Your Final Answer to Everything

1

Getting to Know the Truth

Knowing has nothing to do with believing.

Although I am sure this book will be classified as a spiritual book, it is my sincerest hope that in the near future, what is discussed within these pages will be an everyday Knowing. We are pure consciousness having a human experience. It is our birthright, an obvious truth, and our most natural state. Until that day, however, I will have to settle for writing about this as though it were some outside, new concept, something to be contemplated and considered as a possibility, instead of an obvious truth, is to know pure consciousness is who we are.

Unlike religion this Knowing has nothing to do with believing, like religion would have you think, but instead it’s a recognition of the reality that exists. Pure consciousness is often viewed as something that we need to pursue, find, chase, or attain, but it’s really the recognition that is needed. We are pure consciousness expressing itself through the person as the person. When we become aware that we are the pure consciousness that comes before the person, we free ourselves of our limitations.

This Knowing is difficult to explain with the use of language, but I will make an attempt to come as close to the truth as I can by using words. I can relay this to you only from my personal experience. I am going to share my personal journey to knowing this truth in myself and attempt to make this relatable to others who want to know it. It is my hope that they will recognize it in themselves and that it will illuminate their path as it has illuminated mine.

The Yearning

There is this great yearning inside, but not all of us are ready to know it. This yearning is camouflaged as a need for something tangible. We are so mesmerized by the externals that we are unable to see this yearning, which is also felt as a longing for something. It makes us want to reach outside of ourselves to satisfy it. This reaching for external satisfaction is the very opposite of what needs to happen. The yearning is a call to look inward, and it is imperative that we start to answer this call to know the Truth about ourselves. We were born into this life for this very reason. This Knowing of the Truth is the most important thing we can do in this lifetime. It is the primary purpose of our lives. Anything else we achieve is secondary.

I clearly remember the moment when I made the commitment to find answers to my life and its meaning. I had a need for a deeper satisfaction from my life. My life was filled with feelings of inner turmoil, restlessness, and unfulfillment even though I had most of what I had strived to achieve. My life looked pretty successful to those on the outside, but internally I felt a deep yearning for something that could not be met by anything verifiable. For several decades, I spent many hours sitting and writing in my journal, reading spiritual books, and contemplating—digging and searching for the answer to life’s big questions.

I was passionate about getting the answers I sought. I felt driven by something unexplained, but I wasn’t sure if my longing was for some external experience or an achievement, or which of them felt more realistic. I did not know at the time that my search for answers was a need to satisfy an unconscious desire to resolve the deep primal pain of my past. Healing held the key to unlocking my Truth and gave me the fulfillment I longed to have. My search for answers in the external world was a distraction that kept me blind to my real need.

The yearning pulled me to unleash the unconscious pain of the past so that I could become free of it. Only then would I see my Truth clearly. The yearning wanted me to stop reaching outward, to sit in the silence within, and to watch as life taught me all I needed to know about my purpose—to align with the Truth of who I AM.

Whether we direct our attention inward or outward, the act of actively seeking comes from a person whose mind wants answers it believes will give it a sense of satisfaction. Ironically, anything that we do in the way of action pulls us further away from aligning with pure consciousness, which is our natural state where the answers lie. We are all guilty of this reaching toward the external world. It has its pull on us, and this is what we are told to do from the time we are born.

We are taught to achieve and strive for more because that’s what will make us better or happier. We are taught that the more of anything we have the better we feel. The more money we have the more powerful we feel. The more religious, spiritual, or educated we are the more respected we become. And, the more athletic or famous we are, the more important we appear. We are conditioned to believe this is true, and we focus on striving and achieving most of our lives, believing that once enough is attained, we will feel some sense of lasting fulfillment.

It took me a long time to see that what mattered more than any of these external desires was getting to know myself. I do not mean my personality, but my true Authentic Self. The Truth inside was calling to me. I did not see this for a long time. What I was seeking were answers outside of myself that got no response. I felt disappointed that nothing around me could fulfill this longing in me.

This confused me for quite some time until I was able to see that I was searching for the very thing that I already was. Then, I realized that I had to stop my outward reaching, turn my attention inward, and get quiet to get to know the silence, which I would call my Authentic Self. It took a while for me to find this silent presence, but I knew, on an intuitive level, that this was where I was being guided to look. Once it became clear to me where I should place my focus, I set my intention—I was ready to do whatever was needed to know myself more clearly.

This silent peace, that sits in the center of all of us, but most of us never turn inward to get to this truth, which is the pure consciousness from which we came out of. This is our original self, and what we are intended to align with in this lifetime.

