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Before we embark on our journey to empowered self, let us establish common ground by being clear about what awakening to Empowered self implies. A three step approach of “Inspire, Heal and Empower” will be used to understand how we can become embodiment of our inherent virtues like eternal happiness and eternal peace that are hallmarks of empowered self. I promise once you decide to embark on your journey of awakening to Empowered Self, there will be nothing more exciting and joyful than waking up to your true self. It will make you aware of your precious self, one step at a time, at your own subtle pace like blooming of a beautiful flower. It will feel like digging mines of gold and diamonds that you will never want to give up at any cost. Though, it will require patience and perseverance along the way.

One might ask, why awakening to empowered self is so important and why I need to embark upon such a journey, when I have all the amenities of life? Complete understanding of empowered self is supposed to serve as inspiration to do so. When we are awaken to our empowered self, we are aware of five major things, among many others. Let us explore these five things that represent awakened self.

1. We are alive in abundance:
There is significant difference between living and being alive. Every species of living from a tiny ant to human beings. Yet, not everyone is alive. Living is reactionary, whereby we are triggered by external stimuli to take action. In other words, we are responding to what has already elapsed, or is past. Thus, we are living in past and every time we react we miss the present moment. In reactionary state, we are making our present decisions, based on past and thus all our actions are reactionary in nature. When we see the world through lens covered with dirt of past, we fail to see what IS, instead we see what IS NOT.

Being alive is proactive. In reactionary state there are no options to choose from, whereas alive state offers numerous options to choose from. These options offer possibility to establish direction of our thoughts, thus conscious choice of action that ultimately leads to our state of “being”. Therefore, we enter a state of abundance whereby life is blank canvas of possibilities waiting for us to fill colors of our choice. When we are awake to empowered self, we are alive in abundance, feeling at ease knowing no matter what happens, we will be able to choose what serves us best and sustains our empowered self state.

2. We are enriched in all aspects of our life:
Material and spiritual are two broad aspects of life. Material includes all tangible and non-tangible things that we acquire after birth, including our own body and acquired thoughts over time, all of our relationships and everything associated with these relationships including adverse and pleasant situations. Attribute of material thing is it transient nature. Anything that is not eternal is material. There is always a beginning and end to a material thing, thus it has boundaries and can be captured in words or measured. If we attach to a material thing, our life becomes bound and thus our existence becomes limited. Spiritual is universal common core of our individual, collective and whole existence. Universal common core is boundless, with no beginning and an end, thus eternal. Thus we can consider spiritual synonyms with infinite. Domain of the infinite and eternal spiritual contains everything that is transient, with a beginning and an end. This means so called material world is subset of spiritual world. When we are only aware of material world, we fail to fully comprehend ups and down of material world, as it simultaneously shrinks and expands in multiple directions. When we are awakened to our empowered self, we are spiritual that automatically detaches us from material world making us immune to any ups and down in our life. When we are spiritual, we become enriched in our material world too, irrespective of amount of our material possessions. This is because we are fully aware of transient nature of constantly shrinking and expanding material world.

3. We are able to exercise our freedom to choose
When life is reactionary, there is no room for existence of opportunity to maneuver the bulky ship of our life away from icebergs of conflict, judgement, hatred, anger, disappointments and expectations. In fear of sinking, we remain restless, anxious and stressed. When we are awake to our empowered self, we are aware of our inherent freedom like a bird is aware of its wings that enables it to soar in vast sky. Vast sky symbolizes looking down from a heightened awareness offering broader perspective. A broader perspective offers a choice to choose thoughts that make us spiritual .i.e. boundless while existing in human body in material world. This is possible by connecting through our thoughts with our universal common core. In such a state of freedom, we are open to ultimate purpose of human life. Choice requires discerning power to choose what fulfills ultimate purpose of human life. This discerning power is supreme wisdom. The same supreme wisdom that exists as universal common core maintaining eternal balance, harmony and abundance among all entities from tiniest particle in an atom to enormous galaxies, known and unknown to humans.

When we are awake to our empowered self, we fulfill purpose of our birth as humans, along the way selflessly serving humanity by serving as inspiration to others.

4. We fulfill ultimate purpose of human life
When we awaken to our empowered self, we realize purpose of our life. This becomes clear as we shun all identities, boundaries, and beliefs that cause inner divisiveness making the world appear fragmented. In fragmented world, we see ourselves as different from others, thus we each define so called, “my life purpose”. In empowered state, we rise above all inner divisiveness and realize life purpose of all humans is same, irrespective of how we identify ourselves in life based on our gender, color, social status, race, religion, nationality, etc. If we have spent countless days, months or years trying to figure out your life purpose, empowered state will raises us above all beliefs that have impregnated our mind in form of unauthenticated thoughts collected over time. When we awaken to our empowered self, truth guides us, shattering beliefs that wash away like dirt over a car windshield in rain water bringing clarity.

