I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty [Georgi]
Pic: Stanley Leung
“In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.”
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
It began with a simple inquiry, arising some seven years after what many would call enlightenment. It was an inquiry born out of a sense of incompletion, experiential curiosity, and a movement of grace that arose in perfect alignment with the need of individual destiny.
The inquiry is into the ‘here’ and the ‘now’, or more precisely, into the ‘here’ which contains and supports the ‘now’. Where is ‘here’? Where am I? How does the here and now (space and time) take form in all that I am?
Just as the ‘now’ can lead to a rapid awakening, culminating into a liberation into a space of pure, non-verbal ‘being’, the ‘here’ seemed to be a great, unanswered signpost to the source.
What unravelled is a potent trilogy of perception, in which consciousness (the waking consciousness of mind and spirit) dances with awareness (the felt sense, sentience, or being), within the great non-duality of emptiness.
“The menu is not the meal.”
~Alan Watts
I AM HERE unveils a trilogy of perception through the windows of consciousness, awareness and emptiness. In this, the ‘I’ is consciousness, the ‘Am’ is awareness, or feeling sense of being, and the ‘Here’ represents perception through emptiness.
This is an invitation to inquiry. Is it the same perceptive window that releases consciousness, as that which unveils the awareness within our non-verbal being? Does consciousness of consciousness lead to the same expansion as the refinement of awareness, for example in the awareness of loving awareness? What is that which runs through and behind both perceptive windows?
Can we inquire into the differing impact of the Now and the Here? Is there a separate flavor to the experience of peace and that of love? Can we recognize that bliss is different in sensation from the feeling of ecstasy? What is passion? What is unity, true unity, through every layer, expression and experience of form?
As we realize each existential aspect of being here now as non-absolute, a liberation occurs in which we are able to channel these aspects according to the needs of the whole through any moment or situation.
Much of the I AM HERE message is about language, which gives the building blocks of thought, which can give the signposts to experience. The language we use in discourse on non-duality will define and perhaps even limit our ability to communicate with precision. Words, used without a depth of responsibility, can create subtle prisons.
As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj taught, perception is not absolute, either as consciousness or awareness. It could well be the energy that emanates through all forms in creation, but in itself, it is not an end point.
“Perception doesn’t define who we are. Yet it does define where we are limited, and where we are not yet free.”
[I AM HERE]
Please enjoy this special excerpt from I AM HERE
Unity
“It is in the dense dimension of physical matter that emptiness becomes most apparent.”
The soul aspect which pervades as a background to the dimension of emptiness is unity. When I first mention this to students, they are often shocked. Unity? In the root? The idea that it is precisely the ‘lower’ dimension – all that ugly physical stuff – which is the opening to sacred unity can appear as a paradox. Yet what we know as the ‘lowest’ dimension – physical matter – is also in some ways the most inviolate, strong and the most suffused with the perpetual sanctity of creation and the emergence of form. It is in the dense dimension of physical matter that emptiness becomes most apparent.
When we contemplate the densest expression of energy available to our perception – the physical world – the world of bones, flesh, cement, mortar and neatly painted asphalt, it becomes clear that there can be no unity which does not contain that. If we excluded the matter of which we are composed as individual humans, it wouldn’t be unity but escapism. In truth matter does not divide us: it is the most tangible, physical proof of our unity.
Our physical bodies, alive as they are, are also the clearest declaration of physical unity. They declare it constantly, these bodies, as they drag behind us as we venture forth in our ‘higher’ process of spiritual development. Loyally, they ground it all. Whether conscious or not, and beyond the furthest reaches of our awareness, these bodies persist as a magnificent composition of universal matter.
Although we can find a thousand reasons why not to think about it right now, these bodies of ours are also in transformation. We will undergo a death process, and the physical body will be cremated or buried in order to slowly decompose into the elements. Even the fresh air we are breathing is suffused with the particles of bodies of those that have lived and died. And this is not only a future event. Within the timeless, vertical dimension of the present moment, our physical conception and our decomposition are coexisting. There is no greater proof and fact of the transience of form than our physical flesh and blood, and the hard ground on which it stands.
So potent is this, that when there is sound it vibrates through every molecule and cell of our physical bodies, whether or not we know or like the other people in the room. We are responding in unity to every passing truck, and each whisper from a baby’s lips, whether or not we allow it within our awareness or know it within our consciousness. At the heart of matter, we are one.
This basis of unity contains the mid-dimension of sentient awareness and the upper dimension of wisdom and peace. It is the infinite empire that allows the stillness of eternity, the stillness of being and the stillness of silence. It is the powerful support to passion, ecstasy and bliss. It is the unending perimeter of self-realization as it turns back towards a refining of enlightenment and awakening.
Dissolving in this soul aspect of unity, behind time and space, within the great and persuasive playing field of creation in the grey space between polarities, we are one.
If we return to the story of the unborn, we notice that in the coming together of two sides of a polarity, man and woman, something new is born: the embryo of all that we are. If this embryo could report, it would be telling that its formation is a kind of vibration, a movement in which it has been separated from the pure atmosphere of peace, love and unity from which it emerged. It would be almost cynical about the division – because it is still composed within peace, love and unity, and it knows the division is transient.
Just as a handful of sand lifted from the seashore is still sand, and knows it can be scattered in all directions across the planet, yet it can never have its ‘sandness’ taken away, even if every grain were to be spiraled through infinite space. Just as a reflection of light gives light and is composed of light. Just as the water in our bodies and in each individual cell is part of the universal element of water, and when it returns to the ocean will become the ocean. Just in this way, we are an inseparable part of creation as it manifests, moment by moment.
About
Spiritual author and teacher Georgi (Georgina Yael Johnson) has been involved with healing, teaching and meditation for most of her life.
With a passion for going to the depths, Georgi is leading others into an exploration of perception and the realization of the windows of perception: consciousness, awareness & emptiness. Her devotion to this work comes from a keen awareness of inter-being and inherent unity.
Offered together with her partner Bart ten Berge, the inspiring I AM HERE teachings are presently guiding thousands into a process of grounded, spiritual reformation – allowing the manifestation of more peace, love and unity within the spectrum of human experience.
An Oxford graduate in Literature, Georgi presently lives in Israel with her ten children.
Non-Duality America 