Awakening to timeless Being is not enough - talk by Daniela Bomatter

I'm very happy to talk tonight today about something that is very close to my heart and uh I would like to invite all of you to come with me on a journey on a journey from the small self to the big self. on a journey to find out what we mean with the title that awakening to timeless being is not enough. I could imagine that many of you have an idea why why this title could make sense and others probably have not. And I want to try to take you on a journey on a journey to liberation in the end. And I would like to encourage you to be very aware over the next hour or hour and a half that liberation is actually always possible. So to if we sit here together and uh I will talk you will listen and then we can go into a conversation. uh I find it very very important to to stress the point that we don't have to wait for anything to happen because liberation, enlightenment, awakening is always always always possible. There is no path needed. It can always happen. And it has to do with our commitment to wanting to be liberated and with our belief that we can and that we are worthy. And it has to do with grace. The grace of the guru, the grace of spirit, the grace of God. So that being said, we want to go from our limited ego selves, small selves, and I want to say a few words later about what we mean by ego in our context here. The context is evolutionary enlightenment. The context is Andrew Cohen's teaching of evolutionary enlightenment. And uh this is what I will try to convey tonight. So the journey will go from the limited ego self to a liberated experience in two different ways. One in the timeless being of our true self and a second liberation if we can say that in becoming in creating in being active in connecting to life and let's see how we can build up to these insights and I hope that we can have active real experiences about these awakenings. and uh start to understand why I will stress the point over and over that it is important to see the awakening to being as a distinct awakening from the potential awakening to becoming to the urgency and creativity of life itself. But let's start with our normal condition. If I can say that like this. Let's start where we all normally start in our small little selves. Busy with our own stories, busy with our own problems, challenges, but also busy with our plans, our convictions, our uh securities, our beliefs, our our uh visions for the future. But we normally live in this world of our small selves that is limited and a little bit in a box and is very distinct from other people's small self or ego self. So we kind of live in a cocoon and this cocoon is built up over our lifetime from genetic influences from education from our parents from experiences that we had. So we have built up a whole bag of ideas about ourselves that we normally carry around and that is more often than not the base on which we take decisions on which we act on which we react to the world. Or in other words, we are a bunch of conditionings that respond and react to the world every single minute, every single second, again and again. And more often than not, this image of our small self is also full of struggles, full of fears and doubts, doubts about ourselves, doubts about the world. doubts about our self-worth, self-esteem. More often than not, we have a negative relationship to this small self, to our existence or and that's as bad, we have an over exa exaggerated relationship to our our small self. We feel like we are better than, different than, more than other people. But however we see ourselves, be it as we see ourselves as smaller, less than, less worthy than others or bigger, more worthy than other. Both are expressions of separation. Both are of separateness and of living a life in a in this small cocoon of our builtup persona that we call our name. And all these conditionings, all our experience over a lifetime keep us stuck in the limited ego perspective. And then at one point and I guess everybody here in this group of 30 people has come to the moment where we feel like we want to get out of that prison. There must be a way. There must be a possibility to get out. And then for all kind of reasons that we don't have to go into right now, we begin our spiritual path. We begin our path to liberation. And very often this path starts with meditation. And there is this idea in a small self that meditation can help me to relax that can help me to deal with my the stress of my daily life. Meditation can relieve me from the burden of some of my existence. And that's all true, but it's in the end not the goal of meditation. All religious traditions tell us that meditation can bring us to a place in ourselves that is always already liberated. It's a place in ourselves that is always already free. And if we take meditation seriously, then we can start to experience this part in ourself that is already liberated and free. And we can allow ourselves to sink into this recognition. And we can try it here and now. We can just sit quietly still and move our focus from the busy mind that is commenting or thinking or planning tomorrow or thinking about yesterday. We can move our attention from that place that the the the busy mind to the background of that busy mind and try it out. You can actually refocus in a blink of an eye and have your attention on the background of your awareness. on the background of your mind where all the thoughts and experiences and feelings seem to come from where they arise in. And when we find that place, when we focus on that background, the in between place and have no relationship to the content of consciousness, then we get in touch with its place inside of us. and everywhere where we realize that this is our true self. There it is, our