Return To the Self

Photo by Camellia-Yang

Divine Premise, Divine Promise

There’s an awesome premise in Isaiah accompanied by an amazing promise. The verse says,

The mind stayed on Thee, 
Thou keepest in perfect peace.¹

Here we’ll discuss the practical application of this eternal wisdom. And we’ll explore how a conscious awareness of what mystics call the Self (S) is perfect peace. 

We begin with an account from a business person:

“I was once told to ‘go back on the Self’ whenever fear or anger arises. But I didn’t realize this neutral ‘still point’ is the source of problem-solving until I noticed a pattern, especially when working with people or numbers.

“Whenever I feel less than at peace and remember to ‘go back on the Self’—or, more accurately for me, ‘fall back on the Self’—almost always the situation resolves, or the answer quickly appears. Sometimes it’s in an instant, in the blink of an eye. 

“I have come to rely on it—not only in the face of fear or anger—but also when I feel resentment, disgust, confusion—even plain old impatience, like when I’m sitting in a traffic jam. 

“With so many ‘opportunities’ every day, I spend a lot of time on the Self with my eyes wide open!

“Once I was in a meeting with a younger colleague whom I had mentored. He began to angrily and loudly berate me in front of others. I felt so disheartened and embarrassed. I was frozen speechless, my heart was pounding, and—worse—it felt like it was doing giant flip flops.

“But when my attention fell back to my Self—away from words and sensations—the physical trauma stopped immediately and I felt wrapped in a column of pure peace. The atmosphere changed and I was able to respond calmly and professionally. 

“What’s surprising to me is that it took so long to see the pattern and to have confidence in this life-changing gem of wisdom.” 

The Jewish tradition includes many instructions for assuring peace and deliverance. For example, in the book of Job it says:

Acquaint now thyself with [God],
and be at peace...²

In Joel it says,

Whosoever shall call on 
the name of the Lord 
shall be delivered.³

Again from Isaiah,

Look unto Me, 
and be ye saved,
All the ends of the earth. 
For I am God, and there is none else.⁴

Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation is found to be the oldest and most mysterious of all Kabbalistic texts. Although we don’t know who wrote it, it’s said to include the principles of Abraham’s spiritual practices. For example Sefer Yetzirah gives this specific instruction: 

‘When your mind races,
return to the place,’
return to where
you were before thought. 
Return to the site 
of Oneness.⁵

The ‘site of Oneness’ is divinity, it’s pure Peace and pure Love, none other than the silence and sanctity of pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is our essence, our true and only nature. It’s the Light of God that shines as our very being! 

Peace and Deliverance

Oneness with God is the heart of the Abrahamic religions. For example, the Psalmist knows well the answer when he asks,

Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? 
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?⁶

The Christian scriptures record Jesus as saying,

I and my Father are one.⁷

In fact, divinity is so close in the Abrahamic traditions that a Hadith of Muhammad says,

Whoever knows their self
knows their Lord.⁸

This transcendental reality—what Vedic sages call Atma or the Self—is our safehouse. This is the Self that always has been and always will be. Cutting-edge physicists call this unbounded pure consciousness the Unified Field, the home of all the Laws of Nature such as the laws of Peace and Love.  

Because we’re never separated from our Source, we can—with confidence—sink back to pure consciousness. This is the ‘I’ that eternally declares ‘I AM.’ It is at once our divine nature and our refuge. 

Psalm 91, attributed to Moses, speaks of the “covert” or “secret place of the most High...” where “...no evil [shall] befall thee, nor shall any plague come nigh thy tent.”⁹ 

Here’s the secret of the ‘secret place’ of the most High: We can take recourse to ‘the place,’ our source, our true Self, by simply sinking back to the peace and power of pure consciousness, divine Love. And here we find we haven’t gone anywhere!

The truth, peace, power and bliss of our divinity is as near and as eternally accessible as are the eternal principles of mathematics. With repeated experience we discover peace isn't something we go somewhere to get, but that it’s what we are. 

Another Psalm, this one attributed to David, says,  

In the Lord I put my trust:
How say ye to my soul,¹⁰ 
Flee as a bird to your mountain?¹¹

This Psalm has several vastly different translations, but most scholars agree that when David is in trouble, he takes refuge in God.  

