Who are You?
I put it to you, that what you are is nothing; where nothing is everything. It's infinite potential. The unmanifest. Presence before beingness, before anything even arises (like love for example). The challenge with words though is, I can't say you 'are' that, because then you are being something. And if the True Self is something, where did it come from? (who created the creator?).
A reasonable way I've found of understanding this perennial dilemma in spirituality, is to consider that existence happens as the result of a dynamic equilibrium: there is infinite potential (which is not being) continually arising into relativistic flows of consciousness (like a soul for example, which is being). There's a continual arising and dissolving from, and into, the source. Then you have the condition of being/not being simultaneously. Which helps define where we originally came from, how we came from nothing, and yet still get the sense of existence.
On the journey to this sense of emptiness, this expansive nothingness, this crystal clear clarity, we'll have to overcome many hurdles, many attachments - the attachment to identity for example. Jumping into this limitless potential often feels like a death - it's the death of everything you thought you were; everything you defined yourself as... like "I am love" for example. It can be terrifying. And so it could be that for many lifetimes, people turn away from it, because they can't deal with the consequences of such unbounded liberation - such emptiness, such vastness....
How could you possibly continue to live like this?
How can you continue to make decisions and connect to the world from this place?
How can you continue to be in relationship with someone?
How do you possibly define yourself from this place?
How could you live with no sense of identity at all?
These are the fears that often materialise in that open state.
Or else we love the freedom of it so much, that the soul goes into bliss. But bliss is not this place of infinite potential. It is merely the relativistic experience of infinite potential. Nevertheless, people attach to it. It prevents them dropping into the Void of 'who' they truly are.
The Void of Emptiness
I put it to you that the purpose of the soul is to reacquaint you with this place - the Void of Emptiness - The Void of Silence - as an experience. Actually I call it a 'purpose', but that presupposes an intention by the 'creator' - in this sense I mean the infinite potential.
How can that have intention?
What you can have, is an 'emergence' - a flow - from this potential. And if that flow is continually arising and then pulling back into the source, you do get the sense of purpose: like it's 'Ascension' for example. And the moving back to wholeness from separation feels like unifying, which feels like love. Which is probably why a soul identifying with this state (thus forming an ego) would say "I am Love".
The soul emerges from this vast potential as a stream of consciousness - a stream of awareness. It's what makes 'you' unique - a wave on the ocean of potential. Many people will attach to this experience of the soul; but I put it to you, that you are not that, you are what precedes it.
To me, the soul contains the memory of the original condition of oneness - it is the expression of it. That's its purpose. When we can align with this purpose in a particular moment, then we ride the journey back into the source, inside of ourselves. When we can ride the journey of the soul - all the time - then this is Enlightenment.
How can you ride the journey of the soul all the time?
What defines our work at Openhand - is to recognise the purpose of the soul; to understand how it works; then to align with it. You can't intentionally 'take aim' for the presence of the True Self - the One. Because in so doing, you already establish the foundation of separation - you are an identity trying to do something.
But what you can do (where 'you' is a separated aspect of the One - an identity or ego), is continually surrender on the 'altar of the divine'. The ego could chose to let go and dissolve itself back into presence.
But how does the ego truly let go?
What it can do, is to continually align with the soul. In so doing, we'll feel the pull - of love - back into the source; but we'll have to continually confront the obstacles that get in the way - the hooks that attach an unrealised soul (unrealised as the One) - into the illusion of separation.
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