Step 8:
Freedom from Separation
It is a wonderful day in a life when one is finally able to stand before the long,
deep mirror of one’s own reflection and view oneself with appreciation, acceptance,
and forgiveness. On that day one breaks through the falsity of images and expectations which have blinded one’s spirit. One can only learn to see who one is when one learns to view oneself with the most intimate and forgiving compassion.
—john o’donohue
Your journey continues to release the constricted self from its illusionary hold on you. You have used the practice of forgiveness to release how you identify yourself. Each release with a different pillar of love opens and expands your true expression of yourself. The heart opened in you to reveal the self-centered constricted self, to reveal a gentleness of knowing that you are not the doer. The convincing constricted self cajoled you to be in charge of a false awareness of reality. The awakening of an inner awareness enabled you to acknowledge your hectic and pressure-cooker–driven life. Through the love frequency of openhearted appreciation, you experienced the deepening of your focal length perception moving from the inside to the outside. Appreciation expanded you even more to be aware of what you are capable of experiencing and how to have inner freedom at all times. Amazingly, awareness transformed and went beyond time to being you right in the moment. Appreciation brings awareness so you know that presence looks through your eyes.
We come in this chapter, finally, to face the possibility of you becoming free of this constricted separation from your expanded self. We first will examine what I call the “ground of your being,” which is the essence of your true self. We will explore the reality that you’ve never been separated from this essence and that what you’ve lived in is a “false home” of illusion and can return to your “real home” as a complete human being. The means to return home to yourself as a complete human is through kindness and compassion for yourself and others. These two practices plus those of forgiveness, gratitude, appreciation, and presence provide the pathway for your inner and outer freedom. Both the kindness and compassion meditations opens fully your heart to embrace your expanded self.
Finally, in this chapter we put all the pieces together with an integration meditation. This meditation uses the brain frequency of gamma to take you through all of the chakra color energies I’ve asked you to visualize with each meditation. The gamma frequency will take you up and out the top of your head into the pure white light, which is the energy that the brain research says we die in. In this meditation, it is to know and experience that this high level gamma frequency is the access point to experiencing your expanded self now in your life today.
The Ground of Your Being
Now you come to the eighth and final step of the detachment journey of your constricted self. This final step takes you back to the beginning of your life journey many years ago. In your journey, you come now to the ground of your being with awareness in a different capacity and with a capability to see your constricted self in a purer light. The time from your birth to today has been a continuous experience of living out your primal catastrophe. Now is the time to look at what has kept you captured in your constricted self. As you look at the “catastrophe” of pain and separation, you find that the solution is really quite simple.
The truth is that you have never been separate or separated at all from your essential self. If this isolated psychological space were removed between you and others, you would experience you and others as one being. As you look deeper at being one individual, there is a key similarity in everything that exists on this planet. Everything is alive with energy. All matter can be turned into energy, and energy can be turned into matter, so anything made of matter contains energy. For example, if you hold a bowling ball in your hand and combine it with a bowling ball’s worth of antimatter, the matter and antimatter will destroy each other and simply become energy. It would be a stupendous amount of energy, since the equation that tells us how much energy we get from matter is Einstein’s equation, e = mc2 or energy = mass times the speed of light squared. In simple terms this is a correlation of energy to matter and how powerful energy becomes when we bring the two together at the speed of light!
There Is No Separation
You are a combination of many energy frequencies. In reality, the space or separation between you and everything is in the mind and emotions of your constricted self. There really is no separation between you and everything else. There is no space between or around this self. It is the woven tapestry of your ego that separates you in your mind. The constricted self made it up. We are all connected energy in this life and everything and everyone is a different frequency whether it is an object, a mountain, a tree, another person, or an animal. It is all you too.
The Illusion of the False Home
It is actually quite simple how you came to this experience of feeling separated and alone, abandoned, betrayed, and not belonging. Remember our earlier description that at birth you chose (not consciously) to leave your inner home to move into your outer physical earthbound “body home.” You left your inner home. You chose to make your physical world home. This is the home of objects, bodies, feelings, emotions, and perceptions. You left home and tried to create a new home that was an illusion, a dream, and not reality. At death, you leave this false home and return to your expanded self’s home. Gradually, the recognition dawns in you that you are not contemplating someone else as the Divine. It is like a mirror and the Divine you are contemplating is yourself. You are the Divine. There is no difference between the seer, the scenery, and the scene (seen).
Your Real Home
When you separate from the constricted self, it relaxes its contraction finally and fully. You are then in the midst of a present vastness. Your identity explodes into everything that is empty and where ignorance and desire are gone. As the sense of self dissolves, so do the body and the experience of the “other.” Your mind becomes like the sky where it is open, free, limitless, and not complicated, corrupted, or stained. A more powerful integration of the constricted self merges into the expanded self as you move deeply into the interior of awareness. This awareness is quiet, more centered, and with an experience of grace and stillness that rests in the sacred. You then become filled with love, openness, acceptance, and wholeness. Now you are really home!
The Complete Human
As you may recall, the last stage of human life is where you as a human become whole and integrated. Transpersonal integration is where the heart is open, where the mind is clear and knowing, and where grace exists. At this stage, you become completely human. Completely human is the integration of pain to transform suffering into joy. It is the constricted self merging into the expansion of a nonself. Trying to be a self is all that holds you back from becoming who you really are as “one consciousness.” Once the illusory sense of the constricted self surrenders, unity envelops you. Your sense of identity shifts to become the entire universe. This is what happens when you die. You merge with the pure light and become the Universe. But this is also what can happen for you now, today.
This is the transcendent process; it is the last stage of dying. This last stage is where the dissipation of the “other” dissolves. The process of dying is like a clay vase that holds the ordinary mind. When you die, the expanded self is freed as the vase shatters. At that moment, you realize that there never was any separation or difference with “another.” It is when you surrender that you let go to the expansion. At this point, it is impossible to continue with the identity of the constricted self. The constricted self crumbles and is no longer manifest in you. The pure mind clears and the heart of kindness and compassion opens. This is the place of awakening to your essential human self in this lifetime.
Kindness
Kindness is an energy that is always noticing and looking for ways to act in order that the heart energy can expand more and mutually connect with all beings in the world. It is looking to be kind to yourself, other humans, animals, plants, trees, birds, and so on, as well as made objects such as tools, cars, and homes. Kindness increases the energetic connection within the web of existence. Kindness moves you into heart connection and weaves you into the mystery of unity with everything you confront in your life. The ancient Chinese writer Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching, “In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true.” 64
The energy of kindness is the foundation of True Reality. The Dalai Lama says that his religion is kindness. He knows from inner knowledge that kindness is the outer action that shifts patterns and that opens new awareness. It is kindness that takes you to the heart of love’s power, healing, knowledge, creativity, and revelation. The energy of kindness is transforming not only for you expressing it, but also for those receiving it. Kindness generates energy and creates a higher vibration frequency. This frequency moves quickly toward the spectrum of light. With kindness, things “lighten up!” Your constricted self does not drive kindness because it isn’t about actions; it is about intent. The action of kindness is not about what you do, but rather the focus of intent in your heart. It is the frequency of the kindness intent that motivates your action. The energy of kindness is an attitude of acceptance and recognition that there is no difference between you or anything else in the world or the part of you that receives the kindness from yourself. Kindness prepares you for closing the door of separation, which is the space that separates you from everything and everyone.
Kindness Practices
All around you are opportunities to express kindness. All it requires is a deeper perceiving energetically.
• To develop an awareness of kindness, you can attune to the frequency of the forehead and the top of your head at the crown area. During meditation, walking, or sitting, quietly focus your attention on the forehead and the crown simultaneously. Hold your attention until you feel warmth, buzzing, pulsation, or whatever sensation begins to shift your awareness at these two points. At first, you will need to be conscious of these points. In time, they will be a natural radar for actions of kindness. You will begin to see people and situations in new ways. When the seeing opens, notice what would be appropriate to do. Now bring your attention down into your heart and intuitively ask if you are to do some outward action or not to respond to what you see. The heart will channel the energy of your insight and love in the appropriate act of kindness.
• The more you hold these two points and focus them at your heart the more naturally you will live in the kindness of oneness.
• Practice this frequency of kindness every day and it will open and release your sense of separation.
Compassion
In compassion, you attune to the frequency of the “other.” Compassion is not really a feeling or an emotion. Compassion is becoming unified with the energetic field of the other. Thus, in compassion you let go of the self-concern and you align and become one with the movement, drive, energy, and experience of the other. So when we say you feel compassion for another, what you feel is the core essence of their energy condition, but your feelings are matching their energy feeling. The difference is that responding in compassion to another holds the awareness of a larger context for the energy condition of the other as you together align with the higher frequency that can transform the quality and condition of the other’s experience.
To have compassion for a person, animal, country, tree, weather, and so on is to hold a context in which the higher frequency energy of love “stands under” and holds both of you. Being with the other in the same frequency while holding the larger frequency of the essence of reality is love without separation, judgment, or a sense of fundamental difference between you and the other.
Being in the same higher energy frequency with the other is to stand together with their true nature and in your own true nature. When being together in the one expanded self, both of you experience an aligned frequency that is higher, larger, and stronger than any condition, circumstances, or environment either of you are facing in a particular time and space. The Dalai Lama, who is considered the embodiment of compassion, holds for his people a higher frequency that permits him to hold the pain, suffering, and destruction of Tibet without separating himself from the Chinese. He has understanding and experience of their frequency, just as he does for his own people. His role in exhibiting compassion is not just to hold the frequency of pain and suffering, but also to be in a higher-level frequency for his people and the Chinese at the same time.
Compassion is a transformation of the deep mother quality that respects and understands all of her children and does not hold back from her caring and actions to redeem, save, or protect all beings in her frequency of the supreme energy of love. Compassion, as an unknown author has said, “Is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.” 65
And so to you, I would say, may you wake up to your essence—your true essence—that essence that holds your destiny in this life and that wakes you up to walk through the door of your heart to sublime compassion for yourself. It is truly the door of your compassion that will wake you up!
Compassion Practices
To deepen your compassion is increasingly to shift your perception away from separation. For your compassion to grow, you need to know that you are the source of all that is holding, protecting, and caring for you and others.
• The first practice is to acknowledge the frequency of your own pain and suffering. Literally name it, understand it, shift your awareness and focus to the frequency of your heart, and bring the specific issues and experiences that cause you pain and suffering to that place.
• As you hold these conditions in your heart, feel a warming, a pulsing, an electrical feeling, or any other sensation of energy increase, then move this heart energy to the crown of your head. Feel the sensation of energy building in you like you did at the heart.
• Then let this energy go out the top of your head and experience the expansion of your being of the love that you truly are. In this expanded space, let yourself see, feel, and experience your pain and suffering dissolving in the greater frequency of expansion.
• You may have to do this practice again and again as new issues of pain and suffering emerge from your awareness.
• After you have worked with your self-compassion, turn your attention toward other people. Another practice is to first connect to the highest frequency you know from the expanded frequency you have practiced for yourself and reach out mentally and with your feelings from your heart/mind to the other.
• Let that frequency connect with and understand—stand with—the frequency of the other.
• As you practice this extending to another, it will be similar to how you have been working with your own self-compassion.
• Extending toward another in this way, you will find that it is easier to connect to their frequency than you realize.
• It is moving from focusing on yourself to focusing on matching your frequency with that of the other and then expanding to the larger, higher, and more expansive frequency that encompasses you both.
• This is when you will experience true and deep connection of love with another that holds no judgment of what they or you are experiencing.
• You see and know in the other what you have seen and known in yourself. And you know that whatever is the pain and suffering of the other can be healed in them.
• Start practicing with animals, trees, family, and friends close to you.
