On my personal journey, in the beginning, I knew little past the writing on my walls and my decisions and choices in life were a reflection of my own making within my own mind. While I’ve always had a lot of faith, I knew little of religion, belief, and philosophy other than what I had read and studied of others works. Then one day, I had an experience, what seemed like in hindsight a sort of loss of consciousness.

I entered a deep meditation, it felt like a disappearing and vanishing of everything I thought I had understood. This included myself, as the one aware and yet awareness continued. The nature of that awareness was pure and untouched by space, time and everything external. I was in a state of absolute bliss, a time when even I, as the experiencer did not exist. It was so sublime that even words did not exist to describe the fulfillment of my heart’s desire. I only felt fullness, completion, bliss and LOVE.

I was able to touch heaven’s ever shining Grace. The experience was unimaginable and the presence in my heart felt like a wellspring of transmutation. I felt diminished of myself and of the terrible pain within me. Left intact was an inner peace of all that I had known myself to be. I felt this as a radiance in the center of my heart. It has remained with me, in the ambient background of all that I have experienced since and oft times flooding the foreground of my life. Always available to my mind’s attention and ever available to my heart’s remembrance.  A wellspring of Grace had touched my life.

Meeting My True Self

After that experience, I found myself imbued always with a touch of that heavenly memory. I define the experience as a simple one, not yet debased by the mind. I wanted to go beyond knowledge and understanding, and not pour myself into the mold of another’s interpretation. Unbound by prescription, and dogma, not requiring me to do this, or refrain from that without cause, without condition. I wanted to become ever present.

The Child of the Universe speaks clearly with no effort and no sense of self-importance, naturally:

“I and all of you – we, are children of the Universe.  The Universe is our creator.  We are all divine.  We can never be anything else. Nothing that the Divine creates can be other than divine. I am divine. I live in a divine Universe. A Universe in which there is only, goodness and no opposite to that. You, in my universe, are divine.

All beings in my universe are divine. In that divinity I feel complete safety, as I am surrounded by God in all his forms. In my universe, all things come from God, the pleasant and what you call the unpleasant. In my universe there is no question of worthiness. Can the Divine be unworthy? Can anything the Divine has created be unworthy?”

There is No Enlightenment

In the Universe there is no enlightenment as there is nothing to oppose the light. There is nothing to be enlightened.  We, as a collective, have an opportunity to light up something that is not lit up enough. There is no liberation, because there is nothing bound to be liberated.  The seeking for enlightenment is based on the veil of ignorance that causes you to be blind to your divine nature.

Ask yourself, Would the Divine cry out for enlightenment?  And who would answer? And who will be enlightened if the Seeker of Enlightenment gets enlightenment? …Just him?  What about the rest of us?

As long we continue to live in fear, ignorance and feelings of unworthiness, no one here in this circle of humanity can be enlightened. YOU are something much greater than the sum of who you think you are. In fact, YOU are Universal Divine Consciousness, which has temporarily projected itself into the material world in order to express divine nature.

Am I the Way I Am Supposed to Be?

Many of you have asked, “Am I the way God wants me to be? Must I do something more? Must I be something else than what I am?” We are all parts of a process to reach higher levels of consciousness. Imagine the banks of a river and you are the water running through; ever changing. As you change, you evolve.

For example: Does the water in a river ever ask the banks, “Am I in the form I should be? Am I as you want me to be? NO, it just allows itself to be formed as it is by the riverbanks. Formed by external and internal forces, as flows towards the sea.  Eventually it disappears losing all form, being immersed in the formless sea.

What if you were to simply accept, you are as you should be at this very moment. Guilt, fear and self-rejection will not change who you are. However, love, acceptance and selflessness will. Many are overcome with desire. The desire to be better, to produce more, to serve more, and to have more results. Perhaps you want to be better mediators, better teachers, and better writers.  All of this is ego-centered. Consider, just simply being a drop of water in the river. It is through experience, that life will shape you into the meditator or the teacher or the writer you must be.

Collective Consciousness

As long as you perform spiritual practices in order to get free, you are functioning from the ego. Perform these because you enjoy them, as you enjoy eating and sleeping. Continuing to seek enlightenment through having or not having your desires and expectations met, you “desire” from the ego. Yes, even the desire for salvation is desire. It is for your salvation. You are conceiving yourself as something separate from creation by asking for salvation for your personal ego.

It is better to pray for the collective consciousness of all beings. Pray for the planet to evolve. Perform your spiritual practices but with no goal in mind. The results will come when you are ready. There is no enlightenment or salvation of the individual. You must come to the realization that your real identity is not separate from the Divine. No individual person will wake up enlightened. What matters is that you love, that you are humble and selfless and care about everyone, and not only about yourself.  Spiritual ego and spiritual greed are the worst obstacles because they are the most invisible. They seem holy.

The Key is Self-Acceptance

Accept that you are created in the image of the Divine. You have been created as the Divine wants you to be at this stage of your evolutionary process. But just as the river; two meters downstream you will be changed if you allow it. If you are, however, identified with your roles saying I am a Teacher, I am a Writer, I am an Organizer, a Perceiver of Goodness etc.; you will never flow and never change.

In fact, you will never change until you accept your present nature as God-given. There is an unworthy child in each of us. Each of us has learned to doubt his worthiness and to doubt God’s love and therefore God’s protection and the goodness of the universe. This universe has only one-creator – God. Nothing He creates can be evil. So, unless you come from some other universe and are created by some other god, you cannot be evil.

You are a Flower Bud in God’s Garden

Imagine yourself as a budding flower in a beautiful garden of love. Simply allow life to be as it is. Allow life’s experiences to prune the plant, to cut away what is not useful, so that energy can flow up into that bud and make it bloom. Rejecting yourself, because you have not yet bloomed is like rejecting a rose bud, accusing it of not being worthy of God’s love because it has not yet bloomed.  Accept that you are the bud that has not yet bloomed and that your purpose to bloom is natural and useful.

You will then have a frame of reference and know that you have not yet become what you will become, is silly and counterproductive.  It is your rejection of what is that cuts off the juices and energies flowing to that bud and it will never bloom. By accepting it, loving it, giving it your attention, you help it to come into contact with its center of power and it automatically transforms itself.

Enlightened? …  Awakened? …  What does it mean?

I’m not sure I consider “enlightened” or “awakened” to be a matter of great importance. There seems to be an implied finality.  There is also a sense of unfortunate elevation of stature that they inevitably invoke, especially to those who feel themselves worthy of their use.

My own feelings on this matter and my experience has shown me that it’s unwise at best, and delusional at worst, to ever plant a flag to declare I have reached some kind of the summit. While I am very happy that I have been gifted with some profound milestones along my path to higher levels of consciousness, and to living my life from a place of awareness, it is also my experience there is no finality whatsoever … it is an ongoing journey and extends for many lifetimes … perhaps eternity.

… love and light, Christina