Your Deeper Spiritual Nature

When you begin to realize that you have a spiritual nature, and you realize that your life is possibly greater than your own current experience, this leads you to some remarkable discoveries. The first of these discoveries is that you are not your mind. Your thoughts and the images in your mind all represent part of the mind at the surface—a mind that has been conditioned by the world; a mind that is a catalogue of your experiences, or at least some of them; a mind that holds beliefs, has fantasies and fears; a mind that weaves together images from its collective experience; a mind that dreams, a mind that wanders, a mind that is really very disorganized.

But beneath this surface mind, there is a deeper Mind within you. And you know that you are not really this mind that wanders because you can observe it and you can direct it.

People, however, follow their mind. They think that is their consciousness; that is who they are; that is what distinguishes them from other people. They think this mind represents their unique existence, and while they are afraid of a great deal of things that are in this mind, they still identify with it almost completely. Many people never question their thoughts. They just have them and follow them slavishly, with great devotion.

But when you begin to discover that you have a deeper spiritual nature, this leads you to the realization that who you are is not your mind, and that your deeper nature is more permanent. It has a greater current of truth, a greater current of life flowing through your existence, with you always, but largely beyond your awareness because your awareness is given to outer things primarily, and because you have not yet questioned the reality of your own thinking.

This realization opens the door to the deeper mystery of your life and allows you to begin to take the steps to a deeper Knowledge within yourself—a deeper Mind; a greater Mind; a Mind that is not conditioned by the world; a Mind that has been with you all along; a Mind that is speaking to you each day; a Mind created by God and influenced by God alone.

Many people are afraid to sit still. They are afraid they will experience unpleasant thoughts or dark fears because they live with anxiety and uncertainty. They are afraid of what they might experience if they gave their attention to the stream of their thinking. It is uncomfortable. It is foreign. It is strange. So they live at the surface, constantly stimulated, constantly preoccupied, constantly busy, running around.

All the while, Knowledge is speaking to them, but they cannot hear it because their mind is preoccupied. Their attention is given to things on the outside or to their own personal preoccupations. So the Mystery and the power of Knowledge is with them, but they are not with it.

When you reach a point in life where you realize that you must have a spiritual practice; when you realize that you must focus your mind and give it attention to building a bridge and a connection to this deeper consciousness within you, then you will realize that your mind is very chaotic. As you begin to really observe it objectively and dispassionately, you will see that it is very chaotic. And eventually you will recognize that your life is very chaotic because it is being governed by this surface mind that really, in itself, is very incoherent.

So as you begin spiritual practice, you realize you must focus your mind. You cannot be ruled by it every moment. You must direct it. You must give it a focus. And, of course, this is what you do every day in your work or in other activities where you are very concentrated. You are giving your mind a focus. So this is part of your experience already, but here you are giving it a different kind of focus.

When you begin to learn to meditate, your mind must have something to focus on—a word, a sound, an image, something for it to stay focused upon—because if it is not focused, then it is chaotic; it is distracting; it is all over the place. Here you are directing your mind instead of something on the outside directing your mind. This is a very different experience.

When you go to work each day, your work requires you to focus your mind. It is demanding your attention, but here in this situation, in spiritual practice, you are focusing your mind. As you learn to do this, you gain greater and greater strength, and a deeper and deeper connection to the power and presence of Knowledge within yourself. And you realize your mind can become tremendously valuable here. It is really here to serve Spirit. It is here to serve Knowledge. And you realize its beliefs and its ideas and its images are really not so significant after all.

This gives you a greater perspective, a greater patience and greater self-confidence, for there is something in you that is not chaotic. It is very powerful and very focused. As this becomes more the well of your experience, then you realize the mind is like a telescope that you can focus upon things. It is like a microscope you can [use to] focus on things. You can direct your perception instead of having it direct you.

Here you are able to face unpleasant thoughts, painful memories, and they do not intimidate you so much now. You are able to face them and be with them and realize if there is any action that must be taken regarding them. Here instead of running away from your experience, trying to leap into the future, trying to stay preoccupied and distracted, you are able to settle down within yourself. It is a remarkable freedom, really.

People are strangers to themselves, you see. They have no idea that they have a deeper Mind. They have never been with their deeper experience to any great degree. They have never sat still long enough to experience the presence and the power of their deeper nature. So they are a stranger to themselves, and they are a stranger to other people.

