The Greatest Secret

“The mind will never discover who you are because the mind is the cover-up of who you are. It’s only by letting go of the mind that you will discover who you are.”

Lester Levenson, from Happiness Is Free, volumes 1–5

Trying to see the truth with your mind is like trying to see something with a blindfold on. You need to drop the blindfold to see, just as you need to drop the mind to see who you really are.

“Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.”

Mooji, from White Fire, second edition

Without even realizing it, most of us are constantly focused on the noise of thoughts coming from our mind. Awareness is always present, but when there’s a break from the noise of thoughts, it’s much easier to notice it. When thoughts stop, we become consciously aware of Awareness, which has been existing silently in the background all along.

The Mind’s Cover-Up

“We’re so used to knowing ourselves through our troubles, our dramas, and our obsessions that awake awareness, which is our true nature and our basic goodness, is hard to accept as our true identity.”

Loch Kelly, from Shift into Freedom

“Awake Awareness” is the name that Loch Kelly uses for Awareness, and it is just one of the many different names used by teachers past and present to describe what you are: Awareness, Awake Awareness, Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Being, Buddha Nature, Christ Consciousness, God Consciousness, Spirit, the Self, Infinite Being, Infinite Intelligence, Unlimited Being, True Nature, True Self, Presence of God, Presence, Presence Awareness, Pure Consciousness, Pure Awareness, and many others. All these words are describing exactly the same thing—the Awareness that you are.

“We’re so smart and our lives are so complex that it’s hard to believe that simply discovering awake awareness could be the solution to our suffering. It’s also hard to believe that the most important discovery is already here within us; we don’t have to go on an odyssey to find it, earn it, or develop it.”

Loch Kelly, from Shift into Freedom

“The great joke is the simplicity of it all.”

Peter Lawry

It’s a great joke because what we truly are, what is closer to us than our very breath, has eluded the majority of humans for thousands of years.

We’ve missed the simplest, most wonderful discovery because our thoughts have a hypnotic effect on us that keeps us in our head, oblivious to Awareness. We usually give our attention exclusively to the thoughts in our mind and to everything we perceive through our senses, and with our attention diverted we miss what is always present—Awareness.

“There is nothing wrong with the body or the mind. The only problem is that we identify our witnessing presence, consciousness, with them. As long as we identify this witnessing presence with the body and the mind, there is no room for this presence to reveal itself in all its glory.”

Francis Lucille, from The Perfume of Silence

“For a moment, take off the persona. It’s just an item of clothing, threadbare, stained with years of wear and tear.”

Pamela Wilson

“To believe that our Self—luminous, open, empty Awareness—shares the limits and the destiny of the mind and body is like believing that the screen shares the limits and destiny of a character in a movie.”

Rupert Spira, from The Ashes of Love

“People think they are a human being, but they’re the Infinite Being. They’ve mistaken their identity, but who they really are has never left them and is always present.”

David Bingham

Your mind appears only when you have a thought, and it disappears after the thought has ended. But Awareness never appears and disappears. Awareness is always present, even when you’re asleep. It feels like Awareness disappears when you go to sleep and appears again when you wake, and yet you know when you’ve had a great night’s sleep because you say something like, “I slept really well. I slept like a baby.” How do you know that you slept like a baby? You know it because Awareness was aware and present the entire time you were sleeping.

When you ask yourself the question, “Am I aware?” immediately Awareness is noticed. It didn’t appear; it was always present. You simply took your attention from thinking and put it on Awareness, and so you became consciously aware.

Everything other than Awareness eventually ends or dies. Without exception, all material earthly things come and go, appear and disappear. Every single thing on earth—bodies, cities, countries, oceans—appears and eventually disappears. Take a moment to think about it, and you’ll see that nothing remains. It’s all temporary, even planet earth itself, the sun, the solar system, even universes. Nothing is here forever, except for one thing—Awareness. You, Awareness, are here forever!

Our bodies age, yet when people get older they’ll say they don’t feel they’ve aged, and that they feel the same as they always have. They’ll admit that their body feels older, but the one they feel themselves to be deep down doesn’t feel like it has aged at all. Without realizing it, they are sensing the timeless Awareness that they really are.

“When you remember your past, your childhood, who is it that remembers? I remember. ‘I’ is that which knows the experience, remembers the experience.”

Deepak ChopraTM, M.D.

The “I” that we call ourselves at five years old, fifteen years old, thirty years old, and sixty years old is the ageless Awareness that has witnessed our entire life.

Five years old: “I … am going to school soon.”

Fifteen years old: “I … can’t wait to graduate.”

Thirty years old: “I … just got engaged.”

Sixty years old: “I … am not ready for retirement yet.”

“Self-realization is to see that the changing appearances on the surface of life are arising within the permanent, ever-stable Awareness that one truly is and has only ever been.”

David Bingham, from Conscious TV

“This is not a fairy tale. This possible thing is as real as a tree, as real as politics, as the roots that hold the tree to the ground, as real as the newspaper and its stories. It is as real as the Red Sox, as the price of gas, as a fight with your in-laws, as real as a tuition bill … The truth is, it is more real than these things, and yet it is hardly seen, hardly felt, let alone directly known.”

Jan Frazier, from Opening the Door

“There is not one of us who is not in direct touch with, in possession of, an infinite Beingness that’s all perfect, all present, all joyous and eternal. There is not one of us who is not in direct contact with That right now! But due to wrong learning, by assuming, over the ages, concepts of limitation and by looking outwardly, we have beclouded the view. We have covered over this Infinite Being that we are with concepts of, ‘I am this physical body,’ or, ‘I am this mind,’ or, ‘With this physical body and mind, I have heaps and heaps of problems and troubles.’”

Lester Levenson, from Happiness Is Free, volumes 1–5

“This is the same state that most religions refer to as ‘liberation’ or ‘salvation,’ because only in this state of true self-knowledge are we free or saved from the bondage of mistaking ourself to be a separate individual, a consciousness that is confined within the limits of a physical body.”

Michael James, from Happiness and the Art of Being

Consciousness or Awareness is also known by some religions as the presence of God. When a person has a divine experience—an experience where they feel they were touched by God—the individual mind and ego drop, which then reveals Awareness, or the presence of God. There is a feeling of pure love, infinite peace, beauty, happiness, and bliss, which cannot be mistaken for anything but divinity.

“In reality, we are the Infinite Being rather than the human being. We are the Infinite Being, having a human experience.”

David Bingham

In many ways, the truth of life and of ourselves is actually the complete opposite to what we have been taught. Instead of looking outward to the world for happiness, for fulfillment, for answers and truth, we need to turn and look inward, because it’s only in that direction that we will find everything we’re looking for. Our breathtaking world, and everything in it, is meant to be enjoyed to the fullest, but the happiness, joy, love, peace, intelligence, and freedom that are Awareness—your very nature—can only be found within you.

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