A TIME OF/FOR TRANSFORMATIVE AWAKENING

I recall my mentor Claire Zammit, once sharing (I am paraphrasing) that Transformation is not mere change.
This process is not about a caterpillar becoming a more beautiful, smarter, enlightened looking, and aligned caterpillar.
It is about the caterpillar who wakes up and recognizes the butterfly it already is.
While the words that rang true remained as an echo with me…some aspects continued to however, remain elusive for a while.

trans·for·ma·tion
/ˌtran(t)sfərˈmāSH(ə)n/
A thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.

I had experienced experiences that made me realize I am not only this body. They had lead me to explore deeper on how we maybe more than what we think.
At some level, I had received a glimpse and could sense the truth of it, and yet it felt like I hadn’t yet fully recognized and embodied my visceral wings so to say …

All transformation is change, but not all change is transformation. — Jack Mezirow

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Hello.
Meet Ego.
The seemingly almighty metaphorical caterpillar!
Yes, the one researched for many eons in all fields of Philosophy.
The same infamous antagonist that shows up in most spiritual/consciousness discourses.
The culprit that masquerades in and as most of us and still, for the most part, eludes complete understanding at large.
The polyonymous, Not-Self, Conditioned self, Separate self, False self, Illusory construct, Personality, Ahankaar….the names go on.

The Ego is the metaphorical caterpillar to the True Self butterfly.
It is a case of mistaken identity in which we in unawareness, take who and what we are as the caterpillar.
Elementary, my dear! The Sherlocks may say, but to the ones who feel lost and seek in what feels like a maze it definitely does not feel it to be so.

Awakening to our aware Self is not a physical trans” form” ation.
It is a simple recognition. So simple that the unstill Mind struggles to see what IS.

Awakening is the recognition and realization of the I AM Presence. It is our core essence. It(We) is present even before The Mind steps in.

When cognized, this recognition naturally causes a shift in our identity.
A change that now offers us a completely unseen before perspective of what we see, how we see and from where we see.
Clear seeing naturally then results in a new way of being and doing.
Once awake to its own true nature, the butterfly now standing in it’s new and true place, realizes how it dreamed the whole caterpillar to be real and as its identity.

The caterpillar only exists in The Mind as a constructed sense of self-formed ideas, beliefs, images, and consequent stories.
Once the “I” limited thought is unwittingly owned, nothing from then on, is seen and perceived as is.
The caterpillar now becomes the mechanism through which the other and the World is thought seen, rejected, coveted, and manipulated in order to acknowledge and strengthen its own conceptual identity structure.

TO BE(COME) OR NOT TO (BE)COME

The journey as the Ego is about pursuing to find what it thinks is missing and therefore becoming “some”thing.
It’s identity — a believed and accepted thought-form of limitation.
In unawareness, it traverses a journey of self-improvement which is sparked by confusion and existential doubts at best, unhappiness and deep suffering at worst.
Unbeknownst, all its curiosities and efforts are focused on seeking, improving and becoming _______ thing.
For _________ will mean happiness, success, fulfillment etc.
It lives in and through Hope.
Always seeking to arrive at that unnamable, indescribable thing it is seeking.
The thing that will quench the undefinable thirst it has.
As all thoughts, it can only sustain itself through and in the Time-Space continuum of The Mind.
Mostly an experience of living, regretting, remembering of the past or dreaming, imagining, and hoping for a future…it rarely ever is really present to what is in the Now.

Nothing at the level of the foundational Self changes by working on and trying to better one’s perceived conditioned limited self.
This is not a process of caterpillar bettering itself into a butterfly.
Yes, skills can be polished and learned.
The Body-Mind can be soothed, healed, and empowered in the process.
New ways of embodying can be imagined and emulated.
More knowledge may be (l)earned.
These ways of learning and expressing are the gifts of a healthy relationship with the Ego on this plane.

An issue arises — only if one experiences it as so — when the way we relate causes us to feel limited and ultimately unhappy.
Feeling lost, confused, in pain, and suffering in our mistaken identity, the sacred journey of seeking begins.
Ah, the perfection of it all.
When seen, this opens up a wondrous opportunity to explore.
An opportunity that offers us another chance to see with clarity what IS.
Perhaps what we are looking for is not missing.
What we seek already lies within us, as us.
There truly is nothing we can add-on to our Being True Self to be a better any/something.