I am known for having a very practical and skeptical side. Therefore, I felt the need for the answers to life’s big questions such as Who am I? and Why was I born? Even after I learned the answers through research, I didn’t just settle for what I had read, but I spent hours deep in contemplation. I wanted to experience these truths for myself.

Setting out to know my Truth took courage, perseverance, honesty, and passion. It required that I surrender and let go of everything that I believed to be true, including that practical and skeptical part of my personality. I would never be able to write and speak of this if I were not certain that this Authentic Self had nothing to do with my personality. This has to be experienced to be grasped, and until I experienced it, my only way of understanding that this Truth existed was by following my yearning and allowing it to guide me to who I truly was. Once I allowed myself to look inward by opening to seeing, pure consciousness rose up to meet me.

The way to know our Truth is to get quiet enough to sense the aware presence that resides within, around, and through each of us. I will illustrate how I was able to know this within myself, which will give you a place to start your journey. However, I want to make it clear that the experience of my journey is not a method. My intuitive guidance led me to my answers. Ultimately, I hope to show you how to open your door, but you will have to walk through it yourself. You can find your way by simply setting your intention, allowing, and committing to follow the guidance to know and experience your Truth.

Lost Souls

We are lost souls trying to find our way home. The unmoored self that feels detached from the truth is our desire to know who we are, and it is what brings about this feeling of deep yearning. The yearning is the longing to return home to the source of who we are—pure consciousness. This is our soul’s way of getting us to turn our attention toward it. This yearning intensifies in us as our desire for external gratifications increases. We are constantly distracted and seek mental stimulation from things such as video games, movies, the Internet, texting, cell phones, and television programmes, all in an unconscious effort to numb the yearning and longing, which are also disguised as boredom or restlessness.

If this yearning is misunderstood, we reach outside of ourselves for answers. This is futile because the answer lies within us. Our attention has been misplaced. We mistakenly think that finding a partner or turning to religion, possessions, physical and mental stimulation, or activities will satisfy what we yearn for. Nothing we can do externally will fill this deep longing, though we certainly do try. We continuously reach for food, drugs, sex, money, alcohol, and relationships to temporarily numb and suppress this unexplained neediness and restlessness in ourselves.

Some of us use religion to seek God outside ourselves. We hope to fill the empty void inside through rituals and faith. Some ultimately find the sought-after goal, not by receiving some external blessing, but by turning their focus inward to find God within themselves and liberating their Authentic Self.

For the vast majority of us, this reaching outside ourselves to find satisfaction is completely unconscious. Instead of satisfaction, we find that there is a ceaseless need for more. We turn to such things as a bigger house, a promotion, more education, or getting married—the list goes on and on—believing that these will make us completely happy. It might for a while, but then the same yearning or longing returns, and we start to look for more to meet its incessant need. We can spend a lifetime chasing our tails and thinking that the answer to our feeling of longing will be found in the external desires and goals that we set.

We continually feel we need more, or something else, to take away the restless wanting. When we know who we really are—the True Self—the restlessness and wanting cease in the recognition that who we are has no desires, no agenda, and we rest in the center of unsurpassed peace and joy. Only when we are in alignment with our Authentic Self does the need to fill this empty void cease. Once we are in recognition of this Truth, there is nothing else outside of it. The pure consciousness we are is perfect, whole, and complete, but until we know this for ourselves, we feel incomplete and disconnected. This Knowing is what yearns to be rediscovered.

Some will never want to know this Truth. They are satisfied with the distractions of the world. They love the challenge and excitement that life gives them. Even if they don’t like the lows, they love the highs enough to stay the course. And those who are happy to chase their tails, searching for external and temporary happiness, must be allowed to do so. They will not stop until they get tired or become frustrated with the chase, finally seeing that it leads nowhere.

They see that they are repeatedly back to where they started, feeling empty and unfulfilled. Some, until they get to this point—if ever in this lifetime—will continue to do what they have always done: live with the inability to see the truth. But those who do want to know what this longing is, listen up. It’s the soul urging us to look inside ourselves. It’s that little tug on the sleeve that says, Come look inside and get to know yourself, your True Self, the hidden self, the ignored, invisible self. It came first, before you were born, and will continue after this life ends, when you, the person, with your personal story, physical body, and personality cease to exist. This is your eternal self that has no beginning and no end. This notion has all the power you will ever need to live life to its fullest.

Who or What Yearns

Who or what yearns, and why do we ignore it? Is this yearning a desire for something more? There can be no exact and definite answer because we simply cannot know this for certain. It is my intuitive Knowing that we are pure Consciousness. We take on the form of a person with a mind and a body to have the human experience. It has been said and held as a fairly common possibility that Consciousness intentionally forgets itself as it plays the game called hide-and-seek.

