What we ultimately are in our Ground of Being is beyond description, so all I can do here is suggest what it might be. The final answer to the question “Who am I?” is found by waking up to the totality of our true nature by whatever name we give it. From the awakened view, only this awakened view is the final resolution to the question of who and w

Practice Twenty-Two •Today, simply notice how your relationship with a given experience, or even with your mind, determines your quality of being. •Pay attention to how your relationship with your experience is changeable. You can be upset that your mind is racing at a hundred miles an hour or you can acknowledge, “Okay, my mind’s racing right now.

With heartfelt devotion and focus, yet without referring to a thought, image, or idea to tell you who you are, rest in the always and already existing silent and dark void—the mystery of Being.

Turn within and notice that there is no I or me—no one is doing the looking. The silent and mysterious presence—the manifest expression—of Being looks out upon the world. Notice that this Ground has no name, no agenda, and nothing to gain or lose. It is the gaze of eternity looking into the world of time.

We can’t dictate our next experience or even what the next thought is going to be, but we can become conscious of our relationship with whatever experience happens. So it’s important not to mistake taking responsibility with blaming yourself for how you feel. Nor are you to blame others for how you feel at any given moment. Rather, taking responsib

The paradox of contemplative insight is that we come to a flowering of new identity by emptying ourselves of our old identity. This emptying is not something we do, it is something we allow to happen.

Imagine that all existence, all forms of life are nothing but condensed energy. While there is good scientific evidence for this, I am not concerned here with metaphysical speculation as much as I am with using the term energy to evoke the latent ability within us all to understand unity. Like (and as) love, unity is the most intimate and connected

We all have what you could call an energetic body, and the more present we are, the more we feel this subtle sense of aliveness. If you become truly present right now—and I don’t mean straining to be present or making effort, but simply opening all your senses, relaxing into a more open state of being—you’ll feel a subtle sense of presence.

Therefore, from the Ground of Being each moment is experienced directly, with no distorting lens of past conditioning and no sense of time. Because it is a timeless state of only the eternal Now, the Ground of Being sees through the eyes of eternity and feels through the constant renewal of the senses. Each moment is as a birth moment, with all its