FINDING THE HEART OF OUR BEING

Group question: The question this week has to do with our topic from three weeks ago, when we began to ask about the devotional life and how to live it. We would like to follow up that question by asking how we can find more and more of that which we really are, that which is the heart of our being.

(Q’uo, May 23, 1999, Sunday Meditation)

We are those of the principle known to you as Q’uo. We greet you in the love and in the light of the One Infinite Creator. We are most happy and blessed to be included in your meditation this day, and we appreciate greatly your question for us. Truly the mystery of deity is wrapped up in this question of how to be one’s true self. For as the one known as Jim read from the LAW OF ONE material earlier this day, each is the Creator. And the challenge before all living in illusion is how to become more aware of that personhood as Infinite Creator.

The workings of what this instrument would call God and men are as complex, as assorted and varied, as the grains of sand upon the shore. It is difficult to comprehend the myriad numbers of sparks of the Creator that are, just as you or we are, attempting to be their true selves. It is hard even to fathom that upon your planet, as one small entity amidst a million or a billion other planetary entities, there is such a long history of people such as you attempting to survive, to relate to each other, to accomplish physical and societal, mental and emotional goals. It is difficult to imagine the thousands of years during which the human experience has basically remained the same. This instrument thinks back over all of the reading that she has done through a long succession of classes and learning experiences, and no matter what the century or the millennium, the human heart has remained the same: seeking wisdom, seeking compassion, seeking the truth, concerned for basically the same things century after century, millennium upon millennium.

As each entity sits in this circle of seeking she brings to this moment the sum total of all that has been undergone, all that has lasted through the chances and changes of daily living. In one field of energy there lies for each the history of the life and, taken to a bigger scale, the history of that spirit whose personality shell is now occupying the chair. For each of you and each of us has a tremendously long and varied history of incarnations, experiences, gifts, graces and opportunities, and were we to speak upon any one of you, upon all that that one entity is, we could not exhaust the subject through any amount of time. For each of you is all that there is. Each of you is full and whole and infinite.

As always, for one attempting to come to a place of more awareness, the tool of choice is silence. In meditation and in prayer much may be accomplished beneath the surface of that beingness that is each of you. Without words to limit, without form to inhibit, the silence speaks in the free and open manner of deity. The more of silence that one may eat as food, the more deep shall become that awareness of the Creator speaking within that system of energies that is the being, that is each of you. We hear you speaking of the desire to serve, the desire to give of the self to others and to the planetary energy, and we applaud that hope and that energy, for each of you was indeed careful to include unique gifts in the personality that you chose for this incarnation. And it is wise to seek out one’s gifts and to find ways to use them in the service of others.

Perhaps we may say that when the word, “wise” or “wisdom” is heard, we have not yet gotten to the heart of meaning for this particular density. The lesson that is before you at this point is undoubtedly not about wisdom, not about being wise, but rather about discovering the spring of infinite love. The rational mind can do just so much when it comes to seeking out the wellspring of one’s being. It can put you in a good place. It can arrange an environment for best effect. But once the stage is set, there seems to be nothing but a beating heart, a resting body, an alert and seeking mind that thirsts for the Creator, and time. And in this curl of body and silence and time there is that feeling of being alone, being still, and being at sea. And the rational mind asks how this curl of energy and hope and time can bring one to one’s self.

Individuality is a very deceptive thing. We are not denying each of you your individuality at all, but it is a puzzling thing in that it predisposes one to thinking that the goal is to find more of one’s individuality, that in becoming more of one’s self, one shall become more individualized. This, however, is not our understanding of the way one becomes more fully or wholly one’s self. The rational mind wants to reach out and pull in all of those things that will be useful and helpful in the search for the heart itself. There is that feeling of accretion, of collecting resources that will be of help in this search. Yet it is our feeling that the becoming more of one’s self is a process of things falling away, a process of subtraction.

The model that we give this instrument is the model of an entity who works upon two levels. On the outer level the seeker who wishes to become more itself deals with the environment about it, attempting to place itself more and more in an environment that it finds conducive to the giving of its gifts and the learning of its lessons and the keeping of its promises in relationships and ethical considerations, and in all those matters of personal honor and duty. There is a valid benefit gained by the seeker as it simplifies and regularizes its environment in such a way as to find fruitfulness of self in all of those ways that entities think of being fruitful in vocations and avocations. There is a legitimate outer work that it is helpful to be doing, and we would not say that one who wishes to move more into the heart of one’s self should forgo working on the discipline of the personality, the purification of emotion, and the development of the magical personality. These are just and helpful uses of the mind, of the attention, and of time.

However, in terms of doing the inner work the challenge is to find ways to allow that which is not the heart of self to fall away. It is not that one decides to remove self identification from this or that pattern of living or distortion of mind. The seeker who feels that it knows what is to be dropped in order to be more the heart of self is deluding itself at some level, for there is no way from within the self to see into the patterns of energy that are, in essence, distortions of the One Infinite Creator. Consequently, there is no rational way to become more and more undistorted. Working to become less distorted is a distortion itself, and the seeker who attempts to guide itself in the ways of becoming the Creator is, instead, most likely developing patterns of thinking that are in and of themselves additional distortions, so there is the addition of distortion rather than the subtraction of distortion.

What we are trying to say is how easy it is to work too hard at something that is not actually work at all but rather the cultivation of a growing willingness, and this is the heart of what we would like to say this day. There is this place of willingness that things may change in any way, seemingly inwardly or seemingly outwardly, there is this attitude of open possibility, of lack of fear when viewing the present or the future, that is a kind of key. And if you can do nothing else from what we suggest this day but cultivate an attitude of willingness to be swayed by the tides of destiny, then we are more than happy.