As with all things in Life, EVERYTHING serves perfectly.
This is the hide and seek play of the soul in this grand leela.
All this juice of our experience per se makes for an exciting unfolding of this journey.
One may define it as a unique and interesting story of a singular aspect of consciousness in relativity.
All what is experienced is real and valid for when, how and where it was experienced by one.
It’s perfection beyond what the Mind can ever decipher or see.
In awareness and its healthy ways of relating, now the Ego/Personality is, harnessed to create and manifest uniquely in the World.
From Becoming the plotline now centers back into Being.
And as it aligns to the pulse of Life itself it shifts into living, expressing and creating from and as Presence.

THE (EXTRA)ORDINARY AWAKENING

As we are all part of the same consciousness stream, as one and a few start to awaken so do the others.
In the Aquarian Age that we have now embarked upon, time speeds up.
Sense how fast the days, weeks and the year has gone by?
As the speed of time moves faster through the Body-Mind on this plane, the faster our individuated conscious awarenesses awaken for what is to come ahead.
We are seeing more and more people awakening to the before unseen Self now than ever.
We may almost dare and predict, Awakening will very soon literally be mainstream.

Awakening is simply waking up to recognize the (extra)ordinary You that is already awake, alert and conscious right here. Right now.

Awakening is an experiential visceral presence feeling and not a mental thinking, concept, or learning.
The mark or effect of embodied awakening is seen commonly as a seminal, radical, almost effortless shift in one’s ways of outer being and doing.

The process of Awakening may be experienced in a myriad of ways.
They may feel like this flashy beyond reality kind of a spiritual experience that may shake up the Body-Mind, or they may be more of a simple shift in perception that feels closer and more grounded in what we see as our current reality. It may be something that we cognize continuously or we may forget all about it perhaps remembering its glimpse in time as a solitary incident.

• I -am- Awareness.
  Being Aware — A seemingly instantaneous shift in perception that awareness is my basic nature.
  Ah. Of course this is me. This is who I have always been. This changeless me that has not changed will continue to be.

• As a more broad experience, one may see/sense that it is not a personal “awareness” at all.
  The sense/felt awareness “feels, pours out, touches, becomes” into an-other.
  The Rose plant in infused with the same essence as this Body-Mind.
  The drops of the flowing river sparkle with the same Life that is in this Body-Mind I call me.

• As another experience, we may experience “All that is” as a unified ME.
  An energetic vibrating and pulsing body that is a multifaceted ONE.

We may be connect more to our intuition, hear voices, see things, have lucid dreams and out of body experiences, be taken to the depths of darkness only to be flipped around…
The different manifestations of how something “new” opens into our experience are as varied as our ways in which we receive, perceive, and make meaning.
In this point of view, it does not matter in which style one’s conscious cognizes it.
With pomp and show, as an almost missed whisper, or through darkness that unexpectedly opens an aperture of light in— in the end, they all seem like natural happenings in divine time that are here as we may see it with one and one purpose only.
To remind us of who we truly are.
They are wake up calls offering opportunities to truly see how we are more than The Mind through which we live our lives.
Offering us a choice to relate to ourselves and Life from our true space.
The more we allow the current Body-Mind to blossom into its energetic translucence, the more we allow the permeation of our universal light.

IN GROUNDED EMBODIED ALLOWING

There are layers to our manifested self here on this plane.
The more we allow, the more the Body-Mind, our energetic sheaths get the infused with the light of awareness.
It can feel like a process in time, and therefore, Awakening does not necessarily mean we ALWAYS remain immediately wide-eyed awake and conscious in all our moments.

Some Body-Minds may embody it as an instant seemingly continuous state of wakefulness.
For others, it may be a doorway.
A doorway that may feel like opens and closes at its own will or perhaps stays open with an invitation for one to make a choice.

Rumi beautifully points at this when he says…
“People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

When seated in and as awareness, we can sense the sleepy effects of the conditioning that is potently present the energetic cells of ourBody-Mind.
Deep, habitual patterns that entice with their well known and familiar ways of habit.
As we forget, even momentarily, patterns get repeated.

The initial days of Awakening can be about recognizing the Mind’s fleeting experiences and staying seated in our watchful witnessing Self.
To being super alert and aware so we don’t get carried away in our drowsiness by getting identified with the seemingly real but temporal thoughts and forms.
We are not happenings, things, personality, or the forms we see.

