2014 ms item01 03 07 b phillips awakeningday7
Formula for Miracles® Presents
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 7: The Negative Path to Awakening: The “False I”, or Who/What You Truly Aren’t In the last few days, we pulled back the veil covering the truth of who and what You truly are, and we saw that the truth of your being is that You are the act of the perceiving; You are awareness itself! And now that we’ve begun your Awakening, we’re now going to powerfully reinforce this understanding by taking the opposite approach today by developing a crystal clear understanding of the “false I”, which is the truth of who/what You are not. You might call this the “negative approach” to Awakening. Note that here negative does not mean that’s it is wrong or bad or somehow inferior! Instead, negative here just means that we are showing you the truth of who/what You truly are by developing a clear understanding of who and what You are not, in other words, to clearly understand the “false I” that is not you. Next, recognize that many of the most powerful thoughts that take you away from your Awakening and lead you to worship the “false I” are thoughts related to your identity and the identities of people close to you. To help you more clearly understand this “false I” that you thought you were, let’s do a quick and fun exercise.
Exercise Part 1 Use your computer or a pen and paper and list five to ten things that you thought you were when you were a child. For example, I might list “I am a boy.”
Exercise Part 2 Use your computer or a pen and paper and list five to ten things that define you as an adult. For example, I might list “I am a healer.” Please don’t continue any further until you have at least a few items on each list. Now that you have your lists, I’m going to share some of my answers. My answers from early childhood include: “I am Brent” “I am a boy”
“I am a person” “I am good at math” “I am a soccer player” “I am a student at Bonita Canyon elementary school”
Later in life, we tend to identify with our profession and our community; some of my answers for part two of the exercise (as an adult) include: “I am a healer” (or whatever your profession is) “I am an American” (or whatever your nationality is) “I am a Californian” (or whatever your state/region is) “I am my body” “I am in pain” (or whatever sensations you tend to experience frequently) “I am depressed” (or whatever emotional states you tend to experience frequently) “I am a soul” (for the spirituality minded; but this is still not the truth of your being! The statement “I am a soul” simply replaces identifying with the physical body with identifying with the astral or energetic body. If this is confusing or upsetting, don’t worry, we’ll cover this in more detail later.) Now take a deep breath and recognize that all of these above statements are lies; every single one of them! All the things you have listed are aspects of the “false I”, and are merely descriptions of objects on the screen of the mind. To help see this more clearly, let’s look at what we call a person that has no awareness: the answer is a corpse! So clearly there’s some magic that happens when something is alive, but this magic isn’t about the contents of the screen of the mind. Instead, the truth of You is that You are permanent, eternal, and indestructible. You existed long before the conception of the body and mind that you have identified with, and You will exist long after it is destroyed. You may have heard some version of this many times in spiritual teachings, but the teachings I’ve seen didn’t make a lot of sense until I Awakened and understood that the truth of You is awareness itself. Remember, You are not a noun – You are a verb! There are no beings that have free will or awareness. Instead, all the so-called beings are merely abstractions; they are fictional characters. It’s not an overstatement to say that the “false I” the single greatest and most destructive lie ever created by humans. It’s a lie that is so deeply entrenched into our culture that Awakening to truth
is similar to trying to convince a fish that there is life beyond the water. Repetition creates belief, and because we’ve all repeated different versions of thoughts about our identity so many thousands (or perhaps millions!) of times, we’ve all created a deeply entrenched belief system that we and others are something that we are actually not. And quite simply, this one Great Lie creates all the suffering in the world. If you are confused or feel you don’t completely “get it”, that’s good, because it means you are on the right track! In the following days we’re going to continue to expand and clarify your understanding of who and what You are and who and what You are not. Moving forward, I want to provide you with a few powerful tools to help cut through the clutter of the mind and empower your Awakening. The first tool is a pointer to help you find the truth. In general, the truth tends to be simple, and the false tends to be complex. For example, “I am intelligent” is a false statement, and hence complex, because there are many dimensions to intelligence, and you need a lot more information to know exactly what the statement “I am intelligent” actually means. Really, the only thing you can say that is actually true is “I am that I am”. Notice how this statement is simple and self-evident. Even better, you may recognize that “I am that I am” is the English translation of the secret True Name of God! Another useful tool is to constantly remind yourself the following: You are not your thoughts; You are not your feelings; You are not your emotions, or your drives, or your body, or your personality, or your memories. You are not any of the contents of your mind; instead, what You are is the act of the perceiving of your thoughts, emotions, feelings, drives, and the other objects on the screen of the mind. To help you better recognize what you are and what you are not (aka the “false I”), notice that nearly any variable X that fits into the statement “I am X” or “I am not X” can not be You, and must instead be an aspect of the “false I”. This is because any of the contents of the screen of the mind must exist in duality, or polarity. For example, to say “I am tall” is to describe the “false I”, because you can only be “tall” in reference or comparison to something or someone else that is “short” (or “not tall”). Hence, anything that has an opposite must be in duality – and we know that can’t be the truth of You, because You are in Unity, or Non-Duality. Now I hope the value of the negative path should be clear: it is difficult and a bit esoteric to explain and directly understand exactly who and what You are. Instead, we can find the truth by understanding clearly what You are not. In other words, by eliminating everything that is part of the “false I” and is not You, whatever is left must be You. And that’s Awakening!
