Becoming Aware

I want to talk about ‘becoming’. So many want to become ‘something’ or ‘someone’. They want to become spiritual, or enlightened. More aware. Whilst the desire is genuine and the intent is admirable, perhaps we need to look at the question, “Why do we want to become anything? Aren’t we already that anyway? Haven’t we just forgotten? That is what so much of this is about.

Life is not absolute. We have all come from somewhere to enter our physical bodies – this memory shell we call our personal identity – and we have all entered into our physical self from somewhere. Some call it the spirit, some caught it the soul. There are many names for it, and yet all are images. Through many experiences over many years, Diane and I came to understand our energy as ‘what’ we are coming from beyond who we believe we are. Our real energy that we are beyond, and were before being born into, this life. The energy of what is Real that resides within us all in this very moment.

So if we are already ‘what’ we are we .. we can’t become it, can we? Because we already are it. It’s a matter of unbecoming who we think we are to take off the layers and return to what really exists in the first place.

If we live a life within an awareness of what we are, not who we think we are behind all of the layers of personality, culture, community, perception, fear, power, justifiable memory, and all the rest of the images .. we forgo these layers that make up who we think we are. Who we define ourselves as, and who we allowed others to define us as, in order to be a ‘human being’. But we were not human before we came here, and we won’t be human after we leave, so why should we get so stuck on one singular memory?

If we take all of these layers away, all that is really left is what we are. So we can’t work hard to become spiritual. We can’t find ourselves. Because how can we find ourselves, when we are already here! We have to unravel the imagery that we have bundled up and called our truth.. and let it go.

That is really what life was about so much of the time. So many live a truth that becomes a reality. But truth is like a layer. Layers of who we are that take us away from what we are. Truth is simply imagery. Perceptions. Conveniences of the moment, or our personal or collective history that form an ideology or value. Then we form a personal identity based on culture, family, life itself. But it is never what is Real.

Many years ago we were told “truth is an ever-changing movement of awareness” because truth can and does constantly change.

So how can you find who or what you really are based upon a truth, when truth is always changing? You cannot. Some may say, “No, truth doesn’t change. Truth is truth.” But truth does change. Because what you believe one day, after an event or circumstance or new piece of information, will change the next day. What is ironclad one day, is fluid the next. So truth is an ever-changing movement of awareness – and this definition is not a ‘truth’ either, it is an observable fact through time.

That being so, our identity – our ‘truth’ of who we are – is therefore not true. It is just an image. Collated, rationalised, created .. programmed even, by all of our experiences, and the input from oneself and one’s thoughts and outer life.

As we look at the journey of becoming ‘aware’, becoming illuminated and spiritual, this journey will fail before it even begins. Why? Because you’re only going to add on more layers of imagery on top of who you already think you are. You are just going to become who you think you are plus another layer of awareness on top of that, and another layer of perception on top of that. Where does it stop?

No wonder so many people find themselves so far away from their Real inner being. Lost in ego or importance. Lost to imagery. Lost to forgetfulness. Desperation.

So what if you went the other way? What if you decided you needed to become aware by forgetting who you think you are? Stop adding on. Peel off the layers. Undo the images. Decouple the perceptions.

What if we let more go in order to find the actuality of what we really are beneath it all? So becoming doesn’t become an experience of ‘attaining more’ in an effort to measure how much we need to do or how many more truths we need to find to become wise. What if letting go of illusionary images .. reveals what is Real?

That is letting go in order to remember.

So you don’t become anything. You return to the awareness of what you always were.. and still are. You had just forgotten.