CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
OCTOBER 1985
Vol. 2, No. 10

QUESTION: What is the most important fact I need to be aware of?

RAJ: The most essential thing for you to understand is that you are not some form of mortal or sinner working your way up to a divine status. That may be what you have been educated to think, but it is not the fact.

You are, right now, exactly what God created you to be, even though, at the moment, you are not totally aware of what It is. You have never fallen from your high estate! You could say that you are slumbering fitfully, and dreaming a dream that is not entirely true, but the You that is dreaming the dream is the Totality of what God created you to be. Therefore, please stop attempting to pull yourself up by your bootstraps even through the grace of God, so that you may be transformed out of your present lowly status into your divine status.

Daily acknowledge consciously that you are the beloved expression of God, in whom He is well pleased. That is not a grandiose assumption. It is the simple, natural statement of the Fact about You. It is the Fact about everyone.

You see, in the belief that you are a sinner or a mortal something, which has fallen from grace, you exist in a constant state of self-depreciation. You exist in an absence of Self-appreciation, and indeed, the suggestion is that if you dare to appreciate yourself on the basis of what you divinely Are, that you are being arrogant.

Self-appreciation is nothing more than the acknowledgment of the simple Fact—which is divine, but is something totally natural to You and there is no arrogance, whatsoever, to such an attitude. It doesn't make you special, because it is true of every other Individuality who exists, and therefore it is quite common. It is something each of you have in common, and this is why you are members of the Brotherhood of Man, the whole of which constitutes the Christ—the infinite manifestation or expression of God.

You need to appreciate yourself without any feeling of guilt for doing so. You are not stepping on anyone's toes by doing so. You are not making yourself better than anyone else. And, you are not claiming to be something you are not.

Simply put, Enlightenment is the process of waking up to what you have never stopped Being. It is not a process, by which your puny little selfhood is improved and brought to a level, which It has never been at before. To the degree that you are honoring your conscious Individuality as the direct expression of God, you are not conflicting with Reality, and harmony, healing, Wholeness is the result. When, on the other hand, you see yourself as a puny little mortal on his way to becoming divine, and in the process overcoming the displeasure of God at your low estate, you are not in harmony with Reality.

Your very belief in your fallen state constitutes the fly in the ointment, and inharmony, suffering, and the absence of peace will indefinitely abide with you. It will, indeed, seem to prove to you that you are a mortal, a lost soul, even if temporarily. But that stance will never help you get out of the experience of inharmony. It is in acknowledging that now are you the expression of God, now are you the totality of what He created you to be, that will begin to lift you into the clearer experience of Who and What You Really Are.

Again, do not be embarrassed to claim your birthright. Do not feel that it is presumptuous or arrogant. As the direct expression of God, you are not unworthy to eat the crumbs that fall from His table. Your rightful place is at the table, and His abundance constitutes Yours, because He withholds nothing from His direct expression. God is incapable of expressing His totality in little bits and pieces.

When you joy in God, understand that you are joying in all that God is. That must necessarily include you! Joying in God constitutes Self-appreciation—not because you, in your tiny present sense of yourself are God, but because God is all there is to What You Truly Are, and therefore your honoring God constitutes an honoring of all that constitutes You, as well. This is the one essential key point for you to be aware of at this time and at the bottom line, it is the direct means of shifting from a finite, limited, three-dimensional frame of reference to the Fourth Dimensional Conscious Experience of Being. I am glad that you know how to be joyful. It makes it so much easier for you to make this shift.

QUESTION: Does that mean that I have to stay in this joyful state all the time? It’s going to be hard enough for me to think and believe in these terms, and to look at my brothers and sisters as being the same, but I will. What other steps do I need to get into?

RAJ: Your desire and your efforts to be in touch with your Guide, and the success you will experience in that endeavor, will also constitute a means of functioning beyond the three-dimensional-only frame of reference. Every time communication occurs with your Guide, you are, to that degree functioning Fourth-dimensionally, and this is why the communication will always be transformational for you—or, shall we say, enlightening.