already liberated self. And it rests in timeless being in timeless infinite being and all the problems are gone. There is nothing that needs to change. There is nothing that needs to be addressed. There is just peace and silence. Nothing has ever happened and nothing will happen because this is the ground of our being. The ground of your being and my being and all of our being. And we all touch the same ground. And we all have the same realization that this is always already the case. And there was nothing to be found because this liberated state is always already present. And when we go deep into this state of being, when we allow ourselves to rest in our true self, we can sink deeper and deeper. And we come to a point where we feel like I don't need anything else. I don't want to come back. And that's absolutely beautiful and wonderful and is for sure the strongest source that we can have access to. And then and that's true for all of us here. We rise again from the meditation cushion. We come back into our normal self. Normal self is not a good expression, but you know what I mean. We come back from that peaceful state of pure being. And then it becomes very interesting because then the question arises, how do I live my life? Having touched the truth of my true self, what does it mean for living my life, what does it mean to live from that source, from that experience of timeless being where everything is always already complete and perfect And more often than not, the spiritual path then unfolds in a way that we through this kind of experiences become much more conscious about our ego selves, about our small selves. And we get curious about self-development, about improving the way we live our lives, improving the ways we relate to our own small selves, but also the ways we relate to the world. And that's where many of us choose to work on their self-development. And we do shadow work. We do trauma work and we work on the different lines of of development. When I say lines of development, that's a an expression from Ken Wilbur in the integral theory. Lines of development are different intelligences that we want to develop like emotional intelligence, rational intelligence, spiritual intelligence, artistic, intellectual, logical, musical, kinesthetic intelligences. And on the spiritual path and on the path of our own development, we want to become more and more conscious of all of these different lines. And we want to ask ourselves the question, where do I stand with my emotional line, with my emotional intelligence? How is it with my intellectual capabilities, my musical abilities? And we start to work on these different intelligences and we start to grow and that's absolutely beautiful and important. And in Andrew's teaching, we would call this positive ego development. When we when we become more and more conscious and we want to live a more and more conscious life, we feel compelled to work on on ourselves in many different ways. And doing so we develop a healthy self-confident integrated beautiful positive ego. And positive ego we need to be active in the world. We need to make sense in the world. We need to be in service of the world. Without a well-developed positive ego, we cannot be of service. We cannot be an instrument for for God, for spirit. And so that's a wonderful thing. But then all this development is ego development or small self-development. Uh improves our relationships. It improves our emotional maturity, our psychological health. It literally makes us better human being. And that's a great goal in itself. And everybody who does that can be very happy with him and herself. And yeah, that could be it. But now I want to make the point that this whole talk is about becoming a better human is not the same as becoming a liberated human being. Again, improving ourselves doesn't mean we liberate ourselves. Now, I hear many people say, "No, no, the liberation is in the being. It's in my true self. It's in the timeless perfection of my true self, of the being state. That's where the liberation is. That's where the absolute lifts. That's where God lives. And as long as I can get in touch again and again with that absolute dimension of reality, that deep being that I can find in deep meditation, that is my liberation. And that is what what we mean by enlightenment, by awakening, by liberation. And I think when we think like this, we are missing a very big and important point. We miss the true nonduality of being and becoming. We miss the realization and the awakening to the life force itself. And I want to make this very clear here. I believe that there are two different awakenings, two different enlightenments if we can put it like this possible for all of us. One is to our true self, to the timeless being, but there is a second awakening that is as powerful and as liberating. And this is the awakening to becoming to the life force to the evolutionary impulse as Andrew calls it that drives all of creation. And the evolutionary impulse is an absolute force. It's not a relative force. It's an absolute force as the ground of being is an absolute place without limits. The evolutionary impulse is an absolute force that drives has driven and still drives the creation of the universe. And when we awaken to the evolutionary impulse, when we awaken to this course, this life force that always leans into the future, then it lights up our positive ego in the most beautiful way. So I I like to think about the awakening to becoming or the awakening to the evolutionary impulse as a surrendering of our ego to the evolutionary impulse to allow it to shine through our positive welldeveloped beautiful positive ego and animate it and make it shine and make it available to be of service for the world. So as you could probably hear as much as in being all