Communicating With Your Enlightened Self
It’s not the money you earn that defines your life. It’s how you direct your energies, how much love you share.
Remember that this is no different from any other time in your life, past or future. You are in fullness at all times. This is just one manifestation of it.
Every complaint abdicates power and responsibility.
Neither resist nor insist—instead, outsmart and overcome.
Know that you can create situations where everyone is joyfully free at all times. Refuse the other situations.
Over time, everyone eventually remembers their divinity. It is inevitable.
You are the pipe through which the blessings flow. The only evil is in holding on. This illusion of ownership causes pain.
This is not the past. What happened before is over and can’t happen again. Every day is a new day.
You are a magnet for all the things in your life.
You have a great career as a human being. This is your first and only true career.
You don’t need to understand people. You just need to love them.
Unconditional love does not mean unconditional agreement.
Without the power of Truth supporting you, you are not being fully realized and fulfilled.
Don’t ‘do’ anything. Just be aware.
This world can support you and bless you and receive you. Love the world and it will love you back.
You don’t have to buy love or earn it or do anything to get it or have it. You ARE love. There is nothing but Love, flowing in its many directions infinitely.
Nothing you can DO can ever be as great as what you ARE.
Powerful action should engage all levels of your being, including energetic enthusiasm—and love. Spend time on these things and the rewards will exponentiate.
Know yourself as beyond all limits, beyond all accomplishments.
Each ‘I didn’t get’ should be a building block for a glorious future.
All relationships begin with the self and are exact duplicates of one’s self-relations.
Nothing ever takes away from you, nothing ever destroys you.
Your lesson is to love imperfection perfectly.
The reason is spiritual evolution. That is the only reason for anything.
No one will ever love you the way you can love yourself, because no one can see as much of you as you can.
This is an ocean of love with many currents.
Control can only truly happen during involvement, not through detachment or prediction.
You can depend on God’s love. Even when you don’t love or understand yourself, and when others don’t understand or respect you.
Don’t confuse desire with evil. You can have strong, overpowering desires for good things.
You don’t have to get everything you ever wanted if you can acknowledge that you no longer want it.
A desire can be a lure to take you through needed experiences. It can disappear through its direct fulfillment or else after its purpose has been served but without fulfillment.
As for averting danger, one averts the positive and the negative at the same time if one averts either.
Something could go right.
At heart, everyone knows their divinity, which means their immortal nature, their God-identity.
Know that you are totally harmless, and that the world is totally indestructible.
Action is separate from the self.
See love as coming from inside of you, not as dependent on what is outside of you.
Everything that happens brings you closer to God.
It’s not whether you have a good time. It’s whether you become aware.
What’s gone is forever gone. You can only go from here.
The escaped bird will never return to the cage.
Aim to give love. Let this motivate and inspire you. It will clear your path. And it will also bring you love, as a by-product.
Know that this love you have to give is vital and valuable. Believe in its importance, and you will have the strength to move through the efforts involved in making it available.
If you would just respond to the needs of the moment, you would be doing exactly enough.
Everything is a road to enlightenment.
The smallest is the same as the largest. One individual is as important during their brief lifetime—even during one instant—as the whole of creation for all time.
What is important is your life from your viewpoint at this instant. Take care of that and you will be taking care of God’s plan.
Know that God loves you every second. All you have to do is accept it.
There are only viewpoints, all of which are limited in some way. The only ‘right’ thing is the whole thing.
All karma begins with a choice being made.
No one comes here by accident. And everyone has unfinished business when they leave.
Right where you are walking is where you work out your destiny.
You must fully inhabit and experience each stage before moving on to the next.
You write your own destiny.
At the time of your death, you may have no fear. You may experience great happiness. You won’t know before then. In the meantime, love and work. Anticipation has no value.
The difference between the levels of consciousness is the extent to which one is conscious of self. The ultimate is that Self is All.
It is really one Consciousness which inhabits all Creation, like a stream of water which flows through different avenues, choosing in each case to accept the limitations of that situation.
It’s all God talking to God.
Don’t inflict, invite, or accept suffering for yourself.