People relate to each other at the level of their ideas, the level of their appearance and activities and so forth. They could be together for years and years and never really have any sense of who each other is. This is very common. You can see it everywhere around you.

It is tragic because you are missing the greatest experiences of life. The deeper connection within yourself enables you to have a deep connection with others. If you are a stranger to yourself, then you are like a stranger to everyone. And though you may live in a big city with thousands or millions of people, you can be extremely isolated.

This is a problem that seems irresolvable, but there is a resolution because God has given you a deeper Mind, and this deeper Mind is not disconnected from life. It is not disassociated from its Source. It represents the well of your experience and the deeper current of your life.

At the surface, everything is turbulent and changing, like the surface of the ocean, whipped by the waves—one day calm, the next day turbulent, never settled, incoherent, never stable. But down beneath in the ocean, there are deep currents moving the waters of the world. They do not change.

You have this greater current within yourself. It is here for a purpose, for you have been sent into the world for a purpose. But to realize this purpose, you must break free of the fixations of the mind sufficiently that you can feel the deeper movement of your life.

As you progress in taking the Steps to Knowledge, you will still live at the surface, but you will carry this greater Presence with you. It will temper the influence that the world around you has upon you, and it will temper your identification with your worldly mind.

You shall see that really only a very small percentage of the thinking and the imagination that you experience in your surface mind actually represents anything real or valuable at all. The rest is just a mass of thoughts and images and associations.

You look out in the world and you realize that very little of what you see is really important for you to know. While there may be endless things that fascinate you, or that capture your attention, or that threaten you or intimidate you, there are really only a very few things that you really need to see and know. And these things are very important within themselves.

You look out on people and interactions between people, and you see there is very little evidence of Knowledge, but you look for this Knowledge because it is precious, because it is really the most important thing. People talk incessantly, they are engaged in innumerable activities, but rarely something really significant happens between them. That is what you look for in them because that is what you look for in yourself.

This represents a real shift, you see, from your former existence, which was slavishly following your surface, worldly mind—believing that that is who you are, trying to organize your thinking and behavior to have some sense of stability and coherence in your life: following other people, following the patterns that your culture lays down, following the expectations of others, yet a stranger to yourself and a stranger to the world around you.

In spiritual practice, then, there must be a conscious focusing of this worldly mind. It will respond to your directions, but you must give it a clear focus. You do not rule it harshly. You do not condemn it. You do not punish it or degrade it in any way. You simply give it a focus.

Eventually, your mind must either be still or concentrated on something of real significance for you. It is a very powerful tool, and it must be directed by a stronger will within yourself. It is like the apprentice for your Spirit, but if your Spirit does not exert its will through you, then the apprentice becomes like a master, but a foolish master, a very poor master.

In taking the Steps to Knowledge, you learn to focus your mind so you can experience everything around it—the existence of life within you and around you. You will see people walking through the forest in a beautiful place, and they are talking incessantly, or if they are alone, they are caught up in their thoughts. They are not aware of life around them. They are not connecting to their environment. They are not observing, carefully, the panorama of life, the magnitude and majesty of life. They are caught up in their internal conversation or their conversation with other people.

It is as if the world were some kind of background, a meaningless background to their inner dialogue, their incessant dialogue. Here they are missing the entire experience. They are not looking carefully, listening carefully. They are not paying attention to their environment, and they are rarely even experiencing their deeper thoughts and feelings.

So that is the condition of humanity, you see. Some people are forced into this by the sheer degradation and impoverishment of their lives. But even the wealthiest people, who have the greatest advantages, seem unaware of the presence of life within them and around them.

Here it is very important to control what comes into your mind, for the world, in all of its power and conditioning, is there in full force. You must limit your exposure to it because it will dominate your mind and your emotions with things of really very little or no significance to your greater purpose for being here.

When you are guided by Knowledge, you look into the world for those things that are significant and important. Knowledge will guide you and indicate what really is important for you to see. What are the signs of the world? What are the deeper signs within yourself?

Here your focus is more penetrating. Your intentions are clearer. You are not just taking in everything around you. You are looking for things that stimulate Knowledge within yourself. This is an entirely different experience of being in the world and really is the focus of your spiritual practice, regardless of its form.

Many people want to be close to God, experience God, but really what that means is they must become close to the Knowledge that God has placed within them, that is here to guide them, to protect them and to lead them to a greater life and service in the world.

