The Art of Being You

Chapter One

An Introduction to Your Self

You are searching the world, looking for what you carry within.

One day you may experience an unfamiliar restlessness, a stirring within you. You may start to wonder about yourself and about your life. You push the feeling away, but it comes back again. Questions arise up in your mind: What am I doing here? What do I want out of life? Am I missing something? Who am I, really? These are important questions. They mark an awakening, the beginning of a quest—the quest to know yourself and your place in this universe. Count yourself fortunate if you are growing in the awareness of this dimension of life, or deepening your experience of it.

Don’t be in a hurry to find answers to your questions. One who is wise will not answer them for you. If anyone offers an answer, you would be wise to choose to stay with your question and wait for the answer to come on its own. Your questions are for you and you alone. Just be with them. They are sufficient to take you deep into yourself. They are the vehicle that will take you into that center core of your Being called ‘the Self’.

Every soul, every growing soul, knowingly or unknowingly, longs to make the journey back to the Self.

You may have experiences of this Self—a few seconds, a few minutes that seem to exist outside of time; a moment when the ordinary glows with beauty; the feeling of flowing out, perhaps, of having no boundaries. When these experiences come—believe in them. They are a reflection of your Self.

The Self is spirit in its purest form—eternal and unlimited spirit as it dwells in every individual. “Resting in the Self” refers to the experience of being centered in the spirit within. There you are aware of your oneness with the whole—with God and all of God’s creation.

An experience of Self is more likely to happen when stress, tensions, worries and anxieties are lifted from the mind. Prayer and meditation are helpful in coming to that experience. Until this realization happens, until you have the experience of the pure, vast, blissful Self within you, you are moving through life holding a beautiful gift without unwrapping it. All the charm and joy you see in the world is just wrapping paper—colorful and glittery. Inside you is the real gift-divinity itself.

When you begin to wonder about yourself, about your life, when you begin to look for something bigger, something more, the journey has begun. With patience and perseverance, it will lead you to experience life in its fullest and richest form. Count yourself fortunate if you are awakening to this dimension of life, or are desiring to deepen your experience of it.

In the center core of you, you are only bliss and love— nothing else.

WHO ARE YOU?

When you meet someone for the first time, how do you introduce yourself? Do you talk about the work you do or who you are, in relation to someone else—I am so and so’s spouse or friend or brother? Do you mention where you live, where you went to school, what organizations or what church you belong to?

All these things are subject to change. Today you are a teacher. Tomorrow you could be a cook! You have played many roles in life—you have been a student, an employee, a son or a daughter, a caretaker, a patient in bed—but you are much more than the sum total of all these roles. When you identify yourself with a role you are playing, you are fragmented, your life is compartmentalized and you are unaware of your full potential.

You need a right vision of who you are. You are not your relationships or the roles you play. You are not the sum of your thoughts and opinions; your changing moods; the feelings that rise and fall. These things come on their own and go on their own. It is your very nature to be joyful, peaceful and loving, and that remains the same for all eternity. That is who you are.

We think of love and joy and peace as emotions, but they are not emotions. They are states of being and they are always available. When you understand how to handle your negative emotions and thoughts (Chapter Three), you have taken a big steps toward being able to restore and maintain the love, joy and peace that you are. When you see that these qualities are the very essence of who you are—your heart will open more fully.

Everything is changing, isn’t it? Moods come on their own, stay for a while and go on their own. Different feelings rise and fall. Your opinions change, your body changes. In that moment, when you recognize that things are changing, you can be sure - there is something that is not changing. If you can observe change, then something opposite to it—something that can be called ‘non-change’—must also exist.

Could you recognize love if you had not known hate? Or plenty if you had not known lack? In the same way, if you can observe change, there has to be something that is not changing. That something, that is not changing is the essence of who you are—it is your nature to be joyful, peaceful and loving, and that remains the same for all eternity.

This unchanging aspect of you may be called the Self. This book, The Art of Being You, is an exploration of ways to come back to your Self, your true home, and experience the love, joy and peace that you are.

When you identify yourself by your nationality or your religion, it serves some purpose, but this is not the final truth. In divine creation the whole world is united. The search for this unity is the real spiritual journey.

Today wars and conflicts are happening all over the world in the name of religion. When people take a position: I am a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew; I am a Hindu or a Sikh or a Buddhist; and those who are not what I am, are not mine—division and conflict arise. It is fine to be proud to be an American or Mexican, Indian or Pakistani. With right understanding, these identities need not create division and separation.

Unfortunately, misunderstanding has divided human beings and torn apart society. In these circumstances, the values of unity, love and peace are lost. It is important to see that the identity we all share is that we are part of divinity and part of the whole human family. When the things that

All human beings have within themselves the ability to experience God.

distinguish us from one another—race, gender, nationality, religious tradition— are seen as subordinate to these two. When we have this understanding of who we are first, before our ethnic, religious, economic, or national identifications— separation does not happen and violence does not come up. Instead, when we see who we really are, compassion and generosity spring up. Then we can celebrate and enjoy all that we are; including that which makes us different from one another.

WHO IS GOD?

We are talking about the greatest of mysteries when we attempt to speak of God; mystery that which is partly revealed and partly veiled—is an affair of the heart.

