What is Awakening?

Everyone has an understanding in common: you are here. Wherever you are, you are here. This is the only certainty we all share, the common ground, something undeniable, unquestionable, indisputable, which does not depend on opinions or beliefs. No one can agree or disagree with that! Anything that can be experienced, perceived, seen or felt is within this unquestionable Reality: you are here!

The only real thing is: "I am." Everything revolves around this "I Am." All experiences, at all levels, in all forms and expressions, appear in this "I am." All your "sleep" is happening because you ignore it, you don't assume the truth of it. "I Am" remains here, and everything else revolves around It – all experiences, incidents, happenings, events, the whole story of this character revolves around It. There are many characters! They are different, each one has its individuality, particularity, but this "I Am" does not have that. This is the certainty!

I am giving this key to you now, before your eyes. What is Awakening? What does this mean to you? Awakening means being in your True Nature, in a complete, unique, definitive and irreversible way. In other words, it means no longer mistake yourself for what appears around this "I Am."

One cannot speak about Awakening for having an intellectual understanding of this subject. As long as this disidentification with the egoic mind is not complete and irreversible, there will be no Awakening. As long as there is the belief of this "me," of this "someone present" in the experience, there will be no Awakening.

Awakening, as I present in this talk, is the end of the sense of separateness. Every experience is outside of this "I Am." The experiences of the body and the mind appear in It, but they are not “It”! The "I Am" is here, now, regardless the state of the body, the mind, the events outside, whatever is appearing. I am here and now! This “I am here and now” remains apart, beyond all the idea of a present “I” who has experienced something in the past and who can experience something in the future.

The egoic mind, that carries the sense of an "I" and its experiences, is in contact with the external world of objects, people, places... It was yesterday; it is today and it will be tomorrow. The egoic mind sets up its external and internal world. Its external world is full of objects that mind uses to fulfill itself. It seeks physical fulfillment through the body. It seeks emotional fulfillment through feelings. Intellectual fulfillment, through ideas. Sensory ones, through the senses. Internally, it searches for fulfillment through imagination.

This is a very interesting subject to investigate. Much of your life is spent in imagination. The image you have of yourself is in your imagination, as well as everything that image can obtain. Much of your mental life – movement of thoughts going on inside your head – works by maintaining that sense of "me," which I just called "egoic mind."

This is established on imagination. The egoic mind has no interest in what You Are. It is its nature to be blind and unconscious of what You are. You are here and now, but the egoic mind is not. It is in the past, in the future, or in this present seeking the future or the past. This is imagination!

You spend most of your life careless about this "I am," lost in this identification with the imagination internally and with the experiences of external objects through the body. Then, the senses are at egoic mind’s service, attracted by the colors. This movement keeps you away from this moment, in which the "I Am" is completely disidentified, free, full. You are complete in your Being! In the mind, you are either in the imaginary world or in the illusion of an experiencer in the experience of an external world. As long as there is any chance for you to get lost from Yourself, identifying with thought, with the body, with the idea "I am the body," or "I am the mind," there will be no Awakening.

The words you know about It do not matter. The mastery of your speeches does not matter- neither the beauty of your writings nor the power of your charismatic influence. The names you give to your meetings, the power you have to influence others with your “wisdom” – all this will be just borrowed knowledge, mere theories, mere concepts.

If your interest is to discover the real meaning of Awakening – which is not its philosophical, esoteric, Advaita or Neoadvaita meaning – but the experiential meaning of It, which is only found in Your Being, in Your True Nature – go beyond the mind, in a complete, total and irreversible way. Disidentify from this internal world of imaginations. Stop imagining! Stay here and now!

* Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Ramanashram Gualberto in Campos de Jordão city-SP-Brazil; on March, 2019.
First published in Portuguese on February 22th, 2017.
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