ISmile299 – Integrating Big Self with Small Self

Our work, as practitioners, ultimately centers itself around our ability to shift our perspective from what is contracted to that which is utterly expansive. Once we see this new, more comprehensive view, our work evolves toward integrating this new vision with our old perspective. This dance back and forth becomes a way of living that incorporates a commitment to benefitting all beings. Sitting still regularly supports this realization. As it’s incorporated, it naturally, and spontaneously, begins to loosen whatever it is that might be binding us. This opening allows for us to hold both the manifest with the Unmanifest all at once as we live in the world. From here we can then, all at once, begin to support a conscious coexistence of separation and unity; conventional reality and Ultimate reality; the ego and what’s forever beyond the ego; what’s playing on the stage of mind with what’s in the audience; the many and the one. Michael describes how this process takes on certain characteristics over time, offering us a simple map of experience and development. We begin with a sense of pleasure, which offers us refuge from what threatens our egos. Over time, this gives way to an eventual resistance to what is going on. The ego sees that meditation actually prevents us from hiding and therefore, at the most primal level, we see that there’s no hiding. If we can stick with our practice at this point, we have the opportunity to open to what is without flinching. This stage of openness supports realization and a deep peace. Finally, integrating this peace, this Big Self awareness, into the habitual moves of our small self allows for us to become an embodied blessing that can truly serve all things.