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Our Unity with Spirit
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Foundation One:
I am an individual expression of Infinite Spirit, possessing every quality of Spirit such as love, power, abundance, and beauty.
I am an individualized expression of Infinite Spirit, a creative center of the Absolute, inseparable from the Supreme Power that is now creating the universe. As such, my own nature, though limited by my human condition, is of the same nature as Spirit and embodies every quality of Spirit such as love, power, abundance, joy, beauty, aliveness, and creativity.
This journey is about the whole-hearted embrace of who I am as an individual and who I am as Spirit. I am a human being having a spiritual experience and also a spiritual being having a human experience. I am here to become more and more of who I am, to realize my unity with all things, and to know my fullness, my wonder, and my love through the experiences of my human life.
Understanding your Inseparable Unity with Spirit
A very difficult thing for most people to “get,” especially when they are struggling with problems or beset with difficulties, is that they are ever-unified with Spirit, with God, with the Power that creates and sustains this universe; and that their own nature contains all the benevolent qualities of Spirit. One may ask: “How is it possible that I am inseparable from Spirit and possess all the qualities of Spirit yet be in such misery? How can I be one with the All-Powerful yet feel so limited, weak, and unhappy?” And one might conclude: “Well, it’s not possible. I must be separate from Spirit else I would not feel this way.”
This sense of separation from Spirit, from God—and the deep feeling that something is missing or wrong with “me”—is where most people begin their journey toward wholeness. This is where the work begins. This is where the questioning begins. This is where the deep introspection begins. At some point there may be a shift from your unquestioned position of “I am this separate person, I cannot be one with Spirit” to, “Is it possible that I am unified with Spirit, that my own nature is that of Spirit? If so, why don’t I experience it as such? What’s blocking me?” Even though you may not directly experience your unity with Spirit, an important first step is to hold it as a possibility, to be open to a new way of understanding yourself—and from there seek to discover the truth, through your own inquiry and direct experience of life.
You need not accept anything as true, or commit yourself to some dogma, especially if you don’t feel it to be true for yourself. That would be a useless show of faith. All you need do is be open to a new possibility—a much greater possibility—and either prove it or disprove it through your own experience. Be open and ruthlessly honest with yourself. Question your long-held assumptions about who you think you are and how you should live. And, in all cases, heed the advice of Shakespeare: “This above all—to thine own self be true.”
This is your journey. Others may help you, prayer to a Higher Power may help you—and Life itself is supporting you every step of the way—but, ultimately, it comes down to you, to your sincerity, to your effort, to your pure-heartedness. … It’s important to understand that your mind is a useful tool for helping you function in the world but can only provide you with a rudimentary understanding of yourself. So, when it comes to knowing yourself, the mind can help direct you, and uncover certain things about you, but at some point you have to “never mind.” The core of your being, your essential self, is beyond the mind; it can only be accessed through “higher” aspects of your being, such as your intuition, your subtle sense, your heart, and your direct experience of life.
Two Centers of Consciousness
An understanding integral to Foundation One—and the spiritual path as a whole—is that we as human beings occupy two selves, two dimensions of existence, two centers of consciousness that are simultaneously present in the experience of our human beingness; and it is the seamless integration of these two selves that leads to human and spiritual fulfillment. One self may be called our divine self, our infinite self, or our true nature. This self is pure and unchanging. This self is experienced as our fundamental sense of existence, our very sense of “I” or “I am.” It is this self that is one with Infinite Spirit; and it is this self that we always seem to overlook in our busy lives, in our endless mental machinations, in our deep attachment to this human identity. This self is ever-present and so obvious that the mind fails to recognize its value; so the mind simply skips over it. It is this dimension of self, however, once realized and understood, that frees us from the shackles of our conditioned mind and opens us to the boundless joy of our own life. … The other self is our human self, our limited and conditioned self, the little “me” of our existence. This is the part of self that most people are aware of and exclusively identify with—and this is where the trouble begins. When we live in this curtailed existence, solely claiming one dimension of our being (and thereby excluding the other dimension) we naturally feel that something is missing, that we are incomplete, and that no matter what we do, we will never feel whole. And, yes, something is missing—our entire spiritual self, and access to its qualities, are missing from our experience of life. That's why, quite naturally, we ever-seek the qualities of our own nature, qualities such as happiness, joy, fulfillment, beauty, and love.
We live in a mind-based, mind-determined reality. The mind is useful and necessary but when we come to rely on the mind too much—to tell us what is real, what to value, what to focus on, and how to live—we miss the greater part of ourselves. We exclude the heart and it’s infinite wisdom, we exclude the subtle workings of Spirit, we exclude the sheer connectivity that unifies us all. The mind divides and excludes while the heart unifies and includes. This journey can be seen as a shift in our approach to life from a mind-based approach to a mind-based AND heart-based approach. We don’t want the mind to solely determine our life, to be our master, nor do we want to exclude the mind from doing its job as our servant. We want our life informed by the whole of who we are, by our mind, by our heart, and by Spirit.