So at the outset of your spiritual practice and your deeper orientation, it is very important to realize that who you are is not your mind or your body. You may ask then, “Well, what am I then if I am not these things?” but that is the mystery for you to explore and to experience. It is not a definition. It is not an idea. Who you are is not a thing. It is not a concept. It is not an object. It is a deeper experience. It is the power, presence and movement of Knowledge within yourself. If you can live without definitions, if you can give up the insecurity of having to have definitions for everything, then you open yourself to a deeper experience and recognition.

Here the mind is a powerful tool. It either works for you or against you. Here your body is a fabulous vehicle of communication. It either works for you or against you, depending upon how you use it and your purpose and awareness.

There are many people who, of course, are engaged in religion, but they are only engaged in the ideas of religion, or the beliefs of religion, or the ceremonies of religion and religious institutions. They still think that who they are is their mind, and so they follow their beliefs like slaves. They will defend their beliefs even to the point of going to war with others. They will kill for their beliefs. They will die for their beliefs, so slavish they are to their ideas. They do not realize that these ideas are only ideas and that who they are is something much greater and more pervasive.

If religion is only a set of beliefs or a set of commandments for living, then it is only a focus for your worldly mind. Your deeper Mind is really free of these things. It can function within a religious context or outside of it, for your first commandment in life is to discover the power and presence of Knowledge within yourself, whether you are a part of religion or not.

Religion can be either a great help or a hindrance, depending on where Knowledge wants to take you. But really this [Knowledge] is your direct connection to God. It is not built upon ceremony or tradition or ideas or beliefs or admonitions. It is something much more fundamental and essential for your life.

The great religions have been initiated by God but so radically altered by generations of people that their true essence and meaning have been lost or can be really difficult to find. In essence, they are all pathways to Knowledge, but when you look at them at the outset or at the surface, they seem to be moving in a different direction. When you see how people behave around religion, and how religion is used for selfish purposes, or for the interests of governments, there is little or no indication that it is really a mysterious journey to a deeper reality within oneself.

So like so many other things in the world, what is pure has become corrupted. What is essential has become lost amidst the noise and the myriad influences of those things that have little or no value. What is weak appears to be strong. What is strong appears to be weak. Amongst the endless conversation that you hear all around you, there is very little that has any value whatsoever.

For you are looking for something deeper now—a deeper honesty, a deeper connection, a deeper resonance with other people, a deeper purpose in life, a greater meaning. These are all experiences, not just ideas. As you look for these things, your focus in life becomes much more selective. Your standards are raised. You are not simply being pulled along by everything around you. You really are beginning to search for the people and the situations, the opportunities and the realizations that are essential to you.

This frees you from addictions and seduction. This is a great freedom. Even if it casts you apart and leaves you alone, it is still a marvelous and essential freedom.

Why would you stay with people if they cannot go where you are going, if they do not value the deeper current of your life, if they want to take you somewhere else? What is the value of a relationship if it has nowhere to go and nothing important to accomplish? It is better to be alone than to be with people who do not know you and cannot resonate with your deeper nature.

This is part of the challenge you must face now if you are to take this greatest journey in life. People will come into your life in the future, but at the outset, it is like you are leaving your former engagements to a very great degree. And you are doing this because Knowledge within you is guiding you and because it feels unnatural to go against yourself, as you did before.

For in truth there are only a few people in this life you really need to know and to find. And there are really only a few experiences that will be absolutely essential to your ability to discover your greater purpose here and to express it appropriately. And there are only a few places you must see and know in order for this deeper purpose to arise within you. You can travel all over the world collecting experiences. You can know thousands of people. You can taste every pleasure and sorrow. But, really, if it does not bring you to what is essential in your life, then it does not mean anything.

The need of the soul is more specific and focused. There are certain people, places and events that are essential for your self-discovery. And as your life becomes more focused, it becomes more powerful because power is based upon concentration. If you are not distracted by a thousand things, then your mind can focus, and it becomes penetrating. Your intellect here begins to have power and potency. You are able to penetrate the surface of things, the appearance of things, and see the greater truth within them.

Here your worldly mind is serving your deeper Mind, and your worldly mind becomes focused and powerful as a result. It is able to inspire others. It is able to accomplish great things in the world. It is able to overcome self-doubt and deception and the deception of others.

Here your intellect is serving its greatest function, and it becomes a conduit for a Greater Power coming through you into the world from the Source of all life. This is your greatest satisfaction, and this gives you the opportunity to fulfill your destiny here, rather than simply becoming lost in the world—lost and cast away, a stranger in a strange place, unknown to yourself and to others.