I also do not want you to overlook your heart's desire. It does not mean "nothing." It is not irrelevant. Your love for God, your love for that which is true constitutes a love for that which Is true about you! It constitutes a desire, even if it is not verbalized, to experience the truth about you—not just think about it.

What I am trying to communicate here is that your already-existing heart's desire, your already-existing desire to be in touch with your Guide, your capacity for joy, all constitute very effective and powerful means for moving you beyond any limited thinking which may be binding you. I am saying that you already are well on your way. I am not suggesting that you need to burden yourself with "working harder at it."

Be aware that many of the things you are already doing are powerfully moving you, powerfully causing the shift that you desire. Do not think that you must find ten other big things to do to speed you on your way. Value what you are already doing. It is a truism that what you appreciate appreciates, or grows. You are already appreciating a lot, and that which you are appreciating is growing, is appreciating, is enlarging your awareness of the full Meaning of Your Being.

For your information, it is helpful for you to love your fellow man for What He Truly Is, with the under- standing that right in the face of any ego actions he may be indulging in, his divinity is present to be honored. But your most significant means of appreciating your fellow man for Who and What He Really Is will arise out of your increased awareness and experience of Who and What You Really Are as the expression of God.

The more you allow yourself into that experience of your Being, the less it will be theoretical. Experience is experience! And, what you experience of Your Self will cause you to Know what is true of your fellow man, because you know that he is no different from you. As your experience of your divinity unfolds more and more clearly, your ability to appreciate the divinity of your fellow man will increase correspondingly.

You cannot think yourself into greater appreciation of another. If you could, your appreciation would be theoretical. Appreciation arises out of Knowing, out of experience. So, let your primary desire be to know your Self more and more significantly. It is to know what God is being, because God is being You. Nothing else is responsible for your existence, and in actuality you cannot possibly be anything other than what God is revealing of Himself right there where [Caller's name] is seen by everyone else.

You could call this a divine selfishness. But the wonderful thing about divine selfishness is that it blesses everyone, because it does not block the essential Presence of God right where You Are. It does not obscure It.

QUESTION: I know I'm not supposed to work at being divine, because I already am...

RAJ: You see, the value in acknowledging that you are already the perfect daughter or expression of God means that you do not have to work for anything! However, since you are not experiencing your divine Actuality consciously, and you seem to be experiencing something other than that, then there is something needing to be done, because it is not your birthright to be ignorant, to be minus the experience of your divinity.

Knowing that you already are the ultimate, even though that ultimate is apparently hidden, relieves you of the ethic of "spiritual progress," of striving. Further, knowing that What You divinely Are is functioning fully and completely at this instant, means that you need only to let go, relax, allow yourself into the full conscious awareness of What You Totally Are. Very simply, the mortal sinner syndrome and all of the striving that it involves is so much static, so much tinkling of brass in your conscious awareness that you cannot perceive the undistorted Reality.

Therefore, as you are willing to release the striving, because it is not necessary as you are able to release the theoretical basis of your being a sinner needing forgiveness, and you become quiet within yourself and you move within, go into your closet, it is the equivalent of opening up your eyes so that you may simply see what is Real and what has never stopped being Real, so that you may see and experience your Self and your world and universe as God is being It, without distortion, without pain, without suffering, without death, and much, much more.

You must allow yourself into the Kingdom of Heaven—the Christ-Consciousness of Being. When you find yourself feeling that you must work harder, be alert and do not invite that idea or ethic into your consciousness. Do not entertain it. You do not have to answer the door.

It is ultimately simple.

QUESTION: I would like to listen to Raj and hear what I need to hear for right now, to be aware of.

RAJ: Bless yourself! This is another way of saying appreciate yourself, except that the use of the word "bless" indicates a more active dynamic to the appreciation. Self-appreciation is an honoring of What You divinely Are, and because of What You divinely Are, Self-appreciation is even more significant than what it means from a typical psychological standpoint. In other words, Self-appreciation is healing—not because it is simply positive in nature, but because the appreciation is coming from one who is absolutely divine.

