Being Oneself

The only way we can experience all that is possible for a human being is to be ourselves. If we are not ourselves, any other development is only a sector of human experience. To be a complete human being, to be a totality and experience wholeness, to be able to experience all possibilities and all potential for a human being, first we need to be ourselves. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 196)

The ego tries to bring the Divine life to earth and actualize it; but it uses ways which don't work. The usual result is a personal life which is an imitation of the true one. The ego can imitate only because, at some level, it knows what the real life would be. It is an imitation only because an original exists. It can't be that we are born to become enlightened and disappear; if we were already pure, why come and suffer, and return to what we were before. What is the point of that? (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 198)

To be oneself is to question, to ask, "What is this is about? I don't want to listen to other people's explanations and stories, I want to know myself. I want to satisfy myself by my own experience, by my own investigation. It doesn't matter what authorities or teachers say if it doesn't make any sense in my own experience". The more you question and think for yourself, the more you become yourself. To be oneself means not to be conditioned by others, by the external, not to be an extension of the past, yours or anyone else's past. To be oneself means to be an original. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 199)

To be oneself clearly includes having your own feelings and expressing yourself, but even these are just processes and activities. They may be what is visible, but the central experience, what is germane, is not the expression but the actual experience of Being. To be oneself means to be. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 202)

I exist as me. The mind, the heart, the body, are an external manifestation of me; but I'm the core, the being itself. I am the source and the ground of all of my experience. Only then are my thoughts, actions, and feelings original. Now they have nothing to do with what my mother or father, or even Christ or Buddha, said. To be me does not mean that I'm impersonal, universal light. That is a different experience, and that ocean of light, love, bliss is for me. I'm its flowering. It is in celebration of me, not the other way around. The pleasure, the joy, the love, the enlightenment are for me -- for me as a being. So the being that we truly are is the point of it all, is why there is earth. The reason we are on earth is to be that. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 204)

That is the mystery -- that the true person includes the universal, includes the Divine. The building blocks of the true person are the universal, the Divine substance. You are created fresh in every moment. There is a new birth in that -- God gives birth. Without this experience, you will always feel incomplete. It is for the birth and for the growth of this person, the personal being, the Personal Essence, often referred to as the "Pearl beyond Price", that everything else exists. This is the key, the entry into all the mysteries, and to all the celebrations of existence. To be oneself means to be the synthesis of all that exists as you; to be you. You are the fruit of the universe. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 204)

Being oneself and fulfillment

We believe that if we get what we want, what the personality wants, we will be fulfilled. But fulfillment is ultimately the freedom from desires. So what I am saying is that being oneself, being one’s Essence, free from the desires of the personality, is the fulfillment. It’s not that you want your Essence so you can get something else… When I say this principle is absolute, I mean just that. It is absolute in the way a physical law is absolute. It has nothing to do with your opinions or your preference. That’s the way reality is, it is the truth. (Diamond Heart Book 1, pg 116)