the traditions talk about surrendering the ego so that the true self can come into into the foreground. In the same way, we want to surrender to the evolutionary impulse, to the God impulse. The ego surrenders to the gold impulse and when it works, merges with it and arises on the other side as the authentic self as Andrew calls it. The authentic self is in the end nothing else than the positive ego, the well-developed beautiful ego animated by God and surrendered to God. And what is so beautiful when we can experience this is that on the other side of this surrender to to the God impulse, we find that all the ego's fears of surrendering to a higher power and losing its control have vanished, disappear, and we come out on the other side strengthened and confident. And all of our beautifully developed lines of intelligence are still there. But there is one big difference. Everything is now in service for the world. in service to the world, to other people, to the higher good. And therefore what I'm describing here is a shift of a focus on our small selves wishes, desires and and uh visions and plans and concerns to a much higher cause where we surrender ourselves to God and we say thy will be done and not mine. And doing so and this is very important to to realize doing so we become God. We become the creator. We merge with this life force that is animating the world. And as we realize in meditation that I am that in deep meditation when being is very present. We have this deep insight of yes this is who I am. I am that. And the same I am that is arising in us when we awaken to becoming. When we awaken to the evolutionary impulse and we give ourselves fully as an instrument as a vehicle for the evolutionary impulse to act through us as us. And again we realize I am that and when we do so life becomes full of purpose, meaning And we also realize what a truly nondual relationship to life means. Because in the end, while I I make this distinction here in in my talk about the awakening to being and awakening to becoming, but in the end, it's it's all one. It's all one realization. The realization of the timeless being that we always already are. And the realization of the the urgency of the evolutionary impulse to create, to move forward, to take the next step, to become more of everything, more intelligent, more compassionate, more good, more beautiful, more true. All of this is one single position. In when we when we truly awaken to both dimensions, the being and the becoming dimension, and stop to make the separation between the small self and the big self, between the relative and the absolute, and just embrace all of reality in one single nonduel. will embrace. And what is interesting is when we get in touch with both these awakenings, it also gets so evident how important our role is. And not important in an egoic sense, but important because we feel, we know, we see that we are part of one single creative process that is that is going somewhere that wants to create, that wants to improve, that wants to become better and we see ourselves as an instrument for that. But then I want to emphasize strongly this is not an escape. This is not kind of a utopian vision that is somewhere far out there in the future. But what we realize when we are in contact with with these these these uh forces is it's always about responding to life in the here and now in the present moment and into the next moment. So what I'm advocating here is not something like spiritual bypassing or or kind of having this vision of a a fully transcendent whatever and then everything is good and perfect. What I'm advocating is to to wake up to both being and becoming and then look and be attentive and aware what needs to happen in your life, in my life, in our collective in the next moment and the next moment and the next moment. This is a path of responding to reality as it is. Remember Andrew's third ten it says face everything in the void nothing. The reason is that that we always want to see reality in every moment as it is. And we wanna we want to respond appropriately by giving everything we have into the next moment. And doing so cocreate the future. The future of the universe, the future of humanity. and our own future. We haven't disappeared in this process. We are still there. We are still here as as distinct entities who know that we are something bigger and that we want to give ourselves to a bigger cause because this is what we do. Because this is our true nature because this is the purpose of our life. So to wrap this up a little bit, there are three important things that I want to emphasize again when we speak about awakening, let's embrace the awakening to being and the awakening to becoming as two distinct forms of awakening. Because true liberation in this world only happens if we can awaken to the becoming part too. Because with being awakening alone, there is something important missing that God wants to express in this world. And there is something important missing for our own purpose and meaning to shine in this world and to be of service to the world. And secondly, I want to come back what I said at the beginning. I'm not diminishing the importance of ego development. In contrary, I want to emphasize the important of positive ego development because the awakening to the evolutionary impulse needs us to be in good shape. The evolutionary impulse doesn't come with any moral or ethical compass. We have to develop the morals and ethics for this relative world. And the evolutionary impulse is driving the process forward and is animating it and is shining a light on everything. But our own positive ego development is essential to be a worthy carrier of of the evolutionary impulse or a worthy person to be animated by the evolutionary impulse. And I want to add something