing, you simply use them
(labels) when it makes sense in the conversation you’re having, or
because they are needed to perform a task.

24
 Remember, when you’re thinking about an object, you’re not
actually tuned into the vibration and the presence of the object itself;
you’re just seeing your personal mind’s projection—biased and colored
through years of unconscious assuming. This is not a true way to see
anything, and not a valid way to respond to the amazing phenomena of
creation.

As you practice this lesson’s seeing exercise, you will start to get a
clearer sense of the veil of labels and words—the web of your personal
mind’s conditioning. Seeing this, it becomes easier to ignore the mind’s
interpretations and glimpse the vividness of Existence beyond the veil.

And so, as you keep doing this exercise with different objects (of all
sizes and structures, including the sky, planet Earth, your own body, the
chair you’re sitting on, and finally that delicious-looking cooked meal),
you start to see the same Beingness that you feel as “I Exist”
reverberating inside of—and as—the objects of perception.

Your Presence Is Not Separate from Life’s Presence

Remember where you started to glimpse and realize the energy of

(your) existence, that conscious I-AM-Presence? Well, in this lesson, you
will see how that Presence extends to include not just your own
consciousness, but the entirety of creation.

By applying the “seeing exercise” introduced at the start of this

lesson, and by choosing the second way of looking at things directly, you
will be able to see that same Beingness—that same Is-ness you feel as
your Self—extended out into the rest of yourself—the world that you have
assumed to be “out there.”

Feeling the presence of your own existence, and that of Existence

itself, are not two different sensations or realizations. There is no
boundary separating you from All-That-Is. You, and everything else, are
the same one Beingness!
25
 And so, more and more, as you proceed through these courses, you
start to realize there never was an “out there;” there is only “inside” (or
as) Presence-Consciousness.

All There Is, everything within creation, shares the same Is-ness. It
is all-inclusive and all-pervasive.

Imagine a void, a nothingness—an infinity within which Presence

appears as a cloud of pure, raw, creative energy (Presence-Energy).
Within this cloud or sphere of Intelligent Presence-Energy, myriad forms
are created, because Presence-Energy can express itself as infinite forms,
shapes, sizes, dimensions, times, spaces, and so on.

However, All-That-Is, Everything-That-Exists, is made out of this

Presence-Energy and is simultaneously contained within it; anything
that exists appears inside of this Presence-Energy, as part of its own
self-expression.

This means there is nothing inside of this Presence-Creation that

consists of something from outside of this Presence-Energy.

There is no substance other than this Presence-Energy—which is

the entirety of Creation.

(Comment: Or, as Robert Adams would say, Everything is

Consciousness; all that exists, including you is Consciousness,
objects, emptiness, lightedness.)

26
 Thus, all experiences are made out of Presence/Beingness/Is-ness.
And you can start to directly experience this truth by tuning into the
actual presence of an object, space, time, reality, or location, while
ignoring your conditioned mind’s mental suggestions.

Explanation/Philosophy

If everything is the same being, why does it all look so different?

Let’s jump ahead a little, just for a moment. It’s okay if you don’t
fully or immediately understand this; it will all become much clearer
later on in this teaching process. For now, I just want to plant a seed and
give it time to germinate before you reach the Infinity teaching. So, just
relax the need to “get it,” and let it do its thing.

Presence-Consciousness—or simply put: Presence—is the

expression (the presence) of The Absolute, The Infinite One.

The Infinite One in its original “stateless state” cannot—though it

desires to—directly experience itself. It cannot directly experience itself
because it is One and therefore has no reference point to experience
itself from, or in relationship to.

The One is beyond experiencing. Beyond and before even

Awareness.

You need two before experience—and therefore self-awareness—can

occur as subject-object.

In order for Awareness, or free agency, to come into full

experiential beingness, there has to be a palpable differentiation of some
kind. Since the One cannot experience itself from its own stateless state,
it needs to experience itself through contrast, through an “other”—just as
you need a mirror to see your own face.

27
 And so the Absolute, out of its infinite possibilities, birthed Creation
(Presence-Energy), and in the face of Presence the Infinite One could
start to see its true, original infiniteness.

(COMMENT: Recognize that is just another story. Massaro’s

story of creation, which is similar to that of Nisargadatta, but the
latter does not get so explicit or detailed, because he did not want
to introduce too many concepts to confuse the seeker of self-
realization. But Massaro has this concept as centrally necessary for
his New Age self-actualization teachings, which he hangs his coat on
presently.)

Over “time” (seemingly), Creation’s expression expanded and

developed into countless forms, dimensions, perceptions, and perceivers.
It is the role of Presence-Consciousness—its “job,” if you will—to express
Infinity in all the ways that it possibly can.

Think about it (but not for too long): experience is a finite concept,
so how does Presence-Energy express true Infinity by means of
experience? It can only attempt this (impossible) goal by expressing
experiences in as many ways as it possibly can, in order to even approach
the reality of true Infinity by means of experience.

This explains why Creation is so varied in its expression—because its

underlying drive is to express and reflect the Absolute, True Infinity.
Hence, even though there is only one basic substance in all of Creation,
Presence-Energy can express itself in infinite ways and appear as
anything.

28
 What is important to take away from this, for now, is that no
matter what form, no matter what particular signature-vibration a
particular object has (size, weight, color, dimension, molecular
structure, etc.), all of these specifications that are part of an object’s
unique vibration are still made out of Presence-Energy: The Absolute’s
way of expressing itself.

Bottom line:

There is no other substance but Presence-Energy for anything to be

created out of. If something exists—if it has a presence—it must, at its
heart, be Presence.

(Comment: This part of Massaro’s teaching are consistent with

Robert Adams, Nisargadatta, and Ramana. All that EXISTS is
CONSCIOUSNESS. But they add there are processes, knowning, being
that lie beyond or prior to Consciousness.)

29
 Homework

Read this lesson’s text at least two more times in a relaxed manner,
gently contemplating what the words point to.

Practice the exercise of Sensing the Presence of Things Beyond

Labels, with at least five different objects of entirely different signature-
frequencies. For example, a car tire, a dog’s bark, the sky, the floor
underneath your feet, and your own body. I highly recommend including
your own body as one of your chosen objects.

Don’t move on to the next object until you get a real sense (even if
it’s just a momentary glimpse, that’s fine!) of the is-ness of the object,
of the fact/sense that it exists.

Feel free to apply this exercise to more than five objects—or even
to expand it to include multiple objects or your entire surroundings
simultaneously!

Have fun with it, for it can lead into really interesting expansive
experiences, and will begin shifting you from your sense of separation to
a greater sense of connection (eventually inseparability) with your
surroundings.

30
 What has never changed?
I have gone through many personal transformations over the years:
physical, mental, emotional, circumstantial, and spiritual. Yet, when I
look in the mirror today, I feel the same underlying Self I’ve always felt
myself to be. The same truth that underlies everything has always been
with me, changelessly so. I know this is true for all beings.

Later on, you will discover that Presence is never missing from your
experience; it is always there.

You as a person-consciousness—the sense “I am this person”—will

wake up to something “greater than you” and experience that Greater
Self as the permanent basis of your existence.

Human wakes up to Presence.

Table of Contents [hide]

1 Realizing the Changelessness of Being: A Two-Step Exercise

1.1 Step 1 – Feel the Presence of Being

1.2 Step 2 – Realize the Changelessness of Being

2 Things change, but Presence never does

3 Explanation/Philosophy – You are Waking Up!

3.1 Homework

Realizing the Changelessness of Being: A Two-Step Exercise

I ask you now to look at your direct experience of life, and locate
that sense of being, which has never changed throughout the entirety of
your life.

31
 Step 1 – Feel the Presence of Being

First, recognize the presence of Being here and now, using the
techniques you learned in previous lessons.

For example: Relax your thoughts for a half minute or more, and
recognize that there is a sense of being-here that remains effortlessly.

Even in moments when you don’t think at all (not necessary, but
possible!), Presence-Consciousness, or Beingness, remains clearly present
as the basic energy of your existence itself. Presence remains
undisturbed, indestructible, unwaveringly here and now…

Feel the sense that you exist, that sense that you are here, now.

Feel I AM.

Feel I Exist.

Feel Presence.

Feel Beingness.

Step 2 – Realize the Changelessness of Being

Now that you’re tuned into the sense of Beingness, take a minute or
two to pull up a memory from when you were a kid, perhaps 7 or 8 years
old. Actually recall being there again, seeing through your own eyes as
you were when you were a kid.

Do you see/feel it?

Now, notice how this same sense of Presence that you recognized in
the here-and-now was unmistakably there when you were 8 years old as
well…

32
 It may not have been conscious to you at the time (or maybe it
was!), but it was definitely there: that underlying sense of “there is
something that never changes.” The sense of I-AM was fully present and
intact, whether recognized at the time or not.

Next, pull up a memory of when you were around 16 to 18 years old

and see that there was a sense of being present in that memory as well.
Really go back to that memory as clearly as you can in your imagination
and confirm that the sense of presence was right there, again, whether or
not the personality you wore on top of your Beingness at that time was
aware of this sense of presence. You are aware of it now, in retrospect.

Even if the personality you used to pretend to be was distracted at

the time of your memory (for example, if the experience was intense),
notice how presence was still fully there, pervading the whole
experience. If Beingness-Consciousness had not been there, you would
have had no memory of this experience.

After you’ve done that for a minute or two, pull up a vivid memory
from yesterday, and tune into that experience again. Imagine it in as
much detail as you can…

Feel how the same sense of beingness was present in your

experience yesterday as well. Even if you did not notice it at the time, it
was still there.

In a sense, we can say that, even when we were not present to

Beingness-Consciousness at varying (most) times during our life,
Beingness-Consciousness was nevertheless present to us.

(Comment. I urge you to go along with this exercise because of

the impact it can have in breaking up the concept-ball that you
identify with as you, but recognize this is a set up. While being
aware of your sense of presence in the present, imagine yourself as

33
7, 10, 15, 20 years old experiencing some past event. Notice that
while doing this, you feel the exact same sense of presence while
imagining the past, as you do now before imagining the past. To me,
this is like imagining a past experience and remembering you had a
hand or foot, and immediately you are aware that you still
experience a hand or a foot. Does this prove—as he later concludes—
that both Consciousness and your hand or foot are immortal—does
not change?)

Now, tune into the memory of a few minutes ago, when you went to
open up this lesson and were just about to start reading this text. Notice
how Presence-Consciousness was also there, underlying your every
experience. Every detail you noticed on your computer screen in your
memory of a few minutes ago was being witnessed by Consciousness, and
there was a Presence enabling the entirety of your experience.

(Comment: As well as your hand on the mouse or touchpad, was there

then as now. It seems like an argument, and it is exactly the same as the
great mistake Ramana made when he concluded Consciousness was
immortal, while the body was not. Explored later.)

34
 And finally, back to now. Experience that same sense of presence
right here in your immediate circumstance.

Do you see now, how the sense of I-AM never changes? It is like the
water in the waves of the ocean. You have moved your consciousness
through different moments of time, but the Presence that is the Eternal
Now is always present. No matter what shape or size a wave takes on, it
will always be water.

(COMMENT: Actually you have not moved your consciousness

through time. You have attended to memories of past life
experiences within the present. You are a bubble of feeling
presence, and of course you feel that same presence in memories of
the past being remembered in the present. You are also being
instructed to see how past experiences had a same feel. You are
being spoon-fed a reality construct. But go with it to see where it
leads you.)

Take a minute now to consider what this exercise has confirmed for
you. For example, realize that all your mind’s stories about how difficult
it is to maintain presence—how you sometimes attain presence, but then
you lose it—none of this is true.

If you’re a typical “seeker” who stresses about “losing” presence,

right now you may be inclined to smile and laugh at the absurdity of
believing you could ever lose Beingness. Go ahead!

Presence always feels the same: present, here, now, alive,

available, easeful. It comes infused with a consciousness, a cognizance; it
has a sense of self-intelligence and an awareness-of-being.

Things change, but Presence never does

“Existence doesn’t have an off switch; you cannot stop existing.

Notice this repeatedly.”

35
 (Comment: Notice Masssaro does not deal with the off switch of
consciousness during deep sleep or while under an anesthetic.
Nisargadatta builds on the absence of knowingness in deep sleep in
order to become aware that there is something about you that is
aware both of consciousness, or knowingness, and the absence of
consciousness. This beyond principle he calls the Absolute, a concept
contradictory to Massaro’s conclusions at this point, but which he
adds in future writings after he discovers in while reading a
Nisargadatta book.)

Thoughts and emotions at these different times of your life may

have changed dramatically; even who you believed yourself to be may
have changed significantly, but that underlying, most essential sense of “I
Exist” has never changed.

This sense of eternal presence is what most people tune into when
they say, at 70 years old, “I feel the same inside as I felt when I was 24
years old. I don’t feel like I ever truly aged.”

The form of things changes, but the presence that these forms
appear within, and are made out of, never changes; presence never
leaves your experience and you never leave its experience.

You and Presence, are the same one, changeless and unalterable
experience. No one and nothing can take beingness away from you.

(COMMENT: Except nightly in deep sleep, and especially after

given a general anesthetic.

Also, the perception and conclusion of changelessness of your

sense of being is in the now, the present, and may, in fact, be
inaccurate as you cannot in the now, experience your sense of being
in the past except as a memory now, which coexists with your sense of
presence now.)

36
 Recognize this truth as clearly as you can in your direct experience
with everyday-life experiences. Confirm this truth over and over again,
tirelessly so, until you feel it naturally, automatically. Until your sense of
being shifts from the person to Presence.

(COMMENT: Yes, do continually feel the presence to shift

identification to presence, because it is necessary to undo your
identification with mental concept of who and what you are, and to
switch your identity to impersonal awareness/space/emptiness.)

The more memories you pull up into your consciousness to

investigate whether that same sense of present-beingness was there, the
more obvious it will become that Presence is the ever-noticeable and
reliable experience of Existence itself.

Explanation/Philosophy – You are Waking Up!

If Presence-Consciousness starts to become more (easily)

noticeable to you, this signifies that your sense of self-awareness
(where you place your perceived identity, your ”self”) is moving up
(down) the ladder of Self-Realization into a continually deeper seeing
and knowing of yourself.

Your true being, your awareness, is unlocking itself from being so

tightly wound around the idea of being a person and starts to instead
identify more with changeless Presence-Energy, felt as the sense of I-
AM or Being here, now, always.

Presence becoming more obvious to you indicates that your self-

awareness is naturally (through recognition and interest) shifting from
Person-World-Consciousness (the “I-AM-This” feeling) to Presence-
Consciousness (the “I-AM” feeling), and is no longer rigidly identified with
the personality.

37
 (Comment: This is indeed true after a rather brilliant set of
exercises along with his interpretations. In any event, you can ignore
all of my clarifcations to this point. I just want to point out some of
his teachings are not really based on your own experiences, but on
his interpretations of your experience.)

38
 Congratulations! You are waking up.

Don’t worry: This does not mean you will become unable to interact
as a human being in the world, or that you will lose consciousness of the
person and the world you have created for yourself. It simply means you
are expanding into a greater awareness of the truth of Existence—and of
your True Self—because, after all, Existence and your True Self are the
exact same being. You’ll still be perfectly able to interact with your
loved ones and enjoy relationships.

Presence-Consciousness and Person-World-Consciousness

simultaneously co-exist right alongside/within one another. As do all
four levels of Reality.* One level does not interfere or conflict with
the existence of another.

Person-World-Consciousness

Presence-Consciousness

Awareness

The Absolute

Presence-Consciousness is always already present, has never

changed, and will never change. You can recognize this. When you
recognize it repeatedly, your self-awareness (where you place your
identity, what you perceive yourself to be) organically stops projecting
itself full-time into the personality that you’ve been taught to identify
with, and rests more effortlessly and naturally into the vibrancy of the
true here-and-now.

In other words, you’re getting free from automatic pilot mode, and
you’re becoming more alive, more spontaneous, freer, wiser, more
loving! It’s good to know you are becoming more of your original,
authentic, spontaneous, bold, highly-intelligent, and giddy Self. Isn’t it?

39
 (COMMENT: The author overdoes the positive attributes all
throughout his text. Always better, happier, deeper, etc., when at
the ultimate stage there are no attributes at all. But go along with his
interpretation as it does help free you.)

Overall, this shift results in a greater sense of everyday ease and

liberation from a big chunk of your self-imposed mental and emotional
suffering. It also results in a generally clearer consciousness of what is
fundamentally true, compared to what is mind-created, imitated,
contrived, unnecessary (suffering), or illusory.

Wisdom is arising from within you, thanks to your choice to wake up

to truth.

Homework

Read Lesson Four at least once more, or as often as you need to, to
get a clear understanding of the text, so that you feel comfortable and
excited to move on to the next lesson.

Practice the “Realizing the Changelessness of Being” 2-step exercise

a few times, where you pick different times in your life to remember and
then recognize that in each memory, there was the same sense of “being
you”—that fundamental sense of existence itself—present in your
experience. Also, throughout your everyday experiences, notice it
present in and as the Here-and-Now.

Practice the same memory exercise, but apply it to your imagined

future. Just pick a handful of probable or desirable future experiences
(future “memories”), and imagine that same exact sense of Beingness
you’re now familiar with, present there in that experience as well.

40
 Remember: When performing the “Realizing the Changelessness of
Being” exercise, whether or not you were fully aware of this Presence at
the time of the memory is not important. What is important is that you
become aware of it now, and understand that it has nothing to do with
whether or not you recognized it consciously, because it recognizes
you. It’s similar to how you know you had a good, deep sleep; you
know it because that underlying Existence was still present,
registering every moment.

(COMMENT: Whoa! Author has sidestepped the problem that

awareness presence is not there in sleep for most people, and just
says it doesn’t matter because you have learned (been instructed),
that presence is always there if not in your immediate awareness as a
given. This is existential philosophy, not something you are really
discovering for yourself. But keep along this track, because it is the
only instrument you have for self-realization. Just be aware of the
additional stories you are being told that are not yet proven by the
author or in your own experience.)

What is Consciousness?
When the light of pure Awareness became aware of the Presence of
Creation, it wrapped its brilliant cognizance around this Presence-Energy
and became Presence-Consciousness: Awareness, conscious of Presence.

Some of you may be wondering at this point what the word

“Consciousness” in “Presence-Consciousness” signifies. In the previous
four lessons, I have been placing the emphasis mostly on discovering the
sense of Presence. But what about Consciousness? Is there even a
difference?

This is more philosophical in nature, and in some respects, it jumps

ahead of where we are, experientially. So, I encourage you to let it be all
right if you don’t fully understand everything yet.

41
 Just take it as it comes, and be patient with me as I lay out more of
the context—the bigger picture—behind this course and overall
progression. It is my belief that, while it may seem confusing and
complicated now, you will thoroughly enjoy the comprehensive, “no
stone left unturned” approach of this cosmology. Ultimately, this will
result in you never being existentially confused again, no matter what
type of experience or circumstance you run into. Mystified and awed,
yes; confused, no.

Table of Contents

1 What does Consciousness mean?

2 Is there a difference between Consciousness and Awareness?

2.0.1 Analogy – Awareness as a flash light

3 Everyone can notice Consciousness

4 From I-AM-This to I-AM

4.1 Review of terms

5 Duality versus Nonduality

5.1 Homework

What does Consciousness mean?

So… what does “Consciousness,” in Presence-Consciousness, point
to? Let’s find out!

Did you notice in previous lessons, when you practiced placing your
attention on the basic sense “I exist,” or when you recognized the
Presence in Things, how there was a heightened sense of clarity or
consciousness present in the experience of Being? More perhaps than
when you’re going about your everyday business as a person in the world?
42
 Great! If not, no worries; simply practice with me right now for a
moment…

Take a deep, relaxing sigh and ignore (be uninterested in) your
ideas about everything for a half minute. This, in and of itself, feels
soothing and nice, right? Now, recognize the sense of being that
remains when you’re not as wrapped up in the person-world
consciousness of thoughts and ideas.

Got it? Can you feel the sense “I exist here and now”?

(Comment: “I exist here and now” is a pronouncement about an inner

experience that has no words. It is a story. It is the author’s
interpretation. Is it yours?

I know for myself, the I Am alive feeling exploded out of me

when I was aware of something else within my sense of presence. I
was aware of “an-other,” a spirit, an entity that felt like God
because it was so bright, so powerful within me, within my sense of
presence. The life force. It acted (actually, it exploded through me)
through me like the Holy Spirit, entirely beyond the normal human
dimension, and it arose because I loved another, and through that
love experienced myself to be love itself. After allowing myself to be
love-itself for a while, this other and more powerful sense of
presence exploded in me as God, the divine, cleansed me of guilt and
sin, sharing this body with me, like a big brother, with me, inside me,
inside my sense of presence, emerging from my gut and exploding
upwards as brilliant white light, through my heart area and upwards,
through my brain and upwards into space. After that I was aware of
my sense of presence, the life force within that acted with me and
through me, in great joy and power.

43
 What the author is providing is a very weak experience of the
inner sense of being combined with a story about its qualities.
Learning how to love your own sense of I A, especially the Am-ness,
can result in an explosion of the divine within you as a self-
realization of the Manifest Self.)

Now, in that sensing of “I-Exist,” can you notice an element of

cognizance? Can you recognize that there is an awareness of the feeling
“I Exist”?

In other words: Can you see in this moment of existing that you
know you exist here and now?

(Comment: this is a very attenuated experience compared to

being exposed to the full-blown experience of the immensity and
depths of the totality of the Manifest Self.

I would suggest the practitioner instead of just the recognizing

and meditating on the sense of presence, instead, love it and worship
it. Play with it. Plunge one’s awareness into it in surrender.)

Do you notice that, sort of “in addition to” the Presence-Energy

of Beingness, there is a consciousness available as well? Can you
notice that you are aware of Presence, aware of being here? Aware of
beingness?

Explore this awareness of being for a moment and emphasize the

fact that you are aware of the presence of I-AM. Take a minute or two to
taste this experientially.

Great stuff! This aspect of Beingness, or Presence, is the

Consciousness aspect.

44
 Now, keep this experiential recognition of awareness close to your
heart as I guide you into a more expanded understanding of what
Consciousness is and where it comes from.

Just relax, and don’t be attached to “getting it.” You can always
go back to this at a later time and see if it makes more sense to you.
So, for now, all you really need to know is the basics: that
“Consciousness,” in Presence-Consciousness signifies that Awareness
is conscious of Presence. It points to the experience of being conscious
of being. It points to the fact that Presence is infused with Awareness.

Note: We can only be “conscious of” anything, because what we

ultimately are, is Pure Awareness.

Is there a difference between Consciousness and Awareness?

Consciousness is borrowed clarity from pure Awareness.

Consciousness is Awareness, but wrapped around an object of
perception. Consciousness is Awareness aware of something “other
than itself.”

Consciousness derives its existence, its presence, and its

capacity to recognize, directly from pure Awareness.

In short: Awareness aware of—and/or identified with—Presence

becomes Presence-Consciousness. Simple!

We could just as easily use the term “Presence-Awareness,” but

for the sake of precision and differentiation, I slightly prefer
“Presence-Consciousness,” because to me, Consciousness implies a
subject-object duality, whereas Awareness refers to “pure
awareness,” not “awareness of something else.”

45
 In “being aware of Presence,” there is a subject-object experience
present; therefore, the term “Presence-Consciousness” I find to be a
more precise description than “Presence-Awareness.”

Nevertheless, the force we know as “Awareness” is the exact same

force as the power we label “Consciousness,” but simply applied in a
different way.

I also define Awareness as “I” sometimes.

I use “I-I” to signify Self-Awareness, Self-Realized

Awareness, as it implies “I” being aware of, or reflective of,
itself. “I-I” is simply “I” looping back on itself; seeing itself,
being aware of itself.

Analogy – Awareness as a flash light

Imagine Awareness as pure light for a moment: a light that can

be directed toward different things and, in doing so, takes on different
shapes. It becomes whatever it shines upon, much like a flashlight
beam takes on different forms as it highlights the object it is pointed
at. Awareness is very much like this.

The free light of awareness can shine upon the experience of

“being a human inside of a world,” for example, thereby creating
Person-World-Consciousness—the only level most humans consciously
know themselves at during their waking hours.

At this level, Awareness (the experiencer/seer) identifies itself as

the person and the world it sees; its light is entangled, wrapped around,
intertwined, and identified with the object(s) it shines upon.

If pure light shines upon an object for quite a while, it will

gradually forget that it is—in itself—pure light, and start to identify
itself with the form it is shining upon.

46
 In the example of Awareness shining perpetually on the
perception of the person inside a world, Awareness will start to
identify itself as the feeling, or perception, I-AM-This.

“This,” in I-AM-This, can signify the sense of the body-mind itself,

as well as anything we perceive through the body and mind, such as:
personality, world, possessions, career, fame, body, hairstyle,
relationships, bank account, other people’s opinions, society, being a
peace activist, and so on.

Keep in mind, however, that even when Awareness is caught up,

entangled, or identified with the perceptions of the person-world level, it
is still noticeable (even in this concealed state) as the sense “I am
conscious.”

Everyone can notice Consciousness

Everyone, even very “unaware” people, can notice that they are
conscious. That’s the beauty of Awareness and Presence being Always
Already Present.

If you ask someone, “Are you conscious of me asking you this

question?”—whether they answer yes or no, their very response is a
confirmation of the never-ending consciousness in them having registered
that you asked the question! They cannot really deny their existence is
conscious, awake and present, for their very denial of this would
obviously be a confirmation of it.

(Comment: If you ask a corpse if it is aware of your talking to it,

the mere fact that it does not respond, is confirmation of their
consciousness. Sarcasm.)

47
 Fun tip: I have found this question to be a great way to introduce
curious family members and friends to their “Greater Self.” It’s an
excellent and non-intrusive entrance into a potential conversation or
exploration about what we truly are and how that is changeless. Of
course, this is assuming they show interest.

The consciousness that people notice in their person-world-identity

state as the sense “I am conscious” is the significantly dimmed-down light
of the original “I-Awareness”—which is the pure light of the Creator in its
original, super free, self-realized state.

If they (or you) were to trace this sense “I am conscious” back to its
source, however, closer and closer to its original purity by repeatedly
recognizing “I am conscious(ness),” what would be revealed—more so
with each moment of recognition—is the transcendent light and clarity
available within this ever present Awareness.

(COMMENT: Quite true and a real experience. It is the light of

consciousness that illumines inner and outer specious emptiness.)

In other words: The dullest state of consciousness still is Pure and

Infinite Awareness at heart, and as such, can be traced back to an ever
more expanded and purer state of clarity.

From I-AM-This to I-AM

When Awareness entangled as the person wakes up to a greater

sense of Self (Presence/Beingness/I-AM), it is like moving the flashlight
away from the person and its world of forms and names for a moment (as
if zooming out) and, instead, shining the light on Existence, or the
Presence of Experience, itself (--within, within, the author does not use
the word within, but the beginner must.)

48
 Awareness, at this I-AM level, uses its light to illuminate and wrap
itself around what I call “Presence-Energy”—the substratum of everything
that can ever be. This is the unconditional love God-Energy that enables
and creates all other energies, forms, shapes, and experiences. And so,
Awareness aware of the existence of Presence-Energy, becomes
Presence-Consciousness. It is Awareness aware of Creation’s universal
Beingness-substratum. It is Awareness aware of Creation itself.

(Comment: This is an intellectual way of expressing the

enormity of the actual experience of the Infinity of Manifest Self-
Realization, or the explosion of the life force within. But the author
is preoccupied with oneness/sameness, and misses expressing the
majesty of the divine within, which was the felt-essence of that
realization of presence for me.)

As a result of person-consciousness waking up to Presence-

Consciousness, the sense that I-AM-This is softened, or released
somewhat, and now we (Awareness) feel more rested—or identified with—
the more essential and fundamental I-AM, instead.

We feel that we exist, that we are Beingness-Presence—inclusive of

the person and the world, but not limited by them. We see ourselves as
more fundamental—more changeless—than the person, the world, and all
of its activities.

And we know that we exist; we know the experience of Presence.

We feel stable, solid, changeless, alive, and present. Here and now.