• All you have to do is inwardly ask if you can connect with them. Simply extending to them is to understand from their point of reference. This shifts you and their frequency and opens the connection of understanding as to who and what they are experiencing.
• You then expand together to a higher frequency that brings caring, comfort, and a sense of their true nature as a being. If something concretely and practically needs to be done for that other person as part of the act of compassion, it will be done with an equality of mutual love rather than with condescension. This is called love in action and it releases the separateness of life.
Exercise: Kindness and Compassion Meditation
The final step of the journey is to release the constricted self by opening and expanding your heart with kindness and compassion. These meditations offer an expansion of giving what releases the constricted self into a free, expanded, light mind. This mind of loving awareness prepares you to live an amazing full life now as well as at the last moment of your life on earth. Through each step of the journey, you have released your attachments and have left your baggage behind. As you practice these exercises and meditate, you will be supported to release and move forward in your evolution. I bless you on this journey as you eliminate anxiety, avoidance, and resistance. With open arms and open heart, the next step of this journey is the most important sacred experience of your life.
Again, as with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this meditation in order to listen to it or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Let yourself relax into a safe, quiet, comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat.
• Close your eyes and imagine a red color filling your lower heart area. Notice the sounds in your environment. (pause)
• Recall the depth of your last meditation and take several deep breaths and relax into all parts of your body. (pause)
• What does the relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember the feeling of deep relaxation when using your marker. Recall how you created your marker as a symbol, an image, or a word and how you felt your marker at a particular place on your body. Return to that inner feeling of relaxation spreading through your body. (pause)
• As you move deeper into recalling the symbol, image, or word of your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go.
• Now, take three deep breaths. As you take them, observe your breath. Is it shallow? Labored? What is the quality of your inhale and exhale? Does one seem easier or fuller? Is there a natural pause when your breath is full or empty? Feel the sensations of the belly, as well as the cool and warmth of your nostrils. (pause)
• Place your attention deep inside, back near your spinal cord as you observe your breath.
• Notice as you inhale that you take in oxygen from the outside air and it mixes with the air in the space inside your body.
• As the air merges inside and outside you become even more relaxed, like a falling leaf your mind gently begins to fall down, moving deep inside your heart space. The air on the outside space and air on the inside are merging, allowing the boundaries of the body to dissolve and the movement of the breath to flow easefully and naturally back and forth in and out in an even rhythm. (pause)
• Feel the softness, warmth, caring, openness of your heart quality as you are deep inside your heart. Imagine yourself being held by your heart as you move downward, slowly, gently down all the way to the base of your spine.
• With this heart quality, feel the energy tingling or the energy sensation building in your heart and deep within your body.
• Being held in the gentle softness of your heart, let yourself become open to any current or past pain, issue, or sadness in your life. Be gentle with yourself and let it all rest there in your heart. Compassion is letting it all rest in your heart and your heart will recognize your suffering, pain, and sorrow. (pause)
• Move into this inner knowing and go deeper into this heart space without judgment or condemnation. Let there be acceptance and give this acceptance softness, caring, warmth, and kindness.
• Now, feel kindness for yourself. Feel yourself being held by kindness. Feel what kindness is like within the pain of your suffering.
• Rest your mind back into this soft, warm space of kindness and feel a gentle movement upward as if an escalator is gently sliding you upward softly, slowly, gently.
• Feel yourself rising upward until you come to the top of your head and let this heart energy move out through the top of your head into the space above you, into a vastness. Experience the expansion of the vastness of space. Let yourself move out into this vastness. (pause)
• Now remember your pain, your suffering, and your sadness. Move all of these feelings into this vast space to disappear into the greater energy frequency that you’ve moved into.
• Also become aware of being held by compassion right here in the present moment of letting go and notice the space of love and acceptance you feel in this vastness of heart energy.
