“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment ” - Buddha

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

“Life is Now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be” - Eckhart Tolle

“Before Abraham was, I Am.” - Jesus (John 8:58)

You cannot really argue with that line-up can you! It is like a who is who of spiritual awakening history.

The phrase ‘I Am’ has been one of the most controversial in history. Jesus repeats it several times in the Bible including the mind bending statement “Before Abraham was, I AM”. It is also mentioned directly and indirectly through the work of Eckhart Tolle which I have gained huge wisdom from.

All spiritual seekers and religion founders speak of the same one truth and its spiritual awakening. It is the same truth just expressed by different voices. It is similar to hearing about a football match from fans of opposing teams. Each have their own interpretation but ultimately they all saw the same game. The phrase “I am” means a breaking apart from the dimension of time. When you are in time you are subject to suffering, illness, dis-ease and on the positive side you can plan for the future and learn from the past. When you are in presence in the state of “I am” or “being” you cannot experience illness. Illness requires time. Jesus experienced timelessness and knew, as Zen Masters do today, that the mind cannot comprehend it so bypassed the mind. A great teacher will always tailor his teachings to the student.

“I am” is the state of a mind before it judges something which is the ultimate spiritual state – empty of preconceived notions. You are a human BEING remember, BEING right now. “I am X” means that something is not x which must be so it can be compared too. This is the first phrase which splits the world into two and takes away oneness. When something is described, there must be an opposite to compare it to or it could not be. This is why Lao Tzu says “Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other.” I am is totally barren of judging. I am X brings multiplicity into the world.

When Jesus uttered the mysterious and profound phrase “Before Abraham was, I AM”, he knew that people would try and understand mentally in the dimension of time what this means but there would be no answer. How could you be in this moment, before something that has already happened? In this way it is similar to a Zen poem which has the aim to awaken you because there is no logical explanation. For example, when your foot touches the ground it is the foot feeling the foot. That one was a huge awakening for me.

It does not mean that he is God as common interpretations will have you believe. Jesus was a man like us all. He had emotional times like in the garden of Gethsemane, got angry at the people selling things in the church etc. These common interpretations come from trying to logically interpret what Jesus meant when the truth is actually ridiculously simple and you will only find it when you stop looking. Jesus is consciousness, perfectly awoken. And since he “Is” that means that he is now. Jesus understood that the spirit can never die but the form, or what he calls “being of this world” can die and shift form whenever it wants to. His form died but his spirit is here.

You are essentially presence. Whenever you are not presence, you are mind. When you are in your mind you are in the past and future so the present gets put on autopilot. The only place of possible change in your life is put on autopilot.

I remember starting to search for deep truth around 14-16 years old. I read books of people like Marcus Aurelius and time management and whilst they were good they felt somewhat skin deep and superficial and I had yet to find anything truly deep.

One day during my university life I was in a book store and saw the book “The Power of Now” on a bookshelf and bought it impulsively without ever having heard of the author or book previously (scarily similar to what happened to someone that I know). After reading it for a while I realised the deep truth in it and experienced alignment with the now for the first time.

It was incredible, everything was fresh and I was aligned with it all, a huge spiritual awakening. I knew that everything was good in the universe and that nothing external could beat this knowing that all was good mixed with deep joy. I remember taking a job after that shuffling files and at dinner times I would walk around the local streets finding trees and plants and having experiences like Moses with the burning bush. You can sense their aliveness by sensing them for the first time not through labels. When you look at something without a label and are totally focused on it, you sense your inner connection and can harm nothing as you know it as yourself.

Since that day I have read the book, I pretty much every week at least once. That was years ago too as I am now 20. It has bought a dimension of depth into my life through its spiritual awakening that I never had before and I see around me many are still blind too.

It taught me that this moment TRULY is the only moment there ever has been or ever will be. Consider this. Have you ever experienced something that did not happen in this moment? Of course not. Jesus WAS before Abraham, he WAS in a physical body and he is now. Or you could say Jesus is before Abraham, Jesus is the leader of Christianity and Jesus is now. Feel free to replace Jesus with any name/label.

I cannot tell you how fulfilling it is to know the deepest truth for yourself. You have to experience it (in this moment I may add). It is so fulfilling to know that every spiritual path leads to the same truth and there is ways for humans to find this as I did.

“I am” is the deepest spiritual awakening truth there is. An idea is to sit in meditation and say as a mental mantra “I am”. Try it a few hundred times 2 times a day for a week and it will give you a spiritual awakening.It might not happen during the mantras it usually happens as you go about your daily business and the statement is allowed to seep into your deeper consciousness.