It Is necessary for your thinking about yourself to become more consistently aligned with Who and What You Really Are, else you will see it as a process a tiny mortal goes through in order to bolster himself up to face the world.

Self-appreciation literally provides the means for lifting you out of the tiny mortal sense of yourself into not only a greater appreciation of yourself, but a clearer experience of Who You Really Are. It is the precursor of enlightenment. It is the groundwork for accessing your greater capacity to be aware. It is far more than just a nice or even practical positive thing to do.

You are concerned at times about how you appear to others, and when you are functioning at this level, you are seeing yourself as an object, as an appearance, which exists in some way independent from everything else, and therefore as an easy target for judgment.

When you are functioning from this standpoint, when you are seeing your others as ready to stand in judgment of you, you are already judging yourself from that very same level. This literally causes you to become a puppet, not only of the expectations of others, but your ignorant expectations of yourself. And all the time that this little illusory, imaginative drama is going on, You, in your Totality—You as You divinely Are in Your Wholeness—are functioning fully, undisturbed by the imaginative, illusory drama that seems to be going on.

When you identify yourself as what you appear to be, you are lost in an illusory state of mind. It is the act of Self-appreciation, which has the power to lift you out of that drama, out of that level of perception, into the inherent confidence of your immovable Being—immovable in the sense of being incapable of being affected by anything other than Its omnipotent process of fulfilling Itself.

Even though you might not find yourself totally transformed by the process of blessing yourself with your Self-appreciation, you will find yourself being moved out of the dynamic that causes you to seem to have to react like a puppet to others' as well as your own limited self-perception. It allows you to be, and let the chips fall where they may. It allows you to be at Peace, no matter who else is distressed. And in that Peace, you will find that you have the perspective needed to appropriately act or not act in a way that will relieve or have the potential for relieving the distress that those around you might be experiencing.

Blessing yourself is very Centering, because it constitutes an acknowledgment of your Reality, the Reality of Your Individuality. It institutes or brings into play the conscious experience of your Integrity, wherein you are in no way giving your power away. Who and What You Really Are needs no justification, no explanation. It simply is, and it is all that is. It is the very Presence of the Life-Principle, which has expressed Itself, and the expression is called [caller's name]. By whatever name, the Individuality labeled (caller's name] is eternal and Whole, and the Wholeness is unchanging.

It is important for that Wholeness to be shared, to be lived right where you are, without hooking into the feeling that it must be justified or explained or proven. When you decide no longer to yield to the demand for explaining yourself, for living up to others' expectations, and when you see that the judgment that apparently will descend upon you if you do not justify yourself is a bluff, which cannot be carried out, and you are willing to simply be, and let the chips fall where they may, you will experience the Peace that is natural to your Being, the Peace that is eternal.

You are quite used to the concept of appreciating yourself. But it is important for you to have the awareness of this added dimension of Meaning to Self-appreciation; that it indeed constitutes a blessing that is fraught with Power because the blessing is coming from One Who is Absolutely Divine. It is, indeed, time to grow up into your spiritual stature and status, and own it, and act out from it, and be it right here.

It will not be an earth-shaking event, nor need it be complicated. Self-appreciation is Self-appreciation. It isn't complicated. To understand that that appreciation comes from a divine source is also not an added complexity. It is simple. But that added facet of understanding will have remarkable effects.

QUESTION: What are valuable tools for my growth at this time?

RAJ: The most valuable tool is the realization that contrary to appearances, you are not some piss-ant mortal working its way up to an unnatural but achievable spiritual status. You are not a small ego moving toward an Ego status. You are, at this very instant, the Totality, the Wholeness, the Christ-consciousness; the enlightened One who literally, simply has her eyes closed and cannot seem to experience what she is.

If all that You Are is present, then you cannot be moving toward It, nor can you be growing into It. Therefore, there can be no process to it, in actuality, other than, you might say, opening your eyes, allowing yourself to experience the Reality of your Being, which is going on in Its Totality at this instant.