Who you are is not your intellect. It is not your body. Keep this awareness with you, and it will open doors within yourself to a deeper experience. And when you are ready to begin a spiritual practice, which is really important and necessary, then you will learn to focus your mind.

You will learn to be able to be still, to be observant, to listen within yourself, and to listen deeply to others. You will be able to do this because you will not be ruled by your restless, wandering mind. It is now becoming reorganized and refocused, not simply by the demands of your life on the outside, but by your own inner intentions.

Here instead of running around everywhere trying to stay stimulated, you will begin to focus on a few important things in your life. What is essential for you? What are the most valuable things in your experience? What are you seeking in this life above all else? What problems or difficulties in the world stimulate you to the greatest degree? What are you really looking for in relationships? What are you really looking for within yourself?

These are essential and important questions, you see. But they require you to settle down and to begin to experience the well of your own life. Here you begin to settle down. And you will want reprieve from your outer life. You will seek reprieve through your meditation, through times of quiet and contemplation because you want to stay connected within yourself.

Eventually, this will become a daily emphasis because you will need to be refreshed. You will need to really consider things, given time to do this, not simply driven by your schedule or the demands of others. Here you will retreat from the world to a certain degree so you can have this reprieve, and time to consider deeper things, and to focus your life on the things that are of the greatest significance.

God has given you a greater purpose for being in the world, a specific purpose. But you cannot figure it out with your intellect, for it is held more deeply within you—awaiting the time when you would call for it, and desire it, and give it your focus and attention, recognizing that above all else, it is this greater purpose that is important for you.

Be without answers. Live with the real questions. That is what takes you deeper. It is like the desert, you see. On the surface, everything is arid and parched and seemingly lifeless, but there is water flowing ten feet down. It is moving. It is pure. But you cannot see it from the surface. So unless you drill ten feet down, you will not know it is there. If you only go five feet, well, you will not know it is there. Even if you go nine feet, you will not know it is there.

You must go to where it is. You must have the diligence, the perseverance and the patience to go that deep within yourself. Otherwise, you are living in the desert, guided by your intellect, which is inherently unstable and insecure, following other people who are inherently unstable and insecure, driven by the needs and the desires and the fears of everyone around you.

So here you are turning a great corner. You are choosing the path that every great person has had to choose, every truly creative person has had to choose, every person that has made a significant contribution to the world has had to choose: to follow a deeper conscience and to put this before all the other demands and requirements of life as your number one responsibility.

You can do this because who you are is not your mind or your body, and God has given you Knowledge, the great well of your experience. This Knowledge is not like your subconscious mind. It is a brilliant Intelligence. It is aware. It is awake. It is not governed by the influences of the world. It is not subject to the seductions and the corruption that you experience in the world. It is an infallible and pure Presence.

Follow this. Build the connection to this. Take the Steps to Knowledge, and your life will begin to open up, and your mind will begin to settle down, and you will be able to discern what it is important to seek and to discern. And you will gain freedom from all other influences and seductions.

In essence, the way is simple, but you must become simple and uncomplicated. You do not have to satisfy every need and desire of your mind, for that is not possible. Determine what is really essential and focus on that. What do you really value? Focus on that. The mystery of who you are and why you are in the world? Focus on that.

Take all the energy you spend in condemning others and criticizing the world around you, and bring it into your spiritual practice. See what is coming over the horizon of the world, and see what you must prepare for in facing the Great Waves of change that are even now breaking upon the world.

The power and the presence is within you waiting to be discovered, but you must go beneath the surface to find it, to experience it and to know it, and to feel its movement in your life, to feel its encouragement and its restraint. This is the great challenge and opportunity for you now. And this is really what you must focus upon.

You cannot prepare yourself for your greater purpose. It must be revealed to you. You cannot discern it with your intellect, for it must be revealed to you. You cannot use religious ideology or beliefs to discern its reality, for it must be revealed to you.

You know you are here to do something important in life. That awareness is within you. When you settle down and be with your experience, you will feel this. It is the most natural feeling. It is the most authentic feeling. It is something very true within yourself.

But the journey of discovery is not something that you invent. It is not part of an eclectic approach. It is a journey that only God can reveal to you through Knowledge. You cannot invent the Steps to Knowledge. They must be provided for you. And you must learn to take them, step by step. For it is what you discover along the way that will be of the greatest importance in revealing to you what you are here to do and to give, what you must recognize and what you must set aside.