here in the context of of ego development. I think there are two points or two places for ego development that make sense is that it's very important to do ego development before the awakening and in the better shape we are in when we wake up the better it is for being able to integrate the awakening in in the most productive beautiful way but and that's a very important point we don't have to be perfect to wake up so I'm not saying let's do ego development work first so that we are ready to wake up that's I think not how it works let's be in good shape and let's wake up because once we wake up we are actually in much better position to see more clearly where work needs to be done and where we need to uh do more ego development where we see more shadow where there is more darkness that wants to be shed shed light on. So again we We want to wake up. We want to wake up to being. And we want to wake up to becoming. And then we want to look again. What more is there to be done? What more do I have to develop? But even more important, what can I give the world? And once we have woken up, it becomes very clear that our own development is only important in the context of being able to serve the world. Being able to be beautiful, intelligent, purposeful contributor to improve the world. Ego development loses the the self-importance and needs only addressing when something is in the way of us being fully available to be in service to the world. Yeah, I think I probably made the points I wanted to make and I would love to go into a Q&A or conversation phase now. Um, if you don't mind, I would I would uh appreciate if you could write your questions or comments in the chat box and then we can probably together go a little bit deeper into these questions and I will also try to address your questions or whatever comes up for you. So, Shinasan is asking for saying not able to carry the tranquility of the meditation experience into challenging situations. That's a question that that is often coming up when we when we discuss uh these these aspects of awakening and I would encourage you to I think it's it's not possible to always carry the tranquility of the meditation into ch into any situation. And I I think it's a misconception that we think we have to do that. If you allow yourself to enjoy the tranquility of meditation in meditation and then in relative life, in life in challenging situations, be aware, be conscious what is happening and learn to respond appropriately to these situations. I think that's that's the goal and that's also what is arising when you actually wake up to the becoming to the evolutionary impulse. It's the the appropriate re reaction or response to a situation is not always tranquility. I I think that is a spiritual misconception that we can let go of because there are situations that need something else than tranquility. There are situations that need fierceness or clarity or uh strength. And when we wake up to the evolutionary impulse, when we get the strength of the evolutionary impulse coming through us and and develop our our uh best authentic selves, then we learn to respond to situations, life situations in the most appropriate way for the moment. Whatever that means in any given moment. Then Eigor is asking what is role of small self in relation to creative impulse. For example, if it is going against moral principles, should small self be a sensor? Yeah. Again, Igor, I think Andrew always makes it very clear and and I'm convinced too, the evolutionary impulse does not have any moral principles. It's us creating the morals. And when you think about uh also structure stages of consciousness for those of you who are integrally informed uh moral and ethics have changed over time and it's always us the conscious human beings that make the morals and ethics. So yes, the small self needs to be the sensor or in other words, we want to therefore it's so important to develop a positive ego that is well integrated and has high moral and ethical values so that the evolutionary impulse can shine through a well-developed small self or ego positive ego. Otherwise a lot can go wrong. Then Stefan is saying, "Hi Daniela, I have a question about the eye position as a separate person while the divine or God is one without the second." Yeah, sure, Stefan. In our best moments, in our most awake moments in being or in becoming, when we say I, there is only one I, the eye of God, the I am that. But I think we can honestly say not all of us are all the time exactly there. No. So yeah, there is still a separate person that comes to the four from time to time or more often than we would like it to be. But absolutely God is one without a second. And I would go as far as even say the God of being and the God of becoming are exactly the same, one without a second. That also makes it so clear why being awakening and becoming awakening in the end are the same thing. You cannot separate them. It's it's the awakening to our god nature in in timeless being and in in urgent becoming that is one single position from a very absolute point of view. Um, Satashie, could you say a little bit more? Uh, you are asking, "How do I go about determining my duties to rest outside my family?" Can you say a little bit more? I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I can actually open your microphone, please. Or you can write it. Uh then the next question is from BY. the difference between theory of everything versus evolutionary enlightenment in responding to situations with manifest forms. Um, when you say theory of everything, you mean Ken Wilbur's theory of everything. Yeah, Daniel. Yes. Okay. Um I don't think there is a big difference between Wilbur's theory of everything or and evolutionary enlightenment in in terms of uh the situation with manifest forms because