Everyone ultimately wants unity, and all ultimately will achieve it, because they already have it.
There is no conflict when all parts are seen and heard. Choose all parts of yourself. Each has a reason to be.
Look around and know where you are: in a world of beautiful opportunities. The past no longer exists.
When one places one’s life squarely on the lap of God, sorrows cease and death vanishes.
You should know that Life is indestructible and eternal and that it all belongs to God. Then you can know that you are good, you are in the right place, and you are forgiven.
Truth exists separately from its messenger. A liar or an ignorant person can speak the truth.But the truth will recognize itself.
Only that grows which you feed.
You are now free and whole. The realization of this is what makes it so.
One cannot successfully decide not to feel, not to experience what one is experiencing. One can, however, acknowledge it and move on.
You can become afraid or sad or happy just by thinking about something. But who is the thinker?
Your journey stretches over time, but when all is said and done your lifetime will be one moment, one glorious moment that tells a story, one story amongst the myriad of stories.
All questions are the same question. All answers are the same answer. The question is ‘Am I alone?’ and the answer is ‘I am all one.’
One only knows reality as one knows oneself.
Everything is real. Except the distinction between this and that.
There is direct action without processing or understanding. There is loving without being sure, without testing and approving.
Be angry. Be happy. Be not the anger. Be not the happiness.
Know that if any path exists, it is Love that will lead you upon it.
You shouldn’t take anything personally. Except what you do to yourself.
Enlightenment is not a hypnotic trance. It is the truth of who you are. It carries through into your most mundane actions, feelings, and states of mind.
It is normal to be enlightened.
Timelessness heals all wounds.
The meaning of life is that it isn’t about meaning.
You don’t need to follow a path. What you need to do is to sit still.
The wise have no why’s.
When you seek, you only experience seeking.
There is really nothing to gain. Unless you could gain Nothing. Then you would have Everything.
Preferences are the enemy of freedom.
The way to proceed is not doing something in particular nor going someplace in particular. Instead, it is to bring non-stop godliness into every situation in which you find yourself.
Your true identity is Being.
All directions are the same direction.
Consciousness is everywhere and everything is in it.
You are not your thoughts. You were here before they were.
Through the coming of God’s grace, I am nothing. I am nothing, so God’s grace is coming through. This is my only remaining wish.
The flame, however dimly lit, still guides you home.
What you have is YOUR life. You know what you are and you are living that.
Let your light shine. You are like a diamond. Everywhere you go, your essence, your heart, your eternal star will touch.
The role you play carries the meaning you bring into it. You are free to play it any way you want.
Your purpose lies within your heart and unfolds with every passing second.
Don’t create difficulties by anticipating them. Anticipate ease. You are the agent of action. You are the flow of intelligence.
When the time is right, no questions will remain.
You are here to shine your light on the world.
Recognize all power as yours, not as belonging to that which you endowed with your power.
The truth hurts no one. Truth only hurts falsehood.
This is your evolution, to be where you are now.
You cannot stop feelings and you cannot control future events which may give rise to them again. You can love the feelings and transform them.
A man sees a rope and fears a snake.
You should send God all of your feelings as an offering of love and an acknowledgment of their source.
Your anger is in fact love in one of its forms.
Immediate gratitude. For everything that happens.
Anger is one thing, perpetuating anger is another thing. Anger should last only as long as the emotion is felt.
There is no Self and Other from the viewpoint of the Creator—only from the viewpoint of the Creation.
Your completeness does not depend on events.
You are neither alone nor unloved.
Remember your indestructibility. Remember to acknowledge all of yourself. Remember that this moment is perfect.
If one can see God within everything in Creation, one penetrates illusion.
You must get in the water and swim, not try to understand swimming.
A self-image is only an image. Only the Self is the true self.
Division is inherent in creation. It can be no other way. The misperception of self and other sustains the boundaries of the created.
Those who claim God as on their side have trouble allowing God to be.
You asked and were given permission to live your life the way you live it.
This part of the path leads to the part ahead. And it is golden.
Accept death as an organic part of the whole of life. It is not separate, it is not an enemy.
