Being and Becoming
When Inner Truth and Outer Life Align
This article explores the Congruence phase of ARC, where awareness, peace, and aliveness are no longer separate from everyday life, but lived together.
It was originally written for Positive Life Magazine under the title Discovering Divinity: Seeking the Sacred and Finding Your Self. In this piece, the word divinity is not used in a religious or idealised sense, but to point toward lived wholeness, presence, and the felt reality of being fully human and fully alive.
The whole idea of Discovering Divinity may sound like a lofty, other-worldly or impossible task. We may question ‘Who am I to even try?’. However, I would suggest it is more a question of ‘Who am I not?’ – because seeking sacredness invites us to recognise all that we really are, and results in us being more authentic, empowered, peaceful and loving. (And who wouldn’t want that?)
The key is to not over-complicate it and be clear on what we are aiming to be. Otherwise, we usually lose ourself in a long ‘Spiritual Things To Do List’ that keeps us in a cycle of doing (when the goal is to be ourself), and in doing so, unintentionally do lots of things that just end up enlightening our egoic identity.
So, let’s get back to basics: You are a ‘Human Being’, and so am I. It makes sense, therefore, for us to first understand what ‘Being’ really is.
Beyond just a name for our kind of species, within our Being-ness exists a constant reminder to see and be what we really are. In the Sanskrit language, ‘Being’ is referred to as ‘Sat’, meaning: “That which ‘is’, exists and is real.”
Our Being is the ‘I am’ before we add anything to it – before we become ‘this or that’. Before our ego starts to believe: ‘I am my job title, marital status, religious or political affiliations’ etc. As a result, when we recognise and rest within our Being (our I am-ness), we touch something prior to identity and things – the field in which all identities and things appear and dissolve.
‘Being’ is the still, silent, spacious Self beneath (and co-existing with) every thought, emotion, sensory experience and life event. It doesn’t come and go or change like our thoughts, emotions, physical body, or life circumstances do. It is the permanent Self “that ‘is’, exists and is real” – without any labels or limits.
Recognising the undeniable existence of this Being brings many benefits, including Peace. We can discover that Peace is not a temporary state, but what Being feels like – ultimately ‘is’ – and that Peace is Being resting as itself.
But how can we know this ‘Peace of Being’? The remarkable reality is that our capacity to know ‘it’ is actually built into the fabric of Being.
Awareness is the ‘knowing aspect of Being’. Or said differently, Awareness is the capacity by which we can know or experience anything. In Sanskrit, this is often called ‘Chit’, meaning: “consciousness, knowingness, and the light of perception”. We all have Awareness – again making it innate and undeniable – with the proof of Awareness being that we are aware of our mind, body, and all of the things that are happening during our day-to-day life.
‘Being’ is what you are.
‘Awareness’ is how you know you are.
Awareness is what recognises the ‘I am’ that I mentioned earlier – the Being that exists before, during and after you add anything to it. When you are aware of awareness, you can discover an unshakable Peace that’s untouched by thoughts, sensations or life events. Along with a sense of wholeness and oneness. Not because you are doing anything special, but because you’ve simply recognised the Being “that ‘is’, exists and is real” in yourself and all things.
This oneness (sometimes spoken about in spiritual circles as ‘unity’), is realised when we shift from ‘I am aware of myself and this world’ to ‘I am the Aware Being that myself and this world appears’. When we rest as That – aware of Being, being aware – there is no division between the observer and the observed. We stop believing that we (and Divinity) are an object to find. Instead, we see that everything is That – the subjective, sacred, divine Self – including us!
This peaceful oneness is the felt union of Being and Awareness, and the doorway through which we meet Love – the dynamic expression of Divinity. We learn that Love is Being in movement. Meaning that Peace and Love are not two separate things, but two faces of the same Being as it knows and expresses itself.
Imagine this Divinity as pure sunlight – Peace is the light itself (steady, radiant, unchanging) and Love is the warmth of that light (how it touches and brings life). Love is therefore the outpouring of source (formless) into something (form) – Love is how Being becomes. Love is Being expressing itself as physical form, variety, creativity, meaning, tenderness, joy, and life. When both Peace and Love are realised together, we move through our days being fully still and fully alive.
For me, this recognition brough Peace to life. I stopped aiming to ‘just be’, which had a disempowering side-effect of encouraging powerlessness, passivity and pulling back from life. I became empowered to fully be and engage life, and in doing so, Discover Divinity in all that I am and do, and in all that ‘is’.
Together, the existence of Peace and Love (Being and Becoming) allow for the full expression of Divinity – the still and the flowing, the silence and the singing, The One Divine Being expressing itself as the many in a multitude of beings and things. Incidentally, this Divinity that I am inviting you to see also includes this magazine and the eyes that you are using to read these words! All of It is That.