Your true self: your realized and embodied self
Self-realization means that consciousness fully realizes itself in you.
It is a profound shift in consciousness.
This shift is not a glimpse or a momentarily insight. It is permanent and irreversible.
If or when this inner shift occurs, you see through the illusion of the ego, through the illusion of separation, and awakened consciousness replaces the ego internally.
When consciousness fully realizes itself in you, it realizes itself as you
When consciousness fully realizes itself in you, it realizes itself as you.
So, in other words, when self-realization occurs, it is your true self that fully realizes itself.
When your true self realizes itself, the ego cannot continue to exist as a separate identity because you have seen through and beyond it, and realized who you truly are.
Your true self replaces the ego
The moment self-realization occurs, you don’t only realize yourself and see through the ego. You true self also replaces the ego internally.
When that shift happens, awake consciousness wipes out and replaces the ego internally. You have seen a new reality, beyond the conditioned self, and there is no longer anything in the way of you inhabiting your inner space.
So, when the shift occurs, your true self takes back your inner space, the places inside that the ego used to occupy, and awake consciousness fills up the space inside where the ego had its grip before the realization.
So, when awake consciousness replaces the ego internally, it is your true self that takes back your inner space.
You become fully yourself: awake, embodied, and aware
Many people look for spiritual enlightenment as something other than who they are: as a higher state, a quietness, a stillness, or unconditioned consciousness or nothingness.
It is natural to do that, because that’s usually what we experience when we begin to awaken and open up to higher and awake consciousness. These are glimpses of the awake consciousness that we often experience on our spiritual paths when we begin to awaken and break free.
Those are also beautiful states.
But as beautiful as those states are, they are not it.
What you are looking for is even closer than that. It is you.
So, when consciousness fully realizes itself in you, you don’t become a quiet stillness, or an unconditioned nothingness or presence. Not even a profound inner quietness, as beautiful and peaceful as those states may be.
You don’t become empty space, or an empty “container” that used to contain the ego.
You don’t become empty at all.
Empty of the ego, yes, but not empty.
You become full.
Fully yourself.
Awake, embodied and aware.
Integration
Integration: removing what’s left and moving forward
Your true self replaces the ego in that moment, and the shift is irreversible, but embodying and living in this state takes time.
Integrating the new state
Self-realization is not only an end to the ego. It is also an end to the spiritual path.
And this is not easy in the external world.