Presence-Consciousness is a profound state of Self-Realization,

yet it is still not the original, or primal, state of freedom: Awareness—
the state in which Awareness is aware of itself as Free Awareness
only, without entanglement in the perception of Beingness or I-AM
Presence.

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 Presence-Consciousness = Awareness + the sense-perception
(feeling) “I Exist” or “Presence.”

On this level of I-AM, it becomes even clearer to us that we are

Conscious(ness). In contrast, at the level of identification as a human
being, we are constantly distracted from anything changeless, and it
requires more effort to answer the question, “Are you conscious(ness)?”

Now, having woken up to (recognized until obvious) a deeper level

of being—that of Beingness itself—we can more easily recognize the light
of Awareness infused into the fabric of our experience. We can more
easily notice that there is a consciousness, a cognizing force, an
awareness of being, an awareness of existence.

Review of terms

So, once again, why do I call Awareness “awareness” on its own

level, and “consciousness” on the level of I-AM and I-AM-This?

It is because the word “consciousness” implies awareness of

something in addition to itself. It implies some degree of a perceiver
perceiving something or, simply put, subject-object experiencing. On
its own level (Awareness as I or I-I), there is no subject-object
experience; Awareness is only aware of itself.

Duality versus Nonduality

When Awareness becomes aware of a particular perception, and

especially when it starts to identify itself with that particular perception,
it creates the subject-object duality experience.

This duality is just an experience, and never a reality. Nevertheless,

the word “consciousness” implies a somewhat dimmed-down version of
Awareness; a veiled, concealed, or simply put: a mis-identified state of
Awareness.

50
 Consciousness is Awareness mis-identified, unless Awareness
truly knows it is free as Awareness, while it is being aware of subject-
object experiences. At that point, Awareness can engage with any
level of Reality freely, joyfully, and even passionately. It can associate
itself with things, without actually identifying itself with those things.

(Comment; Massaro makes a very important point.)

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 It’s a beautiful paradox that is hard to explain.

In time, this will all make more and more sense. It’s so much easier
when directly experienced than when expressed in words. The more you
take breaks, experiment, and re-read these lessons, the more you will
start to see beyond the words and effortlessly follow the text with
experience to back up what you read.

Awareness is not “better” than Presence-Consciousness; it’s just

more naked, more original, and freer from identification. All levels of
Reality are equally valid and are ultimately to be treated that way.
However, at this stage, it is for the sake of your initial discovery and
awakening that I make these distinctions.

I want to give you the full context, the full understanding, because I
know from my own experience that these subtler questions will come up
at some point—whether arising from your own search for clarity, or
through someone else’s curiosity about your state of being and what it
means for them.

At this point in your study/awakening process, don’t let these terms

and distinctions occupy your mind-space for too long, especially if you
don’t seem to derive any immediate, experiential clarity from it.
Remember, I will take you step by step. Simply trust in the process.

For now, in this lesson, my goal was just to clarify the word
“Consciousness” in Presence-Consciousness against the background of
and Self-Realization as a whole.

Here’s one more analogy to help you grasp the concept of Self-
Realization:

52
 Imagine Awareness as a camera. The camera can be aware of a
person in a world, and identify itself with what it sees there. Or, it can
zoom out from the personal picture to the more impersonal, grander
picture and view Presence as shared throughout all of creation—the
substratum of Existence—and place its identity with what it sees and
feels there (Presence-Consciousness).

(Comment: In other words, leave the body/mind identification,

and identify as the impersonal sense of presence itself, which is
universal, inclusive, and not separable.)

53
 Or, hypothetically, let’s say the camera is not paying attention to
any object, even if just for a half-minute or so). In this case, the camera
would only be aware of itself as a camera, free from having to focus its
lens on any object that would create the subject-object experience. In
that moment, Awareness realizes it is Awareness, ultimately free from
any object, including the singular object that is All of Creation
(Presence-Energy).

Homework

Over the course of the next 72 hours (3 days) either revisit the
previous lessons and discuss your experiences and/or doubts or confusions
in the study groups, or if you feel completely confident and perhaps even
a bit saturated with information, then I do not encourage you to re-read
this chapter at this point. If that is the case (and you feel saturated) I
would encourage most people to simply let it be—forget about it for a
while—and instead continue forward now if you feel ready. At this point
you might consider taking a little break and taking your new realizations
out with you into the world.

Please note that very quickly from this point onward, with each
successive lesson, I’m going to assume greater intelligence and increased
ability to comprehend subtler material on your part. So, familiarize
yourself as best as you can with the experiential sense of Presence-
Energy, as presented in the previous four Lessons. Explore on your own,
practice, and discuss the material in the study groups to gain a deeper
understanding.

54
 Presence is Unobscurable
If Presence is the substratum of literally everything, that means no
thing can obscure it. Sunlight cannot blind the sun. A bird’s wings do not
prevent its flight.

In this lesson, you will unlock the realization that Presence

comes at no cost, condition, or requirement. It is already here before
anything else could ever be true. It is the truth before, within, and as
all things.

You will recognize the freedom of its existence to be unobscurable,

unblockable, inescapable, and undeniable.

Table of Contents

1 Already Present

2 You Are Already Here

2.0.1 The Unobscurability of Presence is Logical

3 Can Anything Block Existence? – An Inquiry

4 The Benefits of “Already”

5 Even Obstacles Are Presence-Confirming

5.1 Homework

5.2 Got a question, or just want to share? Discuss this in the forums!

Already Present

Now that you feel comfortable recognizing the permanent, or

always present, nature of Being, let’s dive even deeper to discover the
“already” freedom innate in Presence.

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 We’ll start by unlocking your realization of the fact that nothing can
obscure Presence-Consciousness, because it is, was, and will always be
already present.

For just a moment, relax your mind’s ideas about everything (take a
deep breath, relax, unfocus your mind for a minute or so, and then read
the following text:

You Are Already Here.

To Existence/Presence/Beingness, there are no obstacles or

problems. There is only ever more of itself.

Presence has no requirement. There is nothing in between Presence

and anything else, because there is nothing else but Presence. There is
only one Presence, so how could there be an obstacle to it?

In the same way, there is no obstacle between Presence and you

either, because you are (conscious) Presence.

Even if there was an obstacle between Presence and the being who is
trying to discover Presence, it would still only be an illusion. Because the
being trying to discover Presence, as well as the imagined obstacle to
Presence, are both made out of the only substance or component of
existence: Presence/Beingness/Energy itself.

(Comment: Every THING, every object we see, hear, taste, or touch,

every process, energy, thought is the same substance—consciousness,)

How can an obstacle consisting of Presence-Energy be an obstacle

to Presence-Energy? It is impossible. Ponder this for a minute before
proceeding…

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 Suggesting there can be an obstacle to Presence, or a requirement
you must meet before Presence can be fully present, is the same as
suggesting that existence stops existing because of certain things that
exist as part of its existence!

The Unobscurability of Presence is Logical

To say that Existence can be obscured by certain portions of itself,

is as ridiculous as saying that the presence of the finger on your body
prevents your body from being your body.

Presence is unobscurable, because there is nothing but itself.

Anything that might obscure it, would only be more of itself: more
Presence.

And does it really make sense to say that presence can prevent
Presence from being present?

The appearance of any so-called obstacle is, therefore, not only

devoid of the ability to obscure Presence-Energy; it is actually more
confirmation, proof, and further expansion of Presence-Energy.

You can never not be here. You can never not be now. You can
never not already exist.

Before you ever thought about existence, you already existed.

Before you think about Presence, you are already present.

(Comment: Be aware that these are conclusions of the author. I

would not be so bold. I’d rather be stupid and just observe without
concluding.)

Give up your mind’s conditioned ideas for a minute, and recognize

this simple and obvious truth. Presence is always already staring you in
the face, as well as it being the face that it’s staring at, and from.

57
 All you have to do to become Self-Realized in the powerful
“alreadiness” of your Greater Self is open yourself up to recognize it, and
to see as clearly as you can how logical it is that Presence-Energy is
unobscurable because All-That-Is is made out of it. Become convinced in
this experiential logic.

Can Anything Block Existence? – An Inquiry

Look at your direct experience of this moment… Now. And then ask
yourself:

Has anything ever stopped Existence from existing?

Can anything prevent your Presence from being present?

Will anything that may show up as an expression of Presence-

Consciousness ever truly block Presence-Consciousness?

Does (your) existence—even for a second—stop existing because of

something that arises within your experience of life, whether it is a
thought, emotion, feeling, person, or circumstance? Do any of these
occurrences stop existence from existing?

Does anything stop or block your beingness?

Does anything prevent you from being?

These are some of the ways in which you can inquire into the
unobscurable nature of Presence. Choose the line of sight (point of view)
that resonates most for you.

If your answer to any of these “Can anything block Existence?”

questions is “yes,” that’s okay, but please recognize that it’s like saying a
wave in the ocean is preventing the water from being wet. It’s like saying
that an area of space within space is taking up too much space for space
to be spacious in…

58
 It’s like saying a wall in front of your face is preventing your eyes
from seeing…

The Benefits of “Already”

So how does the fact that Presence-Consciousness is already present

benefit you?

Already means that you do not have to meet any requirements or

conditions in order to be as you are: you are already perfect, whole, and
complete.

Already means that nothing can ever take your fundamental well-
being away.

Already means that your natural state is effortless and obvious, and
you can tune into it, regardless of what’s going on in your life.

Already means that Self-Realization is in essence easy, accessible,

and doesn’t require any change or adjustment in your personality,
character, circumstance, thinking, or lifestyle—other than the desire to
realize it.

Already implies that it exists before you think about it.

Already implies that your changeless perfection exists before you

created the idea of it being obscured.

Already implies that you can let go of striving and rest back into
what’s already here.

Already means you can finally forgive yourself.

Already means you can feel safe and supported by the Presence of
All-That-Is, of which you are, already, inseparable.

59
 Already points to the simple truth that Divine Presence existed
before any path, religion, practice, or obstacle toward it was created.

Already suggests that every being basks equally in the truth of

Existence.

Already shows that no one owns the truth; we’re all a living
expression of it.

Already is another word for before, prior to, or free from.

Already means that Presence-Consciousness can be realized without

meditating for years, removing your ego and sin, working out your karmic
debt first, eliminating thoughts, or surrendering your will to a special
deity.

Already means that your essential purity has remained untouched

and unaffected by the stream of experiences that you call “my life” and
is ever accessible, no matter what.

Even Obstacles Are Presence-Confirming

Your ability to believe that Presence requires certain conditions to

be met is itself derived from Presence-Consciousness-Energy.

You are able to deny or confirm Presence—and everything about it—

only because Presence-Intelligence gives you that ability.

Presence was already here, obvious, and effortlessly present, long

before you imagined the obstacles to it into existence.

See? “You imagined the obstacles into existence.”

How could you have imagined obstacles into existence, if existence

wasn’t already there for you to imagine the obstacles into?

60
 And what do you think imagination, and the obstacles it can
project, owe their existence to? Exactly—the only thing in existence:
Existence.

See? “Obstacles are Presence, too.”

So, the next time a limiting belief comes up for you, instead of
buying into it, see that it consists of unobscurable Presence, as well.
Anytime you catch yourself inventing a reason why Presence has not yet
been realized, simply remember that that thought is just another
appearance made out of perfectly-present Presence-Energy.

Realize this, and feel the untouchable freedom of it, the simple
truth of it, and the liberation from conditions it offers.

Presence-Consciousness is already here; it’s as obvious as the fact

that you are, and just as easy to recognize.

Obstacles, as such, can be opportunities for greater recognition:

you start to see imagined obstacles (limiting beliefs) when they arise as
presence-confirming and presence-enhancing—no longer believing them
to be presence-distracting.

Now, go out there and familiarize yourself with the truth that
cannot be obscured! You can even start to fall in love with it.

(COMMENT: His suggestion here is so true. I would even say you

need to love it, adore it, accept it, and play with it. This will lead to a
real explosion of higher sentience, love, and openness within you.)

61
 Homework

1) Read this lesson’s text at least two more times (or as often as
you like) in a meditative, contemplative fashion, before you start the
next lesson. Let the words in this lesson, which point to the directness,
the obviousness, the simplicity, the effortlessness, and the unobscurable
nature of existence, guide your attention to realize these truths.

Study each sentence in this lesson, no matter how repetitive it

seems, to realize the same presence from all these slightly different
points of view.

2) Actively go out into the world, into your mind, into your
emotions and see if you can find an obstacle to presence. In other words:
Explore your everyday life in between this and the next, with an
extremely curious attitude toward it, and see if there is anything that
appears that is truly preventing you from Being Presence, and if there is
anything that truly disables you from being able to choose to relax into
the vastness of Being. Feel free to use the questions provided in the
inquiry in this lesson, as a way to train yourself to ask the right type of
questions to come to greater conviction in Presence being Always and
Already here.

3) Apply the momentary relaxation exercise often and on a

consistent basis. By now this should start to become a natural and obvious
choice for you throughout everyday experiences and “challenges.”

The point of this delay is to give you enough time to fully integrate
the concepts and practices introduced in each lesson. Of course, feel free
to take as long as you need.

In fact, we recommend that you feel good about the material

already made available to you before proceeding. In the meantime, feel
free to discuss, interact, or ask questions in the Forum of whichever you
are
62
 Everything Confirms Existence
If proof of Presence is what you want, seek no further than to
look closely at your every single experience: because every moment’s
very ability to appear to you, confirms the crystal clear existence of
an all-pervasive Presence: You. Without Presence, no experience
could arise. Experience, therefore, implies—proves—Presence. Now,
experience happens all the time, so proof of Presence is always
present. When you get this, the direct teacher of Presence is always
with you.

This will show you how to utilize your every experience as a mirror
for deepening your Self-Realization effortlessly.

Table of Contents

1 Flipping The Card of Experience

2 The Benefits

3 The “Jewelry Store” Analogy

3.1 Save Yourself Years of Seeking

3.2 Homework

Flipping The Card of Experience

Just as there are two sides to a playing card, so too, there are two
sides to every experience that appears within Presence-Consciousness.

One side of the playing card has a story to tell that is unique from
every other card in the deck. It has a picture on it, a number, a label, a
form, and a shape that all tell its story. It has a unique frequency that
identifies its individuality, its uniqueness.

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 The other side of the card shows you only one picture and it is the
same picture regardless of which card you draw. This is the non-story side
of each card; it shows you the same truth over and over again.

Likewise, one side of any experience is the story-side of that

experience—it shows you the labels you and others have given it. It shows
you the thoughts, the names, the associations, and the ideas or feelings
about what’s arising. The story-side of each experience is utterly unique
and different from every other experience in the deck of creation.

Now flip that experience over, so to speak, as you would a card,

and recognize that the existence-confirming side of that same experience
shows you only one thing: the fact that the experience exists.

Just like the backside of every card in a deck shows a flowery red
pattern (for example), the backside of each and every experience has this
written all over it: “I exist, you exist, existence exists.”

If an experience can arise, it must have presence; it must exist.

Read between the lines—see past or beyond the stories—and you’ll

see that the essence of any experience is nothing but Presence
confirming its own existence (as well as yours).

We read books, meditate for ages, chant mantras, and offer

ceremonies to the gods, all to experience more directly this divine,
brilliant Presence-Clarity that we already are.

While that is all fine and dandy, why not take the direct route first,
and stop searching elsewhere for what is staring you directly in the face
over and over again?

64
 Learn to flip over any experience, no matter what its story-side
suggests, and see it from the other perspective. Emphasize to yourself
that the presence of any experience tells you the same truth over and
over again: “I exist. I appear to you, so you exist, too. We both exist as
part of this singular Existence.”

We must be blind to never have noticed! This existence-

confirmation process—the opportunity for life to wake up to its own
existence—is happening every nano-second, with every change, or no-
change, in your experience.

The man who sees me in everything and everything within me

will not be lost to me, nor will I ever be lost to him.

He who is rooted in oneness realizes that I am in every being;

wherever he goes, he remains in me.

When he sees all being as equal in suffering or in joy because

they are like himself, that man has grown perfect in yoga.

Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita

While you read this paragraph, Presence-Consciousness is being

confirmed, reflected to you—and therefore to itself, since you’re not
separate from existence—billions of times!

So, instead of emphasizing the story-side of any experience, learn

to appreciate that same experience from its Presence-confirming side.

It is all about a shift in focus. Where you place your attention—what

you emphasize—is what you will notice most.

The Benefits

65
 When you train yourself to emphasize the Presence-confirming side
of an experience, rather than its suggested story or meaning, you start to
experience greater and deeper ease in the midst of every experience.

For example, the story-side of you sitting in a field of flowers on a

sunny day might suggest that life is beautiful, and as a result, you will
feel ease and joy. The experience of someone then throwing a rock at
your head, while you’re sitting in the field of flowers, might suggest that
something unpleasant is happening, and you might feel uneasy and
anxious. But all the while, the beautiful flowers, as well as the rock
headed your way, are pure Presence confirming this moment.

When you learn to soften your stories by emphasizing the Presence

within them, you start to transcend your own definitions of “good and
bad” or “ease versus unease,” and a stable sense of well-being begins to
emerge and take up residence in the heart of your being—always
available. You stop taking life so seriously and you start feeling freer,
lighter, and in general, much happier and more empowered, because you
know the truth of your being.

Emphasizing Presence, instead of seeing only stories and

definitions, is somewhat similar to exercise of seeing the Is-ness of an
object, rather than the label you’ve learned to apply to it. The subtle
difference between the “Object Has Presence” exercise and the “Flipping
Over an Experience” exercise in this lesson, is that here we place the
focus not so much on the fact that an experience has Presence, but on
the fact that every experience confirms Presence.

We do this to let go of ideas that we need anything but this moment

to confirm the already present enlightenment of (our) existence.

In this way, we move from doubt to conviction by letting the

obviousness of every-day appearances confirm the here-and-now
existence, as often as we desire to see this truth.

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 Remember: an experience’s existence and our own existence are
essentially the same Beingness. The experience is an immediate
extension of Presence-Energy, which is also what makes up your body,
your thoughts, and everything else that has form or presence.

As you know by now, everything is bathed in, and shares, the same
sphere/field/body of Presence-Energy, infused with intelligence—or
Consciousness.

The beauty of utilizing everyday experiences as a teacher

(confirmer) of Presence (or Awareness!), is the fact that experiences
occur all the time. In other words, you’re never even an inch removed
from your next instruction, your next confirmation of Presence-
Consciousness, your next enlightening moment.

If discovering your eternal, all-pervasive, unchanging nature is what

you’re after, you’re never without a teacher. Your every moment, your
every experience, can become a mirror convincing you ever more deeply
that you are present; that Presence is present.

Soon enough (or even right now) you realize with great confidence
that Existence continues to exist—no matter what arises in the field of
Consciousness—and that all appearances (experiences) are bathed in, and
made of, Presence-Energy.

(Comment: This is sheer brilliance of experiential sequences he

provides, cumulatively resulting in reaffirming, but in a more
experiential way, rather than an abstract way as per Ramana or
Nisargadatta, or me for that matter, that Everything is
Consciousness.)

67
 The “Jewelry Store” Analogy
Imagine yourself stopping in front of a jewelry store window.
Mesmerized by the jewelry on display on the other side of the glass, you
marvel at the form, shape, size, color, material, name, price tag, and
design of the necklaces and bracelets that you see.

You are mesmerized by form and name, by label and thought. You
are automatically emphasizing the story-side of that experience.

Suddenly, a pigeon flies by, about a foot behind your head, at 45

miles per hour (pigeon’s are fast). You hear the swooshing sound and feel
its wind trail hit your head. At the same time, you were also shocked
awake by the sudden flash that you saw in the reflection in the jewelry
store’s window, of this pigeon flying by your head.

At that moment, you are snapped out of the story-dream of the

price tag of the jewelry displayed behind the glass, and you become self-
aware once again. You remember that you are in a city, in front of a
jewelry store, and that you have a body.

This time when you stare into the jewelry store window, you see
your own reflection in the glass, rather than the necklaces and bracelets
behind it.

Both the jewelry behind the glass, as well as your body’s reflection
in it, co-exist within the same space, within the same line of sight, but
you can choose to focus more on one, or the other.

As soon as you emphasize the jewelry’s sparkle and price tag, you
lose sight of your reflection in the window. As soon as you emphasize your
body being reflected in the window, you lose sight of what’s behind the
glass.

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 Whatever you emphasize becomes your experience; everything else
disappears from view—from your consciousness.

This analogy helps us see that every single experience works exactly
like that: we can either be mesmerized by the form, shape, size, and
labels we have learned to see our experiences through, or we can notice
that the presence of the experience reflects our true and changeless
existence.

When you apply this analogy to your own experience, you can see
that within the space of an experience arising, you can either see
(emphasize) the experience, or you can choose to see (emphasize) that
its very presence confirms Presence-Consciousness.

Arguably, this is the most immediate and profound way to free

yourself from needing constant confirmation and reminders by books and
teachers: to develop the habit of looking at your immediate surroundings
and using the ever-present nature of experience itself as a way to
confirm and convince yourself of what’s obviously true—that you always
are.

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 Save Yourself Years of Seeking

The above exercise—when applied—becomes a handy short-cut to

conviction, bypassing years that would have otherwise been spent in
unnecessary cycles of seeking confirmation of what’s already naturally
the case.

Indeed, this almost overly simple exercise—when applied—can

eliminate years, even decades, of vague instruction, books, trips to India,
the search for teachers, and other external confirmations of what you
already are, and replace them with just a few days, or even minutes, of
your time enjoying the magic of your already present Greater Self.

You deserve direct tools. They exist, so why not use them and
discard the dreadfully slow tools, cloaked in mystery and ceremony?

(COMMENT: So true, but realize that Massaro has led you down
this experiential and defined route, and that there will always be
steps backwards. However, its brilliance and clarity as a teaching
cannot be denied.)

Unless you absolutely insist on not loving yourself—which you are

free to do—I see no reason why you should not bypass the lengthy, windy,
vague spiritual paths offered to you by unsatisfying and confused
teachings and lineages that are reluctant, or unable, to reinvent
themselves.

(Comment: This is so true. Massaro is utterly clear in offering

his ontology, far more so than Robert or Ramana, who never
explained baby steps realizations because they lacked the step by
step baby steps of explanation and exercises. But, Massaro’s logic is
loose in many areas as show before, and there are alternative
explanations for everything he offers to now, as when he adds
Nothingness to the mix later as a result of reading Nisargadatta.)
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 With all due respect—this should be only about two things: you and
what actually works.

So, take what works best for you, focus on what’s obvious and
immediate, leave out what feels unnecessary or redundant, and carve out
your own direct path with the highest degree of joy and conviction
possible for you.

Homework

Read this lesson’s text at least once more before continuing with
this course.

Practice flipping over the card of experiences, by shifting your

emphasis (focus) from the form and story of the experience to the very
fact that the experience appears to you, and see that it thereby
effortlessly confirms your existence, over and over again.

Apply this way of seeing to your everyday life. Apply it genuinely—

take your time with it until you see/feel its truth and wisdom. Do this at
least 12 times per day—but for the sake of this being fully integrated,
ideally more often than that—between now and when you decide to start
your next lesson.

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 Presence Becomes Stable – Beyond Ups and Downs

At some point in my practice of recognizing “Existence exists no

matter what happens,” I saw very clearly that every experience I had
confirmed this to be true. Every appearance of life, I realized, confirmed
its own presence, as well as my own existence as a witness to it. Seeing
experiences in this way—as being proof of existence—was a great aid in
dissolving my doubts about my ability to “maintain enlightenment.” I
stopped giving meaning to the ups and downs of recognition.

Most of you are now two to four weeks into your practice with ’s
First Course, depending on how much time you are taking to absorb and
embody the content. I’m sure, at one point or another in these past few
weeks of recognizing here-and-now Presence, you’ve created the feeling
(judgment) of “I got it, I lost it, I got it, I lost it.”

This is a common experience for many seekers of Presence, and for

some, this turns into a long struggle reinforcing the painful belief, “I
don’t have it yet” or “I haven’t achieved Enlightenment yet,” because
they still experience the ups and downs of recognition.

This is a substantial lesson, so I recommend you take your time with

it (a few days to a week). Read it over two or three times, perhaps give
yourself a bit of a break after this (but no longer than a week), and let
this (and the previous lessons) truly sink in, before continuing on with 10.

Table of Contents

1 The Ups and Downs of Recognition

1.1 We Are Meant to be Human Beings, as Well

1.2 Realign rather than Imitate

2 From Recognition to Conviction

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 3 Non-recognition is Presence-Consciousness too

3.1 The Presence Rewind Theater Exercise

3.1.1 Alternative: Presence is Present During Sleep

3.2 Profound Discovery

The Ups and Downs of Recognition

On, off, on, off, on, off…

Clarity, unconsciousness, clarity, unconsciousness, clarity,

unconsciousness…

Joy, struggle, joy, struggle, joy, struggle…

I feel free, I feel stuck, I feel free, I feel stuck, I feel free, I feel
stuck…

Enlightenment, ego, enlightenment, ego, enlightenment, ego…

I responded like a saint, I reacted like a child, I responded like a

saint, I reacted like a child, I responded like a saint, I reacted like a
child…

I know that I AM, I forgot that I AM, I know that I AM, I forgot that I
AM, I know that I AM, I forgot that I AM…

Do any of the above examples feel familiar to you?

For many people, this can turn into a vicious cycle of self-judgment,
from which they hope to escape by becoming permanently rooted in the
recognition of Presence-Consciousness—by being in a suspended state of
pure meditation forever, where no distraction ever grabs their attention
again.

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 This is not the way the cycle of doubt tends to end, because, quite
frankly, it’s not relevant or possible for most people to experience
Presence-Consciousness consciously 24/7. I don’t.

The good news is—once you see it this way—Presence doesn’t

need to be experienced consciously all the time.

“Say what!??”

In fact, Presence-Consciousness doesn’t need for you to do anything

at all; it is perfectly enlightened already, by and as itself, since it already
has permanent self-awareness on its own level of Awareness. It doesn’t
need you to be enlightened as well.

It’s important to realize that 24/7 (permanent, constant)

conscious recognition of Presence-Consciousness is not the goal, nor is
it a hallmark of “finally having achieved Enlightenment.” If you’ve
been thinking that this is the way to transcend the ups and downs of
recognition, you’ve probably only created more tension and stress for
yourself.

In fact, in some ways the desire for permanent Enlightenment is

kind of an arrogant, ignorant, juvenile attempt at “becoming a better
person.” It’s a form of spiritual vanity that fails to appreciate the
wisdom of natural momentum, rhythmic expression, ups and downs (or
peaks and valleys), natural and helpful mistakes (lessons), and it
misses one of the wisest, most mature of appreciations: that of
unconsciousness itself being relevant, too.

That’s right. Unconsciousness is relevant.

We Are Meant to be Human Beings, as Well

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 (COMMENT: So true, a point I have made over and over in my
teachings, and which beget Deeya Gair and my system of Devotional
Advaita. Intense love, relations, devotion, humanity are required for
the explosion of the life force within, the divine within, the
experience of love-bliss, all called the realization of the Manifest
Self described in my book Self-Realization and Other Awakenings.)

We are created (have created ourselves) as human beings, with

limited awareness of what’s going on in the rest of Existence, precisely
because we have a purpose and a task to perform.

In order to perform this task, we need to be focused on a particular

slice of All-That-Is. If we were constantly in an expanded state of
Consciousness, we would actually be unable to fulfill our highest desire:
to express Infinity in a specific way, in a way that it hasn’t before
expressed itself—to build a new relationship from the One Creator to its
Creation.

(Comment: Another way of expressing this is a felt need to

experience and express our realization of Self and God as our
destiny.)

Can you imagine if all the employees in a company stopped being

focused on their specific slice of what needs to be done, and they all sat
back, pretending to be the CEO? The company would collapse; it wouldn’t
function effectively, if at all. It wouldn’t invent anything new or expand
upon the organization’s intended purpose.

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 In any organization—and Creation is most intelligently that—it is
relevant for certain levels of the organization to not be constantly aware
of other levels of the organization, and what goes on up there. Sure,
there are regular meetings being held, within which certain parts of the
organization come in contact with and transmit information to other
portions of the whole, but then it is time to take that re-alignment and
use it to focus more effectively at the designated task at hand.

