Who I am (and, coincidentally, who you are) is beyond mere words, yet we can use words to get a rough idea.
Who I am is God. I am God come to this Earth to remember my godliness. I am here to recognize and utilize my creative powers. All in all, I am here to remember who I am.
Moreover, I am here to experience who I am. Conceptually, I know that I am God. This physical lifetime, with the perception of time it provides, allows me to experience that I am God as well. Experience is the ultimate opportunity in the physical world. It is an opportunity to know with the whole of my being who I really am.
The soul longs for experience. The soul is not the essence of self—rather, it is what connects the physical being to the essential self. The soul is a transmitter, or a medium, for ultimate self-ness. The highest idea of oneself is experienced when the soul, mind, and body all work together, with mind and body serving the desires of the soul.
Exactly what sort of experience does the soul desire, and how can I know the soul’s desires?
First of all, recognize that your soul is not separate from you. Your soul is everywhere. There is nowhere that the soul is not. You have only to look around at and feel the world to come to know the desires of your soul.
The soul, I ought to mention, is the only place desire is to be found. The mind, on the other hand, conjures up wanting and needing, sometimes based on its ideas about certain bodily sensations (e.g. cold and hunger). While all thoughts are God’s thoughts, some of God’s thoughts declare that there is a physical being who is separate from God. There is purpose even to these thoughts, for they create a context in which to remember and experience once again- perhaps even more fully now- that thou art God. That being said, feel no guilt in passing up on these thoughts. You will know when you do not need them any longer.
If the soul’s desires are to be known through feeling, how can we possibly make plans for our lives? Can’t feelings only be known in present experience—and does present experience not change from one moment to the next?
You can call forth any feeling you wish at any given moment. All feelings, in fact, are choices. However, you may or may not perceive yourself to be making this choice. Such is the same with external circumstances, with your response to external circumstances, and with your actions—really, with all things. All things in reality are choices, for you are God, the simultaneous creator and experiencer of this reality.
So, you string together precisely the experience that you want- that is, that you would choose- to have. Your experience is never unchosen.
But how do you know where to begin? If even desire is chosen- are as are all other things-, how does one know what choice to start from?
God has made this task a bit easier of himself, by taking care of the bulk of reality-creation at levels of awareness beyond day-to-day consciousness. Ironing out the infinite number of microscopic details and governing the physical world by laws which keep things relatively consistent is a task that the conscious mind can participate in, yet it often does not. This effort is left to other levels of consciousness, so that the conscious mind may remain present to the experience of the reality which is being created in every moment.
Reality is ever-emerging. In each moment that passes, reality becomes more complex, building on while simultaneously departing from what was there before. Reality follows a clear yet of rules, yet at the same time, these rules are arbitrary. They still were made up by someone, and that someone is God; and, in turn, that God is you. You made up the apparent rules that govern this reality, and you are creating them anew in every moment. Your rules are ever emerging—as are you. You are always experiencing and knowing yourself as God in a new way and to a new extent.
While reality is created by the imagination, what is so is far more magnificent than anything that remains within the imagination. There is nothing more beautiful or glorious than what is so. There is nothing more pleasurable than the present. For if this is what is so right now, is it not in the will of God- in my will- for it to be so?
Such a thought may sound scary. You may worry that this thought will perpetuate your present experience, trapping you in it forever. Yet, this cannot be so. Reality must change. Life is change. If there was no change, you could not experience anything; and if you could not experience anything, you could not experience yourself as God, which is precisely what you came to the physical realm to do. God would not create a physical realm in which nothing can be experienced, for this is not what God wants.
A lack of experience is reserved for other realms—realms which are to be found in what one may call “the afterlife.” There, the conceptual knowledge of what God is is absolute—so absolute that experience itself cannot be experienced, for the absolute encompasses all.
Experience is a microcosm of the all. While each experience of life is made up of the all, each experience provides, of course, a different experience of the all. The purpose of time is to allow you to experience experiencing the all from a variety of perspectives. The purpose of the past is to provide you with a context from which to evaluate your present experience. The past is a reminder that your experience has indeed changed.
Embracing the present does not result in trapping oneself there—for just when the present moment begins, it begins to pass on by, and makes way for the next. To embrace the present is to recognize that the self is, right now, nowhere else—and, simultaneously, everywhere. In this embracement is also the recognition of the highest potential of what may be created in the next moment. When the present moment is seen in its highest glory, it only follows that the next moment may be even more glorious, for in the present you have experienced what is possible. It is this paradoxical reality, which you as God have created, that loving what is allows what is to grow.
For a long time, humans have believed that they must fight in order to get what they want. And when they fight with reality, they get exactly that—the experience of wanting. They believe they do not have what they want, and so they create that experience continually. They are left with endless wanting—what some may call a clawing emptiness. They do not understand that the experience of incompleteness they are now having is their own to behold.
On the other hand, loving the present unconditionally and being everlastingly grateful for everything declares that you are joyful, and your desires are being fully realized in one moment to the next. This, experience, too is perpetuated.
While the outward form of your experience is constantly changing (e.g. the physical objects that are present), the inward essence tends to remain the same—unless you redirect it consciously. When lack is declared as the essence of experience, for instance, lack continues to be so. It is the same with love. Lack can be changed to love, but only if it is chosen to be so. It is very much possible to see lack as occurring within love—and when this is seen, there is no longer any lack, but instead, only love.
And so, when your desires are met, you experience that your desires continue to be met. This is quite easy- and pleasurable- when you desire nothing more than what is. For what is is everything. It would be inconceivable to desire anything more than this.
Of course, I know what you think. This returns to the earlier question—how can one plan long-term? Why, that is easy—if you want to, then you can. Go right ahead.
You know what you want. You know who you are. If you think you do not know, then simply let your soul scream it at you—it will do so, if you allow it to. Knowing what you want, in fact, follows first from knowing who you are. You want who you are. We want nothing more than ourselves. There could be nothing more desirable in the whole universe. As the creators and experiencers of all that is, of course, it only makes sense that we should want to be ourselves.
When you plan, you declare your highest idea about who you are. You state your present intentions for how that is to be expressed. As time goes on, your highest idea about who you are changes; as such, your intentions for how you are to express that idea change as well. This is why plans are never followed through to a T. Reality- and yourself- are ever-emerging, and the plan you created was conceived in a reality and for a self which have both since passed.
That being said, the usefulness of planning is that it holds you to a high idea of self. Plans are wonderful reminders of who you are. You know you have a functional plan when you can look at it and recognize, Ah, yes—I would do that, indeed, and I will. A plan works when you see the most intimate experience of yourself nested within it, and the fullest expression of yourself encased around it. A plan ought to be a portrait of oneself. A plan is a statement of intentions for being who you are.
Do you get it now? Your mind may not. Yet your soul has taken up every word. Believe me when I say that you know.
You will “get” it when you experience it. And so, go forth now, and experience the grandest notion about who you are. You already know exactly what that is. All that’s left to do is to simply live it. There could be no more joyful task in this universe than to live as yourself.
Read Related Articles: