Dreaver lays out a straightforward practice that will help reader learn to see and experience life in the present moment, free of any negative thoughts, concepts, beliefs, or stories. He walks readers through his simple, easy-to-use three-step practice for transformation: be present with your experience; notice your story; see the truth.
Dreaver shares his own spiritual journey to seek enlightenment and inner freedom, and reveals how he discovered this effective practice. He interweaves stories about people he has worked with using this process, both privately and in workshops, and the successful transformations they have made to happier more fulfilling lives.
Dreaver lays out a straightforward practice that will help reader learn to see and experience life in the present moment, free of any negative thoughts, concepts, beliefs, or stories. He walks readers through his simple, easy-to-use three-step practice for transformation: be present with your experience; notice your story; see the truth.
Dreaver shares his own spiritual journey to seek enlightenment and inner freedom, and reveals how he discovered this effective practice. He interweaves stories about people he has worked with using this process, both privately and in workshops, and the successful transformations they have made to happier more fulfilling lives.
Paperback
-
SHIP THIS ITEMIn stock. Ships in 6-10 days.PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Dreaver lays out a straightforward practice that will help reader learn to see and experience life in the present moment, free of any negative thoughts, concepts, beliefs, or stories. He walks readers through his simple, easy-to-use three-step practice for transformation: be present with your experience; notice your story; see the truth.
Dreaver shares his own spiritual journey to seek enlightenment and inner freedom, and reveals how he discovered this effective practice. He interweaves stories about people he has worked with using this process, both privately and in workshops, and the successful transformations they have made to happier more fulfilling lives.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781571746597 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2012 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
END YOUR STORY, BEGIN YOUR LIFE
WAKE UP, LET GO, LIVE FREE
By JIM DREAVER
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Jim DreaverAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57174-659-7
CHAPTER 1
Step 1: Be Present with Your Experience
The first person to ask me to be her teacher was Juliana Dahl, the mother of four children, the youngest of whom was still in high school when we met. For the next year, we spoke twice a month on the phone, as she lived in Boulder, Colorado, and I was in Northern California. Then, in 2006, I started traveling to Boulder to teach a series of workshops in her home. Here, in her words, is her story:
I first got a taste of enlightenment in November of 1991 while living in Saudi Arabia. During a healing session, my Kundalini energy uncoiled at the base of my spine. It shot through my crown chakra and united me with all things as oneness. It was definitely a unitive experience. I felt everything surrounding me as part of me, and I, part of it. It was very blissful and ecstatic, and because the energy shot through my sexual chakra on its way up to the crown, I also had huge waves of sexual energy running through me. It is how I would imagine making love with the divine would be. I was in a euphoric state for days, and for six months after this opening, I would swoon in ecstasy when I gazed in the eyes of the person I was with whenever this occurred.
This experience changed my life, because from that moment on, anything in my life that was not in total integrity would fall away. After about a year, I returned to my ordinary way of being, with suffering and hardships meeting me daily, but this Kundalini awakening definitely put me on my spiritual journey. I wanted to discover as much as I could about regaining the feeling of unity consciousness and the freedom I had experienced.
It was not until January of 2004, while I was presenting a workshop on female sexuality at the Sacred Sexuality, Enlightenment, and Shamanism Conference in Santa Fe, that I met Jim. The subject of his talk was "Why Enlightenment Matters." I was drawn to attend his presentation and sat right in the front row, and knew immediately I wanted him to be my teacher. I also understood for the first time that it was not necessary to wait lifetimes to wake up. He let me know we just needed a burning desire for freedom and a fundamental shift in perception, and liberation could be ours.
During the year I studied with him, I could gradually feel the veils of illusion dropping away. Every time I experienced suffering, I would use the simple practice he taught me, the practice that is the foundation of his work. My energy would shift, and I would feel freer and more present.