There are individual employees in every department, office, and

cubicle, each with a task specific to their line of focus, their field of
consciousness and expertise.

That doesn’t mean that each of these people cannot know and feel
in their hearts that they are an inseparable, valuable, crucial part of the
overall company or organization; it simply means they don’t need to
know everything all the time, and they don’t need to see as the CEO sees
all the time, either. The organization already has a CEO. It wouldn’t be
effective if the office clerk tried to be the CEO.

Following that analogy, because our purpose as individual humans is

to express in new, unique, and highly specific ways, it is not relevant for
our “person-in-the-world” consciousness to be permanently abandoned
for the sake of remaining “stuck” in an expanded recognition of
Presence-Consciousness/Awareness, let alone being absorbed in the
Absolute—beyond experiencing.

(Comment: the word analogy is the author’s story. Its purpose

is to allow you to relax a bit and not chew too hard. But don’t take
the story literally as that you don’t have to do anything. The author
loves to tell stories to make people feel better. This is exactly why
Robert Adams told stories: to make people feel better and to
gradually find their way.)

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 We are not—as humans—designed for constant conscious
recognition; that is not necessarily the intention and desire with which
most of us gave birth to ourselves in form.

(Comment: This means you don’t have to emulate the silent

Ramana. You are free to be your own person on your own path.
Don’t take Ramana or anyone else as the be and end all of
spirituality.)

You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor
should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man
established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in
success and defeat.

Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita

To some extent, true wisdom involves honoring the higher purpose

for which we created what we have created, even if we don’t fully
understand the why or how of our own creations. If “to remain as the
Absolute” was truly the intention behind our creation, we would not have
been created as human beings with a body-mind. Our consciousness
would have remained purely non-physical, or even unmanifest altogether.

Presence-Consciousness is already aware of itself, at all times, on

its own level.

The Absolute is already the Absolute. Infinity is already infinite.

Pure intelligence—which is you from a higher level—created the

“you” everybody knows and perceives, as the body-mind-consciousness
expression of the overall greater Consciousness for a purpose.

(Comment: Just another nice story. Hindu theology.)

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 You have a world—made of Presence-Energy—at your command,
available for you to learn from, benefit from, give back to, and shape, in
accordance with your heart’s inspired desire to express infinity in specific
ways unique to your self-created individual expression of the whole.

The deepest you is already aware of all of itself all the time. So
you—as a human-focused consciousness—don’t need to strive to attain
perfect, constant awareness of yourself at that highest level. That
level already has its own perfect Self-Awareness.

Higher Consciousness is doing its job and being itself at its level,
while you are doing your job by being yourself at your level, and both co-
exist inseparably from the totality of The One’s expression.

(Comment: This is true, but unless you experience the Godhead

directly, as the divine energy, love, and bliss of the life force, or
Holy Ghost, whatever you want to call it, you have missed out. It
does not have to be continuous, but it hast to have been an explosive
enough experience such that it is always present when you look for it
within yourself.)

One can become more aware of the other, but each level has its
own relevancy. This has to be appreciated if you wish to attain stable
peace.

Once you fully realize this, a deep appreciation for creation on all
of its levels, and a great wisdom and peace in general, descend upon your
state of being. And you are relieved of a burden: that vain and immature-
but-cute seeker in you—that seeker who always judges itself, based on
the idea that it needs to become better, or more enlightened, or
maintain a certain expanded experience of Consciousness, in order to be
worthy of existing as he or she is. or in order to feel/be enlightened.

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 You don’t need to become “better.” The best way to fulfill your
specific job description as a human, is to be who you naturally are, with
the greatest degree of self-love and appreciation for the purpose that
made you you.

It is important to recognize this truth—that each level has its own

relevancy—and feel the permission from that to relax and take expanded
awareness as it comes, while also appreciating your human-focused
consciousness, as it is an essential part of expressing the Infinite in new
ways.

You are important on all levels of your being.

(Comment: These words are to give you relief from feeling a

failure at any time or anywhere, including self-realization. This is a
most important teaching. Even after realizing the existence of the
Absolute, you realize you can never know the Absolute, you can only
be the Absolute, and when you are the Absolute, what you experience
is Consciousness from your POV as a human in the world.)

Realign rather than Imitate

It’s simply about realigning with these higher truths, rediscovering

them—ideally becoming convinced of them—and in this way, cleansing
your vision from seeing separation, limitation, and conflict, and instead,
seeing infinite potential, unity, and natural perfection.

It is not about trying to imitate the non-dual states of

Consciousness, it is about re-aligning yourself with their truths.

In so doing, you will better execute your unique purpose in a

harmonious, accelerated fashion and be attuned to your Greater Self with
ever more joy, while you continue to be its executing force in
manifestation.

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 Presence-Consciousness—or any “higher” level of Reality—doesn’t
need us to recognize it 24/7 in order for it to know itself on its own level.
So relax.

You are not responsible for the enlightenment of Consciousness; you

are responsible for your own awakening to what is always already here,
and to henceforth express yourself as freely, boldly, clearly and
passionately as it excites you to.

Periodically—or as often as you are inspired to—recognize that you

and your actions are inseparable from All-That-Is; that you are that
higher Consciousness, as well as the human expression through which you
have chosen to express Infinity.

You are simply to wake up, and in doing so, rid yourself of fears at an
exponential rate, cleanse your vision, and be ever more awesome at
simply being yourself with love and joy. If you go about it in this way, I
promise you that your consciousness’ enlightenment deepens naturally.

BTW, purpose is not something we can fail at. Even if you were to
simply live your life in total ignorance of anything awake, spiritual, or
inspirational, you would still add to the expansion of Creation in a unique
way, carve out a new path, build new relationships with Creation, and
thus celebrate the infinite options of The One to express Itself. You
always succeed. What is up to you is how you succeed, and how inspired
and awe-filled that journey will be for you.

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 You will find much more explanation and a variety of tools on the
topic of purpose, life themes, and how to be in alignment with your true
joy, in the courses under the Empowerment teaching. For now, I just
want you to realize that constant 24/7 recognition of Presence-
Consciousness is not the goal, nor is it relevant or desired by your “Higher
Self” to be in a space of conscious preoccupation with Presence all the
time.

Now that you have heard me say that permanent recognition is

(usually) not relevant, let’s relieve you of self-judgment regarding the
ups and downs of recognition. Let’s end this potential struggle right now,
whether it has come up for you yet or not, by realizing that even non-
recognition of Presence-Consciousness IS Presence-Consciousness. You can
therefore safely stop worrying about it.

From Recognition to Conviction

Before we continue with the realization that even non-recognition

of Presence rests in and as Presence, I want to share some information
with you in advance, so you know where this course is leading you: it’s
leading you to Conviction.

More than recognizing Presence-Consciousness, what is important is

truly knowing that it’s all there is, and that it’s what you—at a deeper
level of your being—actually are, 24/7, whether you recognize it or not.

Initially, recognition is the sure way to realization of Presence-

Consciousness, but slightly later on—possibly right around now, although
it may still be somewhat early on in the process—after you’ve come to
more fully recognize Presence-Consciousness and its obvious truths
(qualities), the operative factor naturally shifts from recognition to
confidence, or conviction.

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 So, even though recognition will always remain an incredibly
valuable tool, one that you can always rely on, you will start to see
how your expansion process is more about becoming convinced of
Presence-Consciousness and its essential truths and qualities of being,
than it is about recognizing it all the time.

(Comment: This is true.)

Gravity Analogy: Do you recognize gravity, consciously, a lot these

days, when you’re trying to get up from the couch and walk over to the
kitchen? Or do you just get up and go there effortlessly, without the need
to consciously think about, or recognize, the existence of gravity? I’m
assuming you just get up and walk over to the kitchen without
contemplating gravity, correct?

On the other hand, when you were just getting the hang of learning
how to crawl and walk, you were very conscious of the presence of
gravity. Maybe not the word “gravity,” or the intellectual understanding
of it, but you were instinctually contemplating its felt force on your body.

You had to recognize its truth—that it pulls you to the ground over
and over again—and work with it, become familiar with its qualities in
order to become convinced of its presence, its truths. And then after
some practice, walking became a natural ability that required no further
reflecting on gravity.

You have become convinced of gravity. You have become utterly

familiar with it. This is what we want to achieve with Presence-
Consciousness, as well.

We want the realization of your first nature to become second

nature.

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 Recognition and/or meditation are the tools that propel us to the
point of becoming utterly familiar with Presence-Consciousness, its
truths, and its qualities of being: always already here, free, present,
alive, conscious, stable, peaceful, undisturbed, the essence of all forms,
and so on.

Once we are familiar with the fact that Presence-Consciousness

exists, and once we know that it innately exhibits all these qualities
effortlessly—these fundamental truths of creation—we don’t need to
emphasize the recognition-aspect as much anymore.

Consciously generated recognition might still be relevant

sometimes, and it certainly does continue to clarify our understanding of
Presence-Consciousness, since truly there is no end to the familiarization
process, but it becomes less crucial and slightly less relevant to your
experience and purpose as a being of Creation.

At that point, past the threshold of needing it to become more

known to you, it is simply super enjoyable to relax into the ever-clearer
and more brilliant recognition of the beingness that’s already alive, here
and now, peaceful, satisfied, soothing, awake…

But you won’t need the recognition anymore to know that you are
okay, no matter what happens. You won’t need the recognition
anymore—in most scenarios—to enhance your well-being, although you
may need it in certain intense moments when doubts regarding your
eternal well-being may still arise.

In these isolated cases, you can once again simply recognize what’s
true and distinguish that from what’s imagined, and find even deeper
conviction. Perfect! But for everyday enjoyment and confidence in your
freedom and stability, recognition becomes more effortless, more
integrated, more automatic, more natural and less crucial, albeit totally
available for you to tap into at will.

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 Recognition also becomes less stressed, because it develops into a
more organic part of your everyday sense of Self. This is because your
base-identity (where you place your sense of self) starts to shift from
Person-World-Consciousness to Presence-Consciousness, and as a result,
you begin to perceive more from Presence than you perceive from the
point of view of being a person.

Note: At this early stage in your familiarization process, many of

you may still find recognition to be crucial, and by all means, I encourage
you to follow that instinct. I just want you to be aware of the fact that
permanent recognition is not the point; natural conviction is. Recognition
is a means to an end, not the end in itself. It is the means to knowing
what is true, instead of doubting or wondering. Once you truly know
something, once it is obvious to you, the means that were used to come
to this knowingness are exhausted; they are no longer crucial or relevant.

When you have this conviction—and no longer need recognition—this

leaves you open to move on to different realizations, such as the even
subtler enlightenment of waking up to Awareness and its fundamental
truths and qualities of being.

Or, after having embodied this course and being ever more
convinced of the greater Presence-Consciousness you always already are—
less fooled by the idea that you are the person you create yourself to be—
you might choose to go more fearlessly into exploring the bliss of your
individual alignment. You will do this with less, or even no attachment to
outcome—simply being passionate for the sake of the activity itself, for
the sake of being an expression of Presence-Consciousness, for the sake
of knowing that, by following your bliss, you are accelerating your
purpose of being an agent of Creation’s expansion to express the ever-
unknowable, infinite nature of The One.

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 Before you can authentically go beyond the need for recognition,
you first need to realize that even non-recognition of Presence is held in
loving Presence.

Remember: Anything you can possibly be searching for is Always

Already Here.

(Comment: Where did this story come from? How does he

convince anyone just be stating it as truth?)

Non-recognition is Presence-Consciousness too

The Presence Rewind Theater Exercise

This exercise is similar to the exercise where you took a trip back to
different points in your physical life, remembering yourself at different
ages and in different periods of your evolution, and recognized that
throughout all those physical and psychological changes—something never
changed.

(Comment: This is because you are always in the feeling present

while imagining past experiences, so naturally you will feel the same
presence in that past experience (memory of). This is not the best
way to proceed. I suggest the alternative of digging deeper, dive
deeper into one’s inner emptiness, or to fall backwards into non-
being, or to turn around and look at the looker.)

The Presence Rewind Theater exercise is not so much about

realizing the changelessness of Presence, but rather the fact that it is as
present as ever, even when we are not aware of it.

Let’s begin.

Pick a memory in which you judged yourself to be unconscious of

Presence-Consciousness; a moment when you felt you were not awake to
Existence.
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 Or, it could be a moment in which you judged yourself to be acting
unconsciously, on automatic pilot, out of old habits, or in any other way
that you do not feel good or “enlightened” about.

Now, I want you to close your eyes and bring your consciousness
back to that moment. If it helps, you can imagine your present self in a
big movie theater, seeing that “unconscious memory” projected vividly
onto the screen, and you have the remote control in your hand. You can
fast forward, pause, rewind, and replay at will. You can even change the
camera angle, if you want to.

Replay that scene however you wish. Perhaps start with how you
originally remember that moment, from the first-person perspective (the
perspective of being a consciousness inside of your head, looking out of
your eyes, seeing your hands move, witnessing your thoughts, and so on).

See every detail in that moment, even if some of it seems

“imagined” and not accurately remembered. It doesn’t matter. Just be
there again, in that moment you labeled as “unconscious,” or a moment
of non-recognition, of “not being aware enough.”

Go on, have fun…

Now, as you’re clearly sensing into that memory, rewind it and go

through it again, but this time, place the emphasis on the fact that you
were there at the time of the event… that you existed, that you were
present at that time.

Recognize how something deeper in you was aware of your

personal-consciousness. Even though your brain-consciousness, if you will,
was not aware of Presence, Presence was somehow aware of you!
Presence-Consciousness, your deeper Self, was totally and completely
there.

Alternative: Presence is Present During Sleep

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 You can even apply this exercise to your (often vague) memory of
being asleep, and you can sense that, even when you are dreaming, this
changeless Presence-Consciousness is there.

Even in your vaguest memory of deep sleep, of nothingness, there is

still some profound, super subtle quality of knowingness present—
Beingness/Awareness is still registering the presence of no-thing. After
all, you recognize upon waking that you have been in deep sleep, and you
can even say whether or not you “had a good sleep.”

This is possible because the fundamental presence of your being is

still existent, still present, even when you are dreaming and sleeping.

Back to the exercise. Replay that memory of “unconsciousness” and

emphasize the details.

Remember (or imagine) your hand movements, the other person’s

face, what you felt or thought or feared in that moment. Perhaps you felt
uncomfortable or somewhat avoidant. Recall who else was around you,
what was going on in addition to you, and so on.

Rewind.

Play the whole scene again, but now emphasize that you were fully
conscious of that moment, that the basic sense of Being was present at
the core of your experience of that moment. That which never changes
was there, even when you didn’t pay it any attention.

Look even further. As the rewind reveals another layer of

awareness, see how you were even fully aware that you were acting and
thinking in unconscious, automatic ways!

Presence-Consciousness was effortlessly and inescapably present

and conscious!

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 Profound Discovery

Unconsciousness is an experience held in, and registered by,

Presence-Consciousness. Even unconsciousness is (an expression of)
Presence-Consciousness!

Let this exercise convince—or overthrow—your doubtful mind by

confirming to yourself over and over again, that there is truly no escaping
the already-present nature of Presence-Consciousness. Your freedom,
your natural state, is absolutely invincible.

Give yourself permission to stop beating yourself up about the ups

and downs of recognition, realizing that it is all an expression of
Presence-Consciousness anyway, even unconsciousness is already perfect.

You see, non-recognition is itself a moment, an experience, still

held by Presence. Non-recognition has only one substance: Presence-
Energy.

After all, how else would you know that “you were unconscious?”

Every moment – no matter what it contains – is safe, supported,

embraced, pervaded by, and already inseparable from Presence-
Beingness-Consciousness. There is simply no escaping the fact that you
are always already awake. Always already present.

There is nothing you can do, or not do—including the act of

recognition or non-recognition—to change Presence-Consciousness from
already being here, now, always and forever.

Let this sink in deeply.

Let this recognition turn into a natural, unshakeable, obvious

conviction.

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 You cannot stop being here, now. Realize this now. Be convinced of
it. Let go of doubt. Embrace the obvious truth of Existence existing
effortlessly. It is a given, not a choice.

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 There is Only Now
The only kind of time that deserves your attention is the fact that
it’s time for you to come Home, now. To come into your true Self and
rest in what’s already here, Now.

You will discover another major truth about Presence-

Consciousness—the fact that there is only ever Now.

As a bonus, this truth will help you spot some of the misperceptions
of “you-as-a-person-trying-to-become-enlightened.”

The clearer you see the shenanigans associated with the idea that
you are a separate, un-enlightened person, the more naturally you will
strengthen your association with that which transcends the person:
Already-Enlightened-Presence-Consciousness.

Table of Contents

1 Perfect, Pervasive I-AM

1.1 This Worry-Free Moment

1.2 “The Now” Sounds Familiar—Are You Teaching Mindfulness?

1.3 No self-judgmental delusions allowed

2 True Conviction

2.1 How?

3 “When Do Past and Future Occur?”

4 The Now Detector Test

4.1 Homework

4.2 Got a question, or just want to share? Discuss this in the forums!

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 Perfect, Pervasive I-AM

The idea that future and past exist as real realities, independent of
the all-embracing Now, is one of the core perceptions that generates and
perpetuates the sense “I am a person inside of a world of time and
space.”

To realize the truth of Now is to cut off the power supply to the
unhealthy identification with the person and its endless string of petty-
minded, unoriginal, conditioned concerns regarding past and future.

What remains is freedom.

How much remains of the sense “I am a person inside of a world of

time and space” when, for just a moment, say a half minute or more, you
tune into the actual presence of the here-and-now moment—and refrain
from thinking about a past or future?

Just tune into now—here, now…

Do you see how the sense “I am a person inside of a world”

disappears—for at least the duration of your moment of non-engagement
in thought?

The Now is free from the illusions of time, as projected by your

mind. You cannot think about the true Now; you already are Now. You
can only observe and recognize that this is true: that you are (the) Now.

The true Now—Presence-Consciousness—can only be recognized, as

already here, inescapably so.

This Worry-Free Moment

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 The person in us is trained to perceive time as a real and linear
thing. It regrets or enjoys things that it says happened in the past; it is
worried or excited about things it projects into the future. But before the
dream-illusion-energy of time can be utilized joyfully and creatively, we
must first realize that we’ve never left the Now, and we never will. We
must let that realization settle us into our Presence-Self and have it
absorb the majority of our delusion—that there is a past and future to be
concerned with at all.

So, right now… Relax and give up your choice to see life through the
projector-tunnel of thoughts for a half minute or more, and recognize the
effortless Now-Presence that is here.

Feel it? I AMness…

Existence exists… Isness is… Presence is present… Here and Now.

Alive. Free. Conscious. Awake. Aware.

Now, can you see how there is an innate absence of the ability to
worry about the future when you’re sufficiently tuned into the Now that’s
already here?

Can you see how suddenly your personal concerns take a back seat,
and a sense of trust comes into your experience naturally? A sense of ease
is here.

When you clearly recognize the Now-moment, an absence of

referencing things outside of this moment—outside of you—arises. With
this absence of referencing external things, a relaxation sets in that takes
a load off of your chest and shoulders. You can breathe easier, your body
relaxes, and your mental tendencies start to become transparent, less
dominant, less controlling.

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 Have you noticed that the Now is naturally at ease? That’s because
the Now doesn’t know any time, and it doesn’t know any lack, anger,
threat, or any other reason why it should be concerned.

And neither will you. You are about to become more convinced of
Now and see as Now sees.

“The Now” Sounds Familiar—Are You Teaching Mindfulness?

No.

A very important distinction to make between what I share and

what you may have picked up from mindfulness teachings or other
popular works regarding the Now, is that, in the Now is pointed to as
always already here—without exception—and is therefore innately free of
needing any special means to recognize it, nor does it need to be
maintained.

There are subtle but crucial differences. Once you fully get those
differences, you can never truly go back to your old conscious-presence
practices (if you had any) without seeing more clearly into the nature of
freedom and feeling at least somewhat liberated from your perceived
need to “be mindful.”

Our aim is not to imitate the truth by trying hard to be-here-now

when the Now is already here.

Our aim is much simpler than that: to repeatedly notice—even if

just for a half minute or more—that Now is always already perfectly
fulfilled, achieved and inescapably present, until this truth sinks into the
very root of our being and is as naturally known to our consciousness as
breathing is performed by our bodies.

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 Most mindfulness (and the like) practitioners and teachers I’ve met,
emphasize the need to remain in the present moment, as if there is a
possible alternative.

Now, I’m not saying that by keeping one’s attention fixed on the
“now-sense,” one cannot deepen one’s recognition and conviction of the
fact that it’s always already here, unobscurable, and all-inclusive. I am
simply saying that most people don’t effectively utilize these practices to
come to greater conviction—they just keep repeating the practices, as if
they are an end in themselves, and believing they have to maintain this
repetition.

People seem to continue to believe for many years (even decades)

into their practice of mindfulness and the like, that it is about imitating
the present moment with one’s conscious attention; that it is about
remaining in, or somehow maintaining, the Now and having few, if any,
thoughts anymore.

This belief and conduct leads to what I call suppression by stillness.

At best, it trains the mind to be quiet, which seems nice, but can induce
a state of pseudo-enlightenment and leave one immobilized in many
areas of life.

We don’t want a quiet mind; we want clarity bursting with

aliveness. At least I do, but I think you do too.

If anything needs to be maintained, it cannot be Life Itself, for Life

Itself cannot and does not need to be maintained by anyone. And if what
is being maintained is not Life Itself, we don’t want it because
enlightenment implies the discovery of Life Itself.

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 Now, this is not always the case, but often, what slows down the
average mindfulness practitioner in their recognition of Life Itself are
limiting notions regarding the Now, which often underlie the practice
that is suggested to them: that the Now is a thin slice of reality between
illusory slices of past and future, and that one must remain in between
the slices of past and future thoughts in order to attain the Now, in order
to reach nirvana or Enlightenment.

This limited, isolated way of seeing the Now leaves one still
believing in separation (that the Now is something other than past and
future), and thus, one will attempt to silence the mind and maintain
clarity, not recognizing that clarity is already all there is, and that the
Now includes past and future.

There is no separation and there is no escaping Now. We want to

fully realize this, otherwise we’re not liberated, we’re stuck in the
practice of having to be present and suppressing portions of our natural
spontaneity.

I made a distinction earlier regarding the difference between

“recognizing the Now” and “thinking about the Now,” only to sharpen
your ability to recognize the Now as the actual freshness of this moment.
It was not shared to reinforce the idea that you can somehow not be here
now, and that you need to retain attention on the Now, away from
thoughts permanently, or for as long as you can.

No self-judgmental delusions allowed

I don’t wish to leave any room—here in —for self-judgmental

nonsense regarding not yet being enlightened. So let me reiterate some
facts and refute this possible assumption (that you’re not yet
enlightened):

The Now is already free, always here, and all pervasive.

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 Do you see this??

Know it now more closely than you’ve ever known anything in your
life before.

Fall in love with the always and the already principles of this/your
Perfect Existence.

Whether you get it or not does not even affect this all-inclusive
Now.

The Now includes you seeing it or not seeing it, getting it or not
getting it. All states of mind are happening inside of Now, and arise by
the power of Now-Energy only.

The fact that the Now is already free, always here, and all
pervasive, means that every single thought you have, even when you’re
deeply worried about a future outcome, is an energy already rested in
the eternal Now of Presence-Consciousness.

There is presence-ease at the heart of your every anxious emotion.

Presence-ease, or Enlightenment, is the essence of everything that is.
There is perfect acceptance of whatever appears. All is allowed to appear
as part of Now.

Presence-Consciousness is always Now—whether it thinks, doesn’t

think, recognizes itself or doesn’t recognize itself, feels good or doesn’t
feel good.

Presence-Consciousness cannot escape the Now, just as you cannot

escape you. Presence-Consciousness is the Now, and the Now is Presence-
Consciousness. You have never not been Now, and you can never not be
Now.

Now is the only moment you’ve ever experienced.

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 True Conviction

Many judge themselves for not being in the here and now enough.
They judge themselves for being too occupied with past and future; too
distracted. They punish themselves internally for perhaps not meditating
enough, for not being present enough.

Well, if you really desire freedom, there is an easier solution than

to beat yourself up about your mind’s daily distractions, while hoping
that “someday you will start practicing being here and now, like a real
Buddha.”

There is a way around this need for the endless practice of being
present. There is a short-cut…

Early on in my practice of recognizing Existence, thoughts became

very transparent to me. This simply means I realized that thoughts, too,
appear in—and as part of—the Now-Energy I was searching for.

I, too, had believed there were distractions or obstacles to

becoming enlightened. I believed my thoughts were the main obstacle or
distraction, and that I had to somehow put in effort to bring my mind to a
complete stop, all the time.

The belief that my thoughts were distractions on my way to

enlightenment caused tons of internal struggle and self-criticism for me
every day. This self-imposed stress and judgment went away, or was at
least softened by 90% right away, and then later for good, when I saw
clearly that thoughts did not actually distract from the present moment;
they simply confirmed it!

So, whether or not labels, thoughts, words, ideas, etc. are

presented to me in my mind-space today, these appearances don’t fool
me into believing I’m not yet Now, not yet perfect, not yet awake,
enlightened, or present enough.

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 All they do is show me more of how present I am to perceive them,
and how present they are to be able to present themselves. I am not
“being present” all day long—in fact I couldn’t care less whether I am
present or not. I simply stopped doubting that my beingness could
potentially not be perfect already.

In other words: I don’t force myself to have a silent mind or try to

eliminate distracting thoughts except on rare occasions when I simply
resonate with being in such a space.

I can always see, with ever-expanding clarity, that all is Now,

including what I would formerly have judged to be “distractions.”
Distractions are perfect appearances reflecting Presence-Consciousness.

In short: distractions no longer distract me because I stopped

believing they are distractions. The shift from seeking enlightenment to
finding more of it every day, with ease, is as simple as understanding this
basic principle: that distractions are simply more confirmations of what
you’re looking for.

How?

By looking at the facts. Whenever you’re confused, just take a deep

breath, relax your mind, and look at the facts. Start from scratch. See
afresh.

When I look at the facts, I see irrefutably that the nature of Now is
always already present, all-inclusive, and unobscurable:

The experience of being distracted by the future is happening now.

The experience of regretting what I did several years ago is

happening now.

The thought, “Oh, I have to practice to be more here and now,” is

happening now.

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 The thought, “I am distracted from now,” is happening now.

None of the above appearances or thoughts prevent me from

recognizing that I exist here and now.

Appearances don’t have any power to obscure or distract from

anything; they are simply appearing in, and as part of, perfect Presence.

We cannot do or not do the Now, and we cannot practice being here

now—for it’s already here, now… regardless of action or no action on our
part.

Our purpose is not to be here now; we are only to recognize that we

already are, until this truth is naturally understood and our perceptions
are automatically realigned.

Seeing clearly the many truths of Now, convinced me of its all-

inclusive nature. When you are truly convinced of something, no
appearance can move you into doubt.

Note: For me, conviction is not a mere idea I believe in and then
use it to try convince the world that I’m right, or that I know the proper
God or path to follow. True conviction has nothing to do with beliefs, and
although it unlocks true passion and authenticity, it is not aggressive in
nature, nor does it feel the need to convince others.

I have nothing to prove to anyone, including myself, regarding the

nature of Presence. Natural proof has set me free from needing my
beliefs to be right.

In my case, conviction is a matter of simple and continued

observation, to the point of no longer needing to confirm or deny what’s
true and what’s not; it has become naturally obvious, beyond a shadow of
a doubt.

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 Conviction is not something I identify myself with. It’s not a stick I
hold onto tightly so I can beat other people’s sticks with my “superior
stick.” True conviction transcends vanity, belief, and claiming knowledge
of any kind. True conviction sets you free, and doesn’t leave you with the
need to hold onto some type of “truth” to make you feel safe or better
about yourself. If it did, it wouldn’t be freedom.

True conviction leaves no trace of doubt or pride; it leaves you in

ease—in natural confidence—and reveals, in an ever-expanding and ever-
humbling way, the infinite connection you have to All-That-Exists.

I am free because I allowed myself to recognize repeatedly that

Existence never stops existing, no matter what, and that this truth is
always already available for me to recognize, no matter what.