Your divine status does not lie off in the future somewhere. When this becomes absolutely clear to you, you will stop struggling and striving to achieve. The struggle to achieve denies what you are! It says, "I am not that yet, but I will become it." And the process, itself, constitutes a constant blocking of your awareness of its presence.

The ego not only suggests that your goal is in the future to be arrived at, at a later time, it then suggests that there are particularly good techniques, particularly "right" approaches upon which you may effectively move toward that distant goal. They have achieved the status of religious practices. But there is only one practice, which will get you into the Kingdom of Heaven, the Conscious experience of Reality, and that is to stop trying to achieve it! Stop trying to become something, and allow yourself to be quiet enough in the Now, in the instant of consciousness that you are constantly experiencing, to allow the full open conscious experience of What You never stopped being for an instant.

The whole process of becoming is an illusion, a total waste of time. You must let yourself into the awareness of the Reality of your Being through the middle of the instant of conscious experience that you are at this instant. Striving to become better is a distraction from the experience of your Wholeness, which only exists to be experienced in the instant you are in.

Again, the only "religious practice" that means anything at all is that of allowing, of letting yourself experience Who You Are Really right now. Anything, which helps you let go of the preoccupation with the past or the future is a valuable aid to this "religious practice" which I have described. Anything which helps you set aside future goals, anything which helps you stop bracing yourself against the future or some negative thing you imagine to be in the future, anything which helps you to stop running from the past and helps you to significantly be in the Now, is an effective tool in your apparent process of Waking Up. Nothing else is.

QUESTION: I would like to know how much of my life’s movement is predestined and how much is free will? How can I recognize the difference? How can I find balance between the two? It's like my personal mantra is, "I'm willing." It's just that I'm trying to find a balance between what the Universe is to do, and what I'm to do.

RAJ: The only appropriate use of free will is to choose not to use it! This means, then, that from a Universal standpoint, or from an Absolute standpoint, or from the standpoint of the Reality of your Being, none of it is free will.

Your Individuality, your essential Self, is the direct expression of the Universal Life-Principle, whether you call it God or not. Your Individuality is the Movement of Fulfillment which, because It is the expression of a Universal Oneness, is in absolute harmony with every other Individuality, every other expression of the Life-Principle. It does not involve independent self-direction. I mean by that, direction provided by a mentality, which considers only itself in setting its directions.

This does not mean that from an Absolute standpoint everything is preordained or predestined. The Life-Principle, Itself, is the Process of Creation, the being of that which has never been before. You could say that the Life-Principle, and therefore You, are living Art, constantly evolving out of Its divine Nature the "Tapestry of Life," which never stops to repeat Itself.

On this basis, then, your creativity "automatically" harmonizes with every other action or movement of creativity in the Universe. There is nothing dull or monotonous about it, and there is no loss of anything that constitutes meaningful Conscious Individuality.

The whole process of sensing deeply into, your essential Being, so that you may know where your energy is moving, involves your setting aside free will. Obviously, in sensing deeply, you are deciding in favor of cooperating with your Being rather than ignoring it and "figuring everything out" for yourself at an intellectual level, which, really, simply means functioning as a little ego living on the face of the planet and only harmonizing with everything and everyone else through an accepted "code of conduct."

To the degree that you do set aside, or decide not to use free will, and to sense deeply and flow with what you find, you will experience an increase of harmony, joy, and fulfillment without losing anything except anxiety, fear, stress, and pain.

QUESTION: I was really struck with the idea, in one of the Newsletters, that every idea includes within itself the necessary ingredients for its fulfillment. I am wanting some information for myself about what I must do, if this is true, to encourage the flow of my own unfolding. I have ideas about projects, about going with things, and they just seem to sit there.

RAJ: The key always is listening, and when I say listening, I mean listening deeply, from your Center. Understand that there are not just ideas floating around. There is no waste motion in the universe. There is no waste motion to Being. And, when you are deeply listening, you put yourself in the position of being aware of what your Being is unfolding.