I loved the clarity and depth of his teaching style, and we soon became good friends. I gathered a group of friends in Boulder to hear Jim's teaching. He returned several different times to teach in Boulder, where I hosted him. As my relationship with Jim continued over the next two years, I realized I was getting closer and closer to the freedom I wanted to live.
During the summer of 2008, Jim was teaching a workshop at my home. That Saturday evening, he and I were driving out to dinner. On the way, he said to me, "I'm really happy with your progress of the path of awakening, Juliana. You really do see that everything between your ears is an illusion ... well, almost everything. You're still identified with one story."
I actually pulled the car over to the side of the road when he said that. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I'd been holding onto a judgment about a former roommate. I felt she had interfered in my relationship with my then-boyfriend, so I had asked her to move out, and I hadn't forgiven her. I said to Jim, "My God, you are right ... I see now that that, too, is just a story!"
This realization just hastened my resolve to awaken fully, and I decided I did not want to wait any longer. I could feel that I was ready to make the permanent shift. The actual moment of awakening happened the very next day, June 1.
What happened was that he invited me to sit in presence with him. He asked me to go deep inside and see what there was that was keeping me from being totally free. As I shut my eyes, I saw several different stories I had bought into as reality for so many years, and which had caused me many hours, days, and weeks of pain and suffering. Each one I was able to release as I knew these scenarios were not who I was.
Then Jim asked, "Is there anything else which is keeping you from being fully awake and free?" I closed my eyes. This time I saw pure black void. I heard the words, "You are empty, there is nothing else ... You are free."
When I opened my eyes, I knew I had fully awakened to my true nature as pure consciousness, and knew I could experience the bliss and freedom I had only tasted seventeen years ago all the time. Studying with Jim for these three years really focused my burning desire to have freedom, and his clarity, wisdom, and strong presence—and unwavering love and support—helped launch me back into what I have always been: "pure awareness, expressing through this body, mind, and personality known as Juliana."
I spoke on the phone with Juliana recently, almost a year after she awakened. She is living in Aspen now, enjoying the timeless peace, bliss, and fun of being free, working with her sacred sexuality clients, doing massage, teaching yoga, and sharing the message of awakening with those who are open to it.
Awakening to What We Are
Our true nature cannot be expressed in words. However, consciousness, awareness, beingness, and presence are some words that come closest to defining what we are, here, right now. We always start from this moment now, from the present.
So, what can be said to be real right now is that you are alive, present, and reading this book. What is real now is your existence. You are conscious of existing, of being alive. Your true nature is consciousness itself. It is the one thing always present, whether you are asleep or awake, and whether you are aware of it or not.
What you are in your essence is the lucid, unchanging consciousness giving birth to everything in the world of the senses, including all your thoughts, stories, and memories, and to your body, mind, and this unique personality called "you." To understand this is to grasp the literal meaning of the words attributed to St. Francis: "What we are looking for is what is looking." You become aware of yourself, your true nature, as consciousness, awareness, or presence itself.
Now, most people are not aware of this. They tend to live as if in a dream—a dream which sometimes turns into a nightmare. They take their ego and their thoughts—the personal self and its many stories—to be real; are caught in habitual patterns of conflict, self-doubt, and worry; and have only occasional glimpses of the timeless beauty and mystery of existence.
The goal of spiritual or transformational work is to wake up from the dream. It is to break free of the internal dialogue. It is to see through the mind-created illusion of me, myself, and my story, the imaginary world you have created between your ears, making you feel separate and apart from others.
These stories, memories, and experiences have shaped your personality, but they are still only your stories. They may have been real once, but are definitely not real now. They are an imaginary world existing inside your head, in the form of fleeting thoughts, beliefs, pictures, and ideas of self, with corresponding feelings and emotions in your body. And they are always changing, always coming and going; yet you, as the awareness that sees them and experiences them, are always here.
Every time you see the truth of this, your head clears, your body relaxes, your heart opens, and you experience a release from inner conflict, stress, and suffering. You become, in a word, present.