All humans have one life purpose – to become “Human beings”. Being human means virtues of creator manifesting through us. Being human is a liberated life of harmony with the creator of whole existence, balance without any upswings or downswings of emotions, peace with self, ability to realize and treat everything and everyone as one. As we keep walking in our thoughts towards our life purpose to become simply a being, ultimately no difference remains between us (creation) and the creator. Our destiny is to be the creator as the creator is trying to manifest through its creation.

This is very similar to the waves on ocean surface that rise from the ocean and fall back into the ocean. The waves represents mind – mind thinks it is because of itself and its own effort. A wave fails to see the vast and deep ocean underneath. A mind that fails to acknowledge its transient state resists its destiny and becomes a doer, instead of a being, allowing life to happen – human being. Our life purpose is to be human beings whereby we realize our true self. Our true self is our soul that manifests itself as inner strength we are not aware of outside empowered self. We begin to flow with courage, without duality and become a powerful being.

All other life purposes that we have believed and lived so far are also necessary because all other life purposes are meant to intensify our inner seeking. If we do not become more thirsty to know, it means we have mistaken a milestone for a destination. We are meant to keep seeking through our chosen life purpose, until we become aware of our ultimate life purpose, when awaken to empowered self. Upon awakening to our empowered self, we are filled with awe, amazement and eternal happiness. In this state words fall short in capturing the awe, amazement and eternal happiness as we start fulfilling “purpose of human life”

5. We are always successful
Humans are the only species that pays to live under a roof, eat and play. Humans have created entities like economics and financial markets that are more alive than humans. It is not hard to guess whose choice is to design, measure and live by such a model of success that feels like an inescapable prison? The bigger a man's prison, the more successful he or she is supposed to be. Our systems are designed to produce men and women who know of only this model in which less is considered failure and acquiring more than our needs is considered success. In this prison success feels like a King living lavishly in beautiful mansion on top of an exclusive hilltop. The king rests on ivory beds, laying his head against headboard made of gold and silver. On his head hangs the sharp sword of notion of success and failure from a single thread made of silk. The king filled with fear, anxiety and worry, finds escape in lavish indulgences. Without being awake to our empowered self, success remains an inescapable prison.

When we are awake to our empowered self, definition of success is rewritten. There is no duality in empowered self, thus success is not relative, rather absolute for which we need not compare ourselves to others. Success is our ability to awaken to our empowered self through adversities, challenges, setbacks and disappointments. Each time we hit a roadblock, we are able to turn it into a rung of ladder that we climb to increase our self-awareness. We become aware of our infinite potential. We discover our inherent abilities like we as a child discovered our ability to walk, stumbling and falling along the way with smile on our face. For a moment connect with that inner joy that you experienced upon being able to walk the very first time. The inner joy is success, stemming from becoming aware of our new ability. Somewhere along the away, we lost touch with ourselves to be joyous upon becoming aware of our immense inherent abilities.

Abilities like being humble while wielding power over others, being calm amidst losses and disappointments. Becoming aware of our inherent abilities that walk us towards our infinite potential as human being, brings about inner joy through ups and downs of life is success that is absolute.

When we are awake to our empowered self, our success is experiencing inner joy through adversities of life remaining immune to all unknowns. We are able to escape the seemingly inescapable prison and actually able to cherish, share and inspire others like a King. A king whose boundless kingdom of authenticity, peace, calmness and eternal joy wields a mesmerizing power, quite often not understood by many.

Awakening to empowered self is like light from a dimmable bulb with varying intensities. Transitioning into empowered self is a subtle process. For this reason not everyone experiences the same intensity at the same time. As I write about this state, I realize more and more about importance of Empowered self. It could be overwhelming for me to comprehend it fully, therefore, I consider this to be partial description of empowered self. This description is meant to serve as mere inspiration and the possibility of opening ourselves to empowered self. It might seem that it will require a lot of effort to be in empowered self. You will be surprised to know that empowered self already exists, we are just not aware of it. The good news is in the word, “Awaken” used in title “Awaken to Empowered Self”. Awaken in this context implies becoming aware of pre-existing state of empowered self without the need to create it, maintain it or sustain it. This means Empowered self already exists within us. It is not a thing of past or future. It is now, in this very moment. It is our true nature. We simply have to awaken to it. This must imply we are not awake in this moment. We are not awake to out true nature. There is no need to be dejected as our non-awake state is truly the greatest opportunity, the greatest self-challenge and source of relentless inspiration, if we decide to embrace this opportunity whole heartedly.

Until we are not awake to our empowered self, such a possibility does not exist and seems a theoretical principle good for purpose of reading to temporarily feel elated. Such a possibility is not a pipe dream that mandates living monastic life in a cave or a mountain away from the enormity of the material world. Empowered self does not require one to live in an ashram either, away from family and friends in an inert atmosphere without triggers that bring to surface emotions and feeling that we thought never existed. Triggers are must to know our current state to know our current state, without which there is no start point. Empowered self provides immunity from all enormities of material world, without shunning material world. Clearly the choice is personal. Until next time, stay inspired knowing your potential is infinite as a human being.

Bhupinder Singh

Bhupinder Singh

I coach leaders who are striving for prosperity in form of physical and mental wellness along with spiritual growth rooted in principles of Gurbani.

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