Consciousness can be seen as we replicate what we are, which is 99.999999999% empty space. This empty space, which makes up most of our human form, has the same energy and vibration as that which is our Oneness, the same energy and vibration that is infused in everything around us, from a tree to a chair—including the empty negative space between them—is consciousness. Objects and the space between them are projections of our world through our concepts and beliefs. This is the Oneness in which everything that we see is connected through the same energy and vibration.

Every object and all living things, except human beings, are born out of this spaciousness and emptiness without the distraction of a mind. We, humans, have been given the challenge of judgment and the ability to create thoughts and beliefs. We have the creative ability to make our world appear in full agreement with our beliefs and conditioning, making our perception of the world distinct and unique to each of us.

There are many levels of consciousness, and low-level consciousness has been led astray. It somehow started to identify with the human mind. It has forgotten that the mind is just a tool to be used. Consciousness plays a game of hide-and-seek with our thinking mind and physical body. It becomes unconscious of its Truth and starts believing itself to be our limited selves as persons.

Our experiences as persons feel so real that we forget our origin. We believe that we are these individual persons who have to figure out life with the use of thoughts, beliefs, concepts, and opinions. This makes us feel alone and afraid in our world. We have forgotten our most basic truth, that we are consciousness appearing as a person with a mind and body. Without consciousness, there would be no person.

This identification with the mind is perceived as a separation from the pure consciousness that we are. Although the separation is not real, it feels real because the consciousness has handed over the power to our bodies and minds, believing that is all we are. This misperception of ourselves creates the sense that we are individuals, and as individuals, we believe we are left alone to figure out how to stand up and survive in this world of form.

We start to believe we are our thoughts, and this keeps us away from seeing our Truth. This is how consciousness hides itself—believing it is a person. Hidden, the seed of awareness, which has been placed in the vast emptiness that we are, silently witnesses. When this seed germinates, it is felt as the deep yearning for more. There is no deep yearning in pure consciousness. The yearning is consciousness seeking itself.

Some of us begin to realize that we want more than what our external world can give us. This external world was created and built by our minds. We followed it, believing that it is real, only to come to a dead end. Ultimately, we understand that nothing that is found in the external world satisfies the deep longing and emptiness we feel inside. Yet, it is this yearning that sets the wheel in motion for us to seek fulfillment. This is all a very grand play, with consciousness itself playing all the characters on the stage of life.

We have the realization that what we are seeking cannot be met by possessions, other people, or by altering our person to be or look ideal and perfect. Sometimes, life wakes us up in dramatic fashion through tough lessons of pain and despair. Feeling nothing can heal our pain, and we can then look inward. There, we discover this pure consciousness because life in the external world has simply become too brutally painful. However, we hope to meet the Truth in ourselves on our own terms and not on the terms of life’s harsh lessons.

We Are Afraid of the Truth

We ignore this yearning because we are afraid of it. We are afraid of what we will see if we look. We are afraid that we have to let go of our external fixations and attachments that we hold dear to our hearts. We are afraid that everything that we believe to be true will no longer be true. We fear that we will feel out of control without our ideas and beliefs, and we love our attachment to them. We do not want them to be exposed and find they have no validity. We are afraid to know the Truth in ourselves. We deny that something is missing, and we hope that somehow, this longing will go away if we appease it with external gratification, or we attempt to ignore what it is that we really feel.

I certainly did this for most of my life, and it is only in retrospect that I see how many times I was given the opportunity to look within, but I turned away out of fear of having to let go of what I believed was mine. I told myself I needed to be a mother and a wife first. I could not stray from these roles because they needed my full attention. I didn’t want to give up my attachment to my things and my possessions. I liked having the big house, fancy cars, parties, and extravagant vacations.

I did not want to see my Truth because it scared the crap out of me. It would mean that all my efforts to have the things I placed value on would have been in vain. I wanted only the good part of consciousness, the peace and joy, but I did not want to look into the buried beliefs I was holding onto. I did not want to face what life was showing me every day. It was less scary to keep going in the dark as I had been doing. After all, I appeared to be doing just fine by the external measures of success.

However, I knew there were many things that felt empty about the way I was living. There was this restless need inside of me for more. I kept telling myself that it was just around the corner, that I would figure it out without having to give up my attachments, attainments, and the possessions that I had earned through huge sacrifices. I was telling myself the story about what I had given up to gain them, how much effort and turmoil I had to endure to keep what I had earned, thus justifying my baggage.

