The problem is that identification with thoughts and sensations that give the feeling of being a separate self is not unpleasant in the first instance. As consciousness, we love thinking and sensing. The problem is that we become so used to the experience that we automatically identify ourselves as them, forgetting the context of the experience ourselves as Awareness, and then the trouble starts.

How is it possible that the Universe is created? How is it possible that the Universe is known? What is the unifying principle between creation and knowing? Could it be that knowing (consciousness) IS creation? What is the Universe? It is the phenomena we perceive through our pattern-matching mind. These patterns we perceive are vibrations of energy picked up by our senses that is information our minds and then cognised.

I have been asked quite a few times if there is a practice to experience naturally being one. Our minds get busy, and glimpses of our true nature of peace can fade. It is vital to understand and feel the life-affirming qualities of our true nature to act on them. We need to be very honest with ourselves. The path of wisdom is a path of rational understanding of experience rather than of devoted practices. Investigation of experience is something we may do spontaneously, not ritualistically.

If we open to the ancient understanding that consciousness (the reality that is understanding these words) is the single primary source of all existence, then we view the manifest Universe as existing within and from this consciousness. It is, in effect, the mirror that aids us, as unique expressions of consciousness, to return to being consciously at one with ourselves.

I ask myself do I know I am?

Yes

How do I know I am?

Because I experience, I am. This is not intellectual knowing. It is an immediate intuitive knowing.

When a child, my beautiful grandmother, born of a working-class family in the industrial heartlands of Britain and now peacefully passed for many years, visited Buckingham Palace in London with my family. As we drove past, she gazed at the building and commented out loud, "It's not for the likes of us". I will never forget it. Remembering this now, the thought occurs how different the world would be if everyone experienced themselves as socially equal to everybody else whilst deeply respecting everyone's individuality.

Is it really true that the unpleasant emotion you may feel right now is saying anything about who you are?  

Can you discern any thoughts trying to avoid, fix, or suppress it?

Thoughts that seem to try to maintain a self-image or that perpetuate self-loathing?

Thoughts that seem to tell you, you are no longer loveable, loved, safe and okay.

The freedom to be ourselves completely mentally and physically and feel safe sharing our joy of being alive when in a relationship with another mind and body is a beautiful, powerful natural experience compared to some of the most beautiful experiences human beings can have.

The only thing we know for sure is that we exist and are aware we exist. Looking at the Universe through the eyes of the mind, everything else is just like a complex computer program, comparable to a form of artificial intelligence that, because of its complexity, gives the appearance of knowing but is just an extensive process. It is a complex, multi-layered chain of events that form what our mind calls a Universe.

For thousands of years, various schools and teachers have taught the primacy of consciousness as the singular source of all existence. This means that all manifestations of life, including all human beings, arise from this single source. Although it may appear, from the perspective of an individual human being, we are living in a Universal of separate objects, and we conceive of ourselves in the same way, these teachings would say that this is not the case and that this belief in separateness is an illusion that disconnects us from seeing that we are the single consciousness that contains all things we truly are.

The Universal reset button inside us.

We can trace the patterns of natural nourishment of the mind and body to the life-affirming qualities of source consciousness, particularly the three inextricably linked primary qualities of love, understanding truth and beauty.

Beyond acknowledging the actual experience of Awareness as the basis of ourselves and perceiving its qualities experientially, the really big shift happens when we stop thinking of ourselves as a person trying to be happy and instead open to the possibility of being universal consciousness experiencing itself and the world we perceive is simply a manifest flow of this consciousness.

For many, happiness is seen as a remote possibility, something to be attained. 

 The issue becomes one of transcending current circumstances. This is profoundly embedded in our culture. Happiness is often presented as a state of mind or body that must be obtained by religions and in terms of a materialist lifestyle by the society in which we live. However, This singular idea says, "You are unhappy, and you must do this to become happy". This seems a self-defeating message in many respects. All such notions equate happiness with a state which is, in effect, a material experience, and this means we spend our lives trying to attain this state. But this is a fundamental form of materialism. 

Could the insight of ‘context blindness’ be an organising idea that unites spirituality and science?

Whilst training to be a psychotherapist, I was introduced to the organising idea of ‘context blindness’ or, as the founders of Human Givens, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell, had coined it, ‘Caetextia’. This insight had previously been developed by another psychologist, Dr Peter Vermeulen, co-director of the Centre for Concrete Communication in Belgium.

Happiness is a word quite disliked in mental health circles. We talk more comfortably about "well-being" or "mental health". These are safer terms, slightly more technical, perhaps.

We could more easily say it is the absence of anxiety or mental ill-health. However, to avoid talking about happiness is to refrain from discussing the one thing that unites all people. It's just a word, but beneath lies a fundamental point. All activities we do are fundamentally carried out to achieve it. Even those that are destructive to our mind and body, we do because, at the moment, we believe they will lead us to happiness. It is the fundamental "gravitational force" of our entire life. Hiding this fact only confuses our life.

In the context of the understanding, loving parental presence of the Loving Aware Self, that we are and for which we have no evidence, is limited in any way. Therefore, we can choose to experience as if it were the container of all phenomena with nothing missing and no separate environment; there are two metaphorical children.

When people apparently treat us, in one way or another harshly, it can be hard not to fall into the narrow identification of believing to be a separate person under attack. Our body becomes emotional, and our mind fills with defensiveness. Memories of being a child being told off may occur, reminding us of old traumatic moments. We may compound the unpleasant experience with feelings of shame that tries to hide these unpleasant feelings but only serve to close us down. At these times, we have to deal with our basic instinct to survive.