Our human self is necessary and integral to our whole being. Our human self is not the problem nor is it something we have to attenuate, surrender, or “get rid of.” Our exclusive identification with our human self and the unwitting exclusion of our spiritual self—and the mistaken belief that this body-mind person is the whole of who we are—all based on a mind-centric approach to life—is the problem. This is what obscures our true self, thwarts our creative power, imbalances our existence, and alienates us from the vast wonder of life. We don’t want to get rid of anything or deny anything; we simply want to experience the whole of who we are and all dimensions of our being. This is the way to live a true and authentic life.
Question and Answer
If we are one with Infinite Spirit then why don’t we experience the love and joy of our own nature?
Because we live in an imaginary world—a mind-made world where we are separate from Spirit, where we exist as a separate individual, and where all the qualities of our own nature are somewhere “out there.” In this world people are not aware of their unity with Spirit; they live in a truncated state of awareness where they are fully identified with a mentalized version of themselves; and their entire consciousness (and experience of life) is limited to that small part that they mistakenly believe to be the whole of who they are. (And they are so sure that they are this person, and nothing but this person, that they never question it. It’s an assumption that has taken on the status of an unquestioned fact.) Though inseparable from Spirit people unwittingly imagine a version of themselves where they seem to be lacking in everything. It’s like a fish in water imagining that it’s stuck on dry land; or a king, filled with riches, believing he’s a pauper. The king is not a pauper but since he believes he’s a pauper, and lives like a pauper, his experience of life is that of a pauper. Not realizing his vast wealth, he suffers just like a pauper. People who live through a partial concept of self are always living a life where they feel separate from Spirit, where they feel isolated and lacking, where their own qualities—such as abundance, love, power, joy, and beauty—seem to be missing. They are imagining a state of separation and lack instead of recognizing their natural state of unity and love. This is the unenviable life of most human beings; through no fault of their own they are completely missing the truth and wonder of who they really are.
A corollary to this first question might be: “If I am one with Spirit, and if I am living in a way that deprives me of experiencing this, what steps can I take to experience my true nature and my unity with Creation?” Providing an answer to this question—both in terms of understanding and experience—is the aim of The Nine Foundations. There is no quick answer; it took years of mis-conditioning to get into this bind and it may take years of applied application to get yourself out of it. Addiction to substances is one response to this sense of lack; an addiction is a human way to try and appease or fill up what a person feels is lacking in his life. But becoming addicted to this or that substance is a must-miss approach; it does not address the core issue. One way to appease or remedy this false sense of lack is to expand your sense of self so as to include the whole of who you are, your human and divine natures. … But, bear in mind, there is also a true sense of lack (or limitation) and that is the limitation that Infinite Spirit feels when it is limited to a human form; this is the sense of limitedness that is fundamental to the nature of every human being. So, running from this limitation, trying to spiritualize this away, trying to drown this out with substances or busy-ness is akin to running away from yourself. How can you do that? Accepting this lack, this fundamental limitation, and embracing it from a position of wholeness, is your spiritual obligation—and perhaps the only way to truly get beyond it. The sense of limitation and lack created by a misunderstanding of yourself can be dispelled, and should be dispelled, but the core sense of limitation that comes with the territory of being human must be embraced. So, in this path toward freedom, you must come to recognize the difference between the necessary limitation of your being (the limitation that Infinite Spirit feels when confined to a finite form) and the unnecessary limitations you impose upon yourself through your concepts, beliefs, conditioning, etc.
Quotes
You are God conditioned as a human being. All that you believe God to be, you are. … The most difficult thing for a person to really grasp is this: That the “I am-ness” in himself is God. It is his true being or “father state”—and this is the only state he can be sure of.
(Neville, Freedom for All, p. 4)
The Great Affirmation is the perception that the “I AM” is ONE, always harmonious with itself, and including all things in this harmony for the simple reason that there is no second creative power; and when the individual realizes that this always-single power is the root of his own being, and therefore has center in himself and finds expression through him, he learns to trust its singleness and the consequent harmony of its action in him with what it is doing around him.
(Troward, Doré Lectures, Chapter 7)
Me, in the most personal sense of the term, is the ultimate reality—but it takes itself for something it is not. As inadmissible as this might seem to most people, this personal Me is the infinite, the absolute being, the ultimate. Whoever doesn’t conceive things this way cannot hope to knock at the door of himself with the chance of seeing it open.