This is another way of saying that I allowed myself to recognize

repeatedly that ease, well-being, satisfaction, non-neediness,
transcendence, joy and love are always already continuous, cannot be
stopped, and are ever-available for me to sink into as deeply as I want.

I simply started paying attention to what’s always already obvious,

and I set myself free because I was more interested in freedom than in
holding onto my doubts, fears, pride, and arrogant ideas of being
unworthy of existence, love, bliss, or enlightenment.

If I ever get confused regarding the nature of Presence-

Consciousness again, I shall simply gaze at the facts and be set free once
more by natural proof.

This is what I mean by true conviction: To let Existence cleanse

your vision until you naturally see as IT sees.

If you have any remaining doubts about the already-achieved nature

of Now, then perhaps the Now Detector Test below will be your friend.

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 To let the obviousness of Existence cleanse your vision and
transform your doubts into natural conviction, allow me to ask you a few
questions…

“When Do Past and Future Occur?”

Answer: Now.

The above question in the title is the short version of the Now
Detector Test, explained below. Remember this question and take it with
you into everyday life.

When it comes to your doubt regarding the attainability of Now due

to the interference of past and future thoughts, the question above is an
immediate internal conversation killer.

The Now is not something in between the past and the future; it is
the only reality there is. And it is already perfect, complete, and here.

Both past and future are projections of the Now. In no time, you
will come to see that the Now is not only the only moment you will
personally ever experience, it is the only moment there is in all of
Existence.

The Now is the mother of any and all experience, space, time,
dimension, or thing. Now is time-inclusive as well as time-transcendent.

Where—or when—does the thought, and the corresponding

imaginative experience following it, occur when you say, “I am having
lunch with my friend tomorrow?”

Now, right?

Have you ever had a thought occur outside of the present moment—
even if it was about some distant moment in time and infused with
anxiety?

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 Just as you discovered that every experience confirms its own—and
your own—existence, doesn’t a thought about the future only confirm the
fact that it is appearing now?

It’s so beautiful—and almost too simple to be taken seriously—when

you realize how universally applicable and liberating this “already” way
of seeing life is.

This is the power in the word Already: it liberates your many

assumptions and lets you see as Existence sees. It is “the gift that keeps
on giving” when it comes to your Self-Realization.

You are Already perfect, complete, whole, and enlightened. Simply

notice this until you know it as fact.

The Now Detector Test

Note: This is a variation of the Truth Detector Test from 7.

Imagine a future scenario for a moment… Got it? Feel it? Really
picture it.

Now let’s examine three different ways of looking at this thought

about the future:

We could look at this “thought about the future” through its own
story-filter and be completely absorbed by whatever the story includes.
In this way of seeing, there is the experience of a lack of clarity. We
indulge in the blindness of believing in the thought.

We could then look at “the thought about the future” through the
filter of certain types of teachings, or misunderstand the Now and come
up with a judgment: “This thought takes me away from the Now; I should
still my mind and practice being more in the here and Now.”

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 But since all that we are interested in is liberation by clarity of
natural truth, let’s just look at the facts again, instead:

Question 1: When and from where is this thought about the future
arising?

Answer: Here, now.

Question 2: Could it arise anywhere else (outside of Presence-

Consciousness)?

Answer: No.

Question 3: To whom or what is this thought about the future

appearing?

Answer: To me, Presence-Consciousness.

Question 4: When is that “whom” or “what”?

Answer: I am Now.

Based on your answers in the Now Detector Test above, can you
truly believe that a thought about the future or past denies you access to
Now?

Below are some additional examples of how to look at the facts of

life, which should get you in the habit of asking yourself questions like
these whenever doubts or self-judgments arise:

Can a thought be anywhere but Now?

No(w).

Can a thought have derived its energy to exist from outside of

Presence-Energy?

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 No(w).

Is a thought about the future happening in the future?

No(w).

Is a thought about the past happening in the past?

No(w).

When you’re “lost in a future-thought,” is that happening outside of

this moment?

No(w).

Clearly, after you answer questions like these (and those in the Now
Detector Test) a few times, practicing with different types of thoughts
and beliefs, you start to become more naturally convinced—simply by
looking at the facts—that nothing can escape being inseparable from
Now-Presence-Energy.

You will find, over and over again, that thoughts about the future or
the past only confirm The Now’s unobscurable nature, and are therefore
not to be labeled as “enemies” or “distractions,” but rather, as “friends,
teachers, and reflections of the truth of your being.”

The purpose of this lesson—and this entire chapter—is to transform

your subconscious and conscious mind to the point where it has no
grounds from which to judge itself, when it comes to not yet being
perfect, present, awake, at ease, and enlightened.

You see, the Now shines forth as everything it creates, and is thus
expanding upon itself, upon Creation, through anything that it makes
move, crawl, expand, contract, or otherwise exist!

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 End of discussion—that is, unless you wish to insist on a lifetime of
seeking, striving, general discomfort, and ignorance regarding the hidden-
in-plain-sight truth of your amazing existence.

Do you?

Homework

“Am I worthy of Liberation?”

Ask yourself this right now. Ask yourself the question above and the
questions below, and take five minutes to instinctively answer them
honestly for yourself. Feel into your reactions and write these feelings
out in whatever format happens. It doesn’t matter if you write coherent
sentences, whether you write in Q&A format, story format, poetry
format, or simply compose a list of beliefs or statements about yourself.

Don’t overthink your answers. Respond to the questions

immediately, and let your hand do the writing, or your fingers do the
typing.

The point is not to judge what comes out, but to simply let it be all
right. Give what emerges the space to be a part of you; look at it with a
loving gaze, and don’t try to change anything for now. The purpose of
this exercise is just to gain greater clarity into yourself, which often
results in greater freedom. Ask yourself these questions:

Am I willing to look at the facts of Existence, and have these

obvious truths transform and clarify my beliefs about Presence-
Consciousness? Can I receive and allow the goodness, the simple beauty,
and the resulting ease and self-love of Existence into my being?

Can I accept that I am already perfect as I am, inseparable from All

That Is?

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 Or, do I insist—with the use of my petty mind—that I know better
than the obvious truths of Existence Itself, believing that there must be
more to it than that, or something other than that, or that I must be
different in order to earn the goodness that’s already here?

Do I insist upon doubting the obvious and perpetuating more strife

and suffering for myself?

Or, can I let these beautifully simple, non-mystical truths of

Existence cleanse my vision, empty my heart of confusion, and then fill it
back up with a loving fulfillment so pure that I cannot even begin to
describe it?

Using the “Now Detector Test,” run through a few beliefs you have
(or used to have) that suggest that the presence or absence of something
can obscure your access to Now. Get in the habit of looking at the facts
by asking yourself questions like these more often.

Reread this lesson, and let it sink in, at least twice more before you
start your next lesson.

Consider sharing your answers with the rest of us in the

corresponding Study Group if you want.

Now that you have had your initial recognition of Presence-

Consciousness (Chapter 1), and now that you have become (more)
convinced of its always-already-present nature (Chapter 2) and its innate
qualities of Being (its truths), you are ready to dive even deeper into
being Presence-Consciousness.

This will significantly loosen and soften your identification with the
human appearance (body-mind inside of a world) that you have created
for yourself.

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 Since this signifies the end of an extensive chapter containing lots
of transformations of your brain and consciousness, I again suggest you
take your time to digest this information, take it with you into everyday
life for a bit, perhaps re-read some of the lessons.

When you feel sufficiently rested and established in this new way of
understanding your Self, you may proceed with Chapter Three, which
functions almost like a bootcamp, and is very
practice/meditation/observation oriented, to help you really
experientially shift your sense of self and attain the realizations of
deathlessness, or eternity being what you are.

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 From Person to Presence
Table of Contents

1 Chapter Syllabus

2 Reality Check

3 Transcending Person-World-Consciousness

4 A Little Cosmological Refresher and Overview

Chapter Syllabus

11: What is “The Person”?

12: Meaning is Optional

13: Neti Neti with Circumstances

14: Neti Neti with Thoughts

15: Neti Neti with Emotions

16: Neti Neti with Sensations

17: Neti Neti with Beliefs

18: I-AM, without This

19: Beyond Body, Beyond Death

20: Bye Bye, Attachments

Reality Check

Before you continue, let’s recap:

After having studied and applied the materials in Chapter One (the
Introduction), you can now feel/sense/recognize at will:
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 Your own existence (the sense I-AM).

How to recognize and meditate.

The Presence in things.

The fact that Presence never changes, even when things do change.

That there is a Knowingness of Presence (Consciousness).

After having studied and applied the materials in Chapter Two, you
can now feel/sense/recognize at will:

The unobscurable nature of Presence.

That your not-yet-enlightened beliefs can be easily released by

exposing them to the light of Presence-Consciousness.

That every single experience confirms Presence-Consciousness.

That even non-recognition rests in Presence, that each Level of

Reality has its own relevancies, and that the goal is not to be in a state of
permanent conscious recognition of Presence.

That Now is the only moment, and you cannot be more Now than
you already are.

It’s okay if these realizations still feel somewhat new to you, and
require some conscious attention to conjure up. This is natural, and good
enough to continue with the third chapter of this course.

By this time, the materials should be very familiar to you, and

close-to-effortless to recognize.

If you feel you have too little of a sense of these realizations, I

suggest you go over the lessons once more and take your time with them
before proceeding. There is no rush.

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 That being said: don’t be too quick to doubt your ability to
recognize the Presence that is always here. It’s easier than you think. We
tend to make the idea about it more complicated than the recognition of
it actually is. You got this!

Transcending Person-World-Consciousness

Now that the first half of this course has introduced us to Presence-
Consciousness and its most important, fundamental truths and qualities;
now that the groundwork is established and there is no way back for us
into total ignorance, this chapter enables us to significantly loosen up our
identification with the person—the body-mind—and its attachments to
“the world,” so that we may even more effortlessly feel and know
ourselves to be Presence-Consciousness, rather than “a body-mind within
a world.”

Chapter Three is a Self-Realization boot camp of sorts, focusing you

into a relentless, day-after-day, deepening of your practice in directly
realizing the eternal truth of your I-AM.

This chapter is designed, to an extent, to tire you out. Be prepared

for this, so that you can enjoy it all the more. You will experience
tremendous benefits from this that will stay with you for the rest of your
life. This is arguably the most repetitive and practice-oriented chapter.
Give it all you’ve got, and you will walk away transformed, ready to
enjoy—that much more effortlessly—all the fruits of the courses to follow.

Yes, is all about making Enlightenment easy, offering it to you

step-by-step so you don’t have to be confused about the order of things.
But it does require you to exhaust yourself in the form of practice and
dedication from time to time, especially in this course, because we’re
talking about truly shifting your core sense of self from limitation to God-
nature.

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 Again, this course—and this chapter—lay the transformative
groundwork for all the beautiful goodies and empowering realizations to
come.

This chapter will help you go from feeling like you are a person
recognizing Presence, to feeling that you are Presence-Consciousness
recognizing the person-appearance—a true shift in identity from person to
Presence. Welcome to your ever-more-obvious enlightenment!

A Little Cosmological Refresher and Overview

Let us review a couple of things before we proceed with the actual

boot camp.

Most of us have always taken something we’re not, to be what we

absolutely are: Awareness has become identified with its perception of
the person, which is but a single expression of the entirety of Creation
(Presence-Energy).

The Person and the World are ideas, perceptions, creations,

manifestations—slices of the greater all-pervasive intelligent God-Energy.

No matter how elaborate, complexly built, or separate a thing

seems to be, our lessons to now has shown us directly that it has
beingness as its only substance. We realized that nothing of form exists
outside of the realm of Presence.

Presence-Energy is the Expression (Creation) of The Infinite One,

The Absolute.

Awareness (The Absolute’s Ultimate Free Agent) wraps around

Manifestation (Presence) and its activities, like gravity wraps around a
planet and its creatures.

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 With Awareness wrapping itself around Presence-Energy, Creation is
now complete: It is, and it knows that it is. And so it can evolve, expand,
and experience itself, with supreme intelligence.

Now it can play and perform its honorable duty: to express Infinity
as best it can, in as many ways as possible, by multiplying itself into
infinite directions and exploring the possibilities of creating in infinite
ways, of which you—your body-mind-world experience—is one.

The Person and its self-created dream world are an expression, a

manifestation, of the pure, ever-present force that everything in creation
is made out of: Beingness-Energy-Consciousness.

Even though the Person and the World are relevant and important
regarding their duty to express Infinity, it is indescribably valuable, and
worthy of celebration, each time a portion of the whole wakes up to the
whole. Each time Awareness of “being a person in a world” wakes up to
“Being Presence-Energy,” all of creation is amplified, clarified, and
empowered.

In other words, every time you wake up a little more, Creation

wakes up a little more with you, since you and “the whole” are not two
separate things, but one complete being.

From that point (realization of Presence) onward, “Awareness as

that individual” will express itself with less and less allegiance to the
idea that it is separate, lacking, isolated, and that it has to fight and
steal for its needs to be met.

It will start acting and experiencing itself along the lines of the
innate qualities of Presence-Energy, such as: Wisdom, Love, Compassion,
Clarity, Non-Separation, Interconnectedness, Fullness,
Courage/Fearlessness, Authentic Leadership, Abundance, Satisfaction,
Always Already Present, Connection, Eternity, and so on.

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 Once Awareness wakes up from being a person to this Greater Self-
Presence, it starts shifting its placement of self—its sense of identity—
away from the perception of the limited, separate individual, and into
the vibrational-conviction that “I-AM the Presence of All of Life.”

Awareness stops feeling I-AM-This to be true, and starts feeling that

the simpler, but endlessly more profound and pervasive, I-AM is true.

I-AM-This means identification with “this, or that”—identifying

oneself with certain individual things within Creation, usually one’s body
and mind.

I-AM means identification with Creation—Beingness itself—that

which every individual thing depends upon and is made out of.

(Comment: i.e., Ramana’s and Robert’s concept of

Consciousness.)

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 This chapter is designed to aid your dormant-yet-already-awake
Awareness in making this shift, so that it will predominately feel itself to
be Presence-Consciousness, rather than Person-World.

This should release you into a state of greater effortlessness, ease,

clarity, presence, aliveness, connectedness, fullness, and joy-for-no-
reason in your everyday life.

Now, please enjoy—for no reason at all—or just because you exist

and you can read this sentence and recognize that you are reading this
sentence.

What a miracle life is!

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 What is the Person?
I was desirous of freedom enough to not take pride in my self-
created suffering and personal drama; when I saw I could dis-identify
from it, I did. I recommend you do the same: Give up your right to
believe you are “a person” and see that there is no further value in
continuing to identify yourself with a drama-driven life. It’s one of the
absolute best gifts you can give to yourself.

This offers a simple step-by-step description of what comprises “the

person” and explains the three means of conditioning we are exposed to
that form our personality and determine our perspective on life.

From that angle, this also touches upon the idea of shifting from
feeling separate to feeling inseparable, from feeling contracted to feeling
connection.

You may find this a little bit “dry and intellectual,” as it simply
offers an overview of how the person-idea developed and what it roughly
consists of. But the lessons following this one will take you deep into
transcendence.

Enjoy yourself as a person while you can.

Table of Contents [hide]

1 What is “The Person”?

2 Three Primary Forms of Conditioning

2.1 1. Social conditioning

2.2 2. Environmental friction, or physical-perception-based

conditioning

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 2.3 3. Self-reflection, contemplation, and meditation

3 The 5 Levels of Consciousness (Relevant to the Human Being)

3.1 Diagram of the 5 Levels of Consciousness

4 The Illusion of Separation Leads to Contraction

4.1 Condition of Separation

4.2 Condition of Wisdom

4.3 Condition of Love

5 From Person to Presence; From Separation to Inseparability

5.1 Terminology Summary

5.2 Homework

What is “The Person”?

“The person” started as an idea the moment you became aware of

the fact that you (apparently) had a body, and that people called that
body by a certain name. They called it you.

Everything you approached in this world was experienced from the

same focal point of the body, over and over again. No matter what you
did or where you went, the body appearance remained your focal point
from which, and through which, to gain experiences on this physical
plane.

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 When you tried standing up, you had to somehow make your body
do some balancing work. When you stubbed your toe on something, your
body felt pain. When your mother smiled at you, her eyes would point in
the direction of your eyes. When people called your name, they expected
you to look in their direction, and when you did, they showed signs of
acknowledgement.

This constant association of your Beingness-Consciousness (I-AM)

with the body-appearance gave rise to the idea and consequent feeling,
“I am the body,” or “I-AM-This.”

As this idea and feeling progressed, and the association was further
strengthened over the years, what was initially just an idea, turned into a
deeply rooted and automatic belief that formed the energetic foundation
of your personality: the conviction “I am this body” was the fertile
ground for your psychological sense of self (mind) to develop within.

With the body as the basis of what you were, you could now start to
develop who you were, as a personality with stories and possessions, skills
and challenges, desires and preferences—unique from everybody else in
certain ways.

For the body-mind appearance to stand out to Consciousness as

“this is what I am,” there must be contrast—there must be something
Consciousness thinks it is not. Without that contrast, Consciousness would
simply identify with all that appears, in equal measure.

The necessary contrast was provided by the appearance of “the

world,” which, in our society, is largely agreed to be external to us—as
“out there,” or “not us.”

Thus, the rather distorted feeling of separation was born: not only
were you the body, but everything else was also separate from you.

Three Primary Forms of Conditioning

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 Social conditioning

Environmental friction, or physical-perception-based conditioning

Self-reflection, contemplation, and meditation

1. Social conditioning

The first form of conditioning is usually offered by our parents

initially, and is then reinforced by our family, our circle of friends, our
schools and teachers, strangers, the media, the Internet, government,
society, and so on.

Social conditioning includes verbal, conceptual, and energetic

conditioning. Our parents give us a name, tell us what is right and wrong,
share their beliefs with us, punish and reward us. They display emotions
in response to events, and they interact with other adults in distinctive
ways.

All of this imprints upon us energetically, conceptually, and

verbally, and this is where the great majority of negative, limiting, and
distorted beliefs we carry around with us today originate.

Somewhere along the way, in the process of “growing up,” we

acquired an enormous number of beliefs that were not originally ours.
These beliefs didn’t come to us through inspired contemplation or
intuitive clarity regarding how the universe works. No, these beliefs were
manmade; our parents picked them up somewhere along their path (also
unoriginal to them) and simply transferred their updated versions onto us.
We then “chose” to make these beliefs our own, and so shape our
realities.

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 If the beliefs we adopted are in alignment with our purpose, our
passion, and our Higher Self’s true vibration, they feel overwhelmingly
good, reassuring, positive, and supporting to us. They then help us build
the structure of energy that we could call “our world,” or our
circumstances.

If the beliefs we adopted are not in direct alignment with what our
Higher Self sees and desires for this life, then these beliefs turn into
feelings of a negative nature, causing the wide range of human emotions
that we have labeled with different names.

Despite all these names, ultimately we have only two emotions:

Joy/Excitement and Depression/Anxiety. These are really just two ends
of the same emotional spectrum, so we could also say that we only have
access to one emotional spectrum or field.

When we feel joy or excitement, it signifies that our belief system

is in alignment with our true frequency of being, whereas when we feel
depression, anxiety, or negativity of any kind, this is pointing us to the
fact that what we believe is simply not true for us and does not serve the
manifestation of our truly desired, heart-felt dream life.

This form of conditioning, the social type, is what most people who
are interested in personal or spiritual growth are dealing with today,
through observation, analysis, and in some cases, transcendence—
realizing it’s not who they are at all.

In my teaching, we aim to transcend our assumed identities

altogether, so we can see the deeper levels of our eternal existence. In
my Empowerment teachings, on the other hand, we will realign all of the
individual energies so that the mind/body/spirit being becomes laser-like
in its intended purpose, in its meant-to-be passionate and limitless
expression of Infinity.

2. Environmental friction, or physical-perception-based conditioning

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 Most people on the spiritual or self-help path seem to be aware of
the fact that their conditioning comes from the social sources mentioned
above. However, the second form of conditioning is in some ways more
fundamental and tends to program itself quite deeply into our automatic
mind, forming the basis of our nervous system’s conditioned responses to
life.

That being said, it’s usually much easier to dis-identify from this
type of conditioning.

If social conditioning forms the contents of our mind, environmental

conditioning forms the rudimentary, animalistic container for these
contents. It’s similar to the difference between our personality self-
identity defining the content of who we are, and our body self-identity
forming the foundational context that we feel is what we are.

Environmental friction plays a prominent role in the development of

the sense of oneself as a separate entity in a “hostile,” or external,
world. It is the conditioning offered to us by our physical environment, by
the friction that occurs when you put a moving physical vehicle inside of
a physical world.

It’s the “stubbing your toe on a rock” kind of conditioning; it’s the
feeling of gravity, the seeing of things “over there” in relation to our
body, which seems to be always “over here.” It’s the “time” it takes to
get from China to the United States, and all the intermediary steps of
transportation that must be dealt with.

To a great extent, it’s physical conditioning, or environmental

friction, that makes us feel like we’re victims of, or at least inhabitants
of, a linear space/time container. There are many environmental factors
that condition us, on a very basic level, to feel we are the body and that
we are separate and isolated and temporary (subject to death).

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 Even if we had been born on a planet with no social influences
whatsoever, and no other human beings, we would still most likely
develop a strong sense of “being the body” and “being separate from our
environment.” We would still most likely feel that we were living inside a
space/time container—due to simple, basic actions like running around on
the surface of the planet, bumping into things as we go along, receiving
constant physical feedback from our experience, seeing the sun rise and
set every day, and searching for food to satisfy our body’s hunger
sensation.

Environmental conditioning can be thought of as the instinctual, or

animalistic, part of our body-selves. It’s what initiates the physical
survival response that often flares up before we even have time to think
about things from the socially conditioned part of our mind—especially in
seemingly physically threatening situations. It’s what activates the
adrenaline in your body, and puts you on high alert. It’s what freezes
your body as you approach the edge of a cliff. It’s what gives you “a
scare” when a funny (or not so funny) neighbor hides in your closet at
night and pops out to see your response.

It’s a physicality-oriented, nervous system type of conditioning, and

although deep, it belongs only to the bodily vehicle, and not to you.

Most people do not feel heavily identified with this response, even
if the sensations that come with this conditioning are quite strong. They
don’t feel that it is “who they are,” and they can quite easily understand
that it is not who they are.

As such, this type of conditioning is not often seen as a “problem”

to overcome psychologically. Nevertheless, it does contribute
significantly to many of our everyday feelings of contraction and our self-
protection responses to events.

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 Even after you’ve freed yourself from many (or most) of your
personal and/or socially-induced fears, the physical conditioning may still
have its way with your body, because that is its purpose—to respond when
it needs to respond. This is most noticeable to us in times of immediate
physical threat.

However, even these very animalistic effects can be greatly

softened and untangled, the more we recondition our nervous system, by
showing it our experience of the soothing presence of non-separate is-
ness or beingness, and seeing over and over again that everything is our
Self, and therefore safe—even threatening circumstances.

Which brings me to our third type of conditioning:

3. Self-reflection, contemplation, and meditation

The third major means to condition oneself is more advanced, kicks

in later in the development of our bodily-complex, or age, and although
most humans make use of this to some extent from a certain age
onwards, when this happens seems to be governed and influenced largely
by the first two types of conditioning.

The ability to self-reflect, or contemplate, tends to run around in a

loop or pattern for most people, which leads us to question whether it is
truly self-reflection or merely the echoes of what the entity has heard
before through the verbal/conceptual/social means of conditioning.

It isn’t until this third means of conditioning (and de-conditioning)

reaches a significant point in its lucidity and its mind-transcending
capabilities, that it becomes a source of increased clarity, rather than
more of the same limiting conditioning.

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 This third way starts to stand on its own and offer solutions to the
contractions of the conditioned human body-mind, once it is able to look
at itself as-if from outside the box that was created by the first two
methods of conditioning.

When it begins to stand on its own, it usually does so either by way

of the psychological approach of careful self-analysis, or by way of the
spiritual approach, through contemplation of the spirit portion of one’s
mind/body/spirit beingness. The latter approach has the benefit of
activating more of one’s innate ability to access the intuitive mind, as
well.

Whether psychologically-inclined, or spiritually-activated, the

ability to self-reflect also conditions us to see life from different angles.
In a sense, everything does.

Nevertheless, this third method of (re)conditioning oneself is a most

helpful gateway into spiritual realization and the transcendence of past
conditioning.

I consider you, the seeker of spiritual realization, to have already

opened this gateway. You have become, in this sense, intelligent and
responsible for your sense of self.

The 5 Levels of Consciousness (Relevant to the Human Being)

Tune into I-AM for a moment… Just that naked, pure sense of I-AM,
with nothing attached to it as a distraction. Pure Presence….

Now, imagine that this I-AM Presence can, through intelligently

altering its vibration, generate endless different points of view. In other
words, Presence-Consciousness can, through vibration, change what it
sees and how it sees what it sees. It can interpret appearances from all
kinds of different understandings.

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 When consciousness then lands on a certain point of view and
deems it true or relevant, it “chooses” to crystallize that point of view
into a more solid form, so that this solid form can function as the stage
for a play to appear on. This crystallized state of an otherwise malleable
and etheric point of view, is a “belief.”

Beliefs can also be understood as the unconscious mind of a person.

Imagine that a person carries a certain belief that has formed its
context, its background—the unconscious underlying conviction from
which it perceives the events in its life. Now, imagine this person
encountering a situation that triggers this belief. When triggered, the
belief will generate a feeling or emotion in the person.

Emotions, or feelings, can also be understood as the subconscious

mind of a person.

Side note: The feeling that has been triggered may be positive or
negative, depending on whether the belief was in or out of alignment
with this being’s Higher Self. Beliefs are the energies that create the
person’s inner and outer reality. Hence, it is of true value to get to know
oneself on this level more clearly.

Finally, the conscious mind, the thinking mind, reacts to the

feelings in the body. Thoughts are really nothing more than reactions to
what has already occurred, to what is already aroused by means of
beliefs and feelings in the person. They are the end of the line, and
therefore, they are not the level that actually creates our reality.

Diagram of the 5 Levels of Consciousness

Here is how all these levels of consciousness relevant to the human

experience, structurally, connect together. Starting from most
fundamental to most surface-level, from creator to created, from cause
to effect:

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 I-AM (Presence-Consciousness)

Points of view (vibration/state of being/understanding)

Beliefs (unconscious mind—a crystallized point of view)

Feelings (subconscious mind—triggered depending on belief)

Thoughts (conscious mind—reactive)

The last three together (Beliefs, Feelings, Thoughts) form the

person; the crystallized, manifest portion of an individual’s expression of
Presence.

When a thought or circumstance triggers an underlying belief, it

generates a feeling. That feeling then causes further reactions or
reflections by the conscious mind, or—(more) thoughts.

I will not go too deeply into this now, but I wanted to offer this
overview to you and lay out the structure: the fact that beliefs cause
feelings, and feelings cause thoughts. Noticing this in your everyday life
can help you see more clearly how “the person” operates in you, so you
can realize your freedom from it that much more vividly.

The more clearly you see how the person engages in these
automatic shenanigans, the easier it is either to change these habitual
patterns, and/or to see that, ultimately, it is not what you are.

The Illusion of Separation Leads to Contraction

Once we identified with the body and could feel its pains, we were
automatically wired, from that point onwards, to protect ourselves
against whatever was “not us”—in this case, everything besides our own
body, including other selves.

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 This brings us to examine a very basic, but crucial, topic: the
different levels on the spiritual spectrum, which range from the very
animalistic state of separation and self-protection, on the one hand, to
some of the highest states of spiritual understanding, on the other hand:

Condition of Separation

If everything, except for the body, is seen as not you, then

everything forms a threat to your existence (as the body). This applies to
the Person-World-Consciousness level (I-AM-This).

Condition of Wisdom

When nothing is seen as you, then nothing poses a threat to your

existence, because you are not identified with the body. This applies
mostly to Awareness and Infinity levels (I-I and No-I).

Condition of Love

When everything is seen as you, you also don’t feel a threat

because you know that everything is your Self. This applies mostly to
Awareness and Presence-Consciousness levels (I-I and I-AM).

These very simple distinctions can be likened to physics:

If you perceive only the body as yourself, you will contract.