Ultimately there is no death. There is only life. But all that exists changes and in so doing there is the ‘death’ of its previous form.
You make so much of time. It is only the thinnest web. Look through the strands.
In truth, each human carries all potentialities for the whole range of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
Everyone has an IDEA of God, but that is not God. God is an experience, not an idea.
Don’t fight any part of yourself. Then only can you see, love, and heal yourself.
Healing means: bringing into the light. That’s all that needs to be done. The rest is automatic. The ‘dark’ parts seek light, to be seen, to be known. The mistake is to push them away.
You need no reason to forgive someone.
To forgive yourself means being in the present.
The sun doesn’t cease to exist when the clouds blow over.
There is one life and there is one illusion, and that illusion is that there are many lives.
There is no time. There is only Moment. At this moment, all is in balance and perfect.
If you wish to become immortal, you must identify with that which is changeless.
Reality inevitably comes to where you are.
There is only one Being. Welcome home.
God is the man behind the curtain, the curtain, the show, and the spectators all at once.
God is the awareness in everything of everything.
Anyone could complete the following phrase with their own name: “I am God having the experience of being __________.”
Enlightenment is seeing as much silence as activity in equal measures. The silent moments between the active moments.
Enlightenment is not the cause of which feeling relaxed and good is the result. There is no cause, no consequence.
You are not your emotions: and this is how you can live by wisdom instead of emotions. Feel your feelings but don’t identify with them.
Enlightenment is not an idea. It is a living reality. It is Reality, living in you.
Enlightenment is a bargain. The trade-off is: give up everything you have. In return, you get all of it back, plus everything in the universe.
You might think that you desire enlightenment. Actually, enlightenment desires you. When you are pushing toward it, you are misperceiving. It is actually pulling you.
You don't obtain enlightenment. Only God obtains enlightenment. You don't become God. God becomes you.
The popular idea is that you have to release the past in order to be in the present. The truth is that what you most need to do is to release the present. The present moment is, in fact, the only thing that you truly have. That would make it the only thing that you could release.
Go and try to fill up the ocean by using your bucket. Where will you find the water to fill the bucket? You will have to dip into that same ocean.
Instead of attempting to gain from life, hold without grasping. The palm of your hand stays open without closing your fingers over what sits in it. Various things come and go, that is all.
At each time in your life, there was a part of you that was always there and that was always the same. Stay with that silent sense of self.
There is nothing but consciousness being conscious of consciousness.
Love summons the unloved.
The illusion leads to its own demise. It is just a path to awakening from the illusion.
You contain everything. Never deny or discard yourself.
There is never a time when you are not working on making progress toward enlightenment. Living your life is the means to that end.
It has nothing to do with thinking. Instead, it has to do with knowing. It is the knowing of who you truly are, a knowing that you carry at all times.
Everyone has an Enlightened Self. It is the part of you that already is enlightened, already knows peace, and already has attained the goal of your evolution. Uniting with your Enlightened Self is the completion of your quest....
Being is unaffected by time, and also is therefore unaffected by cause (past) and effect (present and future). Being is that infinite constancy that is total fullness. Nothing is better than that.
People give love in the way that makes sense to them, in the way that they would like to receive it, in the way that it was shown to them, and to whatever extent they are able.
You are conscious that you are conscious. Just let your attention rest in that experience.
The journey is not the goal. Only the goal is the goal.
Enlightenment is on your doorstep. It is available today to anyone, in all walks of life.
Being is unaffected by time, and also is therefore unaffected by cause (past) and effect (present and future). Being is that infinite constancy that is total fullness.
Think of something about your life that is hard to make sense of. Now say, “It’s my path of enlightenment.”
Let’s look into each other’s eyes and see the divine light that is shining there. It is not affected by time, place, or circumstance.
Enlightenment won’t turn you into a psychic wizard. It’s something different, and much better, than that. It will turn you on to the total human dimension of your existence.
The answers that you get from your Enlightened Self will be the best answers possible, tuned in to your greatest evolutionary need at the time of your asking, and phrased in the language that communicates the most clearly and directly to you about your question....
You are inner stillness. Therefore, you don’t need to do anything to maintain inner stillness. You just live it.
