You are the Self, Pure Awareness, Brahman, God, Consciousness, Soul, Sat Chit Ananda. These are terms that can be difficult to grasp. You are used to concrete, intellectual, tangible identifications. You are used to thinking of yourself as a body, a mind, a feeling. But awareness is harder to understand. The Soul, the Self is ethereal.
There is only God and whatever you are is part of God. You are made from the substance of God and your energy is God’s energy. All of this exists within God for there is nothing outside or other than God. Your Consciousness is part of God’s consciousness. Your body is a denser form of consciousness – consciousness vibrating at a slower rate. Your mind is an impulse of the creative intelligence of God. Your feeling is the vibration of the heart of God. God is Consciousness. To understand who you are let’s examine consciousness.
Consciousness is Shiva and Shakti
Shiva is Pure Awareness, Pure Illumination, Pure Existence, light – the capacity of Consciousness to illumine or reveal. It is not the light that can be seen with the eyes but the light by which the eyes see. Shiva is Consciousness.
Shakti is self-enfolding knowledge and the power of Creative Intelligence. Power, understanding, energy, capability, strength, awareness – the reflection of light on itself – the ability and power of Consciousness to know itself.
Shiva, the power-holder, and Shakti, the power, are inseparable.
Both Shiva and Shakti, as one, are the Absolute and the initial vibratory movement, the primal impulse or spanda, wanting to become creation. In them is the intention to manifest.
Shakti is the mirror that shows us 1) ourselves (Self-illumination) and 2) our personal creation we make through our perception and understanding (our reality). Shakti provides the mirror in which Shiva, Pure Consciousness, may be fully reflected and Shakti provides our ability to create a reality that we live in.
You can know Shiva (the Self) through the agency of Shakti (power). You can know the Self (Shiva) through the power to reflect, the mirror, the power of illumination (Shakti).
The nature of Consciousness is the marriage of clear perception and right understanding: Shiva and Shakti are always one. Consciousness is always perfect and full. Shakti always experiences bliss because of her immense satisfaction of being perfect, full and ecstatic, and that very bliss has driven her to create all forms and expand that bliss. She recognizes she is all Reality and this wholeness causes her to experience Ananda; bliss. It is said bliss is her nature: Your Self is God and as God your Self is absolute, bliss, consciousness.
It is the self-reflective power of Shakti that allows you to be aware and reflect. Shakti is the power to know and examine – to reflect upon your perceptions and make them meaningful. Shiva is the illumination, the light of awareness of something, consciousness, and Shakti is the discernment and discrimination by which you recognize it – the power of recognition. So Shakti allows you to recognize Shiva. The power of recognition allows you to reflect upon your pure consciousness.
In a false sense of connection there is no freedom. As awareness grows, freedom grows. When you begin to experience life happening for you freedom expands and you can relax. When you experience life happening as you, then total freedom arises.