You are something that is whole and unified and simple. You are infinite love, infinite light, infinite energy, stepped down and stepped down until you can exist within this particular illusion, with this particular kind of physical vehicle, this particular energy shell that we have called the personality. It is as though out of an infinite universe you came through density after density and experience after experience, looking and laughing and gazing and enjoying, and came to this particular planet and said, “Here, I shall plant myself. Here, I shall learn to blossom. Here, I shall enjoy the sun and feel the rain. Here, I shall be born and die.” And you descend through the inner planes, through each level at which you make choices, until you have chosen this body, and this time, and this set of circumstances, and suddenly you are born. And this is the present moment of all times, this is the place out of all places, this is the density, this is the experience. Somehow it seems a miracle that is out of time, that has burst upon the Earth like a sun. This is you. This is here. And this is now. Think of yourself in this way, as a sun or a blossom. Anything but a human. For to think of one’s self as human is always to move to the outer. Yet your true self is no outer thing. You true self is without distortion, and infinite in love. We cannot teach you how to realize compassion. You cannot teach yourself how to realize the compassion that is locked within you. And even with the dint of the hardest and most intransigent work upon the self, you cannot add one whit of compassion to your personality. You can teach yourself to perform compassionate acts, but the key to that infinite compassion that is truly yours is not to be found within teaching and learning. It is locked within the present moment, and it is when you go into the present moment that you are vulnerable to a deeper realization of yourself

So what we encourage this day is a heightened awareness of the value of losing yourself in the present moment. When one talks about the devotional life, again one is pulled into thoughts of the outer world. The question that you ask when you ask to learn more of your true self is a question that has no answer but only a direction, a direction that says “into the present moment, into life.” Not living, not a process. But that state of being that lies beyond all process. It should be utterly simple to allow distortion to fall away, and yet it is as far from simple as the challenge of the sculptor who is looking at an ovoid rock which he wishes to carve into a likeness. The likeness dwells within that rock. It is a matter of chipping away at the rock until it has the requisite form to satisfy the maker.

Let us move back into the image of the self in the water. The self has a relationship to the water of being in that the self is a bubble upon the sea of being that wishes to dissolve into that sea, and yet it is the essence of being an individual that it cannot, for the term of this experience, this incarnation, dissolve. This is not your time to dissolve. This is your time to be a bubble. The bubble has a skin, the coherent shell that holds the self apart from the water. And within that bubble there is, one would say, nothing, and yet it is within that bubble of individuality that your true self lies. So you may accept being that bubble on the water, but you are touching the water. You are carried along by the water, and we encourage in each of you a sense of that rhythmic and pulsing wave effect that this instrument would call destiny. You have little or no choice as to how the wave on which you are sitting will go. You may, perhaps, position yourself so that the waves do not toss you unduly, yet you are directionless, except for the water. Where the water takes you, you shall go.

There is an endless art in the observation of this wave action and in those creative attempts to come more into congruency with the line of energy of this wave action. Your responsibility as a personality shell is to be present during this experience of individuality, to observe, and to respond. As you do this outer work, yet still realizing that you are the bubble on the ocean, you set up for yourself that two-layered plan of attack. The outer layer is largely the attempt to come into rhythmic harmony with that energy of destiny that shall give you the experiences that you hoped for, those limitations that will help teach, and those opportunities to share the gifts that you brought with you, meanwhile, always reserving some of the self for the immediate experience of diving into the present moment. This instrument was earlier speaking of the bliss she experiences while working in the garden, talking to the plant life, and working with the devic energy. She wondered “Is it out of proportion to its actual import?” and we would say to this instrument, “No, it is not at all out of proportion.” It is an instance where this instrument did dive into the present moment to find the heart of bliss that is within each present moment.

We encourage each then to find those situations within which it is the easiest to forget the self completely and simply be. For this particular entity-that is, this particular instrument-being in the garden, interacting with second-density energies, is one excellent set of conditions that encourage this particular seeker to come completely out of herself and into the moment. We encourage each to find those situations that so encourage each. For some, it is great music. For others, it is art. For some, a tramp in the woods. For others, the contemplation of the structure of thought that is majestic. What all of them have in common is the result, that explosion of the limited self into the infinite present. Each of you is a blossom. Turn towards the light.

We ask each of you to remember the help that awaits the seeker. You are not alone as you seek to be. There is at many levels help, guidance, encouragement and comfort. As always, we encourage patience, persistence, and a sense of humor. For those who seek outwardly there are many accomplishments that can be pointed to. For those who seek to be truly themselves there is only the joy of bursting the bubble and becoming the ocean. We encourage you to continue this seeking in all faith and all hope.

Again, we thank each present for inviting our presence in your circle of seeking this day. It has been, as it always is, a pleasure to join each this day and we remind each that we walk with you at all times, for we are one in love and in light and in our common bond of seeking the One Creator together. We invite each to call upon us to deepen your meditative state at any time. At this time we shall take our leave of this instrument and this group, leaving each in the love and in the light of the One Infinite Creator. We are known to you as those of Q’uo. Adonai, my friends. Adonai.

NOTES TO OUR READERS

Carla and Jim are both working to gather quotes to use in Carla’s WANDERER`S HANDBOOK, and the goal is to have it written by the end of this year. We will keep you posted as to its availability via this newsletter.