I Am the Word: Reflections in Recognition(Chapter 3)
Back to school, back to school...
Life is a set of experiences that align you to greater knowing.
A while ago I wrote about learning from every part of life so it's really great to see the chapter start off saying that we are here to learn lessons. I think many of us wonder what the purpose of life is. Would learning be enough of an answer, would coming into a greater understanding be grand enough to accept?
I think so, I think when you take life as the greatest teacher available to us, one where we experience countless lifetimes in order to learn who and what we are through experiences of love, pain, joy, fear, that it goes far beyond our expectations for our purpose. We're here to take that next step thatw e need in order to learn. We're here to go ujp a grade, and in this time, right now, we have the opportunity to accelerate the process:
[...] we are deciding now to bypass a program that was set in place by you, by all of you, that this kind of growth towards spiritualization, towards understanding yourself as spirit, would take many lifetimes.
Now is the time, we get cheat codes! The time is changing, we are entering a new age. That means the rules are changing, so we don't have to do things the way we've always done them. More of our truth is being revealed to us, but as stated in Part 3, we have to choose it, if we don't we are in for a bumpy ride. Because the change IS happening, whether we want it to or not. This is not a time where a few people have this opportunity, this is a time where change is happening.
You have decided already prior to incarnation that this would be the lifetime that you would manifest yourself fully in consciousness. And while this has retained its memory in your being in a subtle way, many of you only now are waking up to this possibility through the actions of this text and the circumstances that led you to read it. The chain of events has been in place for many years, and this is the time that the chain is opened and inclusive and everyone is coming to it.
What are you waiting for?
Aim that claim...
The rest of the chapter involves more claims. Our claim of worth is the first and the most challenging to believe and accept. This claim will be the focus for this article. The other claims are very powerful in aligning and aiding us, but I feel that for those of us still identified as the individual, this will be the biggest hurdle.
According to the guides the phrase "Word I am Word" is a more potent version of "I am that I am" in aligning us to the Christ frequency. Word is God in action, claiming that frequency helps us to align to it. Eventually we will understand and know the phrase to be true as we speak it.
Word I am Word through my belief that I am worthy of this journey of the spirit. Word I am Word. I am Word through the self-worth that requires me to believe that I am entitled as a child of God to come into my manifestation as my Christed Self. Word I am Word through this intention. Word I am Word.
I've found it difficult at times to consider myself worthy of knowing what I truly am. I feel like I've glimpsed it, I've felt the joy that comes with it, there was never a reason why anyone would be excluded when I felt that. Yet it can still be a struggle to stop thinking that I have to do something, that I need to get better at something in order to be ready and worthy of it. I feel this is one of the main challenges people encounter when letting go to higher intelligence...
We've been conditioned to think and define, and our self image has been in place for a long time. Sure, we adjust it as we go, but some of our habits and thoughts and ideas and beliefs are programmed in. They run on autopilot, flying under the radar of our conscious mind. Even things as simple as walking should be brought into our conscious awareness, but the insidious things we tell ourselves and believe need to be brought to light. We need to start becoming aware of the thoughts and beliefs and judgments we hold so we can find the root of why we believe those things.
I've been reading the book Conscious Language in conjunction with these teachings, and they further reinforce how claims work. Basically we get what we claim, so when we say things like "I want _____," we claim we don't have that because wanting something is only done when we feel like we lack it. So if we want enlightenment, or love, or whatever, we are claiming we don't have it. So the real key to these claims is to feel like they are true, to come from a place where we already have what we seek.
Freeing ourselves from this sense that we are unworthy of love or understanding or whatever it is we feel unworthy of will allow us to open up and receive the gift we are being given. We can open up to the love that is always here, and to the help and guidance being given. Once we remove our "knowing" of who we are and how things work we open ourselves to the truth. The ol' you can't fill a cup that's already full.
There is nothing to be afraid of in this letting go of what we "know." We are still here, we aren't destroyed. In fact, "you become who you truly are." The personality remains, but it is transformed into a higher personality. The ego is not evil, it's neutral', so don't be afraid that you will lose your individuality, individuality is really beautiful.
DYOR
The other claims in the chapter seemed to have a strong effect on me. I was reading this book on the plane so I had a good place to meditate on the claims, to begin to feel what it's like to come from the place where each claim felt true, and I can confidently say each gave clarity, and more importantly at this stage, confidence. If we don't believe this type of change is possible, we block ourselves from it. Simply saying the words is helpful, but feeling them to be true can accelerate our results even more.
