Outgrowing the Separate Self: Spiritual Awakening

It is the very resistance to or pulling away from or fear of right the emotion or the pain or the fear, right? That initial hesitation, that bracing, that back, stepping back, that causes the amplification of the pain and of the suffering to such a great extent. All right. So before we start the guided, I'll just say a little bit about spirituality and the group.

So I would say that spirituality is about remembering what we've always been and about returning to the wholeness of our being from a certain perspective before we're born or before we come in to this human life we are coming in from the whole as part of the whole, or whatever you believe, spirit, or whatever you want to call it. And then in being human and growing up and having going up from a baby to a child to a teenager to an adult, the separate self forms as a means of learning how to be human and learning how to do complex tasks such as making tea or talking to your friend or doing math or anything like that.

And then the ability to do that, right? To learn how to do these complex tasks, we must separate ourselves into pieces and then use those pieces, right? So I need to be separate from the teapot, I need to be separate from the boiling kettle, and then I need to pour the water in for a certain amount of time, right? And then it seems very simple, excuse me, now as an adult where we are, but actually, if you've been around kids or remember what it's like to be a child, some of these processes are very complicated and take a very long time to figure out.

And so to do that, we have to separate the wholeness and the unity of the world into pieces and then figure out all the relationships and how to use them and combine them and combine them and use them in different ways. And then once you get to a certain age, probably around 18 or older, you no longer need to do that anymore. You've kind of learned how to do it, and it's not necessary. And so, that's when this whole idea of spiritual awakening or spiritual evolution usually begins.

And what's happened is, in a lot of ways, we've outgrown the separate self or needing a separate self. And so, that's why I think we call it like a remembering as opposed to creating something because we have always been it, and then we temporarily become fascinated and merged with the separate self. And then now there's the opportunity for this natural process to pull back from that sense of separation and begin to view the world again from our own innate goodness and wholeness. So, the reason we want to kind of set the stage is that there can be such a tendency, I know I had it myself, but such a tendency to be angry or want to fight the separate self or blame, you know, my small self or my fractured self or my problems or my suffering or my anxiety.

And it makes sense that we would do that, or why we do that. That makes sense. But I want, if you can, to try to take a step back and see that the separation that we all experience, some more painful than others, is just a temporary process, a temporary state that allows us to do complex things and become humans with complex lives and complex emotional worlds and complex emotional relationships. And so, ultimately, the goal of spiritual evolution and of our spirit coming into this body and living this life is to find a way to hold both our humanness and our divineness or our spirit-ness or whatever we want to call it, right, at the same time.

And the only way to do that is to go through this initial period of separation. And so, really trying to see the pain and the suffering and the good things as all parts of a great map or play or design or a life, you know, like a three-dimensional world. And that we can't get one without the other because they're all pieces of the whole. And to fully grasp and live from our own wholeness, we have to say yes and accept and embrace every piece of our lives and our bodies and our emotions, whether we like them or not, whether they make us feel good or not, whether they cause us to be in pain or not.

It is the very resistance to or pulling away from or fear of the emotion or the pain or the fear, right? That initial hesitation, that bracing, that back, stepping back, that causes the amplification of the pain and of the suffering to such a great extent. And what's happened is it's become so habitual, the pulling away and the bracing and the fear, that we've forgotten that how we relate to the emotion or how we relate to the pain can have such a significant impact on its strength and development and power over us. And so, from my experience on this path of emotional healing and spiritual evolution, I strongly encourage you to begin to separate what you want or what feels good from what is.

And as long as we confuse what feels good for what is, then we will continue to suffer. Because, yes, it is totally normal to not like or not want pain or suffering or fear. But it is not true to say that just because we don't want it, it doesn't exist. And when we say it doesn't exist, we give all of our power of choice and autonomy and the ability to regulate to the pain and the fear.