God and self

The more of your self-ness there is, the less there is of God.

The more of God there is, the less there is of your separate selfness.

Want to know God? Want to experience the Ground of all being? Want to experience the mind-blowing Divine Reality?

The "secret" of the saints is "dying to self." When the personality or ego's desires and strivings are set aside and one becomes, quite literally, a channel for God in the world, the gates of the Kingdom are flung wide open. Reality, Freedom, Beauty and Love can be fully experienced in no other way.

It is at this point that your self/ego/personality is no longer behind the wheel, so to speak: "It is not I, but Christ that lives in me." Or, as Aldous Huxley puts it, perhaps it would be more appropriately phrased: "It is not I, but Christ that lives me." Indeed we will not fully experience Divine Reality until we can say with integrity, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

This is a hard truth. There is no greater fear than the threat of ego annihilation - we believe this will leave behind a dull, joyless existence. The exact opposite is true: what lies beyond is unimaginable bliss (Sat, Chit, Ananda) and the unitive knowledge of God.