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The Awakened Way

This earth life offers each of us precise opportunities to grow and evolve to our next level. It is happening whether we are awake to it or not. All the while, there is one master soul lesson, and that is to awaken to our truest and highest nature. One can find many people who are awakening these days if you look for them (hint: check out www.batgap.com). It reminds me of a quote by one enlightened woman, Neelam: “First things first…first awaken to who and what you are, then see if your problems still make any sense.”  Awakening is simply realizing and identifying with the part of you that never comes and goes, that’s always here and now, no matter what spiritual dimension you are on or physical life you are in. One of my favorite teachers of awakening, Adyashanti, says that this realization begins first in the head, then drops into the heart, and finally the gut and you fully know it because you are it. I am sharing with you an answer that was posed to Adyashanti about awakening. Please enjoy reading his response:

What is it like to live an awakened life?

“While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, you’re not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy, you’re not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you it’s not. While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, you’re not. Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you don’t. Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, you’re not.

When everybody around you has a whole host of ideas and beliefs about a whole variety of things, you don’t. Everyone on the path is getting there; you haven’t gotten anywhere. Everyone is climbing the mountain; you’re selling hiking boots and picks at the foot in the hope that if they climb it and come back down, they may be too exhausted to do it again. When everybody else is looking to the next book, to the next teacher, to the next guru to be told what’s real, to be given the secret key to an awakened life, you’re not. You don’t have a key because there’s not a lock to put it in.

When you’re living what you are in an awakened way, being simply what you’ve always been, you’re actually very simple. You basically sit around wondering what all the fuss is about.

When everyone is sitting around saying, “I hope that happens to me,” you remember when you did that. You remember that you didn’t find a solution to that. You remember that the whole idea that there was a problem created all of that.

When you’re being what you are, when you’re living the awakened life, there’s nobody to forgive, because there’s no resentment held, no matter what.

The truth of your being doesn’t crave happiness; it could actually care less. It doesn’t crave love, not because you are so full of love, but because it just doesn’t crave love. It’s very simple. It doesn’t seek to be known, regarded highly, or understood. When you’re living what you are in an awakened way, there’s no ideal for you anymore. You’ve stepped off the entire cycle of suffering, of becoming; you’re not interested.

It’s a curious life you find yourself in. You find yourself… where you are. Not where I am, where you are. Where you really are. Where we really are. It’s a curious place to be (especially in the beginning) not to be driven by anything—pleasure or displeasure, helping or hurting, loving or hating. The only thing that will move you (and I don’t mean to be too poetic about this) is the same thing that moves a leaf hanging from a tree. It’s simply because the breeze blows that way. So you always know what to do: The breeze blows that way, and that’s the way you go. You don’t ask questions anymore. You don’t evaluate why the breeze is blowing that way because you know that you don’t know why. And you know you can’t know why. There’s never been a leaf anywhere that knows why the wind blows that way on that day at that moment. That breeze changes the orientation of your life, moment to moment to moment, simply because that’s the way life’s moving. And when you’re living in your awakened self you have no argument with the way it’s moving because it is the same as you are.

And you know that the breeze was always there, from the very beginning, and that it wasn’t reserved for special people. If you didn’t notice it at some point in your life, you know it was because you weren’t listening, or because you thought you had to figure something out before you could listen, or because you thought there had to be some conclusion before you could just listen so deeply, so without agenda, so without hope of a better future that you would feel the movement.

Many of you know what I’m speaking of.

Truth never explains why it’s moving that way at that moment. And if you ask, it won’t give any information. It would be like a leaf asking the wind, “Why are you moving that way right now?” The question doesn’t make any sense to the wind.

But your argument with the way the truth would move—whatever that way is—is no longer there for you. You’re no longer arguing with it. You’re no longer trying to figure it out. Mother Mary didn’t figure it out. Buddha didn’t figure it out. Ramana didn’t figure it out. None of them figured it out. They just became That. Simple. Ordinary—in the same way a leaf is ordinary.