If you perceive everything as not yourself, you will disappear.

If you perceive everything as yourself, you will expand.

As soon as we developed a personality, or mind, and added it to our

“I-AM-This” sense of self, we started protecting ourselves mentally and
emotionally—in addition to physically. Again, this was due to our partial
identification with creation: seeing only the body-mind as who we are,
not everything else, as well.

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 We started hiding from other parts of our being (other-selves), as
we perceived them to be separate from us, and thus considered them a
potential threat to our mental-emotional privacy-existence, or simply as
a potential source of suffering.

From Person to Presence; From Separation to Inseparability

The sense of separation that dominates most people’s actions in life

can be relieved, uprooted, and dismantled. It is a major reason why
waking up from Person to Presence is such a worthwhile realization to
invest your dedication and practice into.

Realizing Presence-Consciousness to be what you are—which the

next few lessons will aid you with profoundly—will greatly alleviate the
conviction of separation, since it shows you experientially that you are
not just the body-mind creation—you are the Presence that makes up all
of Creation.

Presence-Consciousness will show you that everything you can ever

encounter is simply more of your Beingness, and therefore safe and
friendly.

The beauty of life as a human is that every moment offers another

opportunity to label the things you encounter as either separate from
yourself, or as more of your Self.

Hence, from this day forward, let’s regard anything that is not your
body-mind appearance not as external to me, outside of self, or even as
the world, but as simply being the rest of myself, or more of myself.

And for sake of clarity, when we’re talking about other beings, let’s
use the term other-self, which includes the word “self,” implying that
others are simply other portions or aspects of (our) self, or Self
(Presence-Consciousness Self).

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 Terminology Summary

The Person refers to the body-mind appearance.

Person-Consciousness usually refers to Awareness identified with

the body-mind appearance.

Person-World-Consciousness refers to the totality of the individual

identity-experience, complete with its perceived external, separate-
from-itself associations, possessions, relationships, actions in life, and so
on.

Homework

Read this lesson’s text at least once more before proceeding. This
lesson’s contents are somewhat technical and dry, but when this
overview of the make-up of the person-identification is applied to your
every day life experiences, the contents become more alive in you as
actual wisdom. In order to support that, it might prove helpful if you
dissect and study this and see how it applies to your own mind.

Study the “5 Levels of Consciousness (Relevant to the Human

Being)” diagram and see in your direct experience how the I-AM-
Consciousness generates different perceptions by altering its point of
view (vibration), how this point of view then—when chosen as real, or
valid—crystallizes into a belief-system, and how this belief activates
feelings when it is challenged or triggered by outside events or thoughts.
Finally, see how the thinking mind then comes in and reacts to the
feelings, attempting to protect itself or gain knowledge from what just
occurred by contemplating (thinking about, reacting to) what’s going on.

(Comment: These is great danger in totally accepting this part of his

teaching as it oversimplifies, and gives you his POV on who and what you
are. Read it, and see if it fits. The teachings in this section seem to drift
away from self-realization.)
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 Sit down and contemplate five real-life examples of yours, whether
recent or long ago, and see how an event triggered your feelings, and
that this could only have happened because you had a belief about what
occurred. See how—or where—that belief originated as a point of view
that you—at the time—started seeing as real, true, or relevant.

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 Meaning is optional
Some people have a hard time accepting the essential neutrality of
life’s appearances, as they see it as the death of the validity of their
drama, suffering, passion, and stories. In this regard, I guess I was
different as a seeker. When I discovered that my stories did not affect
reality—and that reality was, in fact, free and neutral—I could not have
been more thrilled! Freedom from myself was the highest freedom I could
think of.

Your stories are optional, self-made, meaning-based projections

that you have learned to automatically place on top of the essentially
neutral appearances of life. You will learn to see through the illusion of
the person’s conditioned responses to events, and liberate yourself from
story-based identity!

Table of Contents

1 The Person Thrives on Meaning

2 The Process

2.1 Example

2.2 Detailed Example – Analysis of the Process of Meaning-Based

Reactions

3 Deconstruction Time

4 Our Beliefs Determine Where Our Attention Goes

4.1 Your Attention Is Highly Selective

5 Two Simple Methods for Neutralizing Charged Meanings

5.1 Method One: Don’t React

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 (COMMENT: Also Robert Adams primary tool outside of self-
inquiry. It introduces space between you and the world events.)

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 5.2 Method 2: Recognize the Inherent Meaninglessness in Things

6 Imagine You Were Raised on a Different Planet

7 Choose your perspective of each event

8 Respecting Other People’s Meaning-Prisons

8.1 Homework

The Person Thrives on Meaning

Note: I will be using the word “appearance” a lot in this lesson.

An appearance is Presence in form; anything that has an

identifiable form can be called an appearance. Anything that shows
up in your experience—in your Consciousness—is an appearance.

It can be a thought, an emotion, a feeling, a story, a belief, your

body, a love affair, an event, an accident, a paradox, simple physical
objects, or literally anything else that takes up presence.

The word “appearance” implies that something appears inside of

Presence-Consciousness—as part of the field of Presence-Energy.

The more clearly you see that meaning is optional, not inherent, in
any event or appearance, the more freedom you will find from the
majority of your personal, story-based drama.

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 After all, in order to psychologically suffer about your person, you
need to believe that the events you have encountered in your life were
filled with inherent meaning and that you were a victim of the meanings
attached to these events.

(COMMENT: Way oversimplified. 20% of US population suffers

from some psychiatric disorder, due to physical or mental trauma,
and endogenous factors of genetics and environment. No matter how
“advanced” you are, given multiple physical or mental injuries, falls,
bad health, repeated deaths of loved ones, both mind and body are
affected. Chronic pain actually changes the brain to be more
susceptible to pain, and there are secondary cardiovascular
damages. Chronic pains leads to a chronic depression at least 40% of
the time, which become built into one’s psyche.)

We never actually fear an event; we fear that an event means

something we don’t like. When you discover that the meaning of things is
up to you, fear about events can be very quickly eliminated.

And what is not an event?

Even your own death is an event that can mean whatever you want
it to mean. You don’t fear death; you fear what it means. But what it
means is up to you, so why fear it? Neutralize the meaning you’ve
previously given to your death by seeing that the event itself does not
include that meaning.

Question: When do you feel most intensely drawn into the sense
that you are a separate person inside of a world?

When an appearance triggers you.

What gets triggered exactly?

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 The meaning you’ve learned to give to appearances. In other words:
what you have learned to believe is true about the appearance.

The Process

Something happens (something appears).

Your body-mind complex reacts with a bunch of feelings and

thoughts about what just happened.

The truth usually overlooked here is that you don’t actually feel the
thing that happened; you feel your reaction to what happened.

The reaction feels good or bad, depending on whether the meaning

(the belief) you give to that happening is rooted in lack (it feels negative,
frightening) or in abundance (it feels positive, exciting).

Note: We tend to believe we experience the actual things that

happen—the circumstances—but in reality, we only ever experience the
feelings inside of us that flare up as a result of something triggering a
dormant belief, a meaning.

(Comment: Oh my God no! Please Bentinho< I deal with injured

works with chronic pain, physical stess injuries, mental stress from
high volume, deadline work, being held up at gun point, seeing a
coworker crushed by a truck and killed. The events themselves,
uninterpreted or not reacted to cause pain, depression, PTSD,
psychosis.

What you are proposing as a solution is a type of therapy called

reframing, where the event is looked at and given a different slant
(POV), or no slant. It is only moderately effective when combined
with psychotropic medications. Unfortunately, you are recommending
a radical form disassociation from humanity and events, to
absorption in beingness as a defense against suffering and pain.)

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 In other words: we only ever experience our state of being, our
energetic response (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, points of view) to
appearances. It is structurally impossible for us to experience an actual
circumstance or physical matter. This fact will become naturally clearer
in Enlightenment II and Empowerment I.

You cannot feel something that you have not given at least some
kind of meaning to. This makes sense if you consider that, if you truly
only ever experience your state of being, then things cannot make you
feel anything, unless you believe something about that thing.

So, it is our own set of definitions and meanings that give us the
experience of life. Life’s appearances are essentially neutral, or open to
interpretation.

In other words: you are the boring one, not Existence.

Bottom-line: Beliefs dictate how you feel, and where your attention
goes, as well as what you decide is valuable and worthy of your time and
energy—and what is not.

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Neti Neti with Circumstances
When you see very clearly that you exist, independent of the things
that appear and disappear in your life—not separate from them, but
independent from them—then your identity shifts from things to Being.
When this happens, usually through the direct recognition of Existence
itself, you inherit all the benefits inherent in Beingness-Existence.

In this lesson, you will learn what “Neti Neti” stands for, and in the
next six lessons, you will apply the Neti Neti Meditation diligently to
different aspects of your experience, so that you can embody the
realization that your true Presence is completely unaffected by
circumstances.

You will stay with I-AM as clearly as you can, letting everything else
come and go as it pleases, until you realize your independence—your
freedom—from the things that appear and disappear in life.

The practices contained within the next handful of lessons will go a

long way in showing you directly the immortal, eternal nature of your
Self.

Table of Contents

1 What is Neti Neti?

2 The Neti Neti Meditation

2.1 Step 1: Preparation

2.2 Step 2: Execution

3 Neti Neti Meditation (Stage 1) – “I Am Not My Circumstances”

3.1 The Starting Focus

3.2 Then Realize…

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 4 Summary of the Neti Neti Meditation

4.1 Homework

What is Neti Neti?

In Advaita Vedanta (Nonduality) and Jnana Yoga, “neti neti” is a

Sanskrit expression meaning “not this, not this,” or “neither this, nor
that.”

Neti neti is the Vedic method of analysis of negation. Using this

method, the Jnani (the Adept) negates identification with all things of
this world that are not the Atman (true Self, Presence-Consciousness). In
this way, the Jnani negates the Anatman (the unreal, the transitory).

Through this gradual process, the Jnani negates the mind and
transcends all worldly experiences until nothing remains but the Self
(Presence, and eventually I, Awareness).

Instead of directing you to recognize what you are, this ancient

practice instructs you to negate everything you are not, so that what you
truly are will remain as self-evident, after having negated all the things
you assumed were you.

It’s a filtering process of sorts that lets you see what’s false until
you’re left only with what is true. It is like undressing yourself from all
the clothes you have put on over the course of your life, until you are
nakedly present as your true body of Being.

I think this practice is especially effective in shifting your sense of

self—your perceived identity—from Person to Presence at this point in
your familiarization process with I-AM, so I will give you my version of the
practice in the form of The Neti Neti Meditation, below.

The Neti Neti Meditation

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 Step 1: Preparation

Make a list of the primary things, or situations, that you feel you—or
a portion of you—identifies with. This list can be as long as needed; allow
these items to organically come up in you and write them down.

An item on this list can be anything—from the body, to a starving

African child, to the potential of a zombie invasion.

Whatever intensely grabs your attention frequently in life, and

makes you feel some kind of significant charge, contraction, or
importance can be added to this list.

Divide the items on your list into the following five categories:

Stage 1 – Circumstances

Stage 2 – Thoughts

Stage 3 – Emotions

Stage 4 – Physical sensations

Stage 5 – Beliefs

Do this now, then come back with your list and proceed with the
next step.

Step 2: Execution

Sit somewhere comfortable and relaxing.

As always, to aid in your body-mind relaxation, take a deep breath

and surrender your interest in thoughts, things, past and future, until
you’re naturally more aware of the eternal here and now.

138
 Repeat each stage, as explained over the course of the next five
lessons, as many times as necessary to free yourself—once and for all—
from the false identification with these layers of your body-mind-world-
experience.

Use the items on your list, and whatever other significant

identifications come to mind, during the following practice.

Note: It might be helpful to read through the following text first, to

get a good feel for the process, but to then use the audio version of this
for the exercise. This will allow you to relax and perform the meditation,
while listening to my voice guiding you through the process.

Neti Neti Meditation (Stage 1) – “I Am Not My Circumstances”

Imagine, or simply observe, your present life environment and the

circumstances that take place within that environment.

Look at each item on your list that is a circumstance, and notice

any other circumstance-related appearance that comes up for you when
contemplating your circumstances.

Especially notice the stressful aspects of your present

circumstances, and practice with them. Include things like money,
appointments, peer pressure, your boss, your partner, your kids, your
move, and so on.

In other words, allow everything that causes some form of tension,

and is seemingly external to your body-mind, to pass through your
consciousness in this meditation, and observe each such item passively,
ideally one by one.

Passive observation is naturally achieved by pretending to be—or by

actually being—uninterested in what the appearances you are observing
have to offer you.

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 It is always helpful, before any type of inquiry, to start by feeling
into—as clearly as you can—what’s always already here, true, and now.
This clears the mind’s tendencies to distort your present activity, and
thus allows the following meditation or inquiry to be utilized most
effectively. Let’s call this The Starting Focus.

The Starting Focus

“I am here and now. I exist without effort. I am Present. I am

Conscious. I am changeless. I am Pure Beingness. I-AM.”

Then Realize…

“The circumstance I observe is over there, while I am over here…”

Go back and forth a few times between being centered on I-AM,

over here, and the circumstance, over there.

“I-AM—before, during, and after the appearance and disappearance

of the circumstance. Circumstances come and go, while I remain like the
ocean remains, as its waves rise and fall, appear and disappear.

Since I am over here, and I remain unchanged by the comings and

goings of my circumstances, I cannot possibly be my circumstances—for I
am here witnessing their arrival, their temporary presence, as well as
their departure.

All the while, I abide, I remain, I know my Self—I stay home.

I exist prior to, and am therefore more fundamental than, the

coming and going of circumstances, of which I am effortlessly aware.

If I am conscious of the circumstances in my life, then I am that

which is consciously present, not the circumstances that appear to this
conscious presence.
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 I am Presence-Consciousness. I-Exist—no matter what. I-AM—
independent of this circumstance or that circumstance. My fundamental
beingness remains unaffected by circumstantial changes.

My true Identity is Presence-Consciousness. Circumstances are just

a sequence of appearances created out of Being’s essential Presence-
Energy, just as waves are made out of the ocean’s water.

Just as the water is unaltered by the dancing of the waves, my basic

existence remains unaffected by the forms it uses to express itself.”

Summary of the Neti Neti Meditation

Relax and center your attention on I-AM (The Starting Focus).

Choose an appearance you have some lingering attachment to, or

identification with.

Go back and forth between focusing on the sense of I-AM, and

seeing the appearance come and go, in front of you, until you…

Recognize clearly that I-AM is who you are (changeless) and that you
cannot possibly be the appearance, because you are aware of it. You
are/exist independently of its comings and goings.

(COMMENT: Another very different and opposite method is to

always bring the circumstance, emotional reaction, emotion, object
within to you. Bring it into your inner heart node, the place you feel
most vulnerable, accept the circumstance, emotion, object, such as
fear, love, humiliation, guilt, sadness, joy, into your heart and
become it. Let it be you for a while and you will have it dissolve into
you sense of being and you will feel an underlying river of bliss as
this is accreted to your sense of self. This is Tantra and can be done
with a love object also, so that you can actually become love itself.)

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 I-AM, without “This”
When you see very clearly that you exist, independent of the things
that appear and disappear in your life—not separate from them, yet
independent from them—then your identity shifts from things to Being.
When this happens, usually through the direct recognition of Existence
itself, you inherit all the benefits inherent in Beingness-Existence.

Now that you’ve applied the Neti Neti approach to circumstances,

thoughts, emotions, sensations and beliefs, in this you will not so much
focus on seeing that your I-AM is not tied to any appearance, but on
experiencing this independence directly and solely, by withdrawing all
attention away from the appearances, and noticing only the I-AM-
Presence for a period of time.

This will allow you to really come to experience exactly how

independent your I-AM-ness is from any appearance that appears within
Presence-Energy (Creation). Enjoy your freedom!

Table of Contents

1 Deepening I-AM—Becoming Undisturbed

2 Beingness Stands on Its Own

3 You Can Trust in I-AM

4 Movie Theater Analogy

5 “I Am Not My Body”

5.1 Homework

5.2 Got a question, or just want to share? Discuss this in the forums!

Deepening I-AM—Becoming Undisturbed

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 Now, once you have applied this “contrasting” way of seeing that
your I-AM is not the appearances in your consciousness, you can deepen
your realization of I-AM, as independent from appearances, even further,
by really turning your attention deeply into the sense I-AM itself—letting
go of all focus on your individual world with its forms and changes.

Close your eyes, if that helps you to initially “spot” that I-AM-ness,
without form and additions.

In this deep sense of beingness, of pure I-AM, you can start to see
how there is no focus, necessarily, on thoughts, emotions, sensations, or
things. “The World” ceases to appear—at least for the moments in which
your attention is fully absorbed in I-AM, in Presence-Consciousness.

Remember the example of the jewelry store?

The one where, if you stand in front of the jewelry store window,
you can either be focused on and aware of the jewelry behind the
window—at the expense of seeing your own reflection in the window—or
you can notice and become absorbed in your body’s reflection in the
window, and for that moment of time, not be aware at all of the jewelry
behind the window?

Both the jewelry and your body’s reflection co-exist within the
same line of sight—the same space of being—yet, when you are very
focused on one, the other appearance ceases to exist to you for that
period of time. When one is obvious to you, the other one’s noticeability
is greatly diminished.

The same goes for I-AM and This (the world of appearances).

When—with great dedication and desire—we really tune into our

sense of I-Exist more than anything else for a moment… we only
experience pure is-ness. I-AM, without this or that!

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 Suddenly, we start to notice that, not only is our I-AM not affected
by appearances, but it becomes our immediate experience in a very
powerful and confirming way.

We can now start to experience our essence without having to

necessarily experience “external things” as affecting what we are
anymore. Whenever we choose to, we can simply have our whole
consciousness be filled up with I-AM, instead of with I-AM-This.

This feels profound, unshakably stable, reliable, and peaceful—

perhaps even blissful to some extent.

It can be likened to taking your submarine of self-identity—of

focus—and moving beyond the realm of waves and currents, into the
depths of the oceanic waters, where there is only the experience of
stable water—of is-ness—with no focus on or awareness of the movements
of water.

In this sense of pure and independent beingness, where you pull

your focus away from the world of form, and tune in profoundly to the
sense I-Exist only, you will really recognize (as clearly as you can) that
this I-AM exists independently from circumstance, emotions, thoughts,
and bodily perceptions.

When you realize that your true being is free from worldly
perceptions, you start to really tap into your realization of immortality
beyond the body: the deathlessness of Presence-Consciousness becomes
more of an experiential fact to you, rather than speculation or belief.
Now, who wouldn’t want that?

Realizing that I-AM endures and exists independently from

experiences coming and going, is the true “holy grail” of immortality.
Eternal life is not sipped from a mythical artifact destined only for a few
to find; it can be extracted from anyone’s direct experience with I-Exist-
No-Matter-What.
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 Beingness Stands on Its Own

You can see, in the purity of feeling I-AM—with no distractions for

just a few seconds—that this Beingness stands on its own.

It is one thing to discover the great I-AM. It is another to directly

experience this as what you actually are. It is yet another to experience
this as self-sufficient and standing entirely on its own, without anything
life has to offer being able to destroy it or take it away. This is the
freedom of immortality.

(Comment: Like I said before, you have to go deeper that this

level before you discover immortality, that which is beyond
Consciousness, because Consciousness itself is changing and
essentially an illusion, witnessed by you as the Absolute. It is this
ultimate witnessing principal that energizes Consciousness, and that
knows both consciousness and nothingness, and is thus beyond both,
that is beyond the attributes of life and death. Complete freedom
from he fear of death is not found at this level, but at a deeper one
that Massaro brings up later.)

In your direct experience with Presence-Beingness, can you notice

that it has its own complete reality? Your here-and-now effortless
existence has a right to exist; it does not depend on anything that comes
and goes in your attention, and it does not need permission from anyone
or anything.

See your Greater Self nakedly, free from forms other than its own
presence.

Deeply feel into the ocean-like depths of I-AM, and see more and
more, as you hold this light of I-AM against the appearance of this and
that, that I-AM is independent—free from—being attached to, or defined
by, appearances of any kind.

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 The more you explore this I-AM-Space by itself, as free from form,
the easier it becomes to recognize that you are not the appearances that
arise, even when they arise full-force!

What this means is that you become aware of, and intimately
familiar with, a deep feeling of presence, peace, ease, and un-
disturbedness. This sense of Presence-Energy—and the consciousness it is
infused with—will start to reside more obviously at the heart of your
existence throughout everyday activities and appearances.

(Comment: Exactly this is true, but there is much further to go.

And for the reader, this is just an unproven promise, an energizing
phrase.)

Congratulations on your enlightenment. That wasn’t so hard, now

was it?

(Comment: For me this is not enlightenment at all, but just an

identification with presence, less still the explosion of the divine
spirit within, the explosive arrival of your awareness of the life
force, Shakti, aka the divine feminine. I call this self-realization of
the Manifest Self.)

This sense continues to deepen with practice, even after you have
already clearly recognized it and its basic qualities, or truths.
Enlightenment is easy, yet it has no end.

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 You Can Trust in I-AM

Beingness, I-AM-ness, Presence—is ever reliable and trustworthy. It

always remains, and it is always with you. There has never been an
experience where it has not been what you are. What could be more
reliable than the indestructible essence of each moment?

Changeless I-AM-ness is already the case, and this implies that—no

matter what happens in the realm of the body-mind-world, no matter
what happens within the Person-World-Consciousness you previously
identified yourself with—you can now surrender your defenses as you slip
into an ever more expansive sense of your true Self.

Now that you have the ability to acknowledge and emphasize the
experience of Beingness over the illusion of appearances, you have a
most incredible tool at your disposal, at all times.

At any given moment, you can now choose to feel and highlight the
sense of Presence, even in the face of challenging appearances, and you
can identify with the undisturbed nature of your existence while
everything around you goes nuts.

Appearances no longer sway you, for it is crystal clear to you now,

that your true beingness remains as it is: unaffected, undisturbed,
unmoved.

And so, you stop projecting your happiness onto appearances and
the meaning-driven personality construct. You learn, for a period of time,
to derive your joy and satisfaction instead from the depths of the eternal
Now-Presence—free from needing any particular outcome in the world of
changing forms.

You are now becoming truly self-satisfied, self-sufficient, and self-

reliant.

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 You are fulfilled by your very own being-here and your choice to
recognize this amazing existence that never ends, never stops, and knows
no separation.

You are now at ease—or at least can choose to be—no matter what.
Even when you freak out, you feel you are fundamentally at ease,
underneath the surface-appearances of your person-world experience.

Movie Theater Analogy

When you’re watching a movie in a theater, you are fully engaged

with a story for about two hours straight.

If the story is compelling enough, you may even forget that you
exist and be completely engaged with the characters who are being
projected by nothing but light, onto a screen that never changes, even as
millions of images are projected onto it.

Your life is exactly like this.

You have been watching a movie this whole time, and you’ve
forgotten for years— decades—that you were sitting in a movie
theater. You have forgotten that you exist—independent from the
movie—all this time.

And now, you are remembering to recognize that you are not the
characters on the screen, engaged in their meaning-driven dramas,
but that you are the changeless screen itself.

Or, from another angle, using the same analogy, you could think of
yourself as the being sitting in the theater, the one to whom none of the
movie’s events actually happened. You are the one who is able to walk
out, at any time, and remember your own existence, once again.

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 Just as the screen has been the substratum that the images are
projected onto, so, too, has the presence of your existence—your I-AM-
ness—never been separate from the projections of your life, yet has never
been affected by them, either.

The movie that is your life has never changed or affected your
beingness. You have never actually been the movie you’ve been
witnessing. You have never truly been defined by, or limited to, “your
life.”

Now, remember what you really are.

“I Am Not My Body”

This stage (6) truly signifies the crossing of a new threshold—a new
realm of possibilities opening up.

However, in order to fully go there, some much needed practice

with the previous five Neti Neti stages is in order. The meditation
(above), “Remaining undisturbed and centered on Presence solely,” is
extremely helpful for this purpose. So, practice it well and sincerely, and
take your time before proceeding to the next lesson.

If you feel you wish to take a week or two off to integrate all you
have learned so far, and to deepen your experience of I-AM throughout
everyday life experiences—to allow it to become more natural—then
please honor that desire.

Listen to whatever resonates.

Then, when you’re ready… In the next lesson, we will take what
you’ve gained from your familiarization with this entire course, and your
deepening experience with this chapter’s contents, and apply it to the
core sense “I am this body.” For this tends to be the closest and deepest
association that people have identified themselves with.

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 “I am this body” is an idea that has become a visceral, instinctual
feeling, which has most likely penetrated deep into the different layers
of your psyche. As such, it deserves its own full-sized to help you unlatch
your true being—I-AM— from your assumed being: I-AM-this-body.

This will catapult you into a whole new level of allowing true
fearlessness to blossom in you, positively influencing every area of your
life and transcending the majority of your fears. Just like that!

Homework

Now that you have applied the Neti Neti meditation to the different
levels of your experience, withdraw your attention from the world of
appearances altogether and rest solely in the recognition of I-AM, as
much as you can without creating strain. Dedication and desire are key,
but we don’t really wish to strain ourselves. If we strain ourselves, it
could be an indication that we simply don’t yet desire as much of the
pure I-AM experience as is possible, and that is totally OK. Everyone has
their own timing with this, so just honor wherever you are at, while
conjuring up as much desire as you can—to stay with the sense of
Presence, at the expense of noticing worldly things, thoughts,
appearances, and so on.

Sit down, as in a meditation session, and conjure up as much desire

as you can to really penetrate deeply into the secrets and independence
of Presence-Beingness, or I-AM. Quite naturally, you will find that by
now, your attention is naturally starting to enter into your own beingness;
starting to realize its independence from all other experiences.

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 Do this in your own way—make it your own—applying whatever you
have learned up to this point, to bring you to an experience of pure and
undistracted I-Am-Ness. Even if just for a half minute or more at a time,
frequently repeated in a single setting—focus on realizing, in this purity
of experience, only I-AM—that it is, in a sense, detached from the world
and its appearances.

Perform this meditation at least twice at separate times before

continuing with the next lesson.

As an additional support to your deepening Self-Realization, watch

the guided meditation video “I-AM Alone Exists” a couple of times, or as
often as you like, to really tune into the transmission, the vibration, the
availability of Presence being reflected back to you from your own Self,
in the form of that video.

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Beyond Body, Beyond Death
The body is simply a brilliant invention of Consciousness to focus
and localize its experience of creation so it can explore space and time in
a linear fashion, from a particular and limited point of view, sequencing
the lessons it wishes to learn in a certain order, and building a
relationship with itself that continuously expands in a completely unique
way. Bodies are the pens with which Consciousness writes its odes to The
Absolute. Regardless of the brilliance that is the body-appearance, it is
crucial to realize that we are ultimately beyond the body, and that we
are continuous, whereas the body is a temporary means to meet an end.
No pun intended.

By recognizing that your existence is independent from—beyond—

even the body, you start to open the gates to a whole new, much more
profound and expanded sense of being and understanding of your Self and
the universe.

As with all of the practices I provide in, most of their results unfold
and deepen over time, with practice and through sincere desire. Hence, I
ask you to be patient with yourself and be excited for the possibility of
experiencing true eternity.

The intention behind this lesson is for its contents to unlock what is
potentially your first real glimpse of your Self as body and death-
transcendent.

“The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions

except one: “Who am I?” After all, the only fact you are sure of is that
you are. The “I am” is certain. The “I am this” is not. Find out what you
are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know
what you are not. Discover all that you are not—body, feelings, thoughts,
time, space, this or that—nothing, concrete or abstract, which you
perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not
what you perceive. The clearer you understand that, on the level of
mind, the real you can only be described in negative terms, the quicker

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you will come to the end of your search and realize that you are the
limitless being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Table of Contents

1 Stage 6 – “I Am Not My Body”

2 Neti Neti Meditation – Stage 6

2.1 The Starting Focus

2.2 Then Realize

3 Your Future Is Bright and Deathless

4 Life and Death Are the Same

5 I-AM Shall Remain

6 Dream-Body Analogy

6.1 Waking up

7 Which Came First—Consciousness or the Brain?

7.1 Where Were You Before You Were Born?

7.2 Some Variations

7.3 Discover your Blueprint

8 What Will Happen After the Body Dies?

9 The Journey Has No End

9.1 Homework

Stage 6 – “I Am Not My Body”

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 You’ve already seen clearly that you are not your circumstances,
thoughts, emotions, sensations, or beliefs.