If you are working through the book, try to get in a place where you feel each claim to be true. The wording is such that intellectually you can't understand what it would be like for it to be true, that's why feeling and experience are so important. They tell us what words can't.
If you aren't working through the book, I recommend paying attention to your self talk and adjusting it. Pay attention to everything you do or say if you can. It's daunting at first, and I know I lapse quite frequently, but the more effort put into it the more natural it becomes. Once we know what we are saying and doing we can consciously adjust.
Closing
Looks like I wrote more than I wanted to yet again! Working through this book is real work, I like to spend at least a full day on each chapter, preferably two, before moving on. The teaching here is significant, which is part of the reason for the repetition. It's challenging to "get" right away. Keep working at it, keep the faith, eventually you will get experiential confirmation.
And when that doubt creeps in again because of a lifetime of telling ourselves we aren't worthy, that we're insignificant people, change the way you talk, change the way you respond to events, and see how much control you actually have in experiencing and creating this life.
Courage and self-confidence are two beacons which must never be extinguished on the path to higher knowledge.
-Rudolph Steiner
Thanks for reading,
All unmarked quotes are from I Am the Word by Paul Selig
Again some very beautiful writings and challenging concepts. My first comments on this I feel will inevitably always come from my 'direct path' understandings (for want of a better term).
One of the key 'turning points' for me was in deeply getting that I didn't have to fix anything. In fact, the moment I tried to fix something in me was the exact same moment I made it seem real, or 'gave it power' might be another way of saying it.
The beauty of just seeing what we are not, reveals what cannot be spoken of or thought of in any way. the nearest we come to it is 'beingness/awareness' but as we said before these are very rudimentary attempts at putting a label on the unfathomable.
Having said all this, I fully appreciate that the direct path is only one perspective and these writings can be helpful and most certainly enriching.
But I love that Deon or Jake (insert name) can be the animated figures life expresses through, and that life itself can seem to lose its self-knowledge within that enactment, yet all the while remaining undisturbed.
-I've waffled!!
Thanks for this great posting, much love Buddy.
Thanks for the great comment! You're the only one! haha. Take that last statement as deeply as you like ;)
So, would you say you reside as beingness/awareness all the time?
I'm admittedly new to these teachings, I only started on this path a few years ago, and where I started was somewhat odd with psychadelics. It led me down a path that worked really well for me because it started in science: How did this happen, what about psychadelics unlocks our potential? That led me many places before I ran into the direct path put forth by guys like Adya and Spira, which I still get a lot out of. I would spend more time with their work, but I kind of just apply the teachings to my daily life now as best I can.
The reason I'm so attracted to this series is that I feel like I've already experienced it during a trip. I reached a level where like you said, there was nothing to fix. The reason that was so was because my perception of everything changed. I became aware of everything on a whole new level and before I had even studied anything spiritual I had an experience that was indefinable. At one point my friend asked me what it was like and all I could say was "Everything just is."
So on this I Am the Word stuff: what I really think is happening is that we are aligning our manifestation completely with that beingness/awareness, allowing it to flow through and guide our lives. Kind of like, we aren't this body/mind, but we have the opportunity to know and understand it, like what kind of beast am I.
This is hard to talk about as you know, but I like to think of it like this: There is the Word, the primordial sound AUM or Om, and we are all that at our core, but we fight it because we think we are separate. When we surrender that vibration is allowed to flow through us, we are receivers of that vibration, and it expresses through each of us uniquely.
So these claims in the books bring us back into alignment/resonance with what we truly are by the simple claiming of that. The direct method does this too I think, but it does it in stages instead, like realizing we are not what we thought, realizing we are that pregnant void of infinite potential/awareness/whatever, then once that is realized how do we bring that into the world, how do we sing our song and dance our dance as who and what we truly are. I think that is the biggest hurdle, being ourselves despite outer circumstance, where nothing phases us because we are at the highest vibration possible, the strongest vibration always wins.
