(Brilliancy as a subtle essential substance)
What we will be doing instead is participating with the universe in the universe enjoying its own beauty. Why not?
The presence of an essential aspect manifests as a substance, as subtle matter, only through the direct and immediate experience of that aspect. This direct experience of each aspect has characteristics of color, texture, taste, and so on. In terms of color, Brilliancy is brilliant, which is not one of the known colors.
Brilliancy usually flows in the body through the cerebrospinal fluid in the spinal column. As such, it is directly involved with the nervous system and the brain, so it affects the functioning of thought. Imagine Brilliancy flowing through your synapses; imagine feeling it in your nerves. Imagine the sensation of exquisite smoothness and purity coursing through your nervous system, lighting it up, setting it ablaze with the brilliance of intelligence. Like a lubricant or a conducting substance of complete smoothness in your nervous system, Brilliancy dissolves any resistance in the nerves with its smoothness and flow, with its incredible ease, speed, and penetrating power.
(The taboo of living and shining your truth)
The basis of hurt is the sense of being cut off from oneself, from one’s own truth. That has to happen first, before you can be hurt in other ways. If you are not cut off from truth, you can’t be truly hurt. But if you are cut off from truth, then you will be hurt by all sorts of things. But those hurts are just provoking the deeper hurt. They’re a reflection of it.
What we are talking about here is a taboo that runs really deep in our society. It seems to me that there is a taboo against knowing and living and shining with your truth, even more so than there is about sexual things.
But that is not new; society has always been like that, and it’s probably going to be like that for the next few million years. You can take that as a given.
Instead we can ask ourselves, “What is the most intelligent way to go about this so we can be the truth of what we are? How can we use the present situation in the most intelligent way possible to support ourselves and our endeavor—and hopefully benefit society as well?”
(Being yourself and what Brilliancy actually is)
AH: I mean that being yourself 5 percent of the time is pretty good for most people. Really. I am not kidding. If you can be yourself 5 percent of the time, you at least know what it is like to be yourself. A lot of people haven’t even got the vaguest idea what it is like to be themselves. In fact, the majority of people don’t even know when they are not being themselves.
Brilliancy is an actual part of who we are. It’s like your stomach. You don’t say a person is stomachy. A person has a stomach. It’s part of being a person, of having a body, that you have a stomach. It is the same with Brilliancy. You can’t say a person is brilliant or not brilliant. You say that a person is not being that part of themselves, that they are not in touch with their Brilliancy.
If you are really normal, you won’t have to take yourself to be anything; you won’t bother about what it is that is you. Who you are, whatever you are—you won’t need to think of it.
(Letting go through understanding, not effort)
AH: Well, maybe at some point you will let go, but the letting go will not happen by trying to let go. The letting go will happen by staying with the truth, understanding the longing, where the longing takes you. You don’t let go of anything, or anybody, by trying to let go. The letting go is a natural process of dropping away when the situation is understood completely. Does that make sense?
S: Yes. AH: But you never let go. I never experienced myself letting go, never in my life—that never happened. I understood certain things, and through the understanding, transformation happened, things changed, see? But I didn’t feel, “I am letting go of this.” It is not exactly like that. It’s more like through understanding, a certain part starts dissolving or changing. So it seems that what you’re feeling is the important thing. So you are feeling the emptiness and the longing for the father you did not have. Right? So you feel you’ve wanted it for a long time. [Stu-dent is nodding.] What is it specifically you wanted that you didn’t have? S: I just wanted him to love me, and to have contact with him and to have him love me. And to just be who I am and have him get it.
(How essence is mirrored through parental presence)
As children, we don’t know that we have Essence, with all its aspects and qualities. A young child cannot express and embody the functions of the essential aspects. She needs them to be expressed, to be shown, by the human beings who take care of her. She first sees them in her parents, who, as they embody and express these qualities and functions, become mirrors for her own innate qualities.
It can be an immense, powerful presence if what is needed is support, protection, or strength. Or it can manifest as a very delicate, smooth, gentle, and exquisite presence when guidance and intelligence are needed. Or it can manifest as a very soft and responsive immediacy when what is needed is a father who is flexible and soft, who has gentleness, attentiveness, and love.
(The intelligent luminosity at the core of everything)
You experience it by perceiving that at the core of everything there is a living, brilliant intelligence. It is manifesting in everything all of the time, directing everything. It is not directing it in the sense of “do this, do that,” but directing it by making it happen. It is the intelligence that, by its manifestation, brings out life, brings out appearance, brings out all kinds of things.
Everything is clean, which is what I meant by elegant; everything is very sharply, smoothly, and elegantly delineated. There is no dullness on the edges. Everything is bright, clean, and pure. Everything is washed with some kind of pure oil. That is the sense of clarity and brightness you are experiencing as you regain your own eyes through integrating Brilliancy.
Fire or flame usually indicates an aspiration toward something, but this aspiration is originating from the spontaneous depths of the soul and not from the mind. Gold is the color of truth on the dimension of essential experience. Golden flame is then an aspiration toward the truth, and golden fire is a strong aspiration and movement toward truth and away from falsehood and lies. This is a wonderful orientation. It is actually the specific orientation of our work. And we see that this orientation cannot come from the mind—it has to be real; it has to originate from the essential depths of our soul.
(Being, psychological healing, and spiritual awakening)
More accurately, Being functions in such a complete way that its manifestations not only heal our psychological suffering but also become our realization of our spiritual dimension. Being is the true integration and healing of all dimensions, and not only what is called the spiritual. In fact, Being shows that “spiritual” experience is basically the wholeness of our reality.
This experience of awakening operates on two dimensions simultaneously: the psychological and the phenomenological.
also means you wake up to your true nature: You now see what and who you are, instead
(Essential drunkenness on clarity)
You feel as if you were a light bulb. You are actually awake, and everything is awake. All your senses are bright and open and clear. You are an awakeness that is awake to everything. This awakeness is also you, your very beingness, the very substance of your soul. Awakeness has to do with a certain manifestation of Brilliancy that I call the state of the brilliant champagne drink.
You are drunk, but you are drunk on clarity. You are so clear that the clarity is making you drunk. You are drunk on the brilliant diamond drink. You may feel that you have no control, like you’ve had two bottles of champagne. But what is making you get drunk is how clear you are, not the dullness that we associate with drunkenness. Here it is essential drunkenness. [Laughter] You are drunk on the preciousness of your nature, of who you are.
So, we are going to do a meditation, what we call the brilliant drink meditation. The meditation will be a visualization with music. The visualization has to be what we call an embodied visualization, in the sense that as you visualize, in some sense, you create the presence. It is a creative visualization. You’re not just seeing a picture, you’re seeing an embodied picture.