What signifies your existence? What does it mean for you to be alive? When you think about You, what comes to mind? The shape of your smile, the color of your eyes, or the curves of your body? Perhaps your name or the knowledge that you exist in the minds of others?
Who are you? Are you your thoughts or emotions, your history, your successes or failures, or the people you’ve met along the way? Are you the things that you create? Are those really you?
Breathe. Right now, take a deep breath. Is that you breathing? Look down at your skin. Feel it. Is that your flesh? Put a hand over your heart. Feel your heartbeat. Does that vibration signify you?
If you release all false identity, you’ll recognize something that goes much deeper, something more substantial, more concrete.
It’s in your smile. It’s in the color of your eyes and the curves of your body. It’s in your thoughts and emotions, and your successes and failures. It’s in every breath, every heartbeat, and every cell of your body. It’s in all the people you meet and every thing you create.
Close your eyes. Let go. Allow your essence to emerge. You can sense its presence, the way it saturates everything. You’ve always felt it, perhaps somewhere in the background hidden behind all that stuff: all the labels added to life, the ideas, the expectations, the subtle judgements.
Your essence is You. It’s here, always present, always offering comfort and confidence. It comes from that place where beauty, peace, and love emanate, where dreams originate, where intuition paints a landscape of impossibility with colors of hope.
Your essence has no doubt. It doesn’t question itself or feel inadequate. It knows right from wrong and intuitively senses what needs to be done. It rides the line between thinking and feeling, between dreams and reality, between the past and the future.
When you feel your essence, hold it tenderly, embrace it with unconditional love. Stop resisting it. Stop fighting it. Stop judging it. Let go of self-pity and free yourself from the expectation that you are somehow incomplete, lost, or unhappy.
You are complete. You know the answers. You are abundantly enough.
Release your essence. Give it the respect it deserves. Stop trying to change it. Stop regulating its unquenchable thirst for freedom. Stop holding You captive in a cage of reason. Remove the leash, unlock the door, and open your arms. Embrace You.
Raam,
Thank you for reconnecting me with myself again this morning. I just found your blog last week and read through the archives. If I look at your first posts and your latests, it shows how much you have grown as a person and a writer. I can’t wait to read your new essays!
Thank you, Sander. I’m so happy you enjoy my work. :)
Looking back through my early writing can be embarrassing at times, but I feel that keeping it there is part of embracing my essence and letting go of false identity.
If I feel the need to delete my old writing just because it’s embarrassing, then I’m identifying with the non-essential part of me. Instead of doing that, I choose to leave it as a reminder, a record of sorts for the progress I’ve made uncovering my true self.
How much I appreciate your thoughts. It took me forever to ‘embrace’ my essence and to trust it. I particularly ove the last paragraph. Joany
Thank you, Joany. Our essence has no sense of time, so it’s never too late to embrace and trust it. :)
I am learning to trust the process…. thanks Raam for the reminders….. it helps at times to keep me out of my negative mindset which could be created. I am smiling at my powerlessness of it ALL.:o)
Raam, you continue to deliver. 20 something going on 60.
This was well received, thank you.
Hi Raam, loooong time no connect – sorry – got somewhat lost in my own life I have!!!!!
Your article Embrace Your Essence youve outdone yourself blown me away excellent soooo true and absolutely perfect timing for my life right now so well done and thank you sooooo very much – much appreciated!!!!!! Love our thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love your intentions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you are reaching your goals!!! Wish you very well on your journey hope it goes all the places you could wish it to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope it give you everything you are hoping it will!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! May you find yourself fully realised in full and perfect awareness of it all with full knowing and willing control of it all knowingly and willingly – may all thats good be yours!!!! Go well!! Antoinette Thank you for all your output all your thoughts and for sharing them with me – read 2 of your articles and feel like a kindred soul for some strange reason. keep on keeping on!! I take my hat off to your mission.
Thank you, Antoinette! :) It’s great to hear from you and I’m so happy this was what you needed.
=o)
Our true essence is undying and unchanging. You’ve captured this wisdom so beautifully here!
Sandra, I find the timeless, changeless, and undying nature of our essence to be the most difficult reality to accept. There is nothing else around us that we can use for reference… we just need to experience it firsthand. :)
Your comment about the most difficult reality to accept is understandable… and I am humbled at the same time. I understand what you mean about the Experience, being recently awakened out of a fog. Wisdom cannot be taught…. experience is the teacher, I see NOW!!!!!!!
:o)
josi
And then I smiled, knowing my “self”, without losing it in myself. Another moment created to be truly who I am, and understand the essence of what I can do.
Thank You.
Understanding the essence of what we can do… that’s a thought-provoking way of putting it! :)
NO kidding
:o)
josi
Once in while a smile appears spontaneously on my face as I read a text that is True. Sometimes I choke. Sometimes both. For a short few minutes tonight, the world only contained Me and this text. Thank you.
Yan, you are most welcome. I can relate with your spontaneous smile: When we see a hint of our true essence — how connected, whole, and equal it makes all of us — it’s hard not to smile. :)
I am a newbie (to myself) to awareness of the essence. The more Aware I Become, the more I Understand. All is in Concert. I have a hard time at times, at times the More I try to explain, the more words confine process. All I know, is I must do what I must do. There are no truer words Raam, on how connected, whole and equal we all are…… and it cannot help but make me smile-:) and it is funny, in an ironic sort of way. I way I understand in my soul which is beyond words…the unexplainable but true.
love and ((((((SUPER HUGS TO ALL))))))
Raam,
Your writing as has a way of stirring my spirit and prickling my skin (in a good way)!