Yet, I had this misplaced feeling of restrained sadness in the background that I could not understand. It did not match my current life situation because all I had was supposed to make me happy. I had gotten to the end of the fairy tale, and this should have been the line in the story that read, …and they lived happily ever after.

I was unwilling to take a closer look at my discontent even if it didn’t add up. I now know that I was afraid of what I would find if I looked into the hidden sadness, so I chose not to acknowledge it. My overlooked and suppressed emotions, both conscious and unconscious, showed up to point me to freedom. However, they made me uncomfortable, so I often chose to pretend they were not there, hoping they would go away. They did not. They showed up in my life to teach me what I needed to make conscious, heal, and dissolve in order to be free.

Whether we like what we see, want what we see, or are ready to heal what we see in ourselves, what we are being shown is simply the truth. These hidden emotions will never go away until they are faced and healed. Until then, they linger in the background of our lives. We have a bag full of tricks that we use to make them vanish temporarily, but they always manage to resurface.

Life has a way of gently nudging us at first and then not so gently pushing us until we wake up. The key is to look for all the gentle nudges, follow them, and not wait for the big push life eventually gives if we ignore them. I was being nudged, and I knew intuitively that if I did not take action, I would be given something much harsher to overcome. So I did something I had never done before: I made a commitment to see what life was teaching me, to honor every lesson that showed up, to see what is and let life’s nudges guide me out of the dark and into the light, regardless of my reservations and fears.

We are all afraid to see our Truth. To be free, we must surrender everything we know to be true. Everything is threatened, and that’s a scary place to be, especially if we identify with and are attached to our beliefs. Most of us identify with our material possessions, titles, ideas, self-image, status, and so forth. Seeing clearly that all of this has nothing to do with who we are flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught to believe.

Seeing our Truth does not mean that we need to rid ourselves of our possessions or titles. It is in the giving up our attachment to them that they no longer have the power to hold our attention. It takes courage to see this clearly. Yet, when we allow ourselves to see this, we understand and know that these possessions and attachments are figments of our imagination. They are people, ideas, and things that we believe have some real meaning and power in our lives.

To be free, we need to allow life to show us the way. We must surrender to our Truth in order to see it. Our egoic mind has control of the fear we feel about knowing our Truth. The truth is not sugar-coated. It is not all glamour. Some of it is hard to look at and to face. Our mind is afraid. Its fear comes from wanting to maintain control. It fears that discovering our Truth—that we are not our mind and its thoughts—means its death. Our mind has forgotten its purpose as a tool, so it creates fear to survive.

This does not want to be revealed. Our mind remains hidden in the background, pulling and pushing us with fear, desires, and distractions. Our work is to see this and to dis-identify with our mind. It is not easy, but it is simple. First, we must be willing to open up to the possibilities that are found in the truth of who we are. Becoming aware of the truth in ourselves allows us to receive the guidance we need each step on our way to freedom.

Finding Your Truth

Your truth is not to be searched for outside of yourself. It’s as though you were searching for the air you already breathe in order to stay alive. You cannot be alive in this body if what you are looking for did not come first. There would be no you. You would not and could not exist.

Although I no longer feel that there are real steps to take, or that this needs practice, there is a paradox in my saying this because it takes showing you the steps to take and practice to get to know your Truth. It seems absurd to say there are steps and practice when you already are the pure consciousness you are searching for. Your existence comes from this place, so taking steps to know it sounds unreasonable. We already are what we seek.

You look outside yourself, searching for answers, when all that is required is turning inward and recognizing that you are already perfect and whole. You have forgotten who you are and believe yourself to be this problem-ridden person. The mind is what obscures your being able to see yourself. The mind has no power over you; however, you have forgotten that and relinquished all your power to it. Therefore, it takes practice and some measured steps to remember to align with who you are because you tend to be forgetful of this since your mind keeps you distracted, averting your attention.

The awareness always resides within you and witnesses everything that you do in each moment. This is your key to seeing that there is something that is aware of you as this person. Try seeing this in yourself in this moment. If you have never done this, it may feel strange. However, this is your ability to know there is something that watches and knows your every move, thought, emotion, physical sensation, idea, and opinion. It can see you now, and it knows everything about you in every way. This is the silent watcher that sees all and everything. This is the real you—your True Self.

However, your silent witness is subtle and easily overlooked, so you end up searching for the obvious truth. You search for the air you breathe. If you are able to witness yourself, you will notice, over time, that there is a flow inside of you that is not identified with your thinking mind or even associated with your emotions. It has no interest in the events that