We come to know God the same way, we come to know love. Though we have never seen love, we know with certainty that love exists, because we have experienced it. God can best be known through experience—perhaps a moment of deep silence, an unexpected feeling of peace, a sense of an unseen presence...

The limitations of language become very evident when we talk about our relationship to God. The word relationship implies—two separate entities have become linked in some way. Instead if we say that we are always connected to God, again there is a problem with regard to language. Connection also implies that two entities, which were once separate and now have been brought together. This is not so. There is no possibility of existing separately from God.

What happens when we perceive separation from God or from other people— we fall into an us-them mentality? First, division comes. When there is division, fear comes. In Sanskrit, perhaps the oldest language of the world, the word used for fear means ‘two’. In reality, there is no ‘two’. Separation does not exist. You cannot separate God from any of God’s creation. Separation is an illusion created in the mind. When you recognize that you and God are one; all of God’s creation is one whole—fear vanishes.

WHAT IS SPIRIT?

When you feel very happy, have you noticed that something in you expands? When you are upset or angry or sad, have you noticed a feeling of contraction? Something in you shrinks? What is this something that feels as if it is expanding or contracting? It is the spirit. When you feel expansive and happy, when you feel energetic, that is the spirit. When you feel down and your energy drops, you are not experiencing the spirit.

There are certain qualities that are associated with spirit. We can call them spiritual values. Here is a short list:

We all carry these qualities within us. They only need to be skillfully kindled. Just by paying your attention on them with sincerity and without being hard on yourself, you will enhance them in your life and in the lives of others. There is no lack of love, no lack of anything, whatsoever in you.

According to an ancient story, there was a beggar who sat every day on a particular spot. When he died, the people in his village said that he had spoiled the piece of land where he sat every day. “Let us dig out the mud from here and throw it away,” they said. When they broke down his small hut and started digging where he used to sit, they found a box full of treasure. The poor beggar spent his whole life in poverty, if he had dug down just a little bit, he could have been a wealthy man.

Each one of us has come into this world to contribute, to express love, joy and peace, that we are, but we can remain unaware of our wealth for whole lifetime. Count yourself fortunate if you have awakened to the reality of who you are.

WHAT YOU CAN DO How to get back to your Self? Wanting to get back— having a passion to get back—is the first step, the first qualification. When you close your outside door, an inner door opens. When you keep thinking about people, situations and the circumstances of your life, you will be completely lost in that. Just for a little while, shut that outside door. Don’t think, “This person is bad, that person said something unkind.” In this you are lost. When you shut the door to these things, an inner door opens and one day there will be only love. That’s all. Innocence, goodness and love.

WHAT MORE YOU CAN DO Which of the spiritual values that were listed earlier are important to you? Is there any value on the list that surprises you—something that you wouldn’t have thought of as spiritual? Would you add anything? Make your own list by circling qualities that you would like to increase in your life and in the world. Add qualities that you observe in others and yourself, which you value. You might want to choose one quality from your personal list and focus on expressing that in your life for sometime. Be sincere. Let what you do or say come from your heart. Then take note of how you feel when you have expressed yourself in this way. Also notice—how the people around you respond.

These spiritual values are common to all major cultures and religious traditions, and to all people. Spirituality is a way of life based on these common values. To see the distinction between religion and spirituality, we can think of a banana. Religion is the banana skin; it gives us outer rituals and codes of conduct—a way of life. Spirituality is the banana, the quest for the source of life—going back to the source and knowing deep within us we are part of Divinity. Sometimes people mistakenly hold on to the skin and throw away the banana.

When this distinction between religion and spirituality becomes clear, the journey to the source begins. Then we become united to that principle that has enormous intelligence and orderliness, and lies beneath all existence, beneath every happening. All wealth lies within. Remember, there is no lack of love in you, no lack of anything whatsoever.

As we live the values of spirit—as we take responsibility, act with generosity and find our own peace—life attains its richest form. Without these values, life becomes shallow and we are dependent and unhappy.

Just as the nature of fire is to burn and the nature of water to flow; it is the nature of spirit to uphold and sustain life. When you pay attention to the spiritual values, when you bring them more fully into your life—you become solid and strong. You feel connected to all other human beings.

WHAT IS THE JOURNEY?

The spiritual journey is a homecoming; a journey to a centre space within you where love, joy and peace abide. Truth is often paradoxical: you are coming back to a home which you never left. It has always been a part of you, but you may have been unaware of this aspect of yourself or felt separated from it.

Your journey is for you and about you. It is unfolding right now—wherever you are and however this moment may be. The goal of the journey is to experience the love that you are and to express that love in the world.

As you bring the love, happiness and peace—that is your nature—more fully into your life (in ways we will talk about in the pages ahead) you will benefit yourself, people around you, people you don’t know and may never meet. And the benefit will come back to you.

Every action that you take, comes back to you. This is the law of karma. If you do something harmful, it comes back to you. If you do something beneficial, that merit comes back to you.

It is one thing to know—who you are, to have an intellectual understanding of your true nature. It is another to experience that abiding love, happiness and peace. For this, you need to understand the ways you may be robbing yourself of that experience.