When you’re living in your awakened being and living in an awakened way, power on any level is not an issue for you. It’s not interesting. The power to control another human being is not interesting. Intellectual power is not interesting. The power to control yourself is not interesting. The power that people want to give you is not interesting to you—not because it shouldn’t be; it’s just not. What would you want to do with it? You see that there’s nothing you want to do with it.

You realize, in the truth of your being, that you are the totality itself, but you have no interest whatsoever in doing anything with that knowledge, with using that knowledge.

Finally, you realize that you really don’t want to change anybody, not because you shouldn’t want to change them, because you just don’t. You might not want to be around everyone, but still you don’t want to change them.

None of this is an ideal—it’s the end of ideals. None of this is holiness; it’s the end of holiness. It’s the beginning of wholeness. None of this is something to achieve, because it’s not achievable. It’s simply what is in the truth of your being. It’s just what is. You can’t attain what’s naturally so. And nobody anywhere can ever tell you when or why, or to what degree you’ll let go of untruth; you will let go when you let go, usually when nothing else works.

When you’re living in the awakened way, in the awakened being that you are, you’re alone, and you’re finally comfortable with it. You’re alone, but you’re not lonely at all, because the only one who was ever supposed to meet you where you are—the only one who ever could meet you where you are one hundred percent—was you. Nobody else could ever fully meet you where you are—maybe ninety percent, maybe ninety-five. Nobody can meet you fully but you. When you finally do, then you don’t need anybody else to do it for you. Then you’re alone, more alone than you could ever imagine. And strangely—very strangely—you are more connected, more intimate, more at one with everything. More. And you would have never thought that those two could in any way be together: total aloneness and total oneness. You would have never guessed that that’s the way it would end up. But it does, and it always has.

And finally, when you’re just living in the awakened way that you really are, you’ll never form an image again of what it’s like. Even as it’s happening, you won’t form an image because you’ll know they’re all images, dust. The way it was yesterday won’t be the way it is today.”

Lessons Learned from 3,000 Regressions

After guiding 3,000+ past life regressions over the past 15 years, I’ve noticed three common themes or soul lessons that often emerge during the latter part of the session when the earth life is over and is being reviewed from the vantage point of the soul. There is such wisdom in these lessons that I wanted to share them with you.

#1 Do not live from fears or guardedness. You will regret the times that you allowed fears to hold you back or limit your life expression in any way. A common example is withholding your expression of love by guarding your heart from emotional pain. Other regrets include choosing security over pursuing a passion, love or joy, whether it be marrying for status and money instead of love or holding back on following a dream. As Wayne Dyer once said, “Don’t die with your music still left in you.”

#2 Be more proactive in creating your life experience rather than simply reacting to what life gives you. I’ve heard many variations of this same missed opportunity. Unfortunately, we cannot get through life without loss or failure because they are built into the human experience as a means for us as souls to evaluate how the human part of us chooses to respond to challenges. Loss or failure can limit us or it can make us stronger and wiser with a richer life experience. When we glimpse behind the scenes and view life as a temporary role-play, however, losses and failure don’t paralyze us as much. In other words, as we become more awake to our permanent identity, we become freer.

#3 Be more fully and consciously present in each moment of life to experience more joy. It reminds me of Emily’s famous line in the play Our Town, “Is anyone really aware of life while they’re living it?” This is a theme that we all can relate to as we often go through life in our heads rather than appreciating the underlying love and beauty that is available in each instant, often only noticing it when it’s gone.

We can understand these lessons intellectually, but yet not fully feel and experience the truth of this wisdom. The value of past life regression is that it can allow us to integrate deeper soul truths at the level of the body and subconscious mind, thus helping us to more easily live from them in our daily lives. This is because towards the end of the session, the background noise of the thinking mind is silent and you are fully anchored in the here and now, which is actually a higher dimension of your being that is saturated in peace, love and clarity. You are more deeply connected to the soul part of you that is always ‘here’ and never goes away…not only throughout the years of your life as the body ages, but even long after the body is left behind.