It emerges first as simple awareness, or what I have called Knowing. You can verbalize or express that awareness in ideas. But the necessity is for you to stay with the awareness or Knowing, because it has Meaning—or what you would be inclined to call feeling. That feeling is always a Self-feeling, because, mind you, what is emerging here and taking the form of ideas is Your Being in the process of fulfilling Itself/You.

In your willingness to remain at the Source of the idea, in your willingness to continue to listen, you will find yourself always at whatever point of unfoldment that Meaning is at in Its process of fulfilling Itself. You see, the ego always tries to take over, and, by virtue of its own energy, bring that idea to fruition, so that it may take credit for it and feel substantial and worthwhile. Your Being does not go through any of those gyrations. Its movement is always a movement of fulfillment.

Again, the answer to your question is, listen deeply, and continue to stay in that listening Place even when you are led to take certain actions in your world. You can take action from the level of your Being. It is not necessary for you to take action from the level of your ego. That really is the key difference.

Again, I want to reemphasize that the only ideas that you will find unfolding in your experience will be those which arise out of what your Being is unfolding for the identification of Its Wholeness. Now, because this is the case, there will always be the feeling of Integrity to You when you are experiencing your Self-Meanings, the energy of your Being, as It gives rise to ideas.

When you are not being able to recognize a oneness with the ideas, when they, in effect, are flitting through your mind like butterflies—some of an interesting design, and some not—you can rest assured that these ideas are not being sensed from the deeper levels of your Being, and are imaginative concoctions of the ego. It is not necessary for you to respond to ideas in which you cannot find your love, your motivation, your interest. So always listen deeply, because the Meaning of the ideas will always be, at the bottom line, Your Self in its process of fulfilling itself by manifesting Its Wholeness. This is why, at a very simple level, you are encouraged to do what you love.

QUESTION: If I am to understand and apply the information I have just gotten, and it's right for me to go forward with the doctoral program, is this to say that I simply need to dismiss concerns about providing for the program; that I can, in effect, make the investment now with what resources I have now, and by concentrating on a sense of abundance and moving in the right direction, that the additional means – specifically money – are going to be made available?

RAJ: It is not a matter of concentrating on abundance as much as it is gaining clear focus as to the path in which your Being is unfolding Itself. When you are "on target" with what your Being is unfolding, and since your Being is always unfolding Itself Wholly, or Completely, then you will always be in that Place where that Completeness can be experienced, whether it is dollars and cents, or transportation, or dwelling, or whatever.

What I have shared with you is a clear expression of the direction in which your Being is unfolding your opportunity to access your greater capacity to be aware. Now, you may contemplate abundance. It will be helpful for you in overcoming, or at least assuaging, the ego's doubts. But understand that the contemplation or affirmation of abundance is not what will make abundance a fact.

Abundance is a Primary Fact of your Being, and when you are "on target" with your Being, your abundance is what you will experience. It is essential to understand the Source of your abundance. It will never be the result of your thoughts! It will always be your Being, Itself—what You fundamentally, divinely Are. The key is to learn to flow with your Being, rather than think wonderful, abundant, affirmative, positive thoughts.

The one benefit there is from positive, affirmative, abundant thinking is that from an intellectual level, it helps you arrive at a point where you can dare to let go and trust into your Being, which is the Actual Source of your abundance, because It is Whole and has never been anything less.

QUESTION: I have a stronger and stronger sense of that quality, and I still don’t understand about the specifics of having the "means”—like, to pay the bills.

RAJ: Again, it is the ego, which wants everything pegged ahead of time. But, understand that having everything pegged ahead of time does not involve any element of trust.

It is very simple. There is no way to connect with the divinity of your Being and Its Wholeness and Completeness without implicit trust! To whatever degree trust is withheld, you are functioning at the level of the ego and its doubts, and its conflict-generating dynamics. You do not need to know exactly where every dollar and cent is going to come from. You do need to know that your Being is constantly unfolding Itself Totally. I mean that right now! And, the only thing that causes you to seem not to be aware of that Total Universal Completeness is the element of doubt, which is inherent in the ego's sense of things.