Now, I’m going to ask you to observe the idea, or instinctive feeling
in you, that suggests that you are this body.

Look for this instinctive sense; it is very subtle and pervasive, hence
it can be harder to pinpoint than, say, a mosquito bite sensation, which is
very defined and has a specific location.

The conviction “I am the body,” in a sense, forms the background of

your very existence as a person-world-consciousness. It has been
conditioned not only by the humans around you, but also by your very
own experience with environment.

The feeling that we are the body is one of our remaining animalistic
aspects, and it runs quite deep in our genes to believe we are the body.
There is nothing wrong with that at all, but for the purpose of this lesson,
it’s helpful to not give too much importance to the existence of the body.
In later , the body is again included as a vehicle of expressing one’s true
Self, and appreciation for it returns in full.

So, just give it your best shot at this time, and if you cannot get a
sense of the belief “I am this body,” simply find a sensation or an idea as
close to it as possible.

To further help you pinpoint the feeling, you can try repeating the
following sentence verbally and/or in mind 30 times, with a full second or
two in between each sentence:

“I am this body.”

As you start to get a feel for this belief, idea, conviction, or sense,
again shift your attention back and forth from the stable, changeless
Presence of your true I-AM Beingness, independent from any appearance,

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and then shift your attention back to the appearance of the feeling “I am
this body,” which you are an observer of.

Back and forth between I-AM, and the appearance of feeling “I am

this body.”

Really see that even the idea “I am my body” is an appearance that

comes and goes, and that you remain beyond it, more eternal, truer,
than the idea that you are—and the consequent feeling of being—a body.

See that the body itself—not just the idea that you are the body,
but the very body itself—is an appearance appearing to you.

The more you can view the body as an appearance in consciousness,

the easier it is to go back and forth between the appearance of the body,
and the I-AM sense purely by itself, free from the body.

You cannot experience the body without being present, without I-

AM, but you can experience being present, I-AM, without any focus on the
body-appearance or the body-feeling, or the identification with the body-
appearance.

(Comment: This argument proves nothing. Yes, you can feel the
I Am sense without focus on the body, but can you feel the I Am sense
if you had no body, were under an anesthetic, or were deeply asleep?
Nisargadatta says the I Am sensation is not available to you without
a body in complete contradiction to the author. Maharaj speaks of a
deeper awareness than that of beingness. Bentinho here creates a
concept, an idea, that the sense of I Am is totally independent of our
bodies. It may feel good to believe you are immortal because you
believe his argument, but eventually you will question this
understanding and it will crumbles, and you will have to dig deeper.)

Find this in your own experience.

Neti Neti Meditation

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 Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears; there
is no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death.

Buddha

The Starting Focus

“I am here and now. I exist with zero effort. I am Present. I am

Conscious. I am changeless. I am Pure Beingness. I-AM.”

Then Realize

“The body, which I observe, is over there, while I am over here.”

(Comment: This is an excellent teaching, because it teaches you

that everything observable is consciousness, even your experience of
your body. But it does not prove that consciousness or beingness is
eternal, ever-present, in any way. For that you need to go beyond or
prior to consciousness, be become that which observes consciousness
itself as an object. This is the major difference between Ramana and
Nisargadatta. For the latter, you have to be prior to consciousness;
for Ramana there is only Consciousness.)

I-AM before, during, and after the appearance and disappearance of

this body. Attention on the body comes and goes, and the actual body
comes and goes, while I remain as the ocean remains while its waves rise
and fall, appear and disappear.

(Comment: Slick argument, but untrue. I, as beingness, no longer

exists in a dead body or in one under an anesthetic. Then there is no I
Am, no awareness of the world, emotions, beingness. Consciousness
disappears locally, for that specific person, but remains in other
individuals, and collectively as universal consciousness.

This is where Ramana made a large error in logic, when, during

his death experience, he imagined himself dead, yet still felt his
awareness, the life force within, and his consciousness, wherein his

156
awareness of his body laid, seeing that consciousness was not
affected by his death (imagined), and was different in feel from his
physical body, wrongly concluded spirit or consciousness was
immortal, eternal for each individual. But his death was only
imaginary. He pretended to be dead, assumed his pretending was the
same as actually dying, felt his remaining aliveness as unchanged,
and concluded it was immortal.

You have to go deeper than consciousness to find the eternal.

You have to go back to nothingness.)

Since I am over here, and my beingness remains beingness, even

while my body-consciousness comes and goes on the surface of my
beingness, I cannot possibly be my body or my body-consciousness, for I
am here witnessing the appearance of the body.

Similarly, I shall be there to be a witness to its disappearance and

whatever follows that experience.

(COMMENT: You can literally do this each night, if, through

practice, you can watch consciousness being swallowed by the
nothingness of sleep, and in the morning, you can watch the conscious
self emerge out of the Nothingness of sleep. With practice, you can
stay aware of Nothingness for some time after awake consciousness
disappears, dream consciousness appears, and then waking
consciousness appears in the morning. What is closer to your heart
of heart’s is that which observes the coming and going of the states
of consciousness.)

I exist prior to—and am therefore more fundamental than—the

coming and going of the body-focus. I am effortlessly aware of the body
at some times, and I exist without being aware of this body at all other
times.

(Comment: This is only an imaginary argument. It cannot be

spoken by someone who is dead, or someone without a body. Yes, no
one ever is continuously aware of one’s own body, but that does not

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prove consciousness, or presence can exist without a body, a sentient
instrument through which the Absolute can experience a play, so to
speak. The body is a physical instrument for exploration, an organic
sensor with feedback capabilities.)

Even without the body being in focus, I still exist.

I am Presence-Consciousness. I-Exist, no matter what. I-AM,

independent of this body or that body. I remain unaffected by the
turmoil, the presence, and the absence of this body. I-AM, beyond the
body, already.

My true Identity is Presence-Consciousness. The body is just a

complex, brilliant configuration of energy; an appearance created out of
my being’s essential Presence-Energy—again, like waves are made out of
the ocean’s water.

The water is not actually changed by the dynamic forms of the

waves, just as my basic existence is not altered by the body (or lack
thereof) that my existence uses to express itself.

Your Future Is Bright and Deathless.

(Comment: Only if you believe your consciousness, your I Am

exists after your death in some way, as a soul that will reincarnate
or will go to heaven or hell. This is a belief system, contrary to our
own experience of being without presence in deep sleep, under
anesthesia, or when being dead. The body being alive is necessary
for sentience. It is the instrument for consciousness to explore itself,
as objects, emptiness, and space.)

As you exercise the Neti Neti experience, you will gain a clearer and
clearer, visceral and experiential (as well as intellectual) realization of
the fact that your existence, your Presence-Consciousness, is in fact
independent—free from—the coming and going of the body or bodies.

As a result of this growing conviction in your eternal Self, while your

body is still active on this physical-vibrational plane of Play-Presence-

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Energy, the man-made misperception of fear of death—which is subtle
and pervasive in its infiltration of the mind-portion of a being—will
gradually be uprooted from the different layers where it has settled in
some form, and be dissolved by the loving light of your clarity regarding
the eternal and independent nature of Presence-Consciousness.

So, as your clarity regarding the true deathlessness of Consciousness

becomes more brilliant, more bright, you will be increasingly better
equipped (with “light”) to engage ever-more-wisely with the arising fears
in the mind-portion of your mind-body-spirit complex, as it walks its path
through this temporary physical life-appearance.

You are already deathless and eternal, and you can realize this with
the appearances in your life right now, by seeing that you exist no matter
what comes and goes.

Since the idea of being this body generally runs the deepest of all
identifications, I feel that a little more context regarding the
expansiveness of Existence is necessary to prepare you for any
realizations that may follow the application of this lesson—now, or in the
future.

After decades of having moved around/with/in/as this seeming

bodily complex, most people will unconsciously, instinctually, deeply feel
and respond to life’s events as if they are their body—even when they can
intellectually, spiritually, or philosophically understand that they are not
their body.

Stage 6 of the Neti Neti Meditation above will further aid you in
experientially unhooking the sense “I-AM” from the sense “I-AM-this-
body,” and leave you knowing your Self as truly free and independent of
the appearance of the body.

Presence-Beingness shines on its own accord—is its own source for

being—and is therefore self-existent and self-sufficient. The body,
however, is merely an appearance of which we are hardly ever truly

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aware anyway. Our body-awareness comes and goes, but our existence
remains at all times.

The body needs Awareness and Presence-Energy to be experienced—

to exist—but neither Awareness nor Presence-Energy need the body in
order to be and endure.

(Comment: But that does not mean awareness or present energy

can exist without a body, except as a raw potential that springs
forth when a physical instrument is supplied. One needs to go
entirely beyond existence and consciousness to reach that
independence and deathlessness the author speaks of.)

By disentangling the “I-AM” principle from the “body-appearance,”

you will also automatically grow in your conviction of the fact that you,
as Presence-Consciousness, are eternal and beyond the physical illusion of
body-mind-world. In other words, you start to naturally know that death
is an illusion.

This opens up a real gateway into being able to more consciously

access a greater reservoir of intuition and metaphysical knowledge
regarding yourself and creation in general. You will start to notice this
increase in intuitive clarity throughout your everyday life, following this
lesson and this .

The feeling of trust, confidence, or faith in your true Self can

translate into many feelings or realizations. One way that it translates
itself is as the feeling: “I continue to exist beyond the cessation of this
physical apparatus.”

(Comment: But not as an individual. Not as Alice, John, Ed, or

you as a body-mind. Without a body and its ability to perceive the
world, what would you be able to perceive and know, let alone
express, and relate to? What could you think without a brain?)

Expect this conviction to continue to organically grow in brilliance

and brightness over time, removing more of the fear of death as you go.
This happens largely by itself and “unconsciously.”
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 You may find that a year from now, perhaps without having put in
any special effort to work through your fear beliefs psychologically, you
will look back on your present level of fear of death, and you simply
won’t be able to experience it as real anymore—and you won’t be sure
what you did to deserve that freedom.

“About six weeks before I left Madura for good, a great change in
my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the
first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that day
there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of
death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account
for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was
any reason for the fear. I just felt, “I am going to die,” and began
thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or
my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then
and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I
said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: “Now death
has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.”

“And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my

limbs stretched out stiff, as though rigor mortis had set in, and imitated a
corpse so as to give greater reality to the inquiry. I held my breath and
kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither
the word “I,” nor any other word, could be uttered. “Well then,” I said to
myself, “this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground
and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am
I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my
personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am
Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends
it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.”

“All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living
truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. “I” was
something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all
the conscious activity connected with my body was centered on that “I.”
From that moment onward, the “I,” or Self, focused attention on itself by
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a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all.
Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on.

“Other thoughts might come and go, like the various notes of music,
but the “I” continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and
blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking,
reading, or anything else, I was still centered on “I.” Previous to that
crisis, I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously
attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any
inclination to dwell permanently in it.”

“If a man considers he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death.

Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will
discover that the Self always exists, that the body which is born resolves
itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all
mischief. Find where from thoughts emerge. Then you will abide in the
ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of
death.”

By Ramana Maharshi

Life and Death Are the Same

“I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death,
this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to
live. Eternity does not start with death. We are in eternity now.”

Norman Vincent Peale

At some point, you will not only know that consciousness remains
after death, but you will start to realize that consciousness already
resides beyond the physical presence of the body, simultaneously, right
now…

You will, thus, see that life and death are simply different
experiences of the same always-ongoing dream that is Creation. You will

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see that death never applied to Consciousness, and that you, as
Consciousness-Presence, in that sense, were never truly incarnate to
begin with. Even while you experience the body, you are already beyond
it.

(Comment: This part is true, but not as individual

consciousness, or even the universal consciousness, the totality of all
manifestation; rather, you are even beyond consciousness and
nothingness, as its witness.)

Death, at some point, is no longer viewed and felt as something

that actually exists; nor is its opposite, “being alive,” seen as something
that stands out on its own as a separate occurrence.

The idea “I am alive” is the result of the belief “I could be dead.”

Both ideas are rendered irrelevant to you at some point. Can you
imagine the freedom in this? You will :-).

Soon, life will be known by you to be all that there is, and that it is
endless in its exploration of itself. The idea of life/death as two
opposites will simply disappear.

When the charged ideas of life/death as actual things or events

equalizes, harmonizes, and becomes less and less charged with a feeling
of stark contrast, what shines forth through this transparent equalized
understanding of life and death is simply the stability and conviction in
eternally-free Presence-Consciousness.

A fearlessness descends upon your heart.

(Comment: A false fearlessness based on a too-superficial

identification with consciousness and the assumption that individual
consciousness is eternal. Consciousness as a whole is eternal, in the
sense of multitudes of existing sentient beings being aware, but not
so as something that stands completely apart from the physical
world. But exactly as the author describes will happen after you
realize yourself as Nothingness that embraces both being and not-

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being, existence and non-existence. You have to go one full level
deeper in self-exploration than the author provides.)

I-AM Shall Remain

Presence-Consciousness always prevails over any idea of limitation.

Presence-Consciousness always prevails over illusion.

I-AM will continue after this or that falls away from it, including the
body. The body is, ultimately, just another this or that; just as I-AM
continues right now—after thoughts, emotions, circumstances, and even
awareness-of-the-body fall away—constantly already, in your everyday
life.

Appearances die every second, and you remain to see them all
come, be, and dissolve back into the Presence-Energy substratum from
which they arose in the first place. You have experienced many, many
deaths—even in this single “lifetime” perception.

What makes you think it will be any other way with the body?

Just because the body forms the focal point around which, or due to
which, a large degree of your experiences are known to you, that does
not mean that the vehicle for physical, localized exploration is the great
I-AM itself; existence itself is not contained within, or by, the body-focal-
point-appearance.

The body is made up out of I-AM Energy, so how could I-AM

disappear when it stops sustaining the body-illusion it created in the first
place?

(Comment: A child can die and the parent still live and they are
of the same blood.)

That is as non-sensible as saying that the person eating his own

home-cooked meal, disappears as soon as he swallows the last bite. It is
as illogical as suggesting that the tree disappears when the apple is
plucked. Does the ocean disappear when a wave collapses back into it?

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 (Comment: The author is trying in a way to make the individual
immortal as a soul that can take form and manifest its own destiny
and intentions. It is quite a sales job but many like it because it
promises a shallow immortality, supposedly proved by his exercises
and philosophy of what is. But we really need to get prior to
consciousness for this to happen.)

I-AM is free from the body already; beyond the body already. The
body does not limit or define Existence-Consciousness. It never did, and
never will. The body-reality is an illusion; it’s just a thought, an idea that
developed into a sense-perception.

It is Presence-Consciousness that knows and witnesses the body; it’s

not the body that knows and witnesses Presence-Consciousness.

The body does not have any means of knowing itself, of being
intelligent, other than for awareness to come in, wrap itself around the
experience/perception, and then breathe intelligence, life, and self-
consciousness into the body-experience.

(Comment: He takes a different tact here. Here he assumes a

body exists, then the “spirit” comes into it, animates it, and gives it
self-awareness. This is 180 degrees different from his earlier
position that the body is merely a thought in consciousness.

Nisargadatta’s position is more subtle than Ramana’s or the

author here. He posits that the body is necessary for Consciousness
to exist; the body is the host, and also the body appears in
consciousness as an object. Then Nisargadatta moves one level prior,
saying the Absolute is the creator and witness of consciousness, but
itself is without quality or perceivable, or knowable.)

You have never known anything because of the body, or even

through the body—not really. You have simply known what you
witnessed—whatever was created out of Presence-Energy within your
Presence-Consciousness. That includes the body-appearance.

The body is an appearance.

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 (Comment: This is true. All that you ever know are appearances
in your consciousness. But from my point of view, even
consciousness, the container of consciousness objects, itself is only a
witnessed appearance, witnessed by the Absolute. Even this is not it.
This is just another concept. In “reality” there is only nothingness
and somethingness, Nothingness and Consciousness, and you, the
ultimate perceiver are beyond both.)

“Everyone has to die; so die as your true nature. Why die as a body?
Never forget your true nature. It may not be acceptable to many, but it is
a fact… this body has nothing to do with you. If you must have an
ambition, have the highest, so that at least while dying, you will be the
Absolute. Decide that now firmly, with certainty and conviction. Giving
up the body is a great festival.

“Death is generally considered to be a traumatic experience, but

understand what happens. That which has been born, the knowledge “I
Am,” which is the same everywhere, but which has gotten itself limited
by the body, again becomes unlimited. A speck of consciousness is given
up.

“Why the fear? How has this fear of death crept in? That which
cannot die somehow became convinced that it was going to die. It is
based on the concept that one is an individual who is born… all the fear
arises from mere words told to you by someone. This is the bondage.”

By Nisargadatta Maharaj

(Comment: The author quotes Nisargadatta, and thinks the

quote supports his viewpoint. But the author misses what Maharaj
says about death: A speck of consciousness is given up. For
Nisargadatta and me, the I Amness returns to the unmanifest; it is
given up, and does not continue as the author states. One dies as an
individual unless that individuality has been transcended by seeing it
is a human construct. One has to become impersonal before death.
Not too many will actually do this.

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 Ramesh Balsekar on this point said the individual does not
continue, but a different individual with different experiences and
different destiny is born elsewhere. Life continues, not the
individual. But what you are, that which is beyond birth and death,
beyond somethingness and nothingness, beyond Nowness, or presence
energy, always is. It is this conviction which is beyond the author’s
and rings more true than the survival of an individual soul. This
position is more subtle than the author’s, and I think heuristically of
higher value in liberation.)

Dream-Body Analogy

To help you realize that the body is just an appearance, the

following analogy may make this truth really palpable for you.

When you dream at night, your consciousness creates a body to

explore the dream-world with, using subtle energy (non-physical
Presence-Energy.

In your dream at night, you use your fake ears to hear somebody
call your name, even though your ears are dreamed up and don’t actually
exist. What do you use to hear in your dream?

You can taste a peanut butter sandwich in your dream, even though
your tongue is itself an appearance with no real ability to taste anything.
What are you using to taste in your dream?

You can see far and wide in your dream, even though your dream-
body’s eyes are simply subtle-energy phenomena created inside of your
consciousness and don’t actually have nerve endings that see a world
outside of itself. What do you think sees the dream?

You can touch the Earth in your dream, using your dream-hands,
and you can feel the sensation of touching the Earth, even though your
hands are “unreal.” What do you use to feel in your dream, if your hands
are unreal?

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 You can smell a dream-rose using your dream-body’s nose, but you
know upon waking that your dream body was imagined—so was the nose,
the rose, and the smell. What was doing the smelling, if not
consciousness directly, without an intermediary or medium?

You see, the medium of the body was simply a “permission slip”—an
excuse, if you will—a symbol for consciousness to experience a certain
thing, time, or location. It doesn’t actually need, nor does it in actuality
use, a body to experience things. It experiences appearances directly.

(Comment: Whomever reads this needs to know this is one POV,

Ramana’s POV. As such, it is very powerful all by itself, and in a
sense, obviates my POV and Nisargadatta’s if one does not want to
go deeper and more subtle.)

This can be hard to viscerally understand in physical reality, but if

you remain open to the idea that this might actually be how reality is set
up, it will show you how true it is and it will become your lived
experience.

(Comment: Experiences and further understanding flow out of

conviction, which is ultimately a belief strongly held, which will
create its own set of experiences and understandings.)

Consciousness directly experiences all sensations, stimuli, and

phenomena, with no real intermediary. The body is a beautiful illusion.

(Comment: True, the body does not experience, consciousness

does because the body is a sensor for consciousness. Its
configuration determines what consciousness experiences.)

The intermediary (the body) is just an excuse to experience one

particular space-time moment at a time, so as not to confuse the linear
learning process you chose to have, before you started dreaming this
waking dream within your consciousness.

(Comment: This sounds like New Age bull. You, as a deathless

spirit, had the intention to have some certain kind of creature birth

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in order to fulfill some lesson plan created again by your
consciousness. Unfortunately, you knew nothing about this until the
author told you. How can he know, and you not remember? This is
just a tale.)

If you did not focalize your consciousness into a singular, linear

space/time reality, with a vehicle such as the body as the center of your
point of view, you would simply be experiencing too many parallel
realities at once. This, although expansive in its own way, would not
actually be conducive to learning and evolving as much as is a restricted,
sequential learning environment filled with catalyst, where your sense of
self is limited to the dream scenario and the dream body, and the stakes
seem to be high.

Hence, your—shall I say—Higher Self (more on this in the

Empowerment teaching), will only allow as much expansion of
consciousness as is relevant for you to experience, one step at a time.

(Comment: Massaro here posits the dual existence of a higher

Self forming lesson plans and a destiny for the purpose of teaching
you in the here and now (lower Self) about your true nature as a
Higher Self. A tale. Many current New Age teachers also talk about
alternative realities, intentionality, etc., all based on cosmologies
and ontologies based on speculative modern physics.)

If your Higher Self would allow for a total obliteration of your

singular experience and show you all that you are—on a higher level—all
at once, that would most likely not serve your chosen timeline
experience, unless it was given as a glimpse, that then gives you
something to chew on and allows you to change your perspective as you
go about exploring your life’s theme. But as a permanent experience, this
is not relevant for almost anyone. If it were relevant, one wouldn’t have
come into this incarnational timeline experience in the first place.

So, I ask you to be patient with your waking up process and trust in
the way your enlightenment unfolds. Nevertheless, give it all you’ve got,
because the higher your desire for enlightenment of any kind, the more
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amazing your life-experience will become and the more effective use you
will make of this life-experience.

Let’s briefly return to the dream-body example:

In your dreams at night, your body is completely composed of the

same dream substance that makes up the dream world. There is no
separation between the dream body and its environment, or the illusory
air that it breathes. It’s all the same substance, across the board. It’s the
same energy shaped into different colors and frequencies.

And neither your dream-body, nor the world it appears to reside

“inside of,” exist as real, inherent things separate from the Consciousness
that dreams them into creation. There is no experience apart from
Presence-Consciousness.

When you are dreaming, Consciousness (Awareness in subject-

object focus) uses the power of infinite intelligence to shape Presence-
Energy into the experience it desires it to be.

(Comment: This is a pretty simplistic explanation of the dream

process, that Infinite Intelligence is shaping presence-energy
according to its desire with an intent.)

In exactly the same way, your body in the waking dream also
consists of Presence-Energy, simply in a more crystallized, denser form,
generating what seems to be “matter.” But even matter is exposed to be
nothing but space and energy, by those who are Self-Realized, as well as
by modern-day empirically-oriented (quantum) physicists.

In other words: all is an illusion of Consciousness, a dance of

energy—The Play of God.

All energy—regardless of the dimension of experience—utilizes the

same Presence-Energy, which is Creation Itself, to shape its experiences
out of. Each level, realm, or plane uses this energy intelligently, in
different vibrations and configurations.

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 (Comment: New Age here we come. Easy to state, impossible to
prove. The best you can get is a conviction and for what end? What
does this theory do for the reader/seeker of enlightenment? This is
all speculation, similar to dozens of New Age teachers.)

Physical reality is shaped by Consciousness, using the same

substance your dream reality, or other non-physical realities, are created
out of—basically, light.

This one light of Consciousness is simply vibrating in different

configurations, at different “rotational speeds,” or simply put: at
different frequencies, creating different appearances.

(Comment: Frequencies in what medium? What is vibrating,

electrons or consciousness itself vibrates? How does consciousness create
matter?)

So, everything you see in your waking dream is consciousness

utilizing its innate intelligence to shape the Presence-Energy that makes
up everything you experience.

(Comment: It sounds like I am making up the experiences that I

create for myself. But I don’t know it until the author tells me that I
am both the infinitely intelligent creator, but also the “victim” of all
the calamities I have created for me.)

Hence, the same Is-ness, or Beingness, can be found and felt in

every single seeming “object” of creation; because it’s all made out of
the same Being.

Waking up

When you are sleep-dreaming, you usually don’t realize that your
body is illusory. You are convinced you are the dream-body, inside of a
world. It is upon waking up that you realize it was all a dream inside of
consciousness.

What if you could wake up from this waking dream too?

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 That is precisely what is happening every time you remember to
recognize the clarity and awakeness of Presence-Energy, or Awareness
itself.

Waking up to Presence-Consciousness, or to the Awareness which

enables the experience of it all, is akin to, in the dream, remembering
that you are actually lying in your bed, dreaming this dream.

This realization—that you are dreaming—changes your whole sense

of self and identity-placement, and induces a sense of lucidity into your
experience: a sense of transcendence, freedom, and fearlessness. This
goes for both the sleeping dream, as well as the waking dream. These are
two different types of dreams, but dreams nonetheless.

Which Came First—Consciousness or the Brain?

When I ask people the question, “What makes you so convinced that
you did not exist before the body appeared?”

Many people say, “I don’t remember anything prior to my birth.”

This is because this body’s brain does not have memory-images of

what was before this life. This body’s brain is made up out of this body’s
perceptions only. Conventional methods of remembering won’t cut it.

If you wish to remember more of who or what you are beyond this
life, however, you can—there are various ways to do this.

Many people remember this during dreams (when Consciousness is

out of body), during trance sessions, or during meditation. Some, for
whom it is relevant, connect to their parallel life-experiences (usually
interpreted as past—or future!—lifetimes) while in their waking state.
Some people are suddenly “struck by a memory” of another life, and it
feels so real that they cannot deny they are more than they thought they
were.

If a parallel lifetime is close in its orientation to one’s present

physical reality, one can even retrace where that person lived and find

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confirmation that this other lifetime apparently actually existed or exists,
even though before this glimpse, there was no knowledge of this “other
person.”

(Comment: Speaking of the concept and experience of

alternative realities, astral projection, intentionality and vibration
or frequency alignment are the New Age equivalent of magic and
witchcraft. I warn students about diving into alternative realities
because they can become detached from their “home world” so to
speak, and end up with grandiose delusions and lack of any stable
reality check. Their living world becomes very fluid and no reality is
experienced as stable of real.)

Many young children vividly describe knowledge and

experiences from before this physical lifetime. We often discount this as
“imagination” (and sometimes it is), but many of these “imaginations”
have a true origin. The veil of forgetfulness is not yet thick in young
children, especially in the generations that are being born today.

Another confirmation can be found in the hundreds of thousands of

accounts of near death, and/or out of body experiences people are
experiencing every day.

The idea of “past lifetimes” is not nearly as universally relevant to

The Way of Self-Realization as realizing that you—as Beingness, as a
Consciousness, as I-AM—exist outside of (independent from) the realm of
the physical body’s world-experience.

(Comment: Actually, “you” both permeate it and are beyond or

prior to it, but not outside of it. But you have to go deeper to find
this.)

Knowing about alternate lifetimes your Soul-Consciousness has lived

before—or more accurately, is experiencing right now, simultaneously—is
not crucial to knowing that you are death-transcendent.

Also, it is simply not relevant for everyone to have these

experiences in this lifetime. As such, a person won’t necessarily access
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this knowledge, and thus, we cannot rely on it to instruct you into
greater confirmation of life beyond death. I just wanted you to know that
there is the option to explore this idea, if it resonates for you.

What IS a more universally, experientially-reliable pathway into

confirmation of consciousness beyond death, is the following exercise.

Where Were You Before You Were Born?

You can feel into, or sense, Presence “before” this life.

You can “remember,” intuitively and viscerally, that you existed

before your body’s birth.

Start with the Starting Focus, by simply relaxing your mind,

attuning yourself to Presence/Beingness. Perhaps sit down, if it feels
more centering and silencing.

Then ask yourself, “Where was I before my birth?” or, “Who was I
before my birth?”

Feel into this…

Really let this question sink into the silence of the here and now.

This is called “contemplation,” or meditation.

Let it show you the answer—feel into the answer.

Whenever you sincerely ask for a realization, and then remain in

the most receptive, attuned, open state you can presently assume, you
will always be shown something of value, whether it is something you
expected or not.