Life has its ups and downs. Inner stillness doesn’t have its ups and downs. It isn’t going anywhere, not up or down. It’s always here.
The desire, the passion, the devotion that you put into your spiritual quest are not the property of your identity. They are the properties of Consciousness as it pulls your consciousness into It.
The force of gravity is getting stronger as you approach the shores of infinity.
Reminding yourself to be in the present is all backwards. In order do it, you mentally project another “yourself” that you are monitoring. And the you that is reminding “yourself” is already in the present without any reminder....
You’ve got it all backwards when you copy the effects of enlightenment in order to be enlightened. Those things are just the map. They are not the territory. Occupy the territory, and those things will happen spontaneously....
Being is who you are. Being is what you are. Being is when you are. Being is where you are. Being is how you are. Being is why you are.
Being is the thing that is there when you completely stop trying, the thing that is there without any thought or intention at all.
Enlightenment is not an idea. It is not imagined, thought of, grasped, or followed like a map, or in any other way separated from who you are. Enlightenment is lived.
Changeless, timeless eternity is beyond the present, the past, and the future. The end goal is to arrive there.
Enlightenment doesn’t stop you from being human.
It’s not that enlightenment needs to be maintained, it’s that enlightenment maintains everything. The source of all existence is maintaining existence. It’s not that you have to do something to maintain the source. It’s already there.
The answer is not to struggle with things but instead to bypass them. Go to pure being and be there. And then that will be you.
Enlightenment isn’t an obtaining. It is a giving away.
The reason you do the things you do is to feel alive. Drop the painful, unproductive ways to feel alive. There are better ways to feel alive. Find joyful, productive ways to feel alive.
“Why did this happen to me?” When you ask this, you are confusing one thing with another. This happening is not about you. Only you are about you. This happening is about this happening.
The way to be done with karma is to know yourself as fully being self-sufficient.
Because of the fullness that is enlightenment, the enlightened person doesn’t do things because of an inner lack. If the enlightened person wants anything, it is probably enlightenment for everyone else.
After you are enlightened, things will happen. But none of them will add to you or take away from you, because enlightenment is constant fullness that is independent of circumstances.
What is it to be an enlightened person? It is to know the truth of who you are. Who are you? At your inner core, as your Enlightened Self, you are simply being as pure consciousness.
A person has boundaries. Enlightenment is unboundedness. A miracle of our human existence is that as persons we have the capability of experiencing enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not a philosophy. It is the living knowledge of the truth of who you are. And when that knowledge lives in you, nothing that happens in the world can compromise, endanger, damage, negate, extinguish, or triumph over your Enlightened Self.
Establish yourself in the realm of changelessness, and you will inherit a viewpoint that originates from an experience of timelessness and unboundedness.
The enlightened experience is of fullness, of inner fullness and outer fullness, and of fullness matching fullness.
When you move through life having embraced the inner sense of the wholeness of the silent self, then you are beyond the qualities of positivity and negativity that categorize events in the outer world.
In the fullness of being, and when being is the self, nothing ever adds to or takes away from the self.
Know all moments as fully being self-sufficient. One thing at a time, and each thing unto itself. Then it isn’t about cause and effect. There is just being. And tragedy or its opposite are just happenings.
Enlightenment doesn’t mean that you better yourself to the point of being enlightened. It isn’t the final improvement on the list of improvements. Enlightenment is a change of identity that comes through yielding to eternal being....
As long as you engage with your unenlightened self, your attention is on your problems. To be enlightened, you need to go where enlightenment is and dwell there.
There are only two things, self and phenomena. And phenomena have nothing to do with self.
Enlightenment happens because of a reversal of perspective. The perspective is about who you are. The reversal is that instead of being an individual in the cosmos, you are the cosmos in an individual.
Everything that happens in a person’s life is their path of enlightenment. So take heart. Until enlightenment is your daily life, daily life is your enlightenment.
Nothing will change until you change.
In the time it took you to read this, you approached enlightenment just that much closer.
When enlightenment happens, the biggest change of all to your life takes place: it isn’t your life any more. Instead, universal consciousness lives through you.
