Spiritual Books-Life Purpose-Nonduality-The Now-Metaphysics

The moment—the now—is like a river, which carries you forward, ever-changing and ever moving. You either flow with this now or reject it and fight it, but that doesn’t stop the flow; it only determines your experience of it. When you glide along with the flow, the experience is joyous, as you are able to experience the Source’s joy in the moment it has created. When you fight the flow, you experience tension, anger, and dis-ease.

Loving the flow is not dependent on liking it. Loving the flow only requires that you jump into that moment—whatever is happening—and experience it fully, whether you like it or not. The Source loves experience, and that is all you need to learn to love if you want to be happy.

Who you are—essence—is not a thing but an ever-changing and ever-evolving experiencing. When you look for who you are, you will never find someone or something who is aware or who is having an experience; you will only find experience, awareness, consciousness. It seems like the I is experiencing, aware, conscious, but this is a false conclusion. You are programmed to feel that there is an experiencer that you call I. However, when you look, you see that the I only exists as an idea. It is not experiencing, aware, or conscious.

Since you see yourself as the one who is thinking, you assume your thoughts are what you think, so you do what you think. The egoic mind tells you to do something (because it is consistent with your conditioning and identity), and you do it. You don’t even think to question it because you are programmed not to: That is what you think. End of story. In the egoic state of consciousness, the answer is whatever you think it is, and if someone disagrees, you argue your position because it’s what you think. You are identified with your thoughts in a way that causes you to believe them.

Watch the mind as it tries, in every moment, to co-opt experience by translating it into a story. It tries to draw you away from experience into a mental world that simulates experience. If it succeeds, that story becomes your experience. If you agree to go to this mental world, feelings will also arise and add reality to this world, but it is still a mental world. Once you act on these thoughts and feelings, you create new experiences. In this way, the ego does manage to shape your life. Most people’s lives are shaped nearly entirely by the ego. Essence allows this because it enjoys the growth that results, but this way of living is full of suffering. Essence offers other possibilities for your life, which you may miss if you are not in the flow.

Not only does the egoic mind keep you out of the peace and contentment of the present moment with its thoughts, these thoughts often create negative feelings, pressure, and stress. The egoic mind tells you when to do it, how to do it, and what you are doing wrong. It is always reminding you of time and hurrying you up. It can be extremely bossy, unkind, and unforgiving. The worst atrocities on this planet have been carried out by those dominated by a very negative, tyrannical egoic mind. While even pleasant thoughts can take you out of the beauty of the moment, negative thoughts make being out of the moment especially painful.

When you are engaged in an activity in the egoic state of consciousness, you are usually thinking about something else. If this were not the case, you would drop into the flow, and you might not even decideto do that activity. If you really allowed yourself to experience the activity you were engaged in, you would either find yourself enjoying it or, from the place of essence, you would choose differently. Either is a much better outcome than not being present to what you are doing and not enjoying it.

When you are present to what you are doing, you are rewarded by a quiet mind, or at least a mind that remains in the background. This is a great relief. You don’t have to listen to the negativity, complaints, arguments, confusion, fear, worries, and old worn-out stories of the egoic mind. If they are there, they seem more like a bad radio station in the background rather than about you. They don’t seem personal. Being present to what you are doing quiets the mind, and that is its own reward. Relief from the egoic mind and immersion in essence can turn an activity that you think is unpleasant into a very pleasant one.

The ego doesn’t perceive that anything worthwhile is coming out of the flow. It discounts or disregards many of the insights, solutions, and urges to act that arise from essence. It assumes that it is the only player here, and it convinces you of this too. It even seems this way because the flow’s timing is not what the ego would like. The flow has its own timing, which is not revealed before it happens. The ego assumes it needs to take control of life because it often seems like nothing is happening, and it is very unhappy with that. Almost anything seems better than that.

Something else is co-creating your life along with the egoic mind. It allows the egoic mind to have the influence it does, but all along it is offering other choices, other possibilities, than what the mind is offering. You are free to follow what you think or to follow these other possibilities. They are not immediately obvious, however, because they are not usually introduced through the mind but arise in the moment.

The best way to describe the experience of essence choosing is to say that it just happens. It doesn’t feel much like a choice, which involves thinking and implies deciding between options. Essence chooses when you are not thinking. It chooses in between your thoughts. The choice pops into your mind or is expressed spontaneously through action, but you didn’t arrive at it through thinking.

Essence will create quite a different life than the ego, although many things will be similar. Essence will express the same talents the ego did, but it will do it more skillfully, fluidly, and powerfully. Essence will express itself through the same personality the ego did, but it will do it more positively, without selfishness. Essence will still be faced with the challenges and karma of your particular body/mind, but it will handle them more gracefully and turn them into strengths.

There are ways to discover where the flow is going, at least momentarily. Within every moment are clues about the direction of the flow. What is arising now? Is the phone ringing? If so, the flow is going there. Is there an urge to sit down at your computer and write a friend? If so, the flow is going there. Is conditioning arising? That is the flow too. Whatever is spontaneously arising in the moment is the flow. There are no mistakes: If it is arising, it is part of the flow.

Each moment has the seeds for the next, but you don’t know how they will sprout or even if they will. Even when you are very present to the moment, you still can’t really know what will happen. All you know is what is happening. Still, you can notice the seeds that are present. Each represents a potential direction for the flow.

The life plan is broad and not specified before you are born. There are many ways it can be fulfilled, and you get to choose how you will do that. However, there are more or less optimal ways that plan can be fulfilled. Being in touch with essence will lead you to fulfill your plan in a way that will bring the greatest satisfaction and happiness.

By following your intuition in each moment, the life you were meant to live is revealed. Intuition is the alternative to the egoic mind. When you stop listening to the mind, what is left is your intuition, which arises in between the thoughts. Catch it there because not only will it take you back to essence but to your greatest fulfillment—your life’s purpose.

When you are out of the flow, you get things done, but they don’t bring much satisfaction or joy, both because you are not present to them and because they are not intrinsically satisfying. If what you are doing doesn’t fit your plan, it won’t satisfy you even if it would satisfy someone else. You cannot be fulfilled by someone else’s life purpose; you can only be fulfilled by yours. You won’t find out what that is by listening to the mind because it doesn’t know. Only by paying attention to what is coming out of the flow and letting that lead you through your life will you fulfill your life’s purpose. The mind will lead you if you let it, but don’t.

Reviews

"Return to Essence, the companion book to Radical Happiness, is a joy to read. Clearly originating from a higher place, it is permeated with the truth. Unpretentious but compelling, it is written as a direct, informative, and practical guide to the mystery of life. Return to Essence is an easy, yet profound, introduction to who you really are."
—Keith Prue

“A wonderfully powerful book: My first introduction to Gina Lake's work was her free download book Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence. It was obvious to me from this small sampling that Gina is a gifted teacher who truly embodies her messages. I was ready for more and have not been disappointed. To quote from the introduction: 'The flow is the experience of who you really are as it moves through life. ... But how do you get there and how do you stay there?' This book answers those questions. Gina gives information and examples as well as practical exercises to support the material, especially helpful in showing you how to recognize the difference between ego-generated thoughts and direction coming from Essence (Source, your higher self, true self, god-self, or whatever way you refer to it).

If you’ve read Gina's earlier works, like Radical Happiness, or if you haven’t but are beginning to see that there is a wonderful difference between following spirit and following ego and want more help, guidance, and information, this book is for you. It has helped me recognize what is driving my decisions and actions, and makes it easier to get back ‘in the flow' - which is a most rewarding place to be!” –K. Sutton

Short Excerpts from Return to Essence

Reviews

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