Sorry for dragging on but I really like the analogy of enlightenment being contagious because it is a higher vibration. Like we are all giving our vibration to the world, but most of us, at least in the past, had a very low vibration, so our affect on the world was miniscule. In raising our vibration we become a powerful influence on those things and beings in our perception because we raise their vibration in our own experience. That helps me realize the importance of being near enlightened people and I think that's why teachers like Adya, Mooji, etc say that the words are secondary to the presence.
I'd love to hear what you think on things, since that is all we can share over the web: thoughts. Always going to be secondary and slightly removed but I still enjoy talking and getting other people's perspectives. Thanks for commenting on all of these, I appreciate the discussion
Hey Jake, yeah it would be lovely to see a few more folk taking an interest in these posts for sure.
For me, it feels like the illusory obstacle to ones true nature is nothing more than an idea or stream of thoughts which becomes identified with (somehow). It is a case of misidentification. I findmyself caught in these streams very often, but I would say their subtlety is less convincing.
As an example, I notice many behavioural aspects about this Deon character that I used to want to change, actions that I would berate. Now they are part of the expression of this character, they may or may not change, life will decide. I am happy to be the vehicle of life, and to begin to enjoy the unique expression.
A nice by-product is less guilt and judgement and an ease of being - even when there is not an ease in the charater, which sounds contradictory but life expresses exactly as it was intended.
I do think there is a resonance and it is beautiful to be in the presence of a loving environment and in that resepct we are like moths to the flame, again life directs this impulse.
I don't see the direct path as a process of stages. The investigation, for me, is seeing what we are not. As ACIM says 'Removing the obstacles to the awareness of Love presence.'
We need bring nothing into the world, we are already singing our song and dancing our dance, nothing need be different. Every aspect of life is divine, as indeed is every expression. Only thinking labels it otherwise.
The mind (thought stream) loves idea of strongest/highest, attaining through effort, but nothing is absent right now. The seeking creates the journey to.
Being is ever-present now. Its kinda lovely and kinda crazy too.
If any of this makes sense :) ???
Ya, you're making sense to me. especially:
I mean, that's the whole thing right there, and it seems so simple, like "I could stop identifing with thoughts if I wanted to," then I just keep doing it anyways... haha, getting much better though
I guess it confuses me from an intellectual standpoint how things change once we stop attaching to those thoughts and beliefs, which is exactly the point I think.
Well said, nothing is absent, so I guess my question is how to pose this to others in a way that they can understand. How to explain it in experiential terms in a clear way. Because if you tell that to someone on the streets they'll start thinking of all the things that aren't "right" or isn't here yet. It's like we don't know how to solve things without thinking... Like, years ago I'd have asked you: if we are all enlightened, why don't we realize it? and if it's because of attachment to thoughts, what does that attachment look like and how can we be still enough to let go of them, or how can we understand what we are doing wrong and see our misperceptions.
I think these books are good because they don't make sense in normal ways, yet they do. Like in making a claim we are "doing" something, but we don't know exactly what because the end state that we are claiming (being the Word) is not an experience we are familiar with.
I think that's what draws me to these books, they seem like something people can do(read) that will pacify the wandering mind. If I can put my mind on "I am word through my being. Word I am Word." I have no true intellectual understanding of the terms Word and being, so the mind has something it can't grasp but it can interact with. Does that make sense? Basically a loop[hole where we can use the mind while still allowing those obstacles to fall away. Sorry if I got overly complicated in my explanation before, it was unnecessary.
I think Adya steals some zen teachers line of spiritual teachings being thorns to remove other thorns.
Great comment, you're keeping me in line with how I talk about things, I don't want to stray to far from the direct teaching stuff. Would you say that your perception of life has changed since the realizations you've had?
I would say that it is very subtle and yet, paradoxically, highly significant. From my perspective the Deon character is still characteristically Deon. The behaviours and adversions still play out, but here's the thing, it's absolutely fine - all of it.
Nothing is at stake, and that's not an intellectual statement, it is truly felt viserally. The release of the need to 'personally improve or alter' has opened an avenue of deep contentment that accepts as an inherent way of being, strangely even when there is a flash of resistance. As weird as that may sound - resistance is accepted work that one out!.
I feel deeply blessed to be here and to experience this life, beyond that I don't know much. But I think the sharing of these explorations into existence is a deeply loving endeavour, and I think you are doing a really fine job - so big thanks.
Thanks for this response, really solid stuff, the whole everything is fine really helps stop the straining to achieve