Awakening itself is realizing you are not your stories, not your thoughts, but the consciousness in which stories and thoughts—in which all existence—arises. You are not an object, a human being in space and time who has only intermittent glimpses of consciousness, the source of creation. You are not a wave, occasionally remembering your connection to the ocean. Rather, you are consciousness itself, viewing all of creation through the eyes of this human being called you. You are the ocean itself, manifested in this individual human wave form.
As this realization occurs, you find yourself connected to an inexhaustible source of wisdom, love, and inner joy. Instead of living out of some myth or story about who you are and what life means, you live in awareness in the present. Meaning and identity no longer depend on beliefs, stories, or circumstances, but flow directly out of the beauty and dynamism of the life force itself. They arise from the sense of oneness, from the intimacy you feel with life—from the fullness and fragrance of being itself. You live in a state of openness, of welcoming everything that comes into your awareness.
With this awakening to the truth of being, the incessant chatter of the mind no longer dominates your consciousness. Your inner state becomes one of clarity and ease—at times, radiantly so. You become aware of a deep, vast silence, a universal spaciousness without center and without borders. You feel yourself to be one with that silence.
From within this inner silence you use thinking—including the I thought—for the extraordinary creative tool it is, but there is no attachment to thinking itself, nor to the concepts I, me, and mine.
Whenever you use these personal pronouns, you are clear you are speaking as impersonal consciousness expressed through your personal form. You use them in a functional way, free of personal ownership, pride, or emotional reactivity. Because of this openness and freedom from ego, from attachment to the personal perspective, living becomes much more effortless. Regardless of what is occurring, each day has a quality of magic and adventure to it.
Contrast this with your experience when you have not yet awakened to truth. Whenever you say "I" or "me," there is a very definite identification with the personal, with the ego self—with some kind of story, judgment, expectation, assumption, or agenda. You often feel divided, as in: "A part of me feels this way, and yet another part of me feels that way."
There may be glimpses, but there is no abiding awareness of being one with the totality of consciousness. Instead, separation, isolation, and a feeling of aloneness, even meaninglessness, is the prevailing experience. This personal identification with your story, with who you think you are, triggers self-doubt, stress, worry, and fear. It perpetuates the experience of conflict and suffering.
Awakening, as will become clear, means freedom from conflict and suffering. This is the promise of the inner quest. It doesn't matter what your circumstances are, or where in this world you live—inner freedom can be yours, simply because it is your true nature.
The feeling-tone associated with being established in pure consciousness is one of relaxed ease, harmony, and presence, of openness and welcoming, of gratitude and appreciation. It is one of feeling the energy of being alive in your body. Thoughts may or may not be present, but you are not identified with them. There is no you in the way. There is just the flow of being, that which in Zen is called the "suchness" of life, and you are one with the suchness. Everything then happens out of oneness.
Truly, to know yourself as consciousness, and then to embody the knowing, is the greatest blessing.
See if you can feel it, your true nature, right now. Just be very present, very aware of all that is ... Then let the awareness that you are permeate your body ... Notice how your breath flows in and flows out in the awareness you are ... Then notice how sensations arise and fall in your body ... How thoughts, images, and stories come and go in your mind ... Be aware of yourself as the awareness, the consciousness, which is aware of all this ...
Getting Our Stories in Perspective
Many people have a problem and go into resistance when I say that they are not their stories. After all, they so identify with their stories. In fact, the history of humanity is one vast interwoven story. The theologian Anne Foerst described us as a storytelling people—Homo narrandus. There are as many stories as there are people, and it is natural and human to share our stories with each other.
A story is simply anything we think or believe or tell to others to explain what has happened, is happening, or is going to happen in our lives. This is how we derive a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, until we tap into a deeper level of being and no longer depend on any story for our identity.
There are stories of need and desire, abundance and lack, contentment and dissatisfaction, success and failure, justice and chaos, wealth and poverty, health and disease, hope and despair. Sometimes our stories are mundane and ordinary, sometimes they are fun and even exciting or inspiring, and sometimes they are painful or sad. Stories or parables also serve as teaching devices. We learn from them. We use them as teaching tools to illustrate certain lessons. But whatever emotions they evoke or lessons they teach us, our stories are not who or what we are. They are only expressions of who we are.