As for the conclusion of the verse, The Jewish Encyclopedia from 1901 translates it as: “Flee as a bird to your mountain.” To understand the mystical message of a verse, we must go beyond the surface reading of the text and rise to the highest spiritual standpoint we know. 

Here we find that God, pure consciousness—what Kabbalah sometimes calls divine mind—¹² is our ‘mountain.’ It’s unshakeable. It’s ‘the place,’ the site of Oneness, the ‘high point’ where our vision is clear and where we can intentionally take refuge, anytime, anywhere. Just as birds wisely flee to their mountain for safety when a storm threatens.    

When we ‘flee to our mountain’ it’s the highest form of teshuvah. It’s the experience of ‘no thought,’ literally what Kabbalah calls “the place you were before thought....”¹³ and what Vedic Science calls the source of thought.

It’s here “from where speech returns, and poetry begins,”¹⁴ as described in the writings of our own Kenny Chawkin. It’s here we return. It’s here that we intimately experience that we are “rooted and grounded in [divine] Love.”¹⁵ And it’s here we discover that Love isn’t something we do, Love is what we are.

Beyond Pain

In a book entitled Everything is God: The Radical Path of Non-dual Judaism, Jay Michaelsen writes about teshuvah. He says: 

 [Teshuvah] is simply a return 
to a way of seeing clearly, 
the return to Who we really are,
and the mending that comes from it.¹⁶

Teshuvah is the basis of effective, scientific, healing prayer. Effective prayer is not prayer to divine Mind, or prayer about divine Mind. Rather it is prayer that knows Truth and sees Reality as divine Mind knows and sees Itself. In fact, it is divine Mind in action. It is what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls “transcendental prayer.”¹⁷ He says,

[Transcendental prayer] is instantly heard 
and instantly responded…¹⁸

Teshuvah makes it possible to fulfill the Christian command to pray without ceasing,¹⁹ a Bible verse that has long been a challenge for so many. I mean, how do you pray without ceasing and live an active life? 

Kabbalah boldly says, “return to the place.” And Vedic Science says, return to the place and stay there! In the words of the Bhagavad Gita:

Yogastah Kuru Karmani. 
Established in Being, perform action.²⁰

We don’t need to stop what we’re doing. Right here, right where we are—whatever we’re doing—we can see clearly, and more clearly, our divine nature. 

When we fall back on the Self, it’s an instant conscious awareness of infinite awareness itself, an inner ‘glance,’ so to speak, available at any moment regardless of what we’re doing. 

 Impossible? Not at all! The Zohar says,

In one instant you can do teshuvah.²¹

Rabbi Rami Shapiro assures us that,

Each of us has the ability 
to return to God and godliness 
at any time.²²

Non-dual teacher Rupert Spira describes the fruit of our return when he says,

However brief [the opportunity] may be,
go back to yourself
because it's not the amount of time.
Even if you were just to return
to yourself briefly
between emails or conversations
that is tremendously powerful.

…In time, this feeling of back and forth
will begin to diminish
and you'll find that…
in the midst of conversation,
the conversation…
will lose its capacity to veil
your knowledge of yourself
and right in the midst of the conversation—
even an intense or a heated conversation—
you still feel that you're
centered in yourself.²³ 

Here’s another person’s experience that relates to our discussion:

“Some years ago when I was playing soccer, I snapped a major ligament in my knee and splintered the kneecap. The sports medicine surgeon who was going to do the repairs agreed to try using a local anesthetic. 

“The operation turned out to be more complicated than he had anticipated. It was taking so long that the local anesthetic wore off. The anesthesiologist cautioned against trying to administer a general anesthetic or even another local at that point in the surgery. 

“It was a difficult situation, but since I was conscious, I suggested that I could try something if they would give me a few minutes.

“As a longtime TM [practitioner], I have an established habit of settling into the silence of myself…[in that silence] I was able to locate a point [beyond pain.] Holding my attention here, I told the surgeon to continue as he had planned. He did. 

“My experience during the rest of the operation was such that I was actually sorry when it was over. 

