All right, we've left the desert and now we are deep in the woods.
When I say we are in the middle of nowhere, I actually don't think we could be more in the middle of nowhere.
Not sure how my dad found this place. Actually, it's not even an Airbnb. It's a Vrbo.
It is so quiet.
The nearest town, which is 13 minutes away, doesn't even have a real restaurant or grocery store. Then - the nearest somewhat-close-to-civilization thing is about 45 minutes away. And even that is in the middle of nowhere.
So that should give you an idea as to how middle of nowhere we are right now.
I am looking out into the woods writing this to you.
It is just so serene.
All I hear as I look out over these giant pine trees is the roar of the wind, miles away. Faintly, but roaring.
Where we are, there's no wind. It's pretty chilly.
There's birds here and there and a lot of deer around. We saw a family of four dear last night in our headlights as we were driving up.
Something I've been contemplating a lot (and obviously even more so deep out in the woods) is the concept of the “I AM” versus the “egoic identity”.
In the Bible it is written: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).
And I've been contemplating this because I've been having some conversations with friends who are deeply into traditional Christianity.
And what I discovered is that we actually operate from a completely different epistemological reality.
So for those that don't know, epistemology just means the study or science of how you know a thing.
Epistemology asks - How are things known? What is your ultimate source of truth?
For someone in the traditional biblical system, their source of truth 100% is the Bible.
They say, “the Bible is true”. And they believe that they themselves - in their personal experience - can use their brain and faculties and thoughts and senses to perceive things, but they don't trust themselves because they think that they can be deceived. They fear deceiving themselves so they don’t trust themselves.
They might quote:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6
And so that's the model they operate from. They then lead on the bible, and this guides their entire life as the ultimate reality.
Instead of contemplating further into the experience of why they even trust that in the first place, and why they trust the bible in the first place, they would rather just read the Bible and do exactly what the Bible says - at least however they interpret it, which oftentimes they try to interpret in the way that the church has interpreted it.
In my view, in doing this they make one quick and fell swoop and actually already made a big hop over God, missed the truth completely, and misinterpreted the point of the proverb.
My epistemology is different.
My epistemology is that I believe in direct experience of the “I AM”. But I don’t believe the egoic identity. And this is subtle but extremely key to look into.
I believe that humans are capable - or at least I am capable - of discerning things about reality.
For example: "Be still, and know that I am God."
What does that mean?
Well, we have to look at two subjects of that sentence, and then apply them to our own personal experience.
“I am Arlin.”
What does that mean?
Well, there's two parts. There's “I AM”, and then there's “Arlin”.
Arlin, if I were to describe Arlin, is a collection of thoughts and emotions and beliefs.
It's a story about who I am and what I've done — this artist, entrepreneur, creative who went to Boston University from Massachusetts, who had these good things happen to him and these bad things happen to him, who wants this and doesn't want that.
“Arlin” is just a big old story and collection of memories and thoughts and ideas.
But the “I AM” is something else.
Now, stepping back once again, this is extremely key.
And I want you to bear with me because this is, in my opinion, the most important thing of all things to understand.
And if you skip past this section and skim through it, you're literally missing God underneath your feet.
So here's what I mean by that.
To break it down, I need to give you a thought experiment.
EXPERIMENT #1: Ask yourself - What will my next thought be?
Then just wait. Sit there like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of the hole and pounce on it.
Just sit there in silence, ideally with no other noise around you.
Close your eyes and ask yourself: What will my next thought be?
And you notice that you don't know what your next thought is going to be.
It just shows up.
There's this spaciousness of your conscious awareness waiting for this thought, and you realize you are not the author of your own thoughts.
That’s extremely profound so you might want to reread and redo the experiment a couple times before moving on. This is the basis of my epistemology. And you can prove it yourself.
Now, the ego - which is to say “the story of you” - likes to take credit for everything. And it likes to say, "Nah. That’s BS. Of course, this is my thought."
But if you really pause and notice, you don't know what your next thought is going to be at all.
And then you can also do the same thing with your emotions.
EXPERIMENT #2: Ask yourself - What will my next emotion be?
Pause, wait 60 seconds or so. And you realize don't know. And you realize that often emotions just pass over you for no apparent reason.
Or they seem to be correlated to when things go your way or don't go your way.
When you get what you want, you feel happy. Hopeful. Positive. Excited. Ecstatic. When you get what you don't want, you feel sad. Down. Depressed. Hopeless.
And so all of your life, you've just been this point of consciousness, which is I AM. And how did God refer to himself?
“I AM THAT I AM.” in hebrew - “Elohim, Elohim”
"Be still, and know that I AM God."
And this process we're doing of self examination and looking at the “I AM” is exactly what Jesus told us to do.
"The kingdom of heaven does not come with signs to be perceived. Behold, the kingdom of heaven is within you."
"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field."
Jesus knew people all day long forever in all history just hop over “I AM” the ultimate transcendent truth, aka God. We are done with that here.
So what I'm telling you is: if you just look inside, if you stop for a moment looking everywhere else for a source of truth and happiness and fulfillment - because that's what everyone's doing…
They wake up and as soon as they wake up, they grab their phone. Or maybe they'll just grab a book. Or even a Bible. Or they will just get right into to work.
And the rest of their day, until they put their head back on the pillow, their eyes are open, and they're sending energy outward through their sense perceptions from the “I AM” outward.
And they never take time to reverse their searchlights and look inward.
When you look inward, you're able to realize things about your consciousness.
You're able to know things that you can only know through experiencing them.
Now, I've been doing this for 10 years since I started meditating.
And I've also studied various traditions - from Buddhism to Christianity, to various sects of Christianity, to Judaism, to Hinduism, to atheism.
I know quite a lot about atheism and have memorized various atheistic arguments against God. And so what I can tell you is that everything comes down to what I've just shared.
The ultimate source of Truth, which we call God, is within us. God is within you.
But yet, because we can’t look inside ourselves and are afraid to and just constantly send energy outward into phones, screens, books, anywehre else… we distance ourselves from God when we identify with the ego, instead of the I AM.
This is the true fall away from heaven. This is why Christians say - God is the nearest of the near, but we run away from Him. They just interpret it wrong, imo.
If you keep looking elsewhere - and keep looking everywhere else, except by reversing the searchlights and looking within - you will not find truth.
Looking within is hard. But that's a topic for maybe tomorrow.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed.
See you soon.
We're going to the White Sands today, which I'm excited for.
- Arlin