Those who are in the process of awakening to truth and inner freedom understand this at some level. They learn from the story, but they don't get lost in the drama of it. Instead, they derive their identities from simply being alert and present in each moment, from the flow of energy and fullness being felt right now.
However, most people still identify with some kind of story at the personal, self-defining level. The attachment to these stories creates the emotional experience of either heaven or hell, or something in between the two, in our bodies, minds, and hearts. Strong emotions are always the result of being identified by a story. When we are simply present as the awareness we are, not identified with any story, our emotional state is always one of ease, harmony, and flow.
Until we go through this shift in identity, and as long as we don't know ourselves at the level of pure, primordial consciousness, we are doomed to a life of uncertainty, anxiety, and suffering.
Suffering is the personal response, through the creation of a story in one's mind, to pain or unwanted experience. For suffering to arise, there has to be someone—a person, an I or a me—who suffers. People always have a story around their suffering. To put it another way, pain plus a story equals suffering.
However, as you become inwardly freer, pain or unwanted experiences are just that—pain or unwanted experiences. You may initially get upset about an event, but you remember who and what you are—pure consciousness, being expressed in this body, mind, and personality called you—and you just deal with it. You do not create a story around it—or, if you do, it is a functional, factual story. It is a story that describes what actually happened or is happening.
Almost all the human suffering in the world is due to identification with a story of some kind—from people taking their stories to be reality. It may be a personal story of abandonment, loneliness, guilt, or fear. It may be a story of power and control. It may be due to a state-imposed religious story with its own harsh or restrictive edicts and subsequent denial of human rights. It may be a self-imposed religious story with a whole set of beliefs and dogmas, which you then feel compelled to embrace.
The more entrenched you are in your own story, your own version of truth, the more you will likely resist what I am sharing. Whether it's some personal story of insecurity, pride, or fear, a cultural story causing you to be identified by a particular ethnic group or custom, or one of the many religious stories that have always been promoted as the truth and the way to humankind, you will tend to cling even more tightly to it. A lot of fear can come up as you contemplate letting go of a story, any story, by which you have previously been identified.
In my work, people sometimes ask me, "But who or what am I without my story?" When you know the answer to that question, know it in the depths of your being, then you will be free, and your search for yourself will be over. It is my intention to guide you gently and skillfully toward the answer, but I can tell you this right now: you will find it on virtually every page of this book.
Welcome Your Experience
A lot of people have trouble welcoming very unpleasant experiences. That is natural; yet if you are truly committed to awakening, eventually you will learn the subtle art of welcoming.
For now, it is enough to simply be present with what you are feeling or experiencing. In time, as you become freer from all that binds you, welcoming will be easier. In fact, you begin to develop an attitude of "Bring it on!" You want to see where you still get caught in suffering or reaction, because you want to be free of those demons.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from END YOUR STORY, BEGIN YOUR LIFE by JIM DREAVER. Copyright © 2011 Jim Dreaver. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
A Vision xi
Introduction 1
The Practice of Freedom 11
Chapter 1 Step 1: Be Present with Your Experience 15
The Practice of Meditation 50
Chapter 2 Step 2: Notice the Story 53
The Practice of Looking for the Story 83
Chapter 3 Step 3: See the Truth 87
The Practice of Being Present 121
Chapter 4 Questioning This Me 123
The Practice of Self-Inquiry 151
The Practice of Freeing Yourself from the I Thought 153
Chapter 5 Awakening to Freedom 155
The Practice of Being Awake 187
Chapter 6 The Power of Love 189
Two Practices for Forgiveness 222
Two Practices for Eye-Gazing 224
Chapter 7 Creating a New Story for Your Life 22
The Practice of Manifestation 258
Afterword 261
Acknowledgments 267
Bibliography 269