In order to embrace the totality of being, one must be ready for one thing - one must be ready to surrender one's hold on that sense of false identity which is the mind. The later must be completely put aside, along with all expectations, desires, and fears. One must remain completely detached from all personal experiences and preconceived ideas. One must withdraw from all memory so as to be in a state of direct affiliation with what is real - the totality of life. One must be ready to move ahead with a naked openness, a state of total receptivity to the blessing of self-realization.
Embracing the totality
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The deceptive mind
In the final scene of Carlos Castaneda’s Tales of Power, Castaneda leaps off a cliff into a great abyss. This sounds like an absolutely terrifying experience, and an act of either tremendous courage or total madness. For those of us who take up your direct path, nothing so drastic is on the menu. All we must do is give up the world of thought and ego and time and concept, and, as you say, “purify all sense of false identity”.
There is no danger in this, but somehow it feels almost suicidal, like jumping into an abyss. This is obviously the mind’s deception. What is the source of this deception?
The contradiction between
The contradiction between one's sense of false identity and what is real is also a contradiction that resides within the mind itself. The mind holds on to what is false while possessing the knowledge of what is true. However, at the same time, at the very center of one's self resides the truth of infinite being. Therefore, the mind subconsciously knows that letting go of itself implies the letting go of all its illusions, which is also its own death - a death which it cannot possibly conceive. It is just like the idea of jumping out of a cliff. Although the mind knows about the inescapable reality of death, it still attempts to deny it and to try in any way possible to avoid that inevitable meeting which is to occur at one point or another in the course of its existence. The mind can only re-enforce that fear till the moment when it actually must encounter its own death.
The mind can only fear its death for this is what is to come as the outcome of its existence, something that the mind has subconsciously feared from time immemorial. Therefore, such a meeting - the mind's encounter with its own death - is perceived as a complete suicide. And yes, this place of surrender is the place where the mind must end so that the real may become fully manifest.
The question remains as to how the mind may subside at some point? What is really happening is that on a soul level, as awareness is being more and more incorporated into one's life, the knowledge of the soul's very purpose takes precedence over the false identity of ego. The soul itself is more attuned to its connection with what's real and thus better informed of the outcome of the practice of awareness, for it is within this frequency of higher awareness that it comes to recognize itself. As awareness infiltrates and becomes the pervasive force at the center of being, all the constituent bodies are realigned with extraordinary precision; this is an indication of the transformative process by which spirit assumes dominance over matter. As the spirit's purposes are revealed, the mind's activity can only subside. The mind does not come to an end on its own; it is the spirit that has come to the realization that the mind is no longer needed for its definition, as it now embraces the universal as the only reality.
Acheiving self-realization
We devote our lives to the practice of incessant manipulation of the features of the material world to suit our specifications. We know that we can never control everything, that things usually don’t go as we plan, that we can never shape events on this level of the material plane to meet our total satisfaction. This is why all these materialization cults have such a great appeal today - people want control on the material plane. But when we consider the path of self-realization, we must admit that this is one area in which we certainly can determine our fate. Since realization is not dependent on external factors, since it is entirely in our hands, it should therefore be one of the easiest things a person can undertake and achieve. But, as we all know, this is not the case. We know what is required of us, yet we are unable to do what is required, even though, in actuality, so very little is required. If realization is what we want, we can certainly have it... or can we? Why is this process so difficult for so many people?
Most of us live in a dream
Most of us live in a dream world: a world of mind where everything that is not in the mind does not exist. Therefore, how can the vastness of consciousness be revealed within the constraints of such a dream world? We essentially live for the mind and life does not have any other purpose but to serve the mind... and this is our history, the history of mankind. How is one to step off the vast current of human consciousness and how ready is one to make such a move? Sure enough that cannot happen in the blink of an eye unless one is ready for it! However, when looking closely at what is going on in actuality, although we may believe that we exist as independent entities, the contrary is the truth. Everything is happening as a play over the reality of infinite being. Nothing of our so-called lives really exists. Our lives are only appearing as a movement of colors and shapes over the infinity of consciousness and that is it. The thought of not being realized is a thought that has come from the outside, a thought drifting like a cloud across the reality of infinite being that you are. Discard the thought of being this or that or the thought of not being self-realized and you will immediately come to a place of surrender which reveals that the only thing that is real is that which has always existed and will always prevail - the reality of infinite being.