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 7: The Negative Path to Awakening: The “False I”, or Who/What You Truly Aren’t In the last few days, we pulled back the veil covering the truth of who and what You truly are, and we saw that the truth of your being is that You are the act of the perceiving; You are awareness itself! And now that we’ve begun your Awakening, we’re now going to powerfully reinforce this understanding by taking the opposite approach today by developing a crystal clear understanding of the “false I”, which is the truth of who/what You are not. You might call this the “negative approach” to Awakening. Note that here negative does not mean that’s it is wrong or bad or somehow inferior! Instead, negative here just means that we are showing you the truth of who/what You truly are by developing a clear understanding of who and what You are not, in other words, to clearly understand the “false I” that is not you. Next, recognize that many of the most powerful thoughts that take you away from your Awakening and lead you to worship the “false I” are thoughts related to your identity and the identities of people close to you. To help you more clearly understand this “false I” that you thought you were, let’s do a quick and fun exercise.
Exercise Part 1 Use your computer or a pen and paper and list five to ten things that you thought you were when you were a child. For example, I might list “I am a boy.”
Exercise Part 2 Use your computer or a pen and paper and list five to ten things that define you as an adult. For example, I might list “I am a healer.” Please don’t continue any further until you have at least a few items on each list. Now that you have your lists, I’m going to share some of my answers. My answers from early childhood include: “I am Brent” “I am a boy”
“I am a person” “I am good at math” “I am a soccer player” “I am a student at Bonita Canyon elementary school”
Later in life, we tend to identify with our profession and our community; some of my answers for part two of the exercise (as an adult) include: “I am a healer” (or whatever your profession is) “I am an American” (or whatever your nationality is) “I am a Californian” (or whatever your state/region is) “I am my body” “I am in pain” (or whatever sensations you tend to experience frequently) “I am depressed” (or whatever emotional states you tend to experience frequently) “I am a soul” (for the spirituality minded; but this is still not the truth of your being! The statement “I am a soul” simply replaces identifying with the physical body with identifying with the astral or energetic body. If this is confusing or upsetting, don’t worry, we’ll cover this in more detail later.) Now take a deep breath and recognize that all of these above statements are lies; every single one of them! All the things you have listed are aspects of the “false I”, and are merely descriptions of objects on the screen of the mind. To help see this more clearly, let’s look at what we call a person that has no awareness: the answer is a corpse! So clearly there’s some magic that happens when something is alive, but this magic isn’t about the contents of the screen of the mind. Instead, the truth of You is that You are permanent, eternal, and indestructible. You existed long before the conception of the body and mind that you have identified with, and You will exist long after it is destroyed. You may have heard some version of this many times in spiritual teachings, but the teachings I’ve seen didn’t make a lot of sense until I Awakened and understood that the truth of You is awareness itself. Remember, You are not a noun – You are a verb! There are no beings that have free will or awareness. Instead, all the so-called beings are merely abstractions; they are fictional characters. It’s not an overstatement to say that the “false I” the single greatest and most destructive lie ever created by humans. It’s a lie that is so deeply entrenched into our culture that Awakening to truth
is similar to trying to convince a fish that there is life beyond the water. Repetition creates belief, and because we’ve all repeated different versions of thoughts about our identity so many thousands (or perhaps millions!) of times, we’ve all created a deeply entrenched belief system that we and others are something that we are actually not. And quite simply, this one Great Lie creates all the suffering in the world. If you are confused or feel you don’t completely “get it”, that’s good, because it means you are on the right track! In the following days we’re going to continue to expand and clarify your understanding of who and what You are and who and what You are not. Moving forward, I want to provide you with a few powerful tools to help cut through the clutter of the mind and empower your Awakening. The first tool is a pointer to help you find the truth. In general, the truth tends to be simple, and the false tends to be complex. For example, “I am intelligent” is a false statement, and hence complex, because there are many dimensions to intelligence, and you need a lot more information to know exactly what the statement “I am intelligent” actually means. Really, the only thing you can say that is actually true is “I am that I am”. Notice how this statement is simple and self-evident. Even better, you may recognize that “I am that I am” is the English translation of the secret True Name of God! Another useful tool is to constantly remind yourself the following: You are not your thoughts; You are not your feelings; You are not your emotions, or your drives, or your body, or your personality, or your memories. You are not any of the contents of your mind; instead, what You are is the act of the perceiving of your thoughts, emotions, feelings, drives, and the other objects on the screen of the mind. To help you better recognize what you are and what you are not (aka the “false I”), notice that nearly any variable X that fits into the statement “I am X” or “I am not X” can not be You, and must instead be an aspect of the “false I”. This is because any of the contents of the screen of the mind must exist in duality, or polarity. For example, to say “I am tall” is to describe the “false I”, because you can only be “tall” in reference or comparison to something or someone else that is “short” (or “not tall”). Hence, anything that has an opposite must be in duality – and we know that can’t be the truth of You, because You are in Unity, or Non-Duality. Now I hope the value of the negative path should be clear: it is difficult and a bit esoteric to explain and directly understand exactly who and what You are. Instead, we can find the truth by understanding clearly what You are not. In other words, by eliminating everything that is part of the “false I” and is not You, whatever is left must be You. And that’s Awakening!
