by Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith: AS YOU READ THIS PAGE, other individuals are networking at Internet cafés. 
Some are jogging through a park where homeless persons lay asleep under the sheltering generosity of a tree. Parents are driving their children to school; others remain at home searching through classified ads. While our outer activities vary, the same questions press against the heart: “How can I have a sense of well-being when life as I know it is dissolving right in front of me? How can I find happiness in such an unpredictable world? Where, oh where, can I find some peace of mind? Is there any solid ground on which to stand?”
Despite seeming obstacles and detours, an inner impulse urges you on, as though you are following a reliable map to that place which holds the answers to these courageous and profound questions. A place that ultimately reveals that because the answer is within you, the answer is You! Your relationship with yourself is so multilayered that it requires a wholehearted commitment to cut through to the core of your being, to the transcendental Self that you are. Some call this the Higher Self, made in the image and likeness of godliness.
The image and likeness of Spirit is both within and beyond its creation. This faculty is also an aspect of our birthright. We are both immanent and transcendent beings: immanent in the world of matter as evidenced through our physical senses, emotions, and thoughts, and transcendent as the non-material Self that simply witnesses. We are empowered to transcend our human characteristics, thus reflecting the image and likeness of the Spirit in which we are made. When we consciously make use of this powerful faculty, we become fully franchised co-creators of our individual and collective human destiny.
Whatever actions you perform, whatever thoughts you think, whatever emotions you feel, the You of you is the impersonal, nonattached Witness of them. Any habitual behavior pattern, personality trait, or neurosis that you release from your life is possible because it is not an aspect of your true nature. Only what is Real cannot fall away from you because it is you. Just as the Spirit remains changeless, so does your Higher Self remain changeless, a constant amidst the vicissitudes of your life experiences. The You of you is a formless, changeless Reality.
We have a body but we are not the body. We have a mind, but we are not the mind. Body and mind are vehicles through which the Self expresses. Each of us is That which is conscious of having a body and mind. As we abide more and more in our true Self we become empowered to make wisdom-guided choices. Choice is a function of awareness. When we choose to evolve our mind-sets and heart-sets then self-empowerment, love, abundance, joy, freedom—all that seems just beyond our grasp or that seems to slip between our fingers—are tapped from within and released into our experience. We do not exist to aggressively get; we are here to tenderly let that which is within us to harmoniously flow into our outer life.
Will you give your consent to making a deeper commitment to discover That which has been implanted within you, That which awaits the ripe conditions to leap into full expression as you? This is a courageous and vital commitment, because when the proper conditions are met, who you are fully expresses beyond the ego’s to-do list and purposes designed for its glorification. When you wake up it no longer matters who your parents are, how many Who’s Who volumes you appear in, if you’ve been born into abject poverty, or if you are physically challenged. All of that pales in comparison to the emergence of the Perfect Idea that is latent within you.
Excerpted from The Answer Is You by Michael Bernard Beckwith. Copyright © 2011 (Agape Media International).