When moments arrive that seem difficult or incomprehensible, try this phrase: “This is my path of enlightenment.” And then you can experience what it is like to allow wholeness to happen.
You are in first place on your path.
Just when you think you are being diverted from your desired destiny, it turns out that you are exactly where you need to be. Becoming aware is the prize.
The only real obstacle to enlightenment is an unreadiness to give up the old identity, bound by time and space, for the new identity, which is eternal. People will find reasons not to yield to enlightenment even when they are on the brink of enlightenment....
What you know depends on your state of consciousness.
Each desire you fulfill clears the way for your next desire. The final desire is for enlightenment. Therefore, ultimately every desire leads you to the desire for enlightenment.
Beyond all states of consciousness there is the unaltered state of consciousness, which is pure consciousness. This is the parent of all the other states of consciousness. It is changeless while they are temporary. The ultimate would be to experience this....
Hearing a description of enlightenment does actually give you some degree of direct experience. It’s the glow that you feel when the words of the description sink into you, and you recognize the truth in them. They point the direction to what lies ahead....
A sublime, spiritual peak experience is just one possible effect of spiritual seeking. An effect comes from a cause. What you should seek is the cause, not the effect. The cause is aligning yourself with eternal Being. What you want to duplicate is the cause, cause, cause, over and over. No matter what kind of experience you have....
The business of spiritual seeking is alignment with eternal Being. Whatever else happens is just part of the scenery.
The truth of one level of consciousness may not operate on another level. Attempting to mix the aspects of different levels can be, at best, ineffective and confusing.
‘I’ and ‘God’. In your best moments, those would just be two names for the same nameless thing.
Enlightenment improves your functioning because it takes your identity out of the action that you are performing. The action is no longer about you.
The enlightened experience is that you never stop praying.
Your true state of being is the aspect of you that is there at all times.
Being doesn’t depend on circumstances. It is the ultimate generality: no matter what is, being is there.
Before enlightenment, you experience consciousness as being in your mind. After enlightenment, you experience your mind as being in consciousness.
The entire outer world at any time is equally an impediment to enlightenment, whether you are in Times Square or on a beautiful deserted island. No matter where you look, the environment can be a distraction that leads consciousness to forget consciousness....
The enlightened experience is not neutral. It is positive. Positive, in the sense of wholeness.
The way things really are is that existence is whole.
The enlightened person still uses the mind and its tools of judgment and evaluation. It’s just that she doesn’t identify with them.
Any concept of enlightenment that you have will be incomplete. Enlightenment is not a concept. It is something lived.
When your enlightenment comes, don’t expect to give up anything or to gain anything. Other than everything.
Enlightened people may simply continue to live their everyday lives in society, quietly going about their business, which is probably the same business they were going about before enlightenment. It’s just that now they know who they truly are....
When you do nothing, there remains only being.
They say that every drop eventually returns to the ocean. Sit silently. The ocean will come to the drop.
The enlightened experience is that enlightenment is everywhere. Therefore, enlightenment leads nowhere else. There is no place “to” or “from” it. There is only “in” it.
There are no obstacles to enlightenment.
Why can’t you just stop waiting and hoping and striving, and say to enlightenment, “Take me, I’m yours,” and have it happen? It’s because of the mistakes that are being made. The mistakes are: believing that you desire enlightenment, and believing that you have an individual existence, like a branch believing that it is separate from the tree. Enli...
When you are enlightened, you won’t be enlightened individually. You will be enlightenment, enlightenment will be you, and there will be nothing there but enlightenment.
You may subsequently come to recognize that you were never there at all but instead that divinity was projecting you the whole time.
There is something more primary than thoughts and more primary than the mind: pure consciousness itself. Before there was the painting, there was the canvas.
The drop of your tiny, limited, individual awareness needs to be taken back into the ocean of boundless awareness. There, it will be buoyed by the totality.
The premise that the purpose of spirituality is to be able to get more of what you want is perhaps misdirected. It’s more about what God wants from you, and about you delivering that.
At the base of all experiencing is pure consciousness.