• Let go of your holding of pain, suffering, and hurt. Put your attention and focus on the dissolving of all the hurt; let it fade away. Know that it is gone. Let your awareness remain still unattached and nonreactive. Just rest, rest, rest in this vast peace. (pause)
• Stay engaged in your awareness of this resting and not space out with the comings and goings of the mind. The gift is to let go to compassion and love for yourself.
• Claim within you that in this vastness you can forever know that compassion is always present for you. (pause)
• Now, turn your awareness inward, away, backward from the comings and goings of your mind and notice what is there in this vast space. In this quality of space, there is movement, life, feeling, or nothing at all.
• Relaxing more deeply but not getting carried away with what appears in your mind without grasping or reacting, just being present, being in the self-compassion, in this bright higher frequency. Continue to stay in the warmth of being held in expanded love. (pause)
• Now move back downward, gently to your heart. Notice in this vast space a presence of your being—of who you truly are.
• Now use your breath to bring presence into your entire body and being.
• Allow yourself to inhale and exhale, feeling the sensations of your breath in your belly and your nostrils. Feel grounded in your body, just resting in this place of appreciation and presence for yourself. (pause)
• Place your attention now on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments integrating what you learned in how you became aware of your kindness and compassion for yourself, and your willingness to release all your pain and suffering. (pause)
• Notice now your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath, come back into the room.
• As you relax and feel the experience of this meditation, and trust that as you continue to attune to the heart energy of kindness and compassion, you will dissolve your constricted identity more and more, opening to move into your natural awakening.
• Be gentle and loving to yourself and know that a higher energy source is guiding you and that you can return to this vast space of energy, love, acceptance, kindness, and compassion.
• Trust also that there is your unique timing that brings you to a full state of integration.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.
Integration Process
The Journey of Freedom is to heighten and raise our consciousness. You come now to the place of integration to combine all the qualities of the heart to become whole within you. The integration process is important because it shifts you from the Journey of Separation, where you faced not belonging, resistance, control, and your many identities, all of which have been given to you by others. The integration process creates the potential to shift you into being free of all that creates tension, pain, and fear within you to a quality of expansion and acceptance of your true self. The late Terence McKenna once said to us, “You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.” 66 You will be able to experience the heart of this powerful light in the Integration Meditation.
In this meditation, you will experience each step of the Journey of Freedom moving from the Freedom of Separation to the Freedom of Identities. This will then take you step-by-step to your heart and raise your energy to the top of your head. At the top of your head, you will experience a white light and the frequency of gamma brain waves.
It is in the gamma brain waves that you both awake in this life and die into the next passage of being. You will notice that the frequencies in the meditation build upon each other to open an energetic flow similar to when you die. It is like a rainbow ladder of inner awakening. When the meditation and energy reaches the top of your head, you will experience an awareness of merging into the oneness of a loving white light of high frequency. As you practice this meditation, you will experience the beginning of an inner awakening that may occur at the moment of your death.
Exercise: Integration Meditation
Again, as with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this meditation in order to listen to it, or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Let yourself relax into a safe, quiet, comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat.
• Close your eyes and imagine a red color filling your lower heart area. Notice the sounds in your environment. (pause)
• Recall the depth of your last meditation and take several deep breaths and relax into all parts of your body. (pause)
• What does the relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember the feeling of deep relaxation when using your marker. Recall how you created your marker as a symbol, an image, or a word and where you felt your marker at a particular place on your body. Return to that inner feeling of relaxation spreading through your body. (pause)
• As you move deeper into recalling the symbol, image, or word of your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go.
• Now, take three deep breaths. As you take them, observe your breath. Is it shallow? Labored? What is the quality of your inhale and exhale? Does one seem easier or fuller? Is there a natural pause when your breath is full or empty? Feel the sensations of the belly, as well as the cool and warmth of your nostrils. (pause)
• Place your attention deep inside, back near your spinal cord, as you observe your breath.
• Notice as you inhale that you take in oxygen from the outside air and it mixes with the air in the space inside your body.
