The sound of nothing, the realization of everything

I had a quite radical life change in the past few years. No one, not even I could have predicted that I would have embarked on the journey to return home, which is the process to return to one's True Self. It was not the fruit a mid-life crisis when you realize that you are not happy even though you have achieved everything society expects you to accomplish. My journey to freedom came about through a series of synchronistic events that I only recognized after the fact, just like uncovering the final picture of a jigsaw puzzle. See, it is not that I never had faith or that I did not believe in God, I just thought that my life was only a combination of my doing and of external circumstances. I never knew that I would come to the realization that I was Life herself.

The journey to return home to your True Self is different for every one of us. A big part of it is to "unlearn" what you have learned - to de-construct everything that you have ever known to be true. At first glance, there seems to be nothing spiritual about this process, which can also be called self-inquiry. Yet, through this process you come to realize that there is space opening up inside of "you". All the rules, filters, laws, prejudices, and conditioning that you have learned and been subjected to ever since you were born make you see the world and live your life a certain way. They also crowd your mind and your being. When you let go of these made-up rules little by little or because of a tragic event that shakes your paradigm, you realize that the "you" that you always thought you were is not the same as the You that you are deeply in your core. That True You within you is paradoxically so much bigger - more subtle and spacious. Let's pause and ponder on this for a while.

The important thing to remember when you embark in self-inquiry is that you should question every single belief or obligation that you have so that you can experience the real truth for yourself. For example, if I had grown up with the belief that Spirit existed, I would have probably identified this new "me" as a specific spirit. It would have been another belief or conditioning that I would have been attached to without experiencing whether it was true or not.

When you are trying to discover who you truly are and what is your real purpose in life, you may - one day or another - be exposed to a variety of spiritual teachings such as Non-Duality. Non-Duality is the teaching that there is no separation between our body-mind and our True Self and that we are all connected in Truth, we are all One. Yet, one of the traps not to fall into when you educate yourself about your spiritual journey is to not believe in any teaching blindly without actually trying or experiencing if the messages conveyed actually apply to you. To make things more complicated, it is often hard for those who have been practicing Non-Duality or following other spiritual teachings to let go of their "seeker-of-Truth" personality. Perhaps it was because I was not coming from a spiritual background, that I was able to experience what was left once I surrendered every part of my worldly-made person, like peeling off the layers of an onion. Of course, at some point I also became a seeker-of-Truth, a seeker of my True Self like everyone who is on the journey to freedom. Although I lingered there for a while, I was able to witness that even this seeker me was not my True Self. I transcended.

I was able to recognize that I was more than a person seeking a purpose in life, seeking the Truth, seeking God. I now know that I am this "space" where everything comes from and where everything is seen, heard, felt, imagined, created. I often experience being constantly facing and absorbed in the presence of God. This space is the source of all things. What is happening now that I had this realization is that every time I listen to a spiritual teacher or read about the different journeys experienced by those who openly share their knowledge and wisdom, I can experience or confirm what is being said either physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

An example of how I experience physically the realization of my True Self is the sound of this buzzing static vibration inside of me - like ringing in my ears. It becomes louder and louder especially when I meditate. It has probably always been a part of my being but only now that I have reduced the extra noise in my mind, I am able to recognize it as being here. When I am at work or in a state of overwhelming mind activity, I often pause and search for this sound. It is a reminder that I am not separate from my True Self and that regardless of what my earthly person is experiencing or of what my attention is focused on, I am still here. Later I came to learn that this sound could be the signature sound of my True Self. My own cosmic fingerprint or multidimensional vibration. A way to recognize my True Self. Whether this means that I have several multidimensional selves living at the same time with a common sound to connect with the unique True Self, I don't know. What I know is that this buzzing static vibration is comforting and makes me feel at home.

It is the sound of silence. Who would have known that a sound was so important, as important as knowing who you truly are? A dear friend of mine is severely hard of hearing and yet she accomplished so much to overcome what our current society mistakenly calls a disability. How wonderful would it be if instead of making everyone who is deaf believe that they are missing something, that rather they were told that this sound of silence was actually the most important gift a human being could have!

With much love, compassion and happiness to all!

Photo by Taj Joti Kaur, somewhere between Panamá and Washington D.C.