Some Variations

You can also pinpoint a specific time period, a handful of years or

so before your birth, to give your consciousness a specific time/space
frame to tune into. It doesn’t matter much which time period you

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choose, as long as it is a time/space frame before your physical birth on
this planet.

For some people, this makes it easier; for others, slightly more
difficult or more distracting. If you find it distracting, stick with the
original question above.

For me, for instance, being 26 at the time of writing this, that
question could be:

“Where was I, 50 years ago?”

Or, an alternative question could be:

“What was I, 50 years ago?”

“Who was I, 50 years ago?”

“Where was I when the Wright brothers completed their first

flight?”

“What was I doing during World War II?”

More varieties:

“Where/who/what was I before my grandfather was born?”

“Where was I before planet Earth supported animal life?”

“Where was I before planet Earth was formed?”

“Where/who/what will I be 1,000 years from now?”

And then there is a potentially very powerful question, which jumps

a few steps ahead of where we are (in general terms) in this progression.
This will be addressed in greater detail in the Infinity teaching, but can
already give you access to an instinctual, experiential confirmation of
Consciousness beyond the body:

“Where was I before Creation was created?”

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 Choose whichever one of these examples resonates most
powerfully. Which one excites you the most? Pick that one for now, then
sit down, and in silent receptivity, ask the question. Tune into the answer
as you would listen carefully for someone calling your name in a noisy
crowd. Attune yourself to the frequency you wish to receive, and ignore
everything else.

Feel free to try a few more, or all of the varieties given above, or
come up with a question yourself that works best for you.

Now, since time as we know it does not exist outside of our mind-
consciousness, it is more accurate to say that when we have a feeling of
having existed before our birth, we are truly just sensing into the
Presence-Consciousness which is here, now, beyond the realm of linearity
and physicality already.

We get to know ourselves as deathless aliveness—here, now,

exploring and expanding forever—as free agents of Infinity itself. We are
desired to be exactly who we are.

(Comment: Notice the logic. We can imagine a pre-life past,

and a post life past, but what we are really doing is feeling our
presence energy, and recognizing we are immortally from to travel to
pre and post birth alternative realities. Yes, we are free to imagine
such travels while we daydream or get lost in “Higher” energy
pursuits. But so many people who would normally love science
fiction, also love these speculative existences.)

Discover your Blueprint

As another fun alternative, which may not be everyone’s “cup of

tea”—especially this early on in the progression—you can also tune into
the moment right before your conception. This is the moment when, in a
sense, you were looking down upon what was about to become your
experience as an incarnational focus of Consciousness.

In this alternative, you can imagine yourself anticipating the

conception that would lead to your about-to-be-manifest experience and
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the ideas you chose to explore in this particular lifetime. As such, you can
imagine a high degree of excitement and anticipation, akin to a director
about to see her movie come into being.

For those to whom it is relevant, this proves to be an interesting

experience of “who they were,” specific to preparing for this life’s
incarnational experience.

It can potentially give great intuitive insight into the blueprint,

theme, or intention you had in store for this life. In addition, it can be a
confirmation of your presence-consciousness beyond—or before—
inhabiting the physical body, and therefore, also confirmation of the time
frame after the physical body is let go of.

This exercise can greatly clarify why you have chosen some of the
challenges in your life; what the reason or intention behind them is.

What Will Happen After the Body Dies?

Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form.
Like the sun, only when you set in the west can you rise in the east.

Jelaluddin Rumi

I’m going to state the following descriptions as fact, as it is as

obvious to me as a circle is round; however, it is always up to you to take
from whatever I say the things that resonate, and leave out what does
not. This, as a principle, is always more important than whatever I say.

If you’re not sure what to think or believe, or if you’re not sure

what resonates, I encourage you to simply remain open to receiving these
confirmations in your own good time, through your own direct experience
with Consciousness, and become convinced of what is obvious in that
way.

There is no need to believe in anything; just let information and

confirmation come in stages and be presented in ways most natural and
relevant to you.

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 The absolute truth is that all points of view are equally true.

Without going into too much philosophical/metaphysical detail at

this time, I will summarize:

(Your) Consciousness, upon the cessation of the body-vehicle, will

experience itself as if it wakes up from a long dream and enters into a
“more real” reality of Self, remembering much, much more of its Greater
Self. You will wake up in a different, lighter dimension, where space is
not the container for time, but time is the container for space. I will
explain this in more depth later.

For now, you can liken it to your dream-substance experience at

night, where you can be in any time and any space you can think of.

Your Higher Self’s Consciousness will then, in all its wisdom and
self-knowledge, assist your level of consciousness in synthesizing the life
experience gained from the incarnational experience (a “life-review”) to
grow in wisdom, clarity, and precision of intent. Your Higher Self’s
Consciousness will then decide, from a very expanded place of seeing the
entire Beingness totality (of which the individual you now know yourself
to be is but a portion—like a finger belongs to a hand) what it desires to
explore and experience next.

Then, when it’s ready, and the incarnational experience is

synthesized/integrated, it will start focusing itself into the proper
configuration/frequency of energy to generate another vehicle/body of
some kind. This does not have to be a physical body; it can be a
time/space vehicle, instead of a space/time incarnational vehicle. A
time/space, non-physical body is much like your dream-body.

Whether your consciousness’ next choice is to wear another physical

representation (body) in a space/time reality, consonant with your desire
to explore, or whether it is to dwell more freely within the time/space
planes of consciousness for a while, or whether it is to embody a
different density/dimensionality of energy altogether and explore
creation there—it (You) will choose at that timing whatever is most

178
desired and relevant for your ongoing expansion into, and expression of,
All-That-Exists.

(Comment: My God, what fantasy. It really does not help

anyone except by allaying the fear of one’s death, and the promise of
a bigger, brighter future, not unlike the Christian promise of heaven,
or the promise of certain types of experiences in heaven due to
Muslim warriors fighting a Jihad. It gives Hope.)

The Journey Has No End

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.

Henry Van Dyke

Make no mistake, this human journey of spirituality offers merely

the beginning reflections of an infinite exploration of creation in its
endless dimensions and expressions of The Infinite One. We explore—and
accelerate—this exploration by means of effective utilization of Infinity’s
Free Agent, which is Awareness, or—You.

Each way encourages greater subsequent embodiment of the other.

They are, most certainly, complementary.

Personally, I tend to go back and forth in my primary focus, and yet

to an extent, always simultaneously deepen and expand in my
embodiment of both ways.

We have, after all, infinite time at our disposal, and an ever-

expanding journey ahead.

You don’t die.

Nobody dies.

Death doesn’t exist.

You only reach a new level of vision,

a new realm of consciousness,

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 a new unknown world.

Henry Miller

(Comment: Robert, Ramana, and Nisargadatta would agree to

this as all hold that consciousness itself is illusory, but that which is
beyond Consciousness is not trapped in the time and space, and
object world of Consciousness. To them, you are prior to
consciousness. As such, why would you plan a rebirth to create a new
incarnation? Why would you come back to a new physical life if you
knew it was illusory? Bentinho also posits the existence of a separate
soul that embodies or incarnates.)

There is no rush, yet we do our best to utilize our intended time in

this “incarnational experience” as effectively as we can, to accelerate as
joyfully as we can and learn what we came here to learn, as well as share
with other-selves the love that we came here to share, each in our own
unique ways.

The following, I find, is a helpful attitude to have throughout the

entire spiritual journey during our time in the human suit: the attitude
that this life is both urgent/precious and timeless/indestructible. That
we have to be on top of things and do our very best, yet know that
nothing can be out of place, realized too late, or realized too soon.

This balances will, desire, and intent with peace, healing, and
faith, so that we don’t become either controlling or lethargic/inefficient,
but instead live as joyfully alive, creative, and powerfully effective—as
non-insistent, stress-free co-creators in alignment with the higher levels
of (our) Consciousness.

However, I want you to realize this very clearly—there is no end to

this Journey.

There are finalities to be realized, for sure, but none of them end
the journey.

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 Even the most “final” of realizations—that on the Absolute level you
are beyond experiencing, beyond Creation altogether, and that nothing
ever truly happened to you at this level—does not end the journey; it just
steps it up a notch and destroys all assumptions regarding who or what
you are. But the journey continues.

(Comment: This is true. Even after escaping the body continues,

and one’s consciousness does continue to deeper its understanding
thus changing how the apparent person relates to the “cosmos.)

Note: Since this is such a substantial and potentially perception-

altering lesson, I strongly advise you to take your time with this one and
not rush through it.

I suggest you take a minimum of four days to be present with the

contents, exercises, analogies, and quotes contained in this lesson and
contemplate each of them profoundly.

When you feel good about your new perception of deathlessness,

and feel significantly more independent from the physical body’s
shenanigans, you can proceed.

181
 Attachments are the result of misplaced happiness. They are not
hard to transcend or transform, you simply need to see that you are
actively projecting your okayness into things that have absolutely no
ability to give you what you don’t already have. You are the source of
your own happiness. As soon as you see logic and sense in this, you will
stop projecting your joy elsewhere, and voila–attachments dissolved.

Now that you’ve built a true, experiential foundation in seeing the

independence of your being from appearances, this will explore the topic
of attachments: why/how they are developed, and how they don’t make
any sense any longer.

As with everything in life, as soon as you discover something that

you are used to doing no longer serves you—as soon as you truly see this
with pristine clarity—you automatically stop chasing the thing you
thought was going to bring you great benefit, simply because you realize
it won’t.

And this is really all there is to the science of attachment: To

realize that you are falsely and fruitlessly projecting your satisfaction
into things that are not real (the future).

Table of Contents [hide]

1 What is attachment?

1.1 What is a good feeling?

1.2 What triggers a good feeling?

1.2.1 What does my Higher Self think of this?

2 What is Abundance?

2.1 The source of all negative emotions: “Believing in lack”

3 What causes a good feeling, and how does attachment begin?

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 3.1 An Example: Lisa and Joshua

3.1.1 Then, Lisa’s friend Jack invites her to a party.

3.1.2 2 weeks later…

4 Have a look in the mirror

4.1 What we can learn from Lisa

5 Everyday Practice: Take Action Without Expectation

5.1 Homework

5.2 Got a question, or just want to share? Discuss this in the forums!

What is attachment?

Most people know attachment as the feeling of contraction in the

body that follows the mental “fear-projecting” of a (potential) loss or
lack of something we think contains a portion of our well-being.

In short: we become aware of our attachments as soon as we think

of losing something we desire, or not getting something we desire.

But what is attachment exactly?

Attachment is misplaced happiness.

Our attachments to certain things is due to the fact that we have

come to associate our good feelings with the presence of certain items,
people, or circumstances in our lives, and bad feelings with the seeming
lack thereof.

It is really that simple.

183
 In order to free yourself from an attachment to, let’s say, a person,
you will need to somehow show yourself—realize—that your happiness did
not come from that person, it came from your very own heart, your very
own being, and was simply channeled into your body-mind experience as
a result of you giving yourself permission to feel good upon seeing or
experiencing the other person.

Allow me explain in greater detail:

What is a good feeling?

A good feeling is nothing more than to be in alignment with your

True Self’s natural wavelength. Literally, feeling good is the result of
having the vibrations of your mind-portion dance in sync—in harmony—
with the underlying ever-present wavelength of your True Being; or: your
true frequency.

What triggers a good feeling?

A good feeling is triggered by our mind’s perspective of that

moment being in alignment with our True Being’s perspective of that
moment.

What does my Higher Self think of this?

Develop the habit of asking yourself when you’re feeling bad: “How
would my Higher Self view this experience? Would it also project all the
lack that I project into it, or would it view it from a place of knowing
infinite possibilities, endless abundance, true faith and unconditional
love?”

184
 If a good, peaceful, joyful feeling is released into your state of
being by your perspective being in alignment with Reality, then what is it
that triggers your mind’s perspective to be in alignment with your True
Being’s perspective? A thought based in the idea of abundance (usually),
or some variation of it.

When we look at our life and perceive an abundance of love,

possibility, potential for satisfaction, money, resources, the ability to do
what we want to do, free will, appreciation, and so on, we feel good
because that is how our True Being perceives every second of our reality.

When we feel good, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the

actual circumstances, for they are inherently neutral and without
meaning. When we feel good, it signifies that our way of seeing life is
presently in alignment with our True Being’s way of seeing life.

I will explain a little bit more about abundance in the section

below, however I will not go too deeply into the practical specifics of
abundance and the aligning of frequencies, for that is very distinctly the
purpose of the Empowerment teaching. The purpose of this lesson—and
the Enlightenment teaching in general—is simply to get to as clear of a
picture as we can regarding how and why attachments form, and what
they are, so that when they come up, we can apply the proper clarity and
“relaxation-into-beingness” to release those misperceptions and
remember the true value of our here-and-now existence.

What is Abundance?

Abundance—as a principle of Existence—is the idea that:

“Everything is never-ending and originating from an infinite source.” This
translates into our human experience more along the lines of: “There is
more than enough (infinite amounts) to fulfill every being’s every
desire.”

185
 In reality, abundance is one of the given facts of Creation, for
Creation itself is infinite, and not bound by space or time. As such,
Existence itself (your True Being) does not know the existence of lack. It
doesn’t understand it. It doesn’t compute with the idea, with the
vibration, of a thought that suggests there is a lack of something in the
universe. This is why we feel bad when we think like this.

The source of all negative emotions: “Believing in lack”

As soon as we think in terms of lack—which I sometimes call the

“anti-thought” because it goes against everything true about Creation—
what happens is that your personal vibration does not match up at all
with the vibration of your True Being, which is Existence, or Creation
itself.

The bad feeling you get is the distance you feel between your view
and the true view of Existence itself.

This is the only reason most people on this planet feel so miserable,
scared, confused, and betrayed most of the time: their minds have been
taught to believe, through and through, in the existence of something
that absolutely does not exist: lack.

Hence, every time you project that something is missing or lacking,

or that something could potentially be missing or lacking someday (fear
of the future), whether that is a loved one you lost, or a loved one you
imagine you might lose some day, what is mechanically—energetically—
happening is that you are attempting to separate yourself from the
fundamental laws of Creation.

You are, in a sense, creating a gap between yourself and the core
frequency of Creation, which is limitless Love, Infinity, Abundance. You
attempt this every time you think something rooted in the belief that
“lack exists” or that “lack might exist someday.”

186
 The beauty of this insight is that it cuts through the heart of every
piece of suffering known to humankind. There literally is no type of
suffering that I have not been able to trace back to this core idea of lack.
Try it out and see for yourself.

All of our suffering—all of our resistance and contraction as a human

being—whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual (but it is
especially obvious with mental and emotional suffering) is based in the
idea that lack can occur or that it has already occurred.

You might not believe that it is this simple right now, but as soon as
you start looking for it, you will see that the idea that lack exists or can
exist is the root cause of all of human suffering. This is a far more
accurate perception than to suggest that “desire is the cause of all
suffering.”

I am tempted to explain more, but I want to stick to the intention

behind this lesson, so for now this will do. All you need to know at this
point is that lack is the root cause of all of your mental and emotional
suffering. More on this topic will be explored in the Empowerment
teaching.

Now that you know this, let’s use this understanding to again ask
ourselves the question:

What causes a good feeling, and how does attachment begin?

As you may have been able to deduce: If we did not believe in lack
on any level of our being, we would constantly and effortlessly have “a
good feeling” because our vibration would be that of our natural state.
Hence, being synced-up, we would feel good, because that is what a good
feeling is based on.

187
 In our society, a truly good feeling has become a rare thing and so
we have come to associate “feeling good” with certain situations, things,
or people. But really, when we look at it scientifically, we are supposed
to feel good all the time; it’s our natural state.

We have just become so insistent upon interpreting and projecting

lack unto everything that the few times we do feel good, it is because
some appearance that enters our life triggers a thought rooted in
abundance, which then syncs-up with our true vibration, and because of
this link up, we experience good feelings, good vibes.

However, most of us fail to see that the good feeling is due to the
alignment of our view with our Higher Self’s view, NOT because it comes
from the appearance that entered our perception.

An Example: Lisa and Joshua

This is a fictional story that simply looks a lot like yours. All
similarities between these fictional characters and events, and the ones
in your own life, are completely incidental.

Lisa was taught from an early age onward that lack is a real
phenomenon. Her parents told her to be careful to never let too much of
it come into her life.

She was taught to make sure she has insurance for everything and to
rely on her government to live a safe life. She behaves well so she
doesn’t have to experience a lack of love and an abundance of rejection,
which is also seen as lack.

Lisa has never seen lack before, has never tasted lack before, but
like everybody else who never truly encountered the presence of lack
(because nobody has), she still believes it exists, somewhere… Perhaps
right around the next corner? “Who knows—lack might show up at any
moment now!”

188
 She believes in this fictional phenomenon of lack so much that she
believes it is present in her life right now, even though she’s never seen
or tasted it outside of her mental imagery and definitions.

For example, she interprets and defines the abundance of alive

space in her house as “the lack of a partner,” and because she sees an
abundance of air molecules in her house, and tells herself that she
doesn’t ever bump into other skin molecules in her house unless she has
guests over, she believes she is currently lacking a partner.

She has been taught by many movies, stories, and by papa and
mama’s example, that people are supposed to have a partner in their
house. If they don’t, it means they are lacking something called “love and
companionship,” which then means they should feel lonely. Hence, Lisa
believes she feels lonely, thinking that something nobody has never
experienced before—lack—is all around her.

Because Lisa has been unconsciously imprinted with this idea that
lack exists in certain ways, she now experiences the only thing that
doesn’t exist in all of Creation: A lack of love!

That’s how powerful of a creator, of a consciousness, she is—she

can conjure up the illusory experience of a phenomenon that goes against
the infinite nature of Creation itself. She is literally creating the
experience of the only thing that can never actually manifest—lack!

Lisa is an amazingly powerful co-creator, but she interprets herself

as a lacking loser, thus positioning herself out of sync with the truth of
Creation (that she is amazing and abundant), and she feels bad.

Then, Lisa’s friend Jack invites her to a party.

189
 At this party, she meets one of Jack’s friends, someone she has
never met before. He is a handsome, tall guy with dark hair and good
posture. And he looks friendly and approachable. Exactly the image she
has of Abundance embodied!

He also has a very gracious, magnetic personality; he seems sincere,

too! OMG.

Lisa feels good feelings right now, because she is having thoughts
that are somewhat close in vibration to the original vibration of Creation:
unending Love, infinite Abundance, all is possible, and so on.

She doesn’t feel completely in bliss, but that’s because the

thoughts she is having are not pure truth; they are only marginally close
in their vibration to the true vibration of infinite Abundance. They
resemble truth closer than most of her thoughts, but they are still rooted
in the game of believing in lack.

She is having thoughts such as: “There is the presence of a

handsome man in this room,” and “I got to shake his strong hand and look
into his beautiful eyes,” and “He said he was pleased to meet me, and he
seemed to actually like me!”

These thoughts triggered good feelings in Lisa because these

thoughts were aligning her mind’s perspective more closely with the
perspective of Existence itself. Her good feelings had very little (or even
nothing) to do with the presence of this guy; they had everything to do
with the fact that she gave herself permission to have thoughts rooted in
abundance, rather than lack—for once.

Since Lisa doesn’t experience her mind being in-sync with her
Greater Self very often, she is now associating the good feelings even
more with the presence of this guy, because after all, she’s feeling good
when he’s around!

190
 Lisa doesn’t realize it was her own shift in perspective from lack to
abundance that caused her self’s vibration to be closer to the vibration of
her True Being. Hence, she is now starting to build a strong association—
an attachment—to this guy. She is beginning to misplace her happiness;
she believes this guy can make her happy.

Uh-oh!

2 weeks later…

Lisa and Joshua have been on four dates already since the party at
Jack’s house. Things are really looking up for Lisa! Abundance seems to
be in her future, and lack seems to have disappeared into her past.

Lisa is getting her hopes up, which simply means that the
unconscious idea that she’s been imprinted with, which is that if she finds
a good partner, let alone a handsome gracious one, then there will be the
absence of lack, and the presence of abundance.

So, Lisa finds herself in this uncertain and transitional phase of

being in between a life of lacking a partner, lacking love, and therefore
experiencing a lot of sadness and loneliness, and being potentially—but
uncertainly—headed in the direction of what could be a life filled with an
abundance of love, kind words, intimacy, and the presence of another
body in her house.

This is why “getting her hopes up” feels both good and bad at the
same time. She doesn’t know exactly why it makes her feel both good
and bad, but you guessed it already, didn’t you?!

She is experiencing perspectives rooted in abundance (which feel

good, because abundance is all that there is), but this scenario also brings
up a lot of her perspectives rooted in the idea that lack exists or can exist
(which feel bad, because lack doesn’t exist).

191
 Whenever she imagines, “It is actually going to happen! We are
going to be together; there is going to be presence and abundance in my
life, and love!” she feels really, really fantastic! In fact, she feels leaps
and bounds better than anything she has allowed herself to feel in, like,
forever!

Hence, she is starting to become a little attached to the idea of it

working out. She has projected her well-being, her abundance, and her
happiness onto an idea of a man outside of her. And he could die or he
could not like her (once she starts letting her hair down and accidentally
farts around the house). He could turn out to be mean, or he could find
someone else.

So, Lisa feels good about the idea of being in abundance with him,
but she feels worried and anxious at the same time about losing her
happiness. After all, if he runs away, he runs away with her happiness,
which is now inside of him! If he dies, her happiness dies with him!

Oh lord, what a predicament! Such a double-edged sword this game

of lack/abundance, rejection/love has become. So unnecessarily
complicated!

Now imagine this: A similar scenario is happening constantly,

everyday, to about 7 billion people, and it is repeating itself with no end.
What a cosmic show (joke)!

Sometimes I imagine that the aliens are watching the universe’s

longest version of “As the World Turns.” I bet they simply cannot get
enough of watching a show that is all about trying to create the only
thing that Existence cannot create: lack. It’s kind of fascinating.

192
 If this Joshua episode doesn’t work out like a perfect fairytale for
Lisa, this will only confirm again that she’s unworthy of love, lonely, ugly,
unwanted, and so on. These ideas will root themselves even deeper into
her psyche, until she feels there is no hope possible, and she will close
down the idea of a relationship altogether.

She will feel deluded and stupid for ever having believed in
abundance—for even a second. And so Lisa becomes a little pessimistic
and a little more sarcastic. She buries the carefree dreamer—the aligned
kid—inside of her a little bit more.

After all, can you imagine that, in addition to being unwanted,

unlovable, unworthy, and ugly, you are also stupidly delusional? What will
people think of her? No way! Lisa doesn’t want that. Lisa would rather
play it safe and enclose herself with controlled amounts of lack, so that
she can protect herself from potential future surprise-lack.

Lisa is resolved to kill the kid inside her for good, so that she will
never have to believe in abundance again. She wants to at least keep her
dignity, which she believes means something along the lines of being a
realist that doesn’t believe in love, or isn’t open to too many possibilities
in general.

Have a look in the mirror

Now, can you do me a favor, dear reader, and walk to one of the
rooms in your house where there is a mirror and look into your own eyes?

While you’re looking at yourself, see that you are just like the
example of Lisa.

Admit it. Feel it. Acknowledge it. You have this in you as well.

193
 You have been there and done that, at least to some degree. You
have played this game of lack versus abundance, failure versus success,
realist versus dreamer. And you are tired of it. You are tired of your own
pessimism, sarcasm, and beliefs in lack. You are tired of struggling
against your natural flow.

Make an agreement with yourself that you will always keep

dreaming, that you will keep recognizing the endless abundance which IS
Existence itself, and most importantly, that you will always release
beliefs of lack as soon as you identify them.

What we can learn from Lisa

There is a lot we can learn from this simple example of Lisa.

For one: attachments exist only because we believe we are lacking

abundance, love, and happiness in the first place.

If we did not have any beliefs regarding lack, we would not be able
to attach our happiness to a thing, person, or event, because we would
know and feel an overwhelming presence of love and infinite possibilities
always present in our hearts, overflowing from the inside out, not from
the outside in.

We would feel like giving, rather than taking. Supporting, rather

than asking for support. Sharing, rather than craving love from the
outside.

The more we discover that the entirety of Creation is inside of us,

and that we are the Infinite One creating this dream, the less we will be
able to be attached to things. Makes sense, no? The science of
unhappiness versus happiness is essentially so simple.

194
 This does not mean we become cold-hearted. In fact, our fountain
of satisfaction and eternal confidence overflows in the direction of those
who do not know. Whether that love is received or not doesn’t ultimately
matter. We just cannot stop overflowing when we are in this state of
being—confident in the abundance of our existence.

Everyday Practice: Take Action Without Expectation

Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are
miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they
do.

You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You
should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long
for inaction.

Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within

himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For
yoga is perfect evenness of mind.

Bhagavad Gita

In order to anchor in the observations you have made by now,

regarding how the human mind is trained to project happiness into empty
and meaningless appearances and, as such, feel “attached to these
appearances,” a really helpful exercise can be to go out in everyday life
and learn to take action, regardless of response.

This is helpful in many ways: It helps familiarize you with a state of

being that is free of attachments, waiting, hesitating, doubting, hoping,
fearing, and perceiving lack altogether.

195
 Selfless action isn’t so much actions oriented only around the idea
of “helping others;” selfless action simply means you learn to take
action, regardless of outcome. You act based on your intuitive navigation,
rather than on your mind’s fear projections.

Any act performed with zero need to be rewarded in any way, is a

selfless action and leads you into greater conviction regarding the nature
of Reality. It will show you what it feels like to live according to who you
truly are, not waiting for anything outside of yourself to come your way
first.

Learning to act without expectations of any kind regarding the

results of your actions will directly propel you into great bliss through
achieving harmonious vibration with your True Self. As such, attachments
are simply eradicated.

It is one thing to think about the nature of attachment, and to make

helpful observations about it, but what is way more powerful is to go out
there and live your life according to your highest impulses—free from the
need for a certain outcome and free from projecting your happiness onto
your future appearances and misplacing your true connection in that way.

So, once again, to anchor this in, you have to deliver the goods: test
it out in your own life. Put it into action.

Homework

Read this lesson’s text at least once more before proceeding with
the next lesson.

For at least the next 2 to 3 days, sincerely apply the exercise of

taking actions in life with zero expectations as to what the outcome
ought to be.

196
 Set a note or alarm on your phone, or write a note on a piece of
paper and lay it next to your bed, reminding yourself to take a few
minutes in the morning to center yourself in the presence of Being Here
Now, and to imagine yourself taking action throughout the day, with no
attachments whatsoever. Imagine a flowing life, free from needs,
expectations, hopes, and fears. Imagine a life where you feel satisfaction
welling up in each moment from the infinite depths of your heart,
overflowing into this world in all directions, and positively enriching your
every action. Imagine an action-filled life, free from lack. What would
that look and feel like? Imagine it for 5 minutes in the morning for the
duration of at least 3 days, and then…

Take action on your imagined reality and show yourself what it

actually looks and feels like in real life to live without fears, without
hesitations, without future projections, without attachment—to the best
of your ability and without judging yourself negatively.

197
 Bye Bye, Attachments
Attachments are the result of misplaced happiness. They are not
hard to transcend or transform, you simply need to see that you are
actively projecting your okayness into things that have absolutely no
ability to give you what you don’t already have. You are the source of
your own happiness. As soon as you see logic and sense in this, you will
stop projecting your joy elsewhere, and voila–attachments dissolved.

Now that you’ve built a true, experiential foundation in seeing the

independence of your being from appearances, this will explore the topic
of attachments: why/how they are developed, and how they don’t make
any sense any longer.

As with everything in life, as soon as you discover something that

you are used to doing no longer serves you—as soon as you truly see this
with pristine clarity—you automatically stop chasing the thing you
thought was going to bring you great benefit, simply because you realize
it won’t.

And this is really all there is to the science of attachment: To

realize that you are falsely and fruitlessly projecting your satisfaction
into things that are not real (the future).

Table of Contents

1 What is attachment?

1.1 What is a good feeling?

1.2 What triggers a good feeling?

1.2.1 What does my Higher Self think of this?

2 What is Abundance?

198
 2.1 The source of all negative emotions: “Believing in lack”

3 What causes a good feeling, and how does attachment begin?

3.1 An Example: Lisa and Joshua

3.1.1 Then, Lisa’s friend Jack invites her to a party.

3.1.2 2 weeks later…

4 Have a look in the mirror

4.1 What we can learn from Lisa

5 Everyday Practice: Take Action Without Expectation

5.1 Homework

5.2 Got a question, or just want to share? Discuss this in the forums!

What is attachment?