as I tried to explain we are living in the manifest forms here and now. Our asham here, our online ashram is called manifest nirvana. So we are always dealing with the manifest forms and we want to do that in the most awake, enlightened and developed way. Okay. Many many aspects of evolution enlightenment are are closely connected or can be closely connected to to Wilbur's uh theory. This will theories is much bigger and evolution enlightenment is more focused on uh on the awakening part of it that the the waking up and and uh yeah that's probably the difference but I wouldn't reduce it to that because evolution enlightenment is a is a full teaching to live a a purposeful welldeveloped beautiful life and not to escape from life or from manifest forms. I mean like uh in the today's world of cult based approach is there any difference between a singularity and non-duality of like a religion or a region or a space-time dimensions. That's that's a difficult question. Uh I'm not sure what I mean these words uh can mean so many things. What what I can say is that that evolution enlightenment points to a a truly non-dual embrace of life of being and becoming of unmanifest and manifest reality and of our ability to act in the world from that non-dual perspective as good as we can knowing that it never will be perfect because nobody here in this relative world is perfect. Then the next question is from Sheila. Is the purpose to get focus off of oneself? How to find the true purpose? Yes, the purpose is to get focus off of oneself. And I would go one step further. I would even say the initial purpose of the spiritual path as we understand it here is our liberation. Like it starts very personally. starts actually with the focus on oneself because we want to become liberated human beings. We want to wake up. We want to become enlightened. But once we have achieved a certain awakening, it's more a realization that the focus never was on ourselves. Because from that perspect perspective of the awakened mind, it's very clear that it never was about me. But it always was about the world. It always was about everybody else and the world and the service we can how can we serve the world. So and then we find purpose because when we are surrendered to the evolutionary impulse to God and we live that surrendered life then the purpose is appears. There is no question you you the thing is the ego thinks it has to find purpose but the purpose is already there. What we have to do is let go of the ego's uh ideas about purpose and meaning and surrender ourselves to the bigger to the bigger picture and then we realize oh this is the purpose. Make sense? Yes. Yes. Yes and no. It's it's it's so very hard to get the the focus off of oneself, right? It is. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It is. And still it is the goal. Thank you. Then so sadish [Music] I understand your question now. How do you let me clarify that I understand your question and this is a very important question. How do we balance the spiritual search and the awakening and and the energy that goes into this endeavors with our daily duties and and family and and uh the lives that we live. Is that right? I assume that this is what you meant and it's a difficult question. I'm I'm very aware and it's a question that often comes up. Andrew's answer is always by making the spiritual search priority. If we really want to wake up, it has to have priority in our life. Whatever that means and it can be challenging, but who said it should be easy? I think it's uh important to acknowledge that that the the path to awakening is is uh asking everything from us and therefore it's sometimes probably not easy to juggle all our different duties. Then Shini was is asking hi Danella sometimes there is laxity in dealing with mundane matters after reeling in ecstasy of meditation almost like not giving mundane things the importance they deserve how to deal with this yeah that's that's exactly the the point I I tried to make with encouraging all of You all of us to allow the possibility that awakening and the ecstasy is also possible in in the in the daily dealings in our in in the becoming life in the relative world in the life we live outside of meditation. I think it's it's uh good to contemplate like the possibility that what I'm saying here could actually be true that the ecstasy of meditation could be even more ecstatic in becoming when we wake up to the evolutionary impulse and because you are right the meditation has has a strong pull towards the silence and the and the peace and the timelessness of our true selves and and that's beautiful and therefore so many people went into caves and were just sitting and and uh pondering their true self. But but in our world where where we are needed where awakened people are needed to to help to change things. uh when we can awaken to to the becoming part then the ecstasy can actually be felt in in how we live our life and and in the purposefulness of our of living our life true I think I I I agree and and and there are times when uh I'm able to carry the energy into the mundane activities u and uh it seems pretty uh effortless in fact uh there is efficiency as well in in doing some of those mundane activities. Mhm. There are times when it does not happen and uh I think uh it's probably just a matter of uh a change within where um if if there is if if I'm not able to pay attention to those mundane things, I probably just need to look at myself look at that look at whatever is coming up basically. Uh as Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. and and maybe maybe it resolves itself. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense because I hear an echo and and then when we really wake up, it's also possible that some of the mundane things have to fall away that that we realize that some of the mundane things are probably too mundane and we want to let go of. So there is a whole uh line of effects that comes with the waking up to becoming where we where we realize oh we probably have to change some aspects of our life to the better. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Thanks for that. Thank you. Then the next question is coming from Bill. [Music] Sorry, I have a cat that came home here. Hi Daniela, when you talked about ego development before awakening may be best awakening earlier can help us where work can be done. This put me in the idea of use of psychedelic materials that can catalyze awakening. Do you think these materials can accelerate access to a surrendered life? Bill, to be very honest with you, I have no experience with psychedelics. I read and hear a lot about it and uh it it sounds to me that it's it can be very powerful and can probably help in certain situations. I have in myself, but that's just me. I have a little resistance. I feel, shall I be very honest with you? I almost feel like it's a little cheating. You know what I mean? Yes. I I have felt that myself, but I I have done some work with that. It's been actually pretty positive. Um, but it I I have that same sense you have too sometimes. and when I I've been going through sort of a difficult period. I'm just know I'm coming up against some ego kind of stuff and I'm wondering if I've bypassed or you know but you know it's becoming pretty clear to me about some things I need to work on you know positive ego kind of development. Yeah. The thing is what I find very important Bill in all of this is that we don't get stuck in the ego development. I I feel like especially today there are there is so much emphasis on ego development and trauma and shadow work and so little emphasis on on the waking up aspect. That is actually the liberation where where there is a shift that is incomparable to the shift that we that we can have with ego development. And I I just encourage people to not get lost in it. We have to look at what we need to look at and then that's it. It's okay. And then we can we can refocus on either the awakening or once we awaken on see where our where our purpose is, what what our task is to to give to the world. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. The next question is from promoter. From a previous shared view of ego sensation leading to attainment of the absolute to now embracing the ego in a positive context and consciously developing attributes for the becoming. This flips the traditional view entirely. It's also interesting to note how the being enlightenment does not by itself serve when acting out in the world and the conscious becoming process presents a promise to realize the fuller potential of the human form in exciting and significant ways. This is just a sharing of what came up. Yeah, I agree with every word promote. That's exactly how it is. It it shatters traditional views. What what I want to emphasize though, I I agree with everything you say and I'm not saying you you meant it differently, but there is one danger. The path to awakening, path to enlightenment is still a path of ego transcendence. So while I make this point that that the awakened uh evolutionary impulse is falling on a positive ego while this is true it's also true that this only happens when we surrender the small self at least not even sure how to say that at least once but totally and absolutely and unconditionally and doubtlessly. I don't personally don't believe that the ego ever completely disappears. But the pause that we are describing here is a pause where ego surrender at one point is the only way to to to get to that liberated space or to rediscover the already liberated space that we are. And that's important to keep in mind. It's it's not and in that sense it's not different than the traditional view that speaks about ego transcendence. Then B is asking uh why Andrew Cohen lost his position in the top 100 of the Watkins list and he's asking if it's due to health issues. Um, no that was not due to health issues but he has written a whole book about it. The book is called when shadow meets the body satwa. And if you want to know the full story, you can find it on Amazon. When shadow meets the bodhisattva. I think there was one more question. Yep. Eigor, one more question. Um, are there any other options for deciding to express a creative impulse other than morality? I'm not totally sure I understand the question, but I try. Uh, I think once we awaken to the evolutionary impulse, everything that we express is is animated by the evolutionary impulse. Like you probably heard Andrew explain that the evolutionary impulse expresses itself also on three different levels as the sexual impulse that that drives procreation and then as the creative impulse that that you can see in very creative people in in painters in musicians in chess musicians in in in even in in people who who uh do sports like and describe flow flow states. It's it's it's the impulse that drives life forward. And then what we are talking here when we talk about awakening, it's it's the awakening on on the highest level, the the it's the evolutionary impulse that that has the urge to to become more conscious. And when we talk about awakening to the evolutionary impulse here, we talk about the third level of of the evolutionary impulse that that awakes in ourselves the urge to become more conscious and with that to become better human beings to express ourselves in a different way in the world and to to to serve the world. Oh, this was the last question. That was interesting. So, thank you so much for coming tonight. It was a real pleasure to to do this and uh I wish you a wonderful evening, day wherever you are and see you