• As the air merges inside and outside you, become even more relaxed, like a falling leaf, your mind gently begins to fall down moving deep inside your heart space. The air on the outside space and air on the inside are merging, allowing the boundaries of the body to dissolve and the movement of the breath to flow easefully and naturally back and forth in and out in an even rhythm. (pause)
• You are moving deeper in this space where there is a softness and a warmth.
• Now as you rest your mind back into this soft, warm space, feel a gentle movement downward as if on an escalator, gently sliding downward softly, slowly, and gently, moving down to the base of your spine.
• Let yourself be held here, right in the very base of your body, and imagine the color red. As you imagine the red color, you let yourself rest in this energy frequency of red as it moves you into a vast space in which you are held by the energy of who you truly are. Let yourself rest in this loving space, totally belonging and filled with self-compassion. In this space of self-compassion, many thoughts and feelings may be passing through your mind/body/heart. (pause)
• Open even more as you now imagine and let go to the orange color. Imagine the orange color move into your sacrum. Open yourself, open your mind and heart now, right here in the present moment. Be absolutely here now. Be aware of inner stillness. Be aware of deep appreciation for yourself. (pause)
• Remember to be aware and mindful of whatever arises as you now imagine and view in your mind’s eye the color yellow. Feel the energy, the frequency of yellow, as you move up into your belly. Notice within you and be aware of the energies building into calm gratefulness. Let your awareness remain still, unattached, and nonreactive, just receiving this feeling and awareness of gratefulness for yourself, your life, and all that you’ve been given. (pause)
• Stay engaged, stay present, bring your mind to full focus as the color green appears in your mind’s awareness. The green color and its frequency opens and moves you into your heart area. Your mind and heart becoming one in gentle, loving peace and a feeling of openheartedness. Stay focused, not spacing out but still observing the comings and goings of the mind yet not grasping at anything. (pause)
• Notice the color white emerging in your mind. It is naturally moving upward. The energy and frequency of the color white is moving upward to your throat and then upward to your forehead. The color white pulls you upward to the top of your head. As you rest here at the top of your head, feel the sensations. It may feel like buzzing, tingling, or warmth moving energies about your head. Within your own sensations notice that there is movement and energies coming toward you above your head. Let yourself open and merge with this white light of healing energy and stay as long as you like, continuing to let go and merge with it. (pause)
• When you are ready, turn your awareness and move downward from above your head and the white light, down to your heart. Notice that the light has subsided, allowing for your breath to appear. Rest from the comings and goings of your mind and thoughts. Notice what is in the space of your heart. What is the quality of this heart space? Is there movement, life, or the feeling of nothing at all? (pause)
• Observe the movement of your breath as you come back into your body. Continue to notice each breath relaxing into a natural flow of inhale and exhale.
• Feel in yourself and appreciate these precious moments of being present in awareness to the energies and the movement in and beyond yourself with the white light.
• Now use your breath to bring presence into your entire body and being.
• Allow yourself to inhale and exhale, feeling the sensations of your breath in your belly and your nostrils. Feel grounded in your body, just resting in this place of love and presence for yourself. (pause)
• Place your attention now on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments, integrating what you learned in how you became aware of your integration for yourself, and your willingness to experience that this movement up and out of your body into this place of freedom is always available to you. You know now that freedom from fear and separation is alive and present in you both in your present life and when you die. (pause)
• Notice now your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath, come back into the room.
• As you relax and feel the experience of this meditation you know that you can come back to this experience again and again to attune your heart and mind energy to this expansion and that you will dissolve your constricted identity more and more opening to your natural awakening.
• Be gentle and loving to yourself and know that a higher energy source is guiding you and that you can return to this vast space of energy, love, acceptance, kindness, and compassion because you are all alive now in freedom.
• Trust also that there is your unique timing that brings you to a full state of integration.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.
64. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching: A New Translation (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1972), 12.
65. Unknown Author, cited at http://quotesweliveby.blogspot.com/2009/09/lend-helping-hand-compassion-quotes.html.
66. Terence McKenna, “Unfolding the Stone,” 1991, YouTube: Fractal Youniverse.