THE BIGGEST BARRIER TO REALIZING THE MANIFEST SELF
Let us get one thing straight. There is a huge difference between the Fifth Amendment protections of our lives from intrusions by the government, and our “right” to hide portions of our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions both from our own awareness and from others. Fifth Amendment protections protect our freedom in terms of behavior and speech, while personal privacy described below prevent living the life-divine.
Our inner world is very complex—as complex as our outer world of everyday life which closely reflects our inner beliefs, feelings, and insecurities. When we hide portions of that inner world from ourselves along with a refusal to be open with our inner selves to others for whatever reason, we are preventing our searching self from realizing itself as Self.
Until our inner world is a completely open book both to us and with an attitude of open sharing, to others, we cannot tease out that which is most fundamental to our sense of identity: the Self.
The Self is that burning light of awareness that makes any experience an experience, any knowledge, knowledge, any love, love. Self is awareness of things, awareness of love; it is knowledge itself, love itself.
Yet to tease out that pristine Self from the complexity of our inner experience is extremely difficult if the totality of that experience is not available to the seeker, that aspect of Self that seeks itself as an object of knowledge.
A key ingredient of successful realizing of the Self, becoming aware of one’s own Self, is the ability to find the missing portions of an integrated human self, the lacunae, resulting from failure in the development of our sense of self from developmental failures, or the result of internal fixations as the result of trauma. Both developmental failures and trauma create distortions in how we view ourselves and the world, and prevent Self-Realization because the self-aspect that is seeking is really seeking lost aspects of itself which when regained, allows for the full manifestation and life of the divine within us.
Self-Realization really means God-Realization. By that I don’t mean literally that one realizes some sort of conceptual God is manifested within. What I mean is that when the Self is revealed to you the experience and power of the Self revealed is unlike anything you have experienced or felt before. It is several orders of magnitude more intense, more moving and life-changing than anything you have experienced before.
The experience of Self when first realized is one of awesome wonder, of intense awe of the power of awareness, and of the light of Consciousness, and feeling directly as oneself the living, ever-mutating, vibrating nature of the energy within often called Shakti.
Along with the ecstatic experience of Self comes an overwhelming humility. The self that was before, the self created over the time-span of your life, the little human self, bows and submits in the presence of Self which is experienced as the divine Other—a presence so magnificent as to overwhelm and thus exclude any other experience. God is found here in all His majesty, and you, His humblest of servants.
With this experience there is no longer anything to hide. All has been exposed to God’s penetrating vision and thus to one’s own Self who is God, and all has been accepted and even welcomed by that God within. Even the worst things you have ever done, the evilest of misdeeds is seen and forgiven. You are wiped clean of guilt, sorrow for misdeeds, and made clean, fresh, alive once more. No longer lost or confused because of inner blindness, inner hidden secrets, you stand tall, complete, cleansed of sin and darkness, now leading a life of continuous open sharing of your Self.
Practicing openness and open sharing prior to Self-Realization is almost a requirement for it to take place. One must become an open book, hiding as little as possible, being humble and human. It is this open acceptance of who and what one is at any point in time that fosters and makes possible a long sequence of pre-Self-Realization experiences of a progressive exposure to lost portions of self allowing us to absorb and integrate that lost self into ourselves preparatory to realizing the Self in its fullness.
There is nothing worth hiding if you want to experience the godlike-Self within. One knows that the light of Consciousness is the same for all, and that light is everywhere except for the secret-holder who creates a shadow to hide his shame and sin.
So many seekers fall off the path to realization of God precisely because of their clinging to the darkness of secrecy, for hiding anything anywhere within or without, is sequestering that thing away from the light of Consciousness and thus in an inner darkness.
These persons talk continuously of a need for privacy and exclusions from shared experience. There are serious flaws in their openness to their own experience which is reflected by their fears about sharing their experiences with others, or of others knowing their flaws and hidden sticking points.
In Self-Realization, your heart of heart’s, your deepest sense of identity and intimacy, your most tender and vulnerable sense of self is exposed and totally accepted by God, by your Self within and privacy is seen as a barrier to seeing, feeling, and manifesting that Self.
So many fall from the path because they protect wounded parts of themselves from being seen by themselves or others and this self-protection is precisely the mode of their failure to realize that Self within, the Self of All.
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