As long as we continue to go back and forth the doorsill of awareness, practices and reminders to stay aware and awake may feel necessary.
Till we don’t anchor ourselves fully, Body-Mind and all into our newly awake state, we may need to ask ourselves this question often throughout our day.
“Who/What am I BEing in this moment?”
“Where am I coming from? “
Having a practice where we stay connected and surrounding ourselves in a company that is walking a similar path can be very helpful at this time.
Jeff Carreira’s explorations and the Mystery School of a New Paradigm is one that I am personally excited to be a part of.

“This is the crossing from the conscious into the unconscious world, but the unconscious world is represented in many, many different images…It may be a plunge into the ocean, it may be a passage into the desert, it may be getting lost in a dark forest, it may be finding yourself in a strange city…but this is the adventure — it’s always the path into the unknown, through the gateway or the cave or the clashing rocks…The idea in the hero adventure is to walk bodily through the door into the world where the dualistic rules don’t apply.”

– Joseph Campbell, Hero With a Thousand Faces.

From where we are standing, the invitation from Life in these times is to awaken from the Ego’s grip, which is our familiar sense of self right now.
It’s to awaken to the foundational myth of this orientation and ways of relating that creates this illusion of separateness.
Recognizing the essence of our True Self is not dissolution of the perceived others in physicality.
It is simply a visceral recognition that others are also what I AM energetically.
We are what ALL THAT IS.
The other and the World I perceived in my delusion was simply a construct I created and called ME.

Why is the recognition and dissolution of our Egoic construct needed even more so urgently now?

Recognizing we are more than who we think is not merely a good or better desire about improving ourselves.
It is not an airy-fairy unrealistic lofty goal to be pursued and meant only for spiritual aspirants.
It is the need of the hour as we see — ourselves , others and the World today.
Our ways of being define our ways of seeing and doing.

Our World is a reflection of who/what we think we are.
Our external system is a mirror of our collective internal identity.
How we see one another in the World today is a proof of our fragmentation.
How we relate with Mother Nature and all her creatures is a sign of our disconnection.
The dissolution of one’s false sense of self is the dissolution of what is false in ourselves and hence the World.

The times ahead call us forth to invite the emergence of our embodied True Self.
We stand at a pivotal threshold.
It asks us to accept the calling of our inner revolution. However we may interpret it in us.
To accept and cross the threshold will feel like a radical and uncommonly courageous step for the Ego.
Awake or not, its time we stand in our transparent authenticity wherever we find ourselves.
After all, the Self is all there is.
In standing in and as Ourselves, we see in clarity our ever present Sovereignty.
We recognize our responsibility.
We move in life by shedding the layers of our stale internal beliefs and dogma.
We then naturally question what is not aligned with us.
We naturally give up our unhealthy Ego driven dependencies and allegiances to external authority.

This awakening is the recognition of our true freedom.
And what we ask, we always receive.
And as always, paradoxically also knowing we are all in every given moment perfectly where we are meant to be.

Till we all wake up together fully, may we all remind ourselves by listening to the words the wisdom keepers have echoed.
Identified with and in this form, we don’t see, understand or own anything.
As long as we walk this land we see as separate from us, as long we walk with others who we see different from us…our perceived suffering will continue.
For when we completely forget, may we remember the Golden Rule.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
And to when we stand at the familiar doorway of Awakening, may we remember to always ask
“Who am I BEing right now?"

In a prayer that may we always move in and through the world as the sentient beings we are that experience life predominantly through the human Body-Mind on this plane.
Living both our intermingled abodes in ever present reverence.
So it is and so it shall be.

A standard P.S — Life is ineffable and words can be limiting. Especially when it comes to all these topics that I continue to explore. My desire to keep things practical often feels futile when I try to translate these explorations and experiences into form. And yet I am compelled to try. This human experience is complex. Paradoxes are a given. Setting context sure helps. While all the words, stories, and shares matter to me, I am cognizant of the fact that in the end, our unique life experiences are only our lived interpreted truths and that its multifaceted nuances many times cannot really be captured, expressed, or perhaps even understood accurately at the level of The Mind.
One step at a time I stay present in the now and move towards living, embodying it the best I know how and sharing when inspired as an offering to myself and the world.
I welcome all reflections as it’s the perspectives and questions that really help me dive deeper. If there is one thing in my experience that has shown up constantly as the truth, it is that we grow and evolve most when we take time for sole self reflection and when we come together in open wholehearted conversations.
If this resonates, I would love to connect with you.
You can message me or find me @
www.supriyakini.com
https://www.instagram.com/supriyaakini/

Thank you for taking the time to read!

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