Who we are is an energy of presence. That doesn’t seem to say much, does it? The Greek poet Hesiod began his Theogony with Chaos, commonly translated as “void”. It is also the Nothingness of the Zen Buddhism – the emptiness and the experience of solitude that the emptiness seems to deliver.
First Xaos (Chaos) came to be,
but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Earth),
the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones
who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos.
From the viewpoint of the ego-character, the personality that we have constructed throughout our lifetime, this nothingness is something akin to death, a black hole, the unknown. And the ego is not wrong here. This void cancels all egos and consumes all their energy. And, at the same time, it is the energy from which the ego derives any and all of its possibilities, its patterns, its energetic expression of relationship and creativity. The ego wants to be part of something, to have definition, meaning, importance, ownership, control – it seeks, like Zeus, to have dominion over all the living things of the earth and the earth itself. It is for this reason that countless numbers of stories have been generated describing angels who have fallen, or demons or creatures who have attempted to gain power, or to break away from Source or God, to proclaim power from within themselves, as if such things are possible without entering a world of suffering and despair. But suffering and despair are features of entertainment for humanity. We like hearing songs about it, watching movies about it, and watching others fall into it.
Entertainment is just one of the myriad of things in this world that provides both distraction and comfort, all serving to foreshadow that which we inevitably will have to face within our own selves. In this sense, everything you experience in the other or in the enemy or in that which you avoid, will return from within your own presence and you will no longer be able to run from it, because you will know that it is a monster of your own construction.
Each one of us, begins life on earth, running from the Chaos and the void – the very presence that we are, and we do this without knowledge of it, instead projecting the imagination of our fear into scary thoughts, monsters, demons, “The other”, that is our enemy or that which we want to avoid. Entire industries are built on our desire to learn about evil and monsters, the bad guys. We learn, over time, to become comfortable with the running over the hills, the mountains, and all the plains of the earth, and we begin to tell ourselves that we are looking for love, looking for friends, success, a good job – something that will make us happy, or relieve us from the fear that we don’t want to even look at. Some imagine that they aren’t running and think they are filled with courage by turning around and fighting the “other”. In the Matrix, warriors are said to be filled with courage. But behind the wars and the abandonment; behind the cowardice and courage that are the same, we forget that our presence is that from which we run, and that no matter where we go, the darkness still seems to follow. Some egos manage to deceive for entire lifetimes. But eventually, this can no longer happen. The awakening happens and the running must stop and the light begins to stream in between the shattered walls and defensive barricades. The awakening is when we let the doors of love open once again. And the experience is awful at first – terrible and unkind even. Only later do we experience its glory, and that it is the essence of the sacred, the kind of sacred experience that is impossible to communicate, except to those who have already experienced it.
Nothing on this earth exists without Chaos, from which all beings come and all beings return. As we emerge from Chaos, we are propelled into the running and into the absorption into a world that seems to promise hope and relief and success from the discomfort of physical and spiritual birth. The quality of our parents will determine how we learn to initially cope with life on earth, which isn’t easy and isn’t designed to be easy. We can let death snatch us at some point, and return that way, or we can return before death. If we return before physical death, we do receive the reward that is the bliss we are always seeking, the presence of our own true nature, the secret emanation of life itself. That is the reward for awakening – it is the emanation of presence and love that fills all forms, and all the earth. We are merging with Source and in that way, we become lights for all the world.
That is your true purpose and that is the purpose of the hero. Some call that God. But it is not the God of the religions, which are also designed to deceive and distort, and to keep running from and to.
Another word for Chaos or Void or Nothingness is Source. Another word for Source is Self, with a capital ‘S’. Whatever name you call it or label it with, the truth remains: the mind likes to observe that sun at a distance, because the mind is not equipped to comprehend it without breaking it down into abstraction, imagination, or utilitarian functionality. This is because the ego is about survival and in that sense, it resonates on the frequency of the physical world, a world that is contained by temporary forms that come to be and pass away, as the seasons and the years pass. The ego relates to these forms due to frequency pulse and so it clings to many of them, like an ant clings to other ants, and like a cloud remains with other clouds, and like the sky that doesn’t mix with the grass. The structure of the formal world is separation, division, and the preservation of form. The ego thinks it is small and only sees others as small egos as well. If you cling to egos, you become the ego.
There can be no diversity without separation and to force any such unity is to inflict violence on the world. The only way to “create” unity that doesn’t inflict violence is to merge with your presence that is love and an emanation of Source. That is how you “save” the world. No other way exists – political methods are violent. Social agendas are deceptive and distorted. All of them are dead ends of the labyrinth created by ego. How much are you really willing and able to love? Can you let go of fear and desire? If you can, then you can begin to be love. There is no other way. This often means letting go of attachments in relationships and various other energies that are remain in the lower frequencies. All is your choice. It is the choice you must make: to suffer or be love. There is no middle way.
Who we are is an energy of presence. Not consciousness. I have spoken about this many times before. Consciousness is a form of knowledge. Energy of presence is simply what it is: presence, and it is communicated through what the mind understands as the heart space. It is the connective interaction that we tap into, to flow with the universe, to experience love and acceptance unconditionally. It is that which remains fast in the middle of a flowing river, and even though debris and various forms of life, may stick on it for a while, eventually it lets them go because they are ready to go and so they pass on with the running of the water, the drama (running, in Greek) of the water. The presence doesn’t lose or gain anything based on what stays or what goes, what comes or what leaves. It is I AM that I AM in absolute experience. It is formless but creates all forms. It’s power needs no additions and so it has no desires. It has no requirements for its love. All else beyond it, will imitate it. Ego will imitate its neutrality with objectivism. Emotions will imitate its love with romance and attachment. Political mind will imitate its unity with violent control and manipulation. Warriors imitate courage and boldness, when all they are doing is operating out of fear. The world is a stage, and the world is participated in by people who want to continue to engage in theater and costume, to be driven by the fear of their own presence of the strange and uncanny presence of Self, World, and God.
All of this, as the world spins, is okay. There is no need to control or convince anyone of anything else. Your world is shaped by the formulations of your mind, the contrivances of your emotions, and the places where you find comfortable and comforting distortion. There is a time and place however where your soul is ready to emerge, like the butterfly from the worm, to become who you truly are, at all costs, and by all measures. At that time and place, the world no longer warps and diverges from your expectations and your dreams. At that time and place, you have come into reunion with who you are, forever and always.
And the river never stops flowing around your ankles, debris collecting for a time between your toes, if only for a moment. And then when the next arrives, all has fallen away, to make room for something no better and no worse, to replace them. Soon, you barely notice any longer. You only enjoy the light of the sun, even through the moon, and the stars that linger, you enjoy. What could feel better than the light? What could feel better than the light that shines through your very own heart?
Soul in the machine 
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