Essence
Essence is not alive; it is aliveness. It is not aware; it is
awareness. It does not have the quality of existence; it is existence.
It does not love; it is love. It is not joyful; it is joy. It
is not true; it is truth. (Essence, pg 80)
... Essence is a category of experience not accessible to the
logical, "mental" mind. It cannot be communicated by
the mind to somebody else. Most teachers, in fact, stress that
Essence is found inside, that the teacher can only point to it,
or at best can ignite the inner flame with his own. But the flame
is one's own and can be known only directly, within oneself, by
oneself. (Essence, pg 149)
Essence is not a thought or an idea a person has about himself.
It is not a self-image. In fact, the self-image, the collection
of concepts one has of oneself, is one of the main barriers to
the recognition and development of Essence. (Essence, pg 17)
Essence is not an object we find within ourselves; it is the
true nature of who we are when we are relaxed and authentic, when
we are not pretending to be one way or another, consciously or
unconsciously. Essence is the truth of our very presence, the
purity of our consciousness and awareness. It is what we are in
our original and undefiled beingness, the ultimate core reality
of our soul. Essence is the authentic presence of our Being; it
is, in fact, Being in its thatness. Different spiritual traditions
have given it different names: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
called it Spirit; Buddhism calls it Buddha nature; Taoism calls
it the Tao; Hinduism calls it Atman or Brahman. The various traditions
differ in how they conceptualize Essence and how much they emphasize
it in their teaching, but essence is always considered to be the
most authentic, innate, and fundamental nature of who we are.
And the experience and realization of Essence is the central task
of spiritual work and development in all traditions. (Spacecruiser
Inquiry, pg 8)
Essence and knowingness
Our essence has the capacity to know itself completely and directly,
independent of what we have known in the past. The knowingness
is inherent in the essence itself, in such a way that it not only
is aware of itself as existing, but is also aware of the quality
and characteristics of this existence. This is an expression of
the discriminating awareness, one of the five major characteristics
of true nature. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 82)
Essence, Soul, Presence
When we are aware of our presence by being present, there is
a new knowledge, and we call this knowledge Essence. At that point,
we have the opportunity to begin expanding our inquiry into the
nature of all of our experience. We recognize that not only is
self-knowing intrinsic to essential presence, but this way of
knowing is fundamental to our soul, the consciousness that is
the ground of all our experience. We recognize that the soul herself
has presence. And how does the soul know herself? How does she
experience herself? She experiences herself the same way that
Essence experiences itself – through the direct awareness
and direct contact with her very presence. In this presence, various
things manifest. Sometimes an essential quality manifests, sometimes
a feeling or a sensation, an image, or a thought. (Spacecruiser
Inquiry, pg 83)
Unfolding of Essence
The unfolding of Essence becomes the process of living. Life
is no longer a string of disconnected experiences of pleasure
and pain but a flow, a stream of aliveness. One aspect manifests
after another, one dimension after another, one capacity after
another. There is a constant flow of understanding, insight, knowledge,
and states of being. As this unfolding proceeds it affects the
mind, the personality, and the external life. When conflicts arise,
inner or outer, it is the expression of the lack of understanding
of incoming essential aspects and dimensions. It is part of the
creative process of living. Every new insight or knowledge is
preceded by its absence... However, the center of all this understanding,
insight, knowledge, discovery, creativity, conflict, and tension
is the unfolding of essential Presence. This flow of essential
Presence becomes the true experience of time instead of the linear
memory time of the personality. (Essence , pg 178)
Essence and its method
What a teacher Essence is! It exposes the issues, makes us look
at them as dystonic, makes us feel the lack of the essential aspect,
makes us long for the aspect. Now the teaching about desire becomes
our personal concern. It is no more only Buddha's concern, it
is now our own personal concern; and it is such a burning issue
for us, such a burning question that it makes us ache and long
for an answer, a solution. We cannot rest. The nearness of Essence
does not let us rest until we find the answer, until we came to
the solution. Essence is even more magical and more beautiful
than that. It does much more than expose and burn the personality.
As it approaches consciousness, we start getting intuitive understanding
about the situation, about our dilemma. As our consciousness is
touched by the emerging aspect, Essence infuses it with its quality,
with its knowledge, with its teaching, with its understanding.
Slowly, we start getting the teaching regarding desire, by ourselves,
from our own Essence. The understanding we get is completely relevant
to our situation. It speaks to us; it resolves our personal conflicts.
The understanding is lived, is alive. (The Elixir of Enlightenment,
pg 43)