“Afterwards, the anesthesiologist followed me to the recovery room and wanted to know what I had done that enabled me to endure what should have been an excruciatingly painful operation…”

Rupert Spira explains that, “It is not necessary to change the content of experience in any way in order to have access to the inherent peace of our true nature. Just as it is not necessary to turn off the movie in order to touch the motionless screen, we are free at every moment to soften the focus of our attention from the content of experience—thoughts, images, feelings, etc.—and allow our attention to come back to ourself.

“Come back to awareness when we, awareness, give our attention to the objective content of our experience. Thus in most cases overlooking or forgetting our own presence and then we, awareness, soften the focus of our attention from its objective content and we come back to ourself.”²⁴

This coming back to ourselves—
this return to our self from the adventure of experience—
is the essence of prayer or meditation.
It is the direct path
to peace and happiness.²⁵

— Rupert Spira

Establish yourself firmly
in the awareness of 'I AM'.
This is the beginning, and
also the end of all endeavour.²⁶

— Nisargadatta

To further illustrate this, here’s another account, this one of a first-time expectant mother. She experienced painless labor and childbirth due, in part, to months of extra meditation and prayerful preparation. She had especially studied the effortless and orderly unfoldment of creation in Genesis chapter one, as well as the promise in Isaiah where God says,

I have made, 
and I will bear; 
Yea I will carry and [I] will deliver.²⁷

Her birth plan included dim lighting, and as much silence in the room as possible. She and her husband planned to pray and meditate during labor, along with the support of a professional prayer practitioner who was located some miles away. 

When the expectant mother arrived at the alternative birthing suite with contractions three minutes apart, she settled in and closed her eyes. To her surprise she was pulled inward like by a magnet. She found herself instantly immersed in deep silence, harmony, peace and bliss. 

Yet she was alert and able to cooperate with the nurse for periodic monitoring. As for the contractions, she was thrilled and awed by the wave of bliss that accompanied each one. No one, but no one, had told her to expect this!

The doctor was in awe. As he was leaving, he said “That was the best demonstration of positive thinking I’ve ever seen.” 

Of course, it wasn’t positive thinking! It was simply repeatedly sinking deeper and deeper towards the Self, the source of thought. This is “the place,” the site of Oneness. As Rumi writes,

Move outside the tangle 
of fear-thinking.
Live in silence. 

[Transcend!]
Flow down and down 
in always widening rings 
of Being.²⁸

— Rumi

In searching for an explanation of these pain-free experiences, I came across an article in The Economic Times of India. It speaks from the non-dual standpoint of Advaita Vedanta. It says,

Pain—whether physical, mental or emotional—
has only a negative existence,
like darkness…[which]
exists only in the absence of light...
it has no positive existence of its own…

no pain can touch the real ‘you.’²⁹

As it says in Psalms,

Even the darkness is not too dark for thee.³⁰

These personal accounts each demonstrate that, when we’re lost in the infinitude of divine Mind—literally floating in the bliss consciousness of divine Mind—pain, fear, confusion, and so forth are simply not possible.

Vedic scholars will recognize teshuvah as nivardtadwam which also means “return,” or “transcend, to go beyond.” 

Christian scholars will recognize teshuvah in the Bible where God, divine Mind, speaks intimately as Jesus’ voice, 

Come unto me, all ye that labour 
and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.³¹

This eternal “me” that beckons and the eternal “I” that gives rest is the great I AM revealed to Moses.  

Before concluding, I’d like to share what Vivian May Williams writes in her book 90 years ago entitled There is Nothing but God. She pens an urgent message for each of us that is even more relevant today. She says,

We have declared
an omnipresent God long enough —
the time is here for us to prove this Omnipresence.³²

As the Lord blesses you and keeps you on this holy day of Yom Kippur, may you be consciously aware that the ever-present Light of God shines as you by reflection, right here, right now. 

And may you recognize that it is this light of pure consciousness that reveals Itself as inspiration, bliss, healing, and enlightenment.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson,  says, 

There is no moment more vital
than the one right now.
There is no space more crucial
than the one in which you stand.
For this is the moment
and this is the place
from which Moshiach (the Messiah) may come.³³

With great awe and respect, standing on the holy ground of pure consciousness, and knowing the Rebbe also speaks so beautifully of the Moshiach within us, let us revisit these words and say to the those awakening in our world,

Whether you are waiting
for the coming of Moshiach
or waiting for the return of Moshiach,
Stop waiting!