(Jourdain, Radical Awakening, p. 152)
____________________ ◊ ◊ ◊ __________________
I am an individual expression of Infinite Spirit, possessing every quality of Spirit such as love, power, abundance, and beauty.
I am an individualized expression of Infinite Spirit, a creative center of the Absolute, inseparable from the Supreme Power that is now creating the universe. As such, my own nature, though limited by my human condition, is of the same nature as Spirit and embodies every quality of Spirit such as love, power, abundance, joy, beauty, aliveness, and creativity.
This journey is about the whole-hearted embrace of who I am as an individual and who I am as Spirit. I am a human being having a spiritual experience and also a spiritual being having a human experience. I am here to become more and more of who I am, to realize my unity with all things, and to know my fullness, my wonder, and my love through the experiences of my human life.
Understanding your Inseparable Unity with Spirit
A very difficult thing for most people to “get,” especially when they are struggling with problems or beset with difficulties, is that they are ever-unified with Spirit, with God, with the Power that creates and sustains this universe; and that their own nature contains all the benevolent qualities of Spirit. One may ask: “How is it possible that I am inseparable from Spirit and possess all the qualities of Spirit yet be in such misery? How can I be one with the All-Powerful yet feel so limited, weak, and unhappy?” And one might conclude: “Well, it’s not possible. I must be separate from Spirit else I would not feel this way.”
This sense of separation from Spirit, from God—and the deep feeling that something is missing or wrong with “me”—is where most people begin their journey toward wholeness. This is where the work begins. This is where the questioning begins. This is where the deep introspection begins. At some point there may be a shift from your unquestioned position of “I am this separate person, I cannot be one with Spirit” to, “Is it possible that I am unified with Spirit, that my own nature is that of Spirit? If so, why don’t I experience it as such? What’s blocking me?” Even though you may not directly experience your unity with Spirit, an important first step is to hold it as a possibility, to be open to a new way of understanding yourself—and from there seek to discover the truth, through your own inquiry and direct experience of life.
You need not accept anything as true, or commit yourself to some dogma, especially if you don’t feel it to be true for yourself. That would be a useless show of faith. All you need do is be open to a new possibility—a much greater possibility—and either prove it or disprove it through your own experience. Be open and ruthlessly honest with yourself. Question your long-held assumptions about who you think you are and how you should live. And, in all cases, heed the advice of Shakespeare: “This above all—to thine own self be true.”
This is your journey. Others may help you, prayer to a Higher Power may help you—and Life itself is supporting you every step of the way—but, ultimately, it comes down to you, to your sincerity, to your effort, to your pure-heartedness. … It’s important to understand that your mind is a useful tool for helping you function in the world but can only provide you with a rudimentary understanding of yourself. So, when it comes to knowing yourself, the mind can help direct you, and uncover certain things about you, but at some point you have to “never mind.” The core of your being, your essential self, is beyond the mind; it can only be accessed through “higher” aspects of your being, such as your intuition, your subtle sense, your heart, and your direct experience of life.
Two Centers of Consciousness
An understanding integral to Foundation One—and the spiritual path as a whole—is that we as human beings occupy two selves, two dimensions of existence, two centers of consciousness that are simultaneously present in the experience of our human beingness; and it is the seamless integration of these two selves that leads to human and spiritual fulfillment. One self may be called our divine self, our infinite self, or our true nature. This self is pure and unchanging. This self is experienced as our fundamental sense of existence, our very sense of “I” or “I am.” It is this self that is one with Infinite Spirit; and it is this self that we always seem to overlook in our busy lives, in our endless mental machinations, in our deep attachment to this human identity. This self is ever-present and so obvious that the mind fails to recognize its value; so the mind simply skips over it. It is this dimension of self, however, once realized and understood, that frees us from the shackles of our conditioned mind and opens us to the boundless joy of our own life. … The other self is our human self, our limited and conditioned self, the little “me” of our existence. This is the part of self that most people are aware of and exclusively identify with—and this is where the trouble begins. When we live in this curtailed existence, solely claiming one dimension of our being (and thereby excluding the other dimension) we naturally feel that something is missing, that we are incomplete, and that no matter what we do, we will never feel whole. And, yes, something is missing—our entire spiritual self, and access to its qualities, are missing from our experience of life. That's why, quite naturally, we ever-seek the qualities of our own nature, qualities such as happiness, joy, fulfillment, beauty, and love.
We live in a mind-based, mind-determined reality. The mind is useful and necessary but when we come to rely on the mind too much—to tell us what is real, what to value, what to focus on, and how to live—we miss the greater part of ourselves. We exclude the heart and it’s infinite wisdom, we exclude the subtle workings of Spirit, we exclude the sheer connectivity that unifies us all. The mind divides and excludes while the heart unifies and includes. This journey can be seen as a shift in our approach to life from a mind-based approach to a mind-based AND heart-based approach. We don’t want the mind to solely determine our life, to be our master, nor do we want to exclude the mind from doing its job as our servant. We want our life informed by the whole of who we are, by our mind, by our heart, and by Spirit.