Now, I encourage you to take the things that we have talked about today deeply within yourself, well out of the reach of your ego sense and measure them against your deepest levels of Knowing, measuring them against the recognition of and feeling of your own Integrity, your own Peace. If what we have talked about adds up to or measures up to your calm, deep Knowing, then I encourage you to dare to act out from that Knowing, no matter what "jig" your ego may subsequently intrude into your sense of Peace.

QUESTION: Is nothing impossible?

RAJ: Literally, infinity is the possibility. However, when one is not cooperating with or flowing with what his Being is unfolding, and is, instead, attempting to manifest the infinite possibilities from the tiny, biased level of his ego sense of himself, the infinite possibilities become a stressful experience.

When willfulness, which does not take into consideration anything other than the possibility it seeks, is being employed, it puts one out of sync with Reality, and there is always discomfort. The infinite creativity of your Being, which employs infinite possibilities, is present to be experienced with absolute harmony when one is willing to set aside what he thinks he wants and senses deeply into what his Being is unfolding, and flows with it.

There are no limits, whatsoever, on your Being, on your essential Self. But, from the level of your finite ego-sense of self, there will always be the limit of discomfort, pain, and anxiety, a total absence of Peace.

QUESTION: Concerning my apparent higher state of conscious awareness, when I smoke marijuana, and the consciousness I seem to have when high – more harmonious, more answers available, almost as if I’m guided – I’ve been told to either let go of the drug or let go of the guilt. I’ve been trying to let go of the drug for some time, and maybe it’s my ego saying that I need them, but I am seemingly happier when I’m around them. I can communicate better with people, it seems. At this time, that’s where I am, and I read an answer about what pot was all about in an earlier Newsletter, and I understand it. I just wonder how I could let go of it or get to that space without the drugs.

RAJ: Fundamentally, the skill and facility you find yourself having in social settings and in communicating your feelings, is brought about because you are more relaxed and less self-conscious. But, it is not a relaxation, an unself-consciousness, which you have really achieved. Therefore you do not have real security.

The security—the sense or experience of your immovable integrity that does not feel vulnerable—must be available to you in your natural state in order for it to be experienced as real security, real stability. The other is an illusion of stability, and it is dependent upon something other than your Self. Thus, you will only have it when you have this "something else" (the drugs) available. This puts you in the position of becoming the puppet of the need for the drugs. That is not independence. That is not security.

Now, I do want you to understand that the real experience of enlightened Consciousness is available to you without the use of drugs. The easiest means of accessing that inner Self-experience can be achieved through meditation or some form of becoming quiet within yourself, realizing that the quietness that you are experiencing is not just a phenomena of peace, but that it is a direct experience of the Nature of your Being, your Self. What you are experiencing in your quietness is the peaceful, non-anxious Nature of your Being.

In the process of becoming still through meditation, you are moving, you might say, through the corridors of your Being. It is the actual experience of the Peace that constitutes your eternal birthright. Thus, the quietness, itself, is a Self-experience. The quietness, itself, serves to teach you about You. As you begin to realize that it is not just a mental phenomena that is different from one called anxiety, but that it is, indeed, the result of a movement out of the ego level of conscious experience, you will gain great satisfaction from it, a joy from it, because it really constitutes experiencing the integrity, the unfragmented Actuality of your Being.

From that centered Peace, you can then begin to access your greater capacity to be aware in a totally nonreactionary way, in a way where you experience your Wisdom and Knowledge without going through any intellectual thought processes to experience it. In some ways it will be similar to the experiences you had with drugs. But the fact that it will be happening without the drugs will have a profound effect on you—one that will constitute the recognition that you are not dependent on anything other than your willingness to go within and become still to experience enlightenment, to experience Guidance, to experience your process of Awakening.

Again, the greatness detriment from the use of drugs is that it implies that spiritual progress or enlightenment is occurring when it is not, and thus it distracts one from the actual experience of enlightenment.