Individuality comes from being separate from others, and from being incomplete and unbalanced. Universal God, by contrast, is Being connected with everything, and is complete and balanced in a state of totality....
The ego can’t let go of the ego any more than your own eye can see itself. The answer is not to struggle but instead to bypass. Go to pure being and be there. And then that will be you.
When you become enlightened, God experiences enlightenment.
Enlightenment, when it happens, doesn’t merely feel as if it’s the very best meditation you’ve ever had. It’s a real rebirth.
Everything that happens brings you closer to enlightenment. Daily life is your enlightenment until enlightenment is your daily life.
Enlightenment happens in your consciousness. The world doesn’t change. You change. And then your world changes.
Enlightenment is not a transaction. You can’t just decide one day to say, “Okay, God, I get it. I surrender. Now, enlighten me.”
Enlightenment arrives on its own timetable.
What you can do about it is to invite it by performing your spiritual practices, whatever they may be. And then get out of its way.
The ocean comes to the drop, not the other way around.
There is a reversal. Before, you know yourself as an individual located in a universe. After, you know yourself as a universe located in an individual.
Your job is to become a big enough container to hold enlightenment.
Become nothing to become the Totality.
You don’t need to follow a path. You need to sit still.
Enlightenment abides in Silence.
Detachment from desires is an effect of enlightenment, not a cause of enlightenment. The enlightened experience is that you are so full to overflowing that there is nothing more to desire.
Imitating the effects of enlightenment won’t cause you to be enlightened.
You think that you need to maintain inner silence. Actually, inner silence maintains you.
You think that the goal is to be in the moment. Actually, the goal is for the moment to be in you.
You think that you are pushing toward enlightenment. Actually, enlightenment is pulling you.
Perhaps the biggest misconception about enlightenment is that it is beyond your reach.
Your enlightenment is inevitable because it already exists in the timeless realm of infinite potential being.
The sameness throughout the diversity of all that exists is the sameness of being.
Enlightenment is identification with Being.
Being is the common element. Being exists in every place and time. The being of any one thing is the same as the being of any other thing.
“To be” is the infinite infinitive.
When your consciousness is grounded in being, being is your fundamental experience: Being is who you are. Being is what you are. Being is when you are. Being is where you are. Being is how you are. Being is why you are.
Newest Posts from author Jeffrey Chappell
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Author Jeffrey Chappell Interviewed At The Library Of Congress
Jeffrey Chappell interviewed on Contact Talk Radio, July 7
Jeffrey Chappell interviewed on Transformational Talk Radio, June 3
Answers From Silence Becomes An International Bestseller
“Let Go And Let God”—And Beyond
Spiritual Success
The Tyranny Of Thought
Rose Rosetree, author of “Aura Reading Through All Your Senses”“And his descriptions of living in Enlightenment are, simply, the best I have read anywhere. Far as I’m concerned, the twinkly-eyed jazz composer and concert pianist has found the best way to communicate spiritual connection I’ve ever read. Move over, Bhagavad-Gita. (Fortunately there’s plenty of space on that blessed bookshelf.)
“Thus, Chappell’s Answers from Silence is in the tradition of Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahansa Yogananda’s magnificent autobiography no longer stands quite alone on my bookcase shelf. Indirectly but substantially, Chappell has told us his life story – the parts that count: His petty jealousies and insecurities, the guilt and confusion and all the other milestones of his personal development. No holding back for him and, perhaps, consequently, less holding back for us.”
Ruth Douillette, Foreword Clarion Book Reviews“Who wouldn’t want a personal answering service for the daily questions that flood our minds; answers to questions about relationships, careers, spirituality, and the like; personalized wisdom delivered straight to our hearts? But where can we find such a guru?
“There’s wisdom within each of us in the form of an Enlightened Self who will direct us, Jeffrey Chappell writes. He defines enlightenment as ‘the shift of identity from that which is bound by time and space to that which is eternal.’ Whether we know it or not, everyone is on the path of enlightenment and everyone has an Enlightened Self, he believes.
“This may not be the book for people whose feet are rooted firmly in terra firma, but seekers of enlightenment will be interested in Chappell’s take on the matter.”