Beyond our Form

Most of us have an easy time dealing with the reality of our physical body. We can see it, touch it, and do things with it. We are comfortably familiar with our body and with the different parts composing this body.

Even when we come across people who may not have an arm or a leg we can still see them. We can identify that they are still beings. They can still call themselves by their names. We can keep removing different parts of our body and as long as we have the mind, we can still say that I am this person. We can remove almost everything of our form and still be who we areexcept when it comes to what we call the mind, the brain. That’s where the difficulty really begins!

To think of ourselves beyond the mind

is the most difficult thing that we can do.

Once we say to ourselves, “I am not the brain. I am not my mind,” then all of a sudden this fear comes up and says “I’m gone. I’m nothing. Everything has vanished. I no longer exist. I have disappeared.”

But when we look at the mind, it is just a bundle of thoughts. So what are thoughts? Thoughts come and thoughts go. They come and go. They come from someplace and they go someplace. The mind is a bundle of these thoughts that come and go. Once we realize that the mind is a bundle of thoughts that come and go, then the mind can no longer deceive us. We know what it is made of. As for the brain, it is composed of cells just as our hand is. It is all composed of mattermatter in different forms.

So beyond the mind, beyond the form,

beyond what you see as a physical being,

is what we are.

We can call this thing that we are Consciousness. We can call it Self. We can call it God. We can call it That. We can give it no name. We can call it emptiness. We can call it fullness. We can call it love. We can call it peace. We can call it any name that we want to call it. Whatever name we call it, the name and the description it implies came from our mouth and from our brain.

But what we are has no name.

What we are has no form.

What we are

is what pervades everything.

What we are

has always been and will always be.

What we areis!

What we are is beingness.

We are manifestations,

beautiful manifestations,

of That.

In order to see this, we’ve got to step back. We have to step back, especially at the beginning, and gently remind our minds who we are. We gently remind this bundle of thoughts that we are That, that we are Consciousness itself.

Then when the mind or the brain gets involved in the melodrama of day to day life, in good things, in bad things, in indifferent things, we can always stand back. We can look at a terrible event. We can look at a wonderful event. We can look at a non-event.

We can look at whatever is happening

from a different perspective.