I want to introduce you to and recommend my primary teacher for awakening, Leonard Jacobson, by choosing a few excerpts from his book “Journey Into Now.” David Welch Founder of AWAKEN

Leonard Jacobson:  I want to begin by saying that I know who you are.  You are an eternal Being.  You are love, acceptance, and compassion.  You are strength, clarity, and truth.  At the deepest level, you are pure consciousness, beyond form and content.  You are powerful beyond imagining.  You are an instrument of God’s will upon the earth.  You are a champion of God and your ultimate destiny is to awaken into Oneness.  You are the champion of your own soul.  It is through your awakening in this lifetime that your soul will be restored to its immortality.  You are the redeemer of Oneness and the revealer of Heaven on Earth.  You are Buddha, revealing the pure mind of God.  You are Christ, revealing the pure heart of God.  And you are Lao Tzu, revealing the way  of God in the world.  You are awakened woman.  You are awakened man.

You are eternal but you are on a journey through time.  Your journey has taken you from Oneness into duality.  It has taken you from the present moment into the past and future.   It has taken you from truth into a world of idea, concept, opinion and belief.

The journey is purposeful but, for the most part, we have lost our way.  We have forgotten who we are.  We are now functioning as egos in our own private and separate worlds.  We have strayed too far from the truth and we are following in the footsteps of the prodigal son.

In truth, there is no life outside the present moment.  In truth, you do not and cannot exist outside of the present moment.  The world of the human thinking mind is an illusory world and almost everyone believes that it is real.  It is as if we have fallen asleep and the life we are living is a kind of dream, from which we must awaken.

To awaken spiritually or to become enlightened is to awaken out of the past and future world of the mind into the truth and reality of the present moment.

It is not until you awaken and become fully present that you realize that you have not been present.  It is not until you awaken that you realize you have been asleep, dreaming that you are awake.  To be enlightened is to awaken out of the dream.  It is a profound and dramatic shift in consciousness.

THE TWO STEP DANCE OF AWAKENING

THE FIRST STEP PRESENCE

The first step in this two-step dance of awakening is to choose the present moment as the truth of life.  More and more each day you choose to be present, rather than absent.  This means that you will have to choose to be present many times each day.  The more often you are present, the more the dimension of Presence opens up within you.

The only reason you choose to be present is that you  know that the present moment is the truth of life, and you are choosing to be in the truth of life, rather than lost in a world of illusion.

Being present is remarkably simple.  Gently remember to bring yourself present with that which is already present.  That is the  simple key to liberation.

When you are in the world of the mind, you are somewhere in the past or future.  The one place you are not is in the present moment.  So all you have to do is bring yourself fully present with something that is actually here in the moment with you.  You will then emerge from the past and future world of the mind and enter into the world of now.

If you can see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, or smell it , you can be present with it.  It is of the present moment, and so it brings to you the opportunity to be present with it.

When you first wake up in the morning, spend a few minutes before getting out of bed just being present in your body as it breaths.  When you are having a shower, be present with the warmth of the water and fragrance of the soap.  Be present as you eat your breakfast. Be present as you wash the dishes can be a sacred experience if you are present.

There are many times each day that you can be present.  When you notice that you have drifted off int the world of thought, memory , and imagination, bring yourself back to the present moment.  As you choose the present moment, you will deepen into Presence and it will gradually reveal its hidden treasures.  Eventually, you will be fully established in Presence, and God and Heaven on Earth will be revealed

THE SECOND STEP – MASTERY

The first step leads to Presence.  The second step leads us to mastery.

If you are constantly and involuntarily pulled back into the mind’s world of the past or future, then you are not free.  You are not awake.  In order to awaken fully, you will have to arise in mastery.  You will have to become a master of your own mind and ego.

The second step involves bringing consciousness to all the ways that you are pulled out of Presence.

RESISTANCE OF THE EGO – THE FIRST OBSTACLE OF FULL AWAKENING

The first reason that it is difficult to remain fundamentally  present in you day-today living and in your relationships has to do with the ego itself.

There are two dimensions of the ego.  When you are lost in the mind, disconnected from the present moment, you are functioning as an ego in the world.

But there is also that other dimension of the ego, whose role is to manage and control your life within the world of time.  It is the custodian of the Separation.

