Richard Shelmerdine

You are invincible. I don’t mean that in a ‘build your self-confidence way either, you are actually infinite and eternal. If somebody had told me this 2 years ago I would have laughed myself all the way to a Biology class. I realised this because of a few observations that I made and then internalized. These were not particuarly in any order but they all occured at roughly the same time in my life.

You are not your thoughts – Do you ever find yourself experiencing emotions that you do not want to? Then you have probably been identified with your thoughts at some point. Your thoughts come and go as do moods, emotions and beliefs over the years. Once you realise this and actually internalise it you see how futile it is to attach yourself to something that will ultimately fail you and change because that is its nature.

I got most of these ideas on this area from Eckhart Tolles excellent book The Power of Now and later A New Earth. He explains that we can actually create and view our thoughts so that means we cannot be them. Can you sit there and view your thoughts without becoming attached to them? Without letting them carry you? If you can then you have disidentified from the mind. If not I recommend trying doing this for 5 minutes a day for a month and seeing the radical shift that happens inside you in relation to your thoughts. This is not for the faint of heart and may be one of the most difficult things you ever do but the rewards are undescribable. You have been warned.

You are not your body – Almost everyone identifies or has identified with their body to some degree. Your body is what you are taught is essentially you from school age and this makes sense right? “This is Richard” Well think of it like this. You are 10 years old and you say to yourself “I am my body, this is me”. At that moment you can take that in. What happens as you age is you look back at age 20 and think “How can I be my body if my body is changing constantly? My body may have changed over the years but I am still the same person aren’t I?”. Most people know that something deeper is the real, original unwaivering you but are either too afraid or do not know where to turn next.

You are not your conditions – Many people explain that their conditions are themselves. I am a tough worker, I am a mother etc. What if you stop being one of those things? What are you now? Nothing when previously you were something? That is impossible and silly. Conditions are the same as thoughts and everything else in the world of form. They are transient and change all the time.

Just what am I? – When you take away your identification with mind and body what is left? You are. The original you that never changes and is immortal. You will one day dissolve from your physical body and return to source and that is something that has to be accepted. You will still live. You were there before your physical birth and you will be there after it. Were you given life? By your mother perhaps? No. You were not given life, you are life. And if you are not given something then it cannot be taken away from you because you do not have it.

The question that really got me to realise this deeply and not just on a logical level is this. Where was I before I was born?. It was a real a-ha moment for me when a deep truth reveals itself and your consciousness goes up a level. It felt fantastic. I thought well I must have been around in some way because I could just not be created from nothing. I was formless, part of consciousness and then was born into form. This led me to a series of deeper and more meaningful truths.

I realised that the eternal life that I am beyond body and mind and form expresses itself in many physical forms that are constantly changing. We are all expressions of that consciousness.

Formlessness creates form. This is simple to understand. An invisible force that is formless gives birth to a flower from a seed. The flower was not there before. In this way we are creators. We are in the dimension of formlessness yet operate in the dimension of form.

Why does there appear to be lots of physical people if there is only one unified consciousness?

I struggled with this question for a long time because I was attacking it from the wrong angle. I believed in a certain level that yes there was one unified consciousness that showed itself in different physical manifestations that returned to the formless state from which they came. Then I listened to a podcast from a great blogger, Steve and realised that I actually was making a huge silly assumption.

How do I know that any other physical people that I percieve are actually conscious? I can never access their consciousness. So I have to stop being so sure that they have their own motives and a fragment of consciousness etc and are not just physical reflections of me. When I stopped doing this, I realised that I could be the only conscious being in the universe. This led me to a strange feeling of how I should approach life at this level.

A great analogy came to me and it went something like this.

“If I was playing a game of football and I was blindfolded and was not aware of any other players, should I play as if I am the only player on the pitch?”

The answer was yes because I can never be sure if there is anything outside of my perception and acting so would be silly because that is not my personal experience. This gives you a real feeling of power in your life. There is no longer other people out there who have their own motives and desires and are competing with me. I am the one and only conscious being that I am aware of and should act accordingly. This also ties in well with the Law Of Attraction when considering what if two people have conflictiong beliefs, who wins? There is only my beliefs, thought and actions.

What will be your ultimate contribution?

When you dissolve your physical body and return to the formless from which you were created what will your contribution be. What the cliche says is true. You can’t take anything with you. All your physical things that you accumulate in your life time you never really own because ownership is an illusion so what should we strive for? We should strive for contribution to the greater good, God, Source or whichever name you wish to give it. When your life is over your contribution counts. If there is an afterlife of any sorts you will take with you the things you have given to people and the change you have made on a personal level.

Where to start?

These are the books that really changed me from a hard line skeptic to a more spiritually connected person.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Tao Te Ching
StevePavlina.com – The site in general

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