This is the moment
and this is the place
in which Moshiach consciousness
comes to our awareness.

It's we who (seemingly) return!

Bonus

[Our being] grounded in [the Divine Mind],
[that] has us ‘occur’
in the first place,
is always the answer…
the path ‘back’ is never
in trying to fix the picture. 

The path ‘back’ is in dropping the picture
and being consciously aware
that all things [in Reality] are good right now.
Whole. Perfect. Complete.³⁴

— Betty Albee

Going through to the absolute
is the way to handle every appearance of
evil or limitation.³⁵

— Richard Booker

‘Back to the Self’
is the secret of success.³⁶

— attributed to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Waves of the Ocean

[1] Isaiah 26:3 JPS

[2] Job 2:21 JPS • [God] replaces “Him.”

[3] Joel 3:5 JPS and in Romans 10:13 KJV where the translation uses “saved” to replace “delivered.”

[4] Isaiah 45:22 JPS

[5] Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), p. 108, see also note for “Aloneness and Abundance” p. 199

[6] Psalms 139:7 JPS

[7] John 10:30 KJV

[8] Cecilla Twinch, Know Yourself: An explanation of the oneness of being, Ibn ‘Arabi / Balyani, (Beshara Publications, 2011), p. 17

[9] Psalm 91:1, 10 JPS

[10] Psalm 11:1 JPS

[11] The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901 translation,  https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3316-bird • 09.14.2021

[12] “Before the world was created, an impulse arose in the divine mind to create a great shining light.” Matt, Daniel C., The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, (HarperOne. Kindle Edition), p. 164

13] Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), p. 108

[14] Ken Chawkin, https://theuncarvedblog.com/2012/09/ 08.31.21

[15] Ephesians 3:17 KJV

[16] Jay Michaelson, Everything is God: The Radical Path of Non-dual Judaism (Trumpeter, 2012), p. 186 [teshuvah] replaces “tshuvah” for consistency.

[17] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, No Prayer Will Go In Vain, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG1qmP2qFYg • 09.14.2021

[18] Ibid.

[19] I Thessalonians 5:17 KJV

[20] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, (Maharishi International University Press, 1967), chapter 2, verse 48 

[21] Zohar I:126a-b, J. Immanuel Schochet, The Dynamics Of Teshuvah, https://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/4833/jewish/The-Dynamics-Of-Teshuvah.htm • 09.15.2008
Yitzchok Kaufmann,  What is True Teshuvah?https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/audio_cdo/aid/2708455/jewish/What-is-True-Teshuvah.htm • see also: Schochet, J. Immanuel, The Dynamics Of Teshuvah, https://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/4833/jewish/The-Dynamics-Of-Teshuvah.htm • 10.01.21
https://derher.org/wp-content/uploads/68-Iyar-5778-09.pdf • 09.08.2022

[22] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, @One daily message, March 21, 2001

[23] Rupert Spira, A Trace in the Heart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRcddANG2pw • 09.04.2023

[24] Rupert Spira, The Direct Path to Peace and Happiness, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KOOCgUykY 01.01.2024

[25] Ibid.

[26] Nisargadatta Maharaj, I AM THAT, (The Acorn Press, 1973), p. 53

[27] Isaiah 46:4 JPS

[28] Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi, (HarperCollins, 1995), p. 3

[29] Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda, Awareness in pain brings you bliss, The Economic Times, August 19, 2009 • https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/vedanta/awareness-in-pain-brings-you bliss/articleshow/4614668.cms • 05.22.21

[30] Psalms 139:12 JPS

[31] Matthew 11:28 KJV see also: Isaiah 45:22 JPS

[32] Vivian May Williams, There is Nothing But God, (Mystics of the World, 1934), p. 22

[33] Tzvi Freeman, A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe, words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman email, 06.17.2002

[34] Betty Albee, ReThink Life Livecast: Being Yourself vs. Being Personal, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Jbk_nd9Jg 06.10.2022 AX 6999

[35] Richard Booker, The Magic of Knowing, (The Farallon Foundation, 1955), p. 22 AX 7789

[36] attributed to a lecture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi AX 7373

This post includes additions and edited excerpts from d’var Torah,
Erev Rosh Hashanah, 5782
September 6, 2021
Congregation Beth Shalom, Fairfield, Iowa

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