Life After Life?

Try this on for size. Clear your mind for a moment. I mean, as much as one can while living here on this planet in your body at this moment in time, given your personal history and all the many roles you play. Try to put aside all of the ideas you might have about who you are, because as it turns out, most of those ideas were put there by somebody else anyway.

It's a drag really, when you think of it, that most of the story that they told you about yourself - well, it just isn't true. And the story that you told you, most of that isn't true either. Bummer.

For just a moment, put aside what you do in the world, your job, the fact that you might be someone's son or sister or husband or girlfriend. At least for now, release yourself from being someone's neighbor or boss or employee. Or, whatever your thing is.

It's still pretty loud in there, isn't it? In your head, I mean. So let's see if we can go deeper.

The concerns you have about what you are doing, have just done or are about to do, let go of that for just a sec. There will be plenty of time to resume being that person. I promise you that you can go right back to the juggling act. If you were in the middle of a freak out about not having enough money or being too fat or not where you should be in life, or whatever, I promise you can pick that back up where you left off, but for now... well, this will only take a moment.

Still with me? Good. Okay, so I just want to ask you something. It's a very simple question actually. Who are you?

What is it exactly that looks out through your eyes? Right now, this person who is reading these words, I am speaking to you. Who are you?

I'm not so interested in the brain-body organism who thinks it is you, although I am sure that person is super cool. But that is not who I am addressing right now. There is a quality of awareness that is separate from your personal history and that is who I am seeking to connect with in this moment. I am speaking to that same quality of awareness that existed before we ever met.

To be a little more clear, I am speaking to that awareness inside of you that existed before you ever fell in love for the first time, before you got all of your grown up teeth. I am speaking to that timeless quality - that which looks out through your eyes, before you were even given a name. Can you hear me? I'm talking to you.

I am speaking to that thing inside of you that can never be harmed and never be threatened. I am speaking to the one who cannot be hurt by losing everything and does not need to gain anything. I am speaking to that within you that can never be more or less than what it is. That is what is looking out through your eyes. Pure consciousness - that is who I am talking to.

If your sense of it is only fleeting that is perfectly okay, but I know that you do have a sense of it. Let's not intellectualize it, just for a moment. Who is it that looks out through your eyes - that awareness - that "is-ness" that just is and always is?

Because, everything you own will fall away and eventually be destroyed. Every thought you have about yourself will in time become irrelevant. Your physical body is a story with a beginning a middle and an end. And it will end, all of it, someday. I can promise you that.

And yet, there is that "is-ness", that stillness, that which observes, that which does not yield to the laws of time, that which will not pass away and was never born. There is that whom I have always known in you and you have always known in me. We know each other on this level, all of us do.

Except... except for when we forget.

Just for this moment, right now, let's see if we can remember who and what we truly are :)

- Eric Allen Bell