It can be so easy to get caught up in the identity and labeling game – trying to figure out who we are and give a name to that in order to describe ourselves to other people. But how does one go about bottling essence? Is it something that can be captured and described? Or is it just something we exude through our speech, our writing, our very being?
You are definitely one of those people who allows your true essence to flow into all that you do Raam, and I think that is what draws people to you.
Personally, I think I’m too much of a people-pleaser. I like to see people happy, and happy with me, and I think inadvertently aiming to please everyone muddies my true essence. So, I think what you said about “releasing your essence” is right on.
Adrienne, I’m grateful for our friendship and I thank you for sharing your thoughts here. :)
I’ve always been somewhat of a people-pleaser, but I think it was in the recognition that pleasing people doesn’t actually help them; simply aiming to make them happy with me doesn’t actually give them anything. If anything, it detracts from what they really need and it’s selfish because I could actually be doing so much more.
By recognizing your true essence and embracing it, you automatically become a generator for happiness and inspiration. All happiness comes from within, so if others see happiness and inspiration coming from within you, it will motiviate them to look inside themselves and discover the real treasure that exists there. :)
Ah, such a great point!
So what are you thoughts about recognizing the true essence of others?
My thoughts are that we need to recognize the true essence in ourselves first. :) When we do that, the essence of others presents itself (because all our essence is one in the same).
Embracing your essence….hmmm… was an eye opener for me, being the spacequeen that I am. I can totally relate to the people pleasing, being one of such nature. I am becoming increasingly aware of what I call “Immaculate timing” as the more I get out of MY own way, and follow the path I recognize……. the more aware of this phenomenon occurring in the present.Recognizing this essence brings a smile -:) of course reading this this morning was Perfect timing (of course….on course).:o)
I witnessed this perfection (altho sometimes it feels like things are falling apart, I know they are actually falling together). One can plan the plans, but not the results. Energy is so important. Raam, you talk abut learning or recognizing your own essence first and I couldn’t agree with you more….. you have such wisdom. It has taken me decades to come to this place, but now that I am here, I am very grateful. All the trials and tribulations were necessary for growth. You also mention your growth within your own writing…. but we know what we know when we know it. I am simply glad to have found this blog…. being “old-fashioned” I resisted such, but I am gaining so much more than I am giving……. or maybe not…LOL:) I see within my own self in little notes that are here and there when I have attempted to let the creative juices flow, and I am always amazed at that premise alone. In fact, I am in a constant state of AWE!!! I am a positron (was not always, due to life, my misunderstanding of my essence) but now I know I have found my true essence and it blows my mind!!!! I am smiling as I write this, since I am saddened (at times, since I do believe everything is in its right place, simply not as I understand it) but I am saddened at times when I am unable to communicate this premise. You are right Raam, about learning about ones own essence….. kindof like the old saying “One must love oneself first, before One can give it away!!!
love and
((((((((SUPER HUGS TO ALL))))))))))
Josi, thank you for sharing your thoughts here. :)
I love what you said about stepping out of your own way and recognizing the path you should be walking. It’s so easy to allow our own negative thinking, our own self-doubt, to cloud the path ahead.
But as you said, the trials and tribulations are necessary for growth. Even when we can see the path, we shouldn’t expect to walk it without facing challenges. There will always be obstacles to overcome.
I like to remind myself that everything I need in life will be presented exactly when I need it, no sooner and no later. All the directions and ‘hints’ we need on this adventure called life exist right here within us. All we need to do is embrace our essence and listen. :)
I love the reminder “I like to remind myself that everything I need in life will be presented exactly when I need it, no sooner and no later.”
Raam, refreshing thoughts as always! Absolutely loved it!
Thank you, Ash! I’m so happy you enjoyed it. :)
A wonderful post Raam, many thanks once again for writing such great words and I love the bit “I like to remind myself that everything I need in life will be presented exactly when I need it, no sooner and no later”. This has happened to me at times during my life and just letting go and believing this is such a help to me. Thanks for reminding me x
Thank you, Debbie. :) Remembering that we have, and will have, everything we need is tough, but it certainly makes life effortless.
Thanks again for the reminder… I have been isolating in a sense, but not in other senses……I forget sometimes, and Debbie and yourself reminded me that all is ok…..I forget sometimes, I get caught up in “reactions” instead of being in action. I forget the simplicity of it all……ahhh…it really is simple but oh so hard sometimes not so easy. Sometimes it is very hard to come out of inertia, at the same time, inertia is needed. I am reminded inertia is part and parcel of being. Recognizing it as such, is quite another feat! I have a hard time sometimes, since not all is as it appears, and being quite human, struggle at times with perception of what is. Perception is quite a powerful powerful entity. Perception, for me, is a key factor in operating my “self” through this maze, which is amazing. Growing in perception has been quite enlightening, I must say, and I am astounded at my own mis-perception at times. I find unlearning all the conditioning to be quite a challenge, unlearning old mindsets and developing true insight into reality as it is, not as I wish. Still learning…. I find my greatest struggle with my own impatience, one of my own personal challenges. I really struggle with the inhumanity I perceive
Josi,
I love that you’re unlearning all the conditioning and growing your perception. I find that by changing my perspective and understanding the world from different vantage points (largely through seeing the world through the eyes of others), I’m able to uncover a bit more reality and simultaneously enhance my perception.
Impatience can be challenging and the urge to sit back and let ourselves be swept away by the current is strong. Through meditating and living moment to moment conscious of ‘now’, we take the reigns of time and plant ourselves firmly in the ground, allowing the surge of time to flow around us while we consciously observe the world and make decisions based on reality as opposed to decisions and choices based on what reality ‘looks like’.