If you are to awaken, you will have to bring to consciousness all the ways that you are lost in the mind, functioning as an ego, and you will have to bring to consciousness all the ways that the ego holds you captive in its world of separation.

The ego is dominant in human life and is resistance to Presence is the primary reason that humanity is lost in a dangerous world of illusion.  If you happen to discover the true way of awakening, which is through the doorway of the present moment, the ego will vigorously resist.  It is afraid of what it does not know and it can never know the present moment.  The ego can never be present.

The ego is extremely skilled at seducing and deceiving you.  It has a bag of tricks, which it constantly uses to tempt you out of Presence into the world of the mind.

DENIAL OF WHO YOU HAVE BECOME – THE SECOND OBSTACLE TO FULL AWAKENING

Denying who you have become on this long journey through time and separation is the second reason that it is difficult to remain present in you day-to-day life, and your relationships.

To the extent that you deny who you have become, you will be denied the truth of who you really are.  To the extent that you deny who you have become, you cannot established in Presence.

Who have you become?  Who have we all become?

We are needy, greedy, fearful controlling, manipulative, jealous, resentful, angry, and blaming.  We are filled with expectations, and we feel resentful when those expectations are not met.  We are filled with judgment of ourselves and others.  We are entangled in a remembered past and lost in an imagined future.  We crave success and fear failure.  We are hopelessly lost in each other.  We are deeply involved in abandonment of responsibility, manifesting as blame and guilt.  We are desperately out of balance in a world of duality.  We fear death.  We fear loss.  We fear the unknown.  We are attached to everyone and everything.  We are even attached to our suffering.  We feel unloved.  We feel unaccepted.  We refuse to feel our pain and so we inflict that pain on others as a way of avoiding feeling the pain ourselves.  We are lost in a world of illusion, insisting that it is the truth.  We use.  We misuse.  We abuse.

Who you have become is a doorway to who you really are!  One of the most important keys to awakening is to own, ac-knowledge, and confess who you have become at the level of the mind and ego.  You cannot sidestep it.  You cannot hide it.  You cannot go around it.  You cannot fix it.  You cannot change it.

REPRESSED EMOTIONS – THE THIRD OBSTACLE TO FULL AWAKENING

To the extent that you have emotions repressed within you from he past, you cannot be fundamentally present.

The repressed feelings are constantly being triggered, and when they are triggered, you are pulled out of the present moment into that past experience, which you then project onto the present moment.  You are no longer in the truth of life.  You have regressed but you are not consciously aware of it.

You will have to empty these reservoirs of repressed emotions so that you can deepen into Presence and remain fundamentally present in you day-to-day living relationships.

ENTANGLEMENT IN OTHERS – THE FOURTH OBSTACLE TO FULL AWAKENING

To be awakened means that I am freed from my past and future and released into the present moment.  It also means that I am freed form entanglement in others and released back to myself.  How can I know who I am if I am entangled in you?  How can you know who you are if you are entangled in me?  We must free ourselves form our entanglement in each other if we are to awaken.

What do I mean by entanglement in others?

If I want you to love me and accept me, I am entangled in you.  If I want you to approve of me or agree with me, I am entangled in you.  If I am trying to please you to gain your acceptance, I am entangled in you. If I fear your judgement or disapproval, I am entangled in you.  If I am afraid of being rejected by you, I am entangled in you.  If I manipulate or control you, I am entangled in you.  If I assume responsibility for you, I am entangled in you.  If I judge you, blame you, or resent you, I am entangled in you.

The truth is we are all hopelessly entangled in each other.  We are hopelessly loss in each other.

To free yourself form entanglement, you will have to bring to consciousness all the ways that you lose yourself in to others.

Each time you notice that you are seeking love, acceptance, or approval from another you will have to own, acknowledge, and confess that you are giving away your power.  If you are trying to please another to gain acceptance, own, acknowledge, and confess it without judgement.

Anger expressed playfully and responsibly can be a liberation force in reclaiming your power.

To free yourself from others, you will have to embrace the following statement:

“I am here for me, not you!”

At first, it might seem selfish but it is a necessary step in your process of liberation.  You must reclaim your power and your right to exist independently of the judgments, opinions, needs, and expectations of others.

If you embrace the above statement fully and joyfully, it will lead you to a deeper truth.  The statement, “I am here for me, not you,” will lead you to the statement,

“I am simply here.”

That is the true liberation.