The Alchemy of Freedom by A. H. Almaas

Author:A. H. Almaas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

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SELF-EXPRESSING TRUE NATURE

AS WE EXPLORE the liberating power of the philosophers’ stone, we are learning a more open way of looking at our experience and our practice. We can begin to recognize what true nature is and to more fully see its role in spiritual awakening and maturation. We can come to understand that true nature is behind all the various revelations, illuminations, awakenings, and realizations that we experience. We as individuals, especially as separate individuals, do not have the wisdom and the capacity to do any of it on our own.

But this does not mean that we are off the hook. Realizing that awakening is always an act of true nature, always grace, always a gift, always true nature illuminating itself, doesn’t mean that we as individual human beings do not have the responsibility to exert our capacities. We continue to endeavor, to practice, and to apply our capacities to discover the secrets of existence, to liberate ourselves and all others. This is the other side of self-illuminating true nature. We can come to recognize that realization happens as a dialectic between individual practice and the self-revelation of true nature as Total Being. This dynamic of realization reveals the inner workings of reality.

True nature, the unsullied purity at the heart of Total Being, which is all of reality, is pure illumination, is the light that illuminates and the goodness that loves. And it acts and functions through individuals, through what we ordinarily believe is our intelligence, our heart, and our will. But when we say “our will,” the point is to distinguish it from another person’s will, not to distinguish it from the will of true nature. This is part of our human error: In order to distinguish our uniqueness from another uniqueness, we end up disconnecting ourselves from the ground of all our capacities. We need to be extra subtle here because this language can be misleading. When I say it is “our human error,” I do not mean that there are actually separate human beings making errors; it is always Total Being, which appears in this case as human beings.

There can come a time when we see that we cannot as individuals do the work of waking up; we don’t have the requisite capacity. We are totally helpless and incompetent in the face of what is required. But even when we understand that only true nature awakens, this doesn’t mean that we can be lazy and take for granted that awakening is just going to happen. We still need to practice and to exercise the intelligence, the heart, and the will that true nature is expressing through our consciousness.

We do this not to get somewhere but because true nature as Total Being practices through us as individuals practicing, meditating, and inquiring. We can’t loaf around and idly wait for true nature to bestow her gifts. That attitude doesn’t express the purity of true nature. True nature expresses its purity when we are in the mode of practice and the attitude of practice.

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