Our human self is necessary and integral to our whole being. Our human self is not the problem nor is it something we have to attenuate, surrender, or “get rid of.” Our exclusive identification with our human self and the unwitting exclusion of our spiritual self—and the mistaken belief that this body-mind person is the whole of who we are—all based on a mind-centric approach to life—is the problem. This is what obscures our true self, thwarts our creative power, imbalances our existence, and alienates us from the vast wonder of life. We don’t want to get rid of anything or deny anything; we simply want to experience the whole of who we are and all dimensions of our being. This is the way to live a true and authentic life.
Question and Answer
If we are one with Infinite Spirit then why don’t we experience the love and joy of our own nature?
Because we live in an imaginary world—a mind-made world where we are separate from Spirit, where we exist as a separate individual, and where all the qualities of our own nature are somewhere “out there.” In this world people are not aware of their unity with Spirit; they live in a truncated state of awareness where they are fully identified with a mentalized version of themselves; and their entire consciousness (and experience of life) is limited to that small part that they mistakenly believe to be the whole of who they are. (And they are so sure that they are this person, and nothing but this person, that they never question it. It’s an assumption that has taken on the status of an unquestioned fact.) Though inseparable from Spirit people unwittingly imagine a version of themselves where they seem to be lacking in everything. It’s like a fish in water imagining that it’s stuck on dry land; or a king, filled with riches, believing he’s a pauper. The king is not a pauper but since he believes he’s a pauper, and lives like a pauper, his experience of life is that of a pauper. Not realizing his vast wealth, he suffers just like a pauper. People who live through a partial concept of self are always living a life where they feel separate from Spirit, where they feel isolated and lacking, where their own qualities—such as abundance, love, power, joy, and beauty—seem to be missing. They are imagining a state of separation and lack instead of recognizing their natural state of unity and love. This is the unenviable life of most human beings; through no fault of their own they are completely missing the truth and wonder of who they really are.
A corollary to this first question might be: “If I am one with Spirit, and if I am living in a way that deprives me of experiencing this, what steps can I take to experience my true nature and my unity with Creation?” Providing an answer to this question—both in terms of understanding and experience—is the aim of The Nine Foundations. There is no quick answer; it took years of mis-conditioning to get into this bind and it may take years of applied application to get yourself out of it. Addiction to substances is one response to this sense of lack; an addiction is a human way to try and appease or fill up what a person feels is lacking in his life. But becoming addicted to this or that substance is a must-miss approach; it does not address the core issue. One way to appease or remedy this false sense of lack is to expand your sense of self so as to include the whole of who you are, your human and divine natures. … But, bear in mind, there is also a true sense of lack (or limitation) and that is the limitation that Infinite Spirit feels when it is limited to a human form; this is the sense of limitedness that is fundamental to the nature of every human being. So, running from this limitation, trying to spiritualize this away, trying to drown this out with substances or busy-ness is akin to running away from yourself. How can you do that? Accepting this lack, this fundamental limitation, and embracing it from a position of wholeness, is your spiritual obligation—and perhaps the only way to truly get beyond it. The sense of limitation and lack created by a misunderstanding of yourself can be dispelled, and should be dispelled, but the core sense of limitation that comes with the territory of being human must be embraced. So, in this path toward freedom, you must come to recognize the difference between the necessary limitation of your being (the limitation that Infinite Spirit feels when confined to a finite form) and the unnecessary limitations you impose upon yourself through your concepts, beliefs, conditioning, etc.
Quotes
You are God conditioned as a human being. All that you believe God to be, you are. … The most difficult thing for a person to really grasp is this: That the “I am-ness” in himself is God. It is his true being or “father state”—and this is the only state he can be sure of.
(Neville, Freedom for All, p. 4)
The Great Affirmation is the perception that the “I AM” is ONE, always harmonious with itself, and including all things in this harmony for the simple reason that there is no second creative power; and when the individual realizes that this always-single power is the root of his own being, and therefore has center in himself and finds expression through him, he learns to trust its singleness and the consequent harmony of its action in him with what it is doing around him.
(Troward, Doré Lectures, Chapter 7)
Me, in the most personal sense of the term, is the ultimate reality—but it takes itself for something it is not. As inadmissible as this might seem to most people, this personal Me is the infinite, the absolute being, the ultimate. Whoever doesn’t conceive things this way cannot hope to knock at the door of himself with the chance of seeing it open.
(Jourdain, Radical Awakening, p. 152)
____________________ ◊ ◊ ◊ __________________
