If asked what do you want to become when you grow up, Anita Moorjani would say: My Self. An excellent video from Jim Carrey came along recently, which expresses the feeling extremely well. I appreciate his image of being on the wave and then off it, for too often that is the case: it sometimes takes a while before you realize you are off that wave again, usually when it hurts in some way. Feeling anxiety creep in is a big tell. The wave is the Dao, the wave is channeling the Holy Spirit, being thunk, not thinking. Not thinking is the higher form of fasting, and it is not something you do, it is something you do not do once you realize its pointlessness - it is not behavioral, you cannot force yourself not to think. Krishnamurti always is very clear on this point, whenever he talks about the observer and the observed being one, something you do not see with you physical eyes, for they are themselves instruments of duality, but with spiritual sight, in contemplation.
This realization of the observer and the observed being one is the sure sign your ego is out of the way.
Jim Carrey expresses it in a different way, but it boils down to the same thing, letting go of all your ideas about who you are and to just be. Again, at that point your ego is out of the way, and the more often you can practice this, the more you become aware what hard work it is to pretend you are all the roles you have developed for yourself.
It has been interesting to watch how Jim Carrey could so completely get himself out of the way that he could fully play the roles he played, until one day he realized that Jim Carrey was just one of the roles, and his Self was something else altogether.
That is the day you fully realize that you are a mind that has a body, and not a body that has a mind (or a soul, if you want). That is what it means to awaken from the dream. It is something we only learn incrementally, but the contrast between these two modes of existence eventually wins us over to fully awaken to the mind, and we find ourselves then in what A Course in Miracles calls the Real World. At the end of that trip the only thing left is the final reunification of the Father and the Son, as the story of the Prodigal Son tells us. That final step is done by God, when we are ready.
Practicing forgiveness is our job in this life, for by doing that we let go of all the ways in which we define ourselves as different, and we steadily remove the obstacles to Love and to God’s presence:
The final step is God’s, because it is but God Who could create a perfect Son and share His Fatherhood with him. ²No one outside of Heaven knows how this can be, for understanding this is Heaven itself. ³Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. ⁴But fear is gone because its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. ⁵And so is Heaven’s Son prepared to be himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him. (ACIM, T-30.V.4:1-5)
Sometimes people seem to stop at awakening and forget that there is the final step, this is where the teaching of Jesus goes further than some other teachings. Gary Renard describes this very clearly in chapter two of the Disappearance of the Universe, as it applies to the Buddha:
"The concept of oneness is hardly an original one. However, the question few people ever ask is: What am I really one with? Although most of those who do ask this question would say the answer is God, they then make the error of assuming they and this universe were created in their present form by the Divine. That is not true, and it leaves the seeker in a position where even if he masters the mind, as Buddha certainly did, he will still not reach God in a permanent way. Yes, he will achieve oneness with the mind that made the duality waves. This mind, in a non-place that transcends all of your dimensions, is completely outside the system of time, space, and form. This is the logical and proper extension of non-duality, yet it is still not God. It is, in fact, a dead end. Or better yet, a dead beginning. This explains why Buddhism, which is obviously the world’s most psychologically sophisticated religion, does not handle the issue of God. It’s because Buddha didn’t handle the issue of God while he was still in the body you call Buddha. It’s also the reason we’ll be making distinctions between non-dualism and pure non-dualism. When Buddha said, “I am awake,” he meant he realized that he was not actually a participant in the illusion, but the maker of the entire illusion. Still, there is another step required, where the mind that is the maker of the illusion chooses completely against itself in favor of God."
In other words, non-dualism is knowing you are mind, and have a body, but pure non-dualism is where we know there is only one mine and it is one with God: the creation is purely extension of God’s Love, and:
⁴What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him. (ACIM, W-132.12:4)
We find the same in Jed McKenna’s books, he stops at awakening. Nothing wrong with that, except there is one more step, and that one more step is the one that is so threatening to the ego, for it means that we do not exist, and that very thought engenders fear. I.e. not only is the world Maya, the tiny, mad idea, consciousness itself, is an illusion, right from the get-go it never happened, it’s an idle thought, but we entertained it seriously and our dream-experience now is the consequence of that momentary thought, but when we withdraw our belief it is over altogether, just like waking from a dream.
Why wait for Heaven? ²Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. ³The light is in them now. ⁴Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. ⁵Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. ⁶The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. ⁷It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. ⁸It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. (ACIM, W-188.1:1-8)
Jim Carrey’s thought of letting go is key, and again, if you have followed his career you must have marveled at how totally he could identify with his roles. I wondered for a long time when it would dawn on him that Jim Carrey was just another role. This realization parallels Byron Katie’s question: “Who would you be without your problems.” In other words, all our roles, all our problems, this story we call our life are nothing but defenses against the truth of what we are as Spirit, one with God, and it all hinges on who or what we identify with. A documentary on Jim & Andy is a brilliant look at the issues of Jim Carry in his Andy Kaufman role. I used to faithfully watch Taxi.
Sometimes it helps to just realize that it is merely our fear of the Love of God that keeps us separate:
There is a distance you would keep apart from your brother, and this space you perceive as time because you still believe you are external to him. ²This makes trust impossible. ³And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. ⁴Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interests perceived as separate. ⁵From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now. ⁶The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you sacrifice and suffer loss. ⁷You see eventual salvation, not immediate results. (ACIM, T-26.VIII.2:1-7)
The Course always emphasizes that we can accept the atonement for ourselves now, we can only do it now, for now is all there is ever. All the rest is illusion. For the longest time we only permit ourselves brief moments that we let it go, and then the contraction of fear brings us back to our separate identity, until one day, like Jim Carry describes, we can just let it go.