The Great Inclusion

Self-inquiry begins with finding out who we are not, but this is not where self-inquiry ends. After the Way of Subtraction comes what I call the Great Inclusion.

After we have pulled our identity out of thought and belief and personality and ego and seen that there is something more primary, identity starts to rest in awareness itself. Of course, we should not let the mind fixate on an idea that says, 'I am awareness.' That idea may be useful, but that idea also is a limiting fixation. Of course, it's much more freeing to identify yourself as awareness than to identify yourself as a thought form or an ego or a personality. It's also freeing to see that everybody else is awareness, too. But we should not get stuck in a new concept, in a new way of identifying ourselves. 'Awareness' is just a word. Another word for awareness could be spirit. Awareness (or spirit) is something that has no form, no shape, no color, no gender, no age, no beliefs. It is transcendent of all that. Awareness or spirit simply means a beingness, a sense of aliveness which transcends all of our form.

I'm using this concept of 'awareness' interchangeably with the concept of 'spirit.' If you look within, you can notice for yourself in this moment that awareness (or spirit) is not resisting thought. There is thought, but awareness is not resisting thought. There is feeling, but awareness is not resisting feeling. There is an ego-personality, but awareness is not resisting the ego-personality. Awareness is not trying to change things; awareness is not trying to fix anything. You can start to notice that there is this presence of awareness within you, which is not trying to change your humanness. It's not trying to alter you. Just as important, it's not trying to alter others. This awareness is totally inclusive. It is a state of being where everything is okay simply the way it is.

Paradoxically, the ego-personality always needs to experience this state of not needing itself to be fixed in order to come into harmony and peace. The ego-personality always needs to come into a direct experiential contact with a presence that is not trying to change it. It's amazing for a human being to realize his or her true nature is not trying to change their human nature. This allows the human nature to rest, to no longer feel separate from its source. We start to feel unity within ourselves. We stop feeling that we are divided within ourselves, because we see that ultimately there is no dividing line between awareness, or spirit, and our ego-personality. There's really no separation between the two.

When we start to let go into awareness or spirit, we start to recognize that that is who and what we are. We start to see that everything in existence is simply a manifestation of spirit. Everything is an expression of spirit, whether it's the chair you are sitting on or the floor you are lying on or the shoes you wear. Everything is an expression of spirit: the trees outside, the sky, everything. In the same way, the body that you call 'you,' the mind, the ego, the personality -all are expressions of spirit.

When our identification is caught in these various forms, the result is suffering. But when, through inquiry and meditation, our identity starts to come back to its home ground of awareness, then everything is included. Everything starts to be seen as a manifestation of spirit, including your humanness, with all of its strengths and weaknesses and all of its funny little quirks. You discover that your humanness is in no way separate from the divinity within you, which is what you actually are. I call this the Great Inclusion because we start to realize that our truest nature includes our whole human experience, that our human body, mind, and personality are nothing but an extension of spirit. It's the way spirit moves in the world of time and space. That's what a human body-mind is: an extension of spirit in time and space.

Now please don't try to understand this with your mind. This is really not understandable in the mind. This knowing resides at a deeper point, at a deeper place within ourselves. Something else understands; something else knows.