Awareness is the basic overall aim of meditation. The problem with a meditation beginner is that their mind is focused on things. It’s pretty hard to break that habit. At the beginning you have to learn to focus your mind on objects. This is why many people recommend focusing upon your breath or a physical object at the start. There is of course levels after this.

Buddha started on breath awareness but he didn’t just remain concentrated on his breath all of his life. He transcended that teaching and moved on after it has served its purpose. If you say to a rookie spiritual seeker “yeah, just become aware of your awareness” they will just look at you blankly and try and make some kind of mental construct of concept out of it. You have to lead the mind slowly.

When you meditate upon things you are still not completely aware of the stillness and formless within but it’s at least a start. It concentrates your mind and at least severs the idea that you are body, thought or anything else. When you’ve totally focused on something your mind is still.

As you get used to this state and master it you will experience the state of inner stillness and its beauty which is beyond words. Infinitely more beautiful than any physical possession. It’s the connection with what you truly are. You see it in someone who has a child and suddenly becomes more vibrant, alive and childish looking. They’ve connected with source and experienced stillness of the mind.



Removing The Crutches

Now you have realised a still mind, you are ready to take off your crutches and allow it to become your natural state. What you do is switch the focus from external things (the object of your focus) to awareness of awareness itself. This sounds complicated but it’s you completely natural state under all the mind made noise.

My technique for doing this is that I sit in a cross-legged state in a dark room. I do this so that I can stop my mind focusing on objects and I close my eyes to gain as much focus as possible. Then I sit at the gate of my mind where things enter and leave and just become aware of the inner stillness. At the start my mind is often busy and I have to acknowledge and become aware of thoughts. Whenever you realize that a thought has took my attention elsewhere on a little journey I just watch it, forgive it until it vanishes and return to silence.

You will eventually get to the point where you are just pure timeless awareness. You are not aware of a body or thoughts. It’s blissful. You can tell how close you are by the degree of lightness and inner peace you feel. When you connect with that state the ecstasy just multiplies the longer you say there, deeper and deeper. It might scare you at first with its power, go into it in degrees.

If at any point you feel like the mind noise is all too much, just internally and silently forgive and accept your state. Then move on from there. I can’t say how long it takes to get to that place because it requires the acknowledgement of timelessness and forgetting your space in time as that is a thought form.



The Stateless State

Once you’ve learned how to access this state it will become more and more prevalent in your life. You will feel an inner peace with you wherever you go that you can amplify at any time and a knowing of being one with all (coincidentally my favourite type of pizza). If you are struggling to find an answer then to this place and silence your mind and the answer will be given to you. God speaks his truth in feelings to a silent mind.



Your Minds Resistance

Your mind will always resist going to this place, ALWAYS! You will find it making up ridiculous excuses just to stop and distract you. It does this because it is fighting for its existence. It wants control of you and at the moment it has it. Old habits die hard. If you want mind control then you will just have to see through this and put yourself into meditation. That’s the hardest part.

One night before sleep, after gaining a great amount of control back from my mind, I was visualizing that I was in my body the following morning getting out of my bed turning off my alarm and going for a shower. Simple, right? Well when I got up the following morning I lay in my bed and I was aware of my mind telling me that I’d reset my alarm for an earlier time and that I should go back to bed. This wasn’t the “close your eyes for just.. another .. second” thought. It scared me a little and I got up. This all happened after just an hour of deep meditation daily, for about 3 or 4 days in a row.

Your mind is full of illusory concepts which it believes are reality. Reality is in constant flux while concepts remain rigid. Something had to give. I’ll take this as a good sign though as I read somewhere that Buddha saw the illusion of horsemen on a chariot galloping towards him just before he reached enlightenment as his mind was trying to fool him.



Appreciation

I found that without any conscious effort, I just started appreciating things massively. My fear of death just started to fall to the side in the place of gratitude and deep love of all, and sleep became incredibly deep and restoring. I’d awaken extremely alert as if I’d slept for years. I started to feel and know that life was living through me rather than the other way around, I’d touched the immortality of the human spirit and it is breathtaking.

A couple of days ago, I bought myself a winter coat with matching hat and it made me feel so amazing. It was as if gratitude and love just burst through my chest and swallowed me up. and after it had died down I just had no fear and it’s aura stayed with me for days. Go to this place, it’s the most beautiful, natural restoring thing you can do for yourself and others who come into contact with you.