Most people know attachment as the feeling of contraction in the

body that follows the mental “fear-projecting” of a (potential) loss or
lack of something we think contains a portion of our well-being.

In short: we become aware of our attachments as soon as we think

of losing something we desire, or not getting something we desire.

But what is attachment exactly?

Attachment is misplaced happiness.

Our attachments to certain things is due to the fact that we have

come to associate our good feelings with the presence of certain items,
people, or circumstances in our lives, and bad feelings with the seeming
lack thereof.

It is really that simple.

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 (Comment: If only it were that simple. Massaro has no
awareness of developmental psychology and the developmental
sequence of one’s sense of self versus our felt sense of other. That is,
of the development of the self-image and self stability within a world
of alleged objects. This goes very deeply into understanding the
creation and individuation of the self-image we have with feelings of
need, succor, dependency, etc. If things go wrong in the
developmental sequence leading to psychopathologies, these are not
repaired merely by sidestepping the repair work by adopting a
theory such as Massaro is proposing. The rules of development of the
human individual are in a large sense, stronger than Massaro’s magic.

Followers of his who follow him to fix early developmental

failures that has led to chronic depression, a lack of personal
instability, a tendency towards manic behaviors, chronic anxiety,
schizoid withdrawal, etc., will find at a point long after adopting
Masarro’s magical view, that there will be a profound disillusionment
and thence anger towards Massaro.)

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 In order to free yourself from an attachment to, let’s say, a person,
you will need to somehow show yourself—realize—that your happiness did
not come from that person, it came from your very own heart, your very
own being, and was simply channeled into your body-mind experience as
a result of you giving yourself permission to feel good upon seeing or
experiencing the other person.

Allow me explain in greater detail:

What is a good feeling?

A good feeling is nothing more than to be in alignment with your

True Self’s natural wavelength. Literally, feeling good is the result of
having the vibrations of your mind-portion dance in sync—in harmony—
with the underlying ever-present wavelength of your True Being; or: your
true frequency.

(Comment: Here we go! True Self has a frequency! Vibrations in

sync, in harmony with the ever-present wavelength of your True
Being? Magical belief.)

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 What triggers a good feeling?

A good feeling is triggered by our mind’s perspective of that

moment being in alignment with our True Being’s perspective of that
moment.

What does my Higher Self think of this?

Develop the habit of asking yourself when you’re feeling bad: “How
would my Higher Self view this experience? Would it also project all the
lack that I project into it, or would it view it from a place of knowing
infinite possibilities, endless abundance, true faith and unconditional
love?”

If a good, peaceful, joyful feeling is released into your state of

being by your perspective being in alignment with Reality, then what is it
that triggers your mind’s perspective to be in alignment with your True
Being’s perspective? A thought based in the idea of abundance (usually),
or some variation of it.

When we look at our life and perceive an abundance of love,

possibility, potential for satisfaction, money, resources, the ability to do
what we want to do, free will, appreciation, and so on, we feel good
because that is how our True Being perceives every second of our reality.

(Comment: At this stage, Massaro’s teaching have become a

total mind-fuck, a continuous reframing, a reinterpreting of all
experiences from from the imagined perspective of a Higher Being’s
awareness of abundance and infinite possibilities. Massaro here is
turning away from true freedom of realizing oneself as the Absolute,
towards an illusory life of imaginary self-fulfillment. This is how he
got so many followers—people who want better lives, lives in control,
lives of perfect male/female imagined relationships, rather than
going beyond it all to the peace of the Absolute. Massaro has become

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totally distracted by the imagined infinite alternative realities that
he says are available if you follow him.)

When we feel good, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the

actual circumstances, for they are inherently neutral and without
meaning. When we feel good, it signifies that our way of seeing life is
presently in alignment with our True Being’s way of seeing life.

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 I will explain a little bit more about abundance in the section
below, however I will not go too deeply into the practical specifics of
abundance and the aligning of frequencies, for that is very distinctly the
purpose of the Empowerment teaching. The purpose of this lesson—and
the Enlightenment teaching in general—is simply to get to as clear of a
picture as we can regarding how and why attachments form, and what
they are, so that when they come up, we can apply the proper clarity and
“relaxation-into-beingness” to release those misperceptions and
remember the true value of our here-and-now existence.

What is Abundance?

Abundance—as a principle of Existence—is the idea that:

“Everything is never-ending and originating from an infinite source.” This
translates into our human experience more along the lines of: “There is
more than enough (infinite amounts) to fulfill every being’s every
desire.”

In reality, abundance is one of the given facts of Creation, for

Creation itself is infinite, and not bound by space or time. As such,
Existence itself (your True Being) does not know the existence of lack. It
doesn’t understand it. It doesn’t compute with the idea, with the
vibration, of a thought that suggests there is a lack of something in the
universe. This is why we feel bad when we think like this.

The source of all negative emotions: “Believing in lack”

As soon as we think in terms of lack—which I sometimes call the

“anti-thought” because it goes against everything true about Creation—
what happens is that your personal vibration does not match up at all
with the vibration of your True Being, which is Existence, or Creation
itself.

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 The bad feeling you get is the distance you feel between your view
and the true view of Existence itself.

This is the only reason most people on this planet feel so miserable,
scared, confused, and betrayed most of the time: their minds have been
taught to believe, through and through, in the existence of something
that absolutely does not exist: lack.

Hence, every time you project that something is missing or lacking,

or that something could potentially be missing or lacking someday (fear
of the future), whether that is a loved one you lost, or a loved one you
imagine you might lose some day, what is mechanically—energetically—
happening is that you are attempting to separate yourself from the
fundamental laws of Creation.

(Comment: And the mind fuck deepens.)

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 You are, in a sense, creating a gap between yourself and the core
frequency of Creation, which is limitless Love, Infinity, Abundance. You
attempt this every time you think something rooted in the belief that
“lack exists” or that “lack might exist someday.”

The beauty of this insight is that it cuts through the heart of every
piece of suffering known to humankind. There literally is no type of
suffering that I have not been able to trace back to this core idea of lack.
Try it out and see for yourself.

All of our suffering—all of our resistance and contraction as a human

being—whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual (but it is
especially obvious with mental and emotional suffering) is based in the
idea that lack can occur or that it has already occurred.

You might not believe that it is this simple right now, but as soon as
you start looking for it, you will see that the idea that lack exists or can
exist is the root cause of all of human suffering. This is a far more
accurate perception than to suggest that “desire is the cause of all
suffering.”

I am tempted to explain more, but I want to stick to the intention

behind this lesson, so for now this will do. All you need to know at this
point is that lack is the root cause of all of your mental and emotional
suffering. More on this topic will be explored in the Empowerment
teaching.

Now that you know this, let’s use this understanding to again ask
ourselves the question:

What causes a good feeling, and how does attachment begin?

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 As you may have been able to deduce: If we did not believe in lack
on any level of our being, we would constantly and effortlessly have “a
good feeling” because our vibration would be that of our natural state.
Hence, being synced-up, we would feel good, because that is what a good
feeling is based on.

In our society, a truly good feeling has become a rare thing and so
we have come to associate “feeling good” with certain situations, things,
or people. But really, when we look at it scientifically, we are supposed
to feel good all the time; it’s our natural state.

We have just become so insistent upon interpreting and projecting

lack unto everything that the few times we do feel good, it is because
some appearance that enters our life triggers a thought rooted in
abundance, which then syncs-up with our true vibration, and because of
this link up, we experience good feelings, good vibes.

However, most of us fail to see that the good feeling is due to the
alignment of our view with our Higher Self’s view, NOT because it comes
from the appearance that entered our perception.

An Example: Lisa and Joshua

This is a fictional story that simply looks a lot like yours. All
similarities between these fictional characters and events, and the ones
in your own life, are completely incidental.

Lisa was taught from an early age onward that lack is a real
phenomenon. Her parents told her to be careful to never let too much of
it come into her life.

She was taught to make sure she has insurance for everything and to
rely on her government to live a safe life. She behaves well so she
doesn’t have to experience a lack of love and an abundance of rejection,
which is also seen as lack.

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 Lisa has never seen lack before, has never tasted lack before, but
like everybody else who never truly encountered the presence of lack
(because nobody has), she still believes it exists, somewhere… Perhaps
right around the next corner? “Who knows—lack might show up at any
moment now!”

She believes in this fictional phenomenon of lack so much that she

believes it is present in her life right now, even though she’s never seen
or tasted it outside of her mental imagery and definitions.

For example, she interprets and defines the abundance of alive

space in her house as “the lack of a partner,” and because she sees an
abundance of air molecules in her house, and tells herself that she
doesn’t ever bump into other skin molecules in her house unless she has
guests over, she believes she is currently lacking a partner.

She has been taught by many movies, stories, and by papa and
mama’s example, that people are supposed to have a partner in their
house. If they don’t, it means they are lacking something called “love and
companionship,” which then means they should feel lonely. Hence, Lisa
believes she feels lonely, thinking that something nobody has never
experienced before—lack—is all around her.

Because Lisa has been unconsciously imprinted with this idea that
lack exists in certain ways, she now experiences the only thing that
doesn’t exist in all of Creation: A lack of love!

That’s how powerful of a creator, of a consciousness, she is—she

can conjure up the illusory experience of a phenomenon that goes against
the infinite nature of Creation itself. She is literally creating the
experience of the only thing that can never actually manifest—lack!

Lisa is an amazingly powerful co-creator, but she interprets herself

as a lacking loser, thus positioning herself out of sync with the truth of
Creation (that she is amazing and abundant), and she feels bad.
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 Then, Lisa’s friend Jack invites her to a party.

At this party, she meets one of Jack’s friends, someone she has
never met before. He is a handsome, tall guy with dark hair and good
posture. And he looks friendly and approachable. Exactly the image she
has of Abundance embodied!

He also has a very gracious, magnetic personality; he seems sincere,

too! OMG.

Lisa feels good feelings right now, because she is having thoughts
that are somewhat close in vibration to the original vibration of Creation:
unending Love, infinite Abundance, all is possible, and so on.

She doesn’t feel completely in bliss, but that’s because the

thoughts she is having are not pure truth; they are only marginally close
in their vibration to the true vibration of infinite Abundance. They
resemble truth closer than most of her thoughts, but they are still rooted
in the game of believing in lack.

She is having thoughts such as: “There is the presence of a

handsome man in this room,” and “I got to shake his strong hand and look
into his beautiful eyes,” and “He said he was pleased to meet me, and he
seemed to actually like me!”

These thoughts triggered good feelings in Lisa because these

thoughts were aligning her mind’s perspective more closely with the
perspective of Existence itself. Her good feelings had very little (or even
nothing) to do with the presence of this guy; they had everything to do
with the fact that she gave herself permission to have thoughts rooted in
abundance, rather than lack—for once.

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 Since Lisa doesn’t experience her mind being in-sync with her
Greater Self very often, she is now associating the good feelings even
more with the presence of this guy, because after all, she’s feeling good
when he’s around!

Lisa doesn’t realize it was her own shift in perspective from lack to
abundance that caused her self’s vibration to be closer to the vibration of
her True Being. Hence, she is now starting to build a strong association—
an attachment—to this guy. She is beginning to misplace her happiness;
she believes this guy can make her happy.

Uh-oh!

2 weeks later…

Lisa and Joshua have been on four dates already since the party at
Jack’s house. Things are really looking up for Lisa! Abundance seems to
be in her future, and lack seems to have disappeared into her past.

Lisa is getting her hopes up, which simply means that the
unconscious idea that she’s been imprinted with, which is that if she finds
a good partner, let alone a handsome gracious one, then there will be the
absence of lack, and the presence of abundance.

So, Lisa finds herself in this uncertain and transitional phase of

being in between a life of lacking a partner, lacking love, and therefore
experiencing a lot of sadness and loneliness, and being potentially—but
uncertainly—headed in the direction of what could be a life filled with an
abundance of love, kind words, intimacy, and the presence of another
body in her house.

This is why “getting her hopes up” feels both good and bad at the
same time. She doesn’t know exactly why it makes her feel both good
and bad, but you guessed it already, didn’t you?!

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 She is experiencing perspectives rooted in abundance (which feel
good, because abundance is all that there is), but this scenario also brings
up a lot of her perspectives rooted in the idea that lack exists or can exist
(which feel bad, because lack doesn’t exist).

Whenever she imagines, “It is actually going to happen! We are

going to be together; there is going to be presence and abundance in my
life, and love!” she feels really, really fantastic! In fact, she feels leaps
and bounds better than anything she has allowed herself to feel in, like,
forever!

Hence, she is starting to become a little attached to the idea of it

working out. She has projected her well-being, her abundance, and her
happiness onto an idea of a man outside of her. And he could die or he
could not like her (once she starts letting her hair down and accidentally
farts around the house). He could turn out to be mean, or he could find
someone else.

So, Lisa feels good about the idea of being in abundance with him,
but she feels worried and anxious at the same time about losing her
happiness. After all, if he runs away, he runs away with her happiness,
which is now inside of him! If he dies, her happiness dies with him!

Oh lord, what a predicament! Such a double-edged sword this game

of lack/abundance, rejection/love has become. So unnecessarily
complicated!

Now imagine this: A similar scenario is happening constantly,

everyday, to about 7 billion people, and it is repeating itself with no end.
What a cosmic show (joke)!

Sometimes I imagine that the aliens are watching the universe’s

longest version of “As the World Turns.” I bet they simply cannot get
enough of watching a show that is all about trying to create the only
thing that Existence cannot create: lack. It’s kind of fascinating.
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 If this Joshua episode doesn’t work out like a perfect fairytale for
Lisa, this will only confirm again that she’s unworthy of love, lonely, ugly,
unwanted, and so on. These ideas will root themselves even deeper into
her psyche, until she feels there is no hope possible, and she will close
down the idea of a relationship altogether.

She will feel deluded and stupid for ever having believed in
abundance—for even a second. And so Lisa becomes a little pessimistic
and a little more sarcastic. She buries the carefree dreamer—the aligned
kid—inside of her a little bit more.

After all, can you imagine that, in addition to being unwanted,

unlovable, unworthy, and ugly, you are also stupidly delusional? What will
people think of her? No way! Lisa doesn’t want that. Lisa would rather
play it safe and enclose herself with controlled amounts of lack, so that
she can protect herself from potential future surprise-lack.

Lisa is resolved to kill the kid inside her for good, so that she will
never have to believe in abundance again. She wants to at least keep her
dignity, which she believes means something along the lines of being a
realist that doesn’t believe in love, or isn’t open to too many possibilities
in general.

Have a look in the mirror

Now, can you do me a favor, dear reader, and walk to one of the
rooms in your house where there is a mirror and look into your own eyes?

While you’re looking at yourself, see that you are just like the
example of Lisa.

Admit it. Feel it. Acknowledge it. You have this in you as well.

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 You have been there and done that, at least to some degree. You
have played this game of lack versus abundance, failure versus success,
realist versus dreamer. And you are tired of it. You are tired of your own
pessimism, sarcasm, and beliefs in lack. You are tired of struggling
against your natural flow.

Make an agreement with yourself that you will always keep

dreaming, that you will keep recognizing the endless abundance which IS
Existence itself, and most importantly, that you will always release
beliefs of lack as soon as you identify them.

What we can learn from Lisa

There is a lot we can learn from this simple example of Lisa.

For one: attachments exist only because we believe we are lacking

abundance, love, and happiness in the first place.

If we did not have any beliefs regarding lack, we would not be able
to attach our happiness to a thing, person, or event, because we would
know and feel an overwhelming presence of love and infinite possibilities
always present in our hearts, overflowing from the inside out, not from
the outside in.

We would feel like giving, rather than taking. Supporting, rather

than asking for support. Sharing, rather than craving love from the
outside.

The more we discover that the entirety of Creation is inside of us,

and that we are the Infinite One creating this dream, the less we will be
able to be attached to things. Makes sense, no? The science of
unhappiness versus happiness is essentially so simple.

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 This does not mean we become cold-hearted. In fact, our fountain
of satisfaction and eternal confidence overflows in the direction of those
who do not know. Whether that love is received or not doesn’t ultimately
matter. We just cannot stop overflowing when we are in this state of
being—confident in the abundance of our existence.

Everyday Practice: Take Action Without Expectation

Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are
miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they
do.

You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You
should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long
for inaction.

Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within

himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For
yoga is perfect evenness of mind.

Bhagavad Gita

In order to anchor in the observations you have made by now,

regarding how the human mind is trained to project happiness into empty
and meaningless appearances and, as such, feel “attached to these
appearances,” a really helpful exercise can be to go out in everyday life
and learn to take action, regardless of response.

This is helpful in many ways: It helps familiarize you with a state of

being that is free of attachments, waiting, hesitating, doubting, hoping,
fearing, and perceiving lack altogether.

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 Selfless action isn’t so much actions oriented only around the idea
of “helping others;” selfless action simply means you learn to take
action, regardless of outcome. You act based on your intuitive navigation,
rather than on your mind’s fear projections.

Any act performed with zero need to be rewarded in any way, is a

selfless action and leads you into greater conviction regarding the nature
of Reality. It will show you what it feels like to live according to who you
truly are, not waiting for anything outside of yourself to come your way
first.

Learning to act without expectations of any kind regarding the

results of your actions will directly propel you into great bliss through
achieving harmonious vibration with your True Self. As such, attachments
are simply eradicated.

It is one thing to think about the nature of attachment, and to make

helpful observations about it, but what is way more powerful is to go out
there and live your life according to your highest impulses—free from the
need for a certain outcome and free from projecting your happiness onto
your future appearances and misplacing your true connection in that way.

So, once again, to anchor this in, you have to deliver the goods: test
it out in your own life. Put it into action.

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MUZIKA’S DISCUSSION
When I first Massaro’s Enlightenment I lessons above, I was briefly
taken by the hope that this teaching style might be a shortcut to a deep
self-realization through baby-steps. But late into his description he loses
the orientation towards self-inquiry and self-exploration, and gets lost in
New Age concepts of energy levels, vibrations, resonance and harmony,
astral or infinite alternative realities, mixed with old Eastern concepts of
reincarnation, driving progressive lessons for a soul, and happiness is
found by getting rid of ideas of lack in one’s life. It is all imagination, a
false hope based on New Age concepts based on speculation of realms of
existence suggested by science as applying to quantum levels as well as
cosmological levels.

But the human level is quite different from quantum level science,
and quite different from cosmological science based still in the theory of
General Relativity and its more recent successors, such as string theory.

Also, the initial discovery of presence-energy, Isness, or nowness as

ever-present, abundant, and its eventual proof of your immortality and
deathlessness at first made sense because the theory is so elegant.

But when I actually practice self-inquiry or self-investigation for

myself, what I experience is very different from the line suggested by
Bentinho.

When I began my spiritual journey, I followed the path set forth by

Ramana Maharshi and Zen Master Bassui, doing self-inquiry on the koan or
questioning of who or what am I. That led me to look to where the I-
sensation arose, which meant looking within, by developing an ability to
introspect, to look inside my innards of self experience.

This led me to discover the inward dimensions of a vast emptiness

inside, an empty space which was experientially the same as the empty
space around me. That space, at first dark and kind of moist, became
gradually illumined by the “opening” of my Third Eye and illumined that

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inner empty space with the light of consciousness. My awareness
penetrated the darkness with light.

I never saw an Is-ness, or a Nowness. Already, even at this

beginning I was already aware that everything was Now, and that past
and future was just a creation of the mind in the sense of memories
creating a past, and speculation created a future. I never experienced a
quality called Is-ness or Now-ness. But I was aware of emptiness,
spaciousness, and object being rather flat and transparent, like hologram
images, or what Robert Adams called “optical illusions.”

I eventually discovered and isolated the I-thought as it arose and

passed away. I found it arose from emptiness and also became swallowed
thereby. I clearly saw that that same translucent, infinite, emptiness
pervaded everywhere and permeated all objects of consciousness. This
vast emptiness with the container of all of consciousness, and the objects
of consciousness.

When I first experienced the vastness of this discovery that

everything was indeed empty, swallowed by the void, permeated by the
void, including my sense of self, it was such a stunning revelation of
becoming aware of being totally nonexistent except as the light of
consciousness illuminating the vastness of the totality of emptiness that
contained everything internal and external, and that the separation
between internal and external was only an idea.

I also saw that thoughts created both my sense of self, and the
external world. Thoughts appear to me like tiny clouds that floated in
space around me, and when they came close to my brain, “I” became
aware of the object to process created by that thought.

A few weeks after this experience, I had another, which was the
realization that consciousness itself was only an appearance, and illusion,
and that I was set apart from it. I observed the states of consciousness of
waking, sleep, and dream to come like a cover, covering me and
immersing me in that world, the world of waking consciousness, of deep
sleep consciousness, and of dreaming. I was the witness of the states of
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consciousness, and had nothing to do with them, they were all like
dreams, unreal, transient, passing apparitions, appearances with no
reality of their own.

I recount these experiences in my book Self-Realization and Other

Awakenings found on my website: http://wearesentience.com as a
downloadable e-book.

To me this was the foremost reality which was a vast emptiness

which contained in permeated all things, and an awareness of both the
emptiness container, and the objects within, as well as awareness of the
coming and going of various states of consciousness, such as deep sleep
and dream. I was separate and an observer but my own self was not
visible or experience. All experiences and discoveries happened in
consciousness and in mind, but not to me who was watching all this.

Later, much later, I was to make another discovery even more

potent and compelling than that original discovery of the nature of
emptiness and awareness, and that is what I called my awakening to
myself, as the totality of the Manifest Self, which was purely an energy
state, also described in the book mentioned above.

This discovery is much closer to the process described by Massaro,

in that it was very immediate, impactful, energetic, and filled with
love/bliss. Also this experience was “relational,” as in this awakening
experience, the other was seen as divine energy, the life force
permeating and directing each of our individual lives. In an explosion of
light and infinite energy, Shakti exploded from my gut, upwards into my
heart, and through my brain into the world is an infinite white light that
expanded and embraced everything within the best void nature of my
experience.

I felt infinite power, and total grace wash over me, cleansing me of
all guilt and sin. I became clean and pure, and eligible as a vessel for the
divine as the life force to work through me, and also I was aware of the
Lifeforce in relation to me here and now on earth, and also as an
observer of both. Thus, I was aware both of my body mind/personal self,
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Shakti or the life force, the divine within me, as well as the emptiness in
the void all at once from a perspective beyond all of it.

My most profound experience after that was a profound sense of

presence as a consciousness/energy that permeated my body centered in
my gut and heart which energize my body, from the inside, it permeated,
and extended beyond it a few inches or feet into the physical space
around me. It felt like an energy field or capacitance field that was
directly interacting with the consciousness outside in the form of objects
as substance. This sense of energetic being, of presence, is always with
me, even if I am not focused on it. It makes of my basic sense of self as
an incarnation in this world, even while it is part of the totality of
consciousness, the universal consciousness as suggested by Nisargadatta,
and itself as a transient, existential, quasi-physical being-ness.

Thus I began to intuit as beyond all of experience, beyond

consciousness, as pure awareness lying at the portal between existence
and nonexistence, between consciousness and nothingness, and as such I
lay prior to and beyond both is the ultimate witness of the comings and
goings of consciousness and its relationship with nothingness.

Now, from this perspective and sequence and evolution of my self-

awareness, there has never been much emphasis on the felt sense of
presence energy until after I experienced the presence in myself as being
part of my embodied self. Before that there was only emptiness, and all
things were empty and without substantial self maintaining quality. All
things were transient except the emptiness which contained all of the
processes of being this. But at that time, there was no being this for me,
not until the experience of the divine coming inside of me and awakening
me to my human existence as an energy sense, as a presence, acting
hand-in-hand with Shakti, with the divine, acting and living through me.

So now I look at Massaro’s work through this lens, through my own

progression of experiences and understanding, look at it is if it can be an
aid for others, mostly beginners, mostly those who are not ready to throw
themselves into spirituality hook line and sinker, and instead want to do

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it on a very gradual, guided meditation status. From this point of view, I
think his teachings can be of remarkable assistance to the beginning
seeker of knowledge of the self. However, if one becomes captured by
Massaro’s viewpoint of higher and lower selves, life plans and
intentionality, of infinite alternative realities, and expansion of one’s
identification through multiple explorations of what could be, of realizing
abundance all around you and infinite worlds, you will become trapped in
this fantasy structure, which has its own strong experiential existence,
but will become an infinitely distracting play world, which distracts you
from the fact you have not attained real peace, or true realization, by
entering a play world of astral harmonies, vibration rates, harmonization,
resonance, etc.

But, I am relatively certain that his methodology up to that point of

divergence into a self-actualization spiel, can be of value as the
beginning meditator contemplates is this our anonymous in order to get
“underneath” their mind, to get to a position which he calls clarity,
before the thinking mind arises, and therefore gets to know emptiness,
the interspace, and how awareness permeates and penetrates all objects
of consciousness and consciousness itself as a totality, and one can reach
a recognition Of Oneself Is the Ultimate Observer, the Absolute, or what
Nisargadatta called Para-Brahman, a place of infinite peace and rest.

I am afraid that readers of and followers of Bentinho Massaro will

be so captivated by the concepts of alternative realities, ultimate
creation, intentionality affecting creation, and working wonders in one’s
life by fulfilling dreams, desires, and a so-called alignment with your true
self, that the epic possibility of obtaining real enlightenment will be
missed through redirection towards fulfillment.

With this warning, I would tell an absolute beginner, that Massaro’s

approach probably has a great deal of value for them as an entire
beginner. It provides a step-by-step approach to investigate the nature
of your own consciousness, but within an overall path that relies on
speculation and tales derived from New Age philosophy as well as with
Eastern concepts such as reincarnation, to create a worldview of
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endlessly creating happiness for yourself, rather than penetrating deeper
and deeper into the reality of yourself.

Bentinho is so very popular because he appeals to people who are

susceptible to the promises of magic, and that is what he is offering: and
ability to become a supreme warlock, as opposed to realization of
yourself as Para-Brahman, infinite peace and rest, that which has no need
for existence or consciousness and is beyond both.

However, Massaro’s later work where he introduces Nisargadatta

the concept of the Absolute, as the ultimate witness, as Nothingness,
does have very real value, and clearly lays fourth the distinctions that
Nisargadatta raises, but which I would interpret differently.

You can follow me on my blog at: http://itisnotreal.blogspot.com,

or on Facebook on my page https://www.facebook.com/edwardmuzika

Or on my teaching page there

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1020223968048490/, where I talk
about the teachings of my teacher, Robert Adams, and my other teacher,
Nisargadatta Maharaj. One can also find my downloadable book Self-
Realization and Other Awakenings at: http://wearesentience.com. My
email is satsang(dot)online(at)gmail.com

But I am not trying to besmirch Massaro’s work. It is a work of

genius for the beginner to learn the essentials of self-realization onto the
way of realizing oneself at all levels as he puts in his diagram, at least if
the beginner does not get distracted by his self-actualization teachings,
which can lead to a life of fantasizing fulfillment. Instead, just direct
yourself to realizing yourself, what you truly are at all levels, as
consciousness, as a human being, and also that which lies beyond
consciousness or before consciousness, for that allows for true total
fulfillment and peace, rather than following the antics of self
actualization which embeds you into a fantasy of self-fulfillment.

To read Massaro’s orininal works go to http://trinfinityacademy.com.

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MUZIKA’S DIAGRAM OF SELF, 2012

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MASSARO’S DIAGRAM ON CONSCIOUSNESS 2016?

https://www.trinfinityacademy.com/essentials/trinfinity-self-realization-
map/

We use different phenomenological approaches, and alternative models

of what exists, therefore the diagrams differ. I base mine on traditional
Advaita Vedanta concepts while Massaro’s is kind of a hybrid Advaita/New
Age. I show the phenomenological approach of diving downwards into
one’s own sense of Self b following the I sensation. His goes from
presence energy, to awareness, to the Absolute. The difference is that I
fill in the area of the map that Massaro calls awareness with levels of self
proposed by Nisargadatta’s teacher, Siddharameshwar.

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