PREFACE
I Awoke From My Self
On the evening of January 11, 2014, I went to bed around 10:00 p.m.
As I lay there, no particular thought was on my mind, but some general interest thoughts were wandering around in my mind. I was used to this, as I had already become quite aware of the thoughts in my head and could leave most of them unattended at any given time.
That is, I could not react to most of the thoughts, most of the time but not yet all of the thoughts, all of the time.
I did not worry about this because even despite the challenges I had put myself through the last few years, I always slept well. I had learned to accept that when the day is done, the day is done. And in these years previous, I had given myself very deep challenges, as I was becoming more and more away of who I was and the life I wanted to live.
The thoughts that I allowed to come in and out this night were questions that I had been investigating in my waking life for many years: of human self-consciousness or the ego; of how all other life sees life, especially animals as our sentient co-inhabitants on earth; of how to live in the moment continually as I had read about in various texts and traditions.
As I breathed deeply and allowed the mind to be, I let go and dropped any resistance to chasing these curious thoughts at all.
I then continued to breathe deeply, entering an almost meditative state of deep relaxation and I began to try to see life from the point of view of an animal. For whatever reason, when I have done this in the past my mind has chosen a bear, so I again tried to see a moment in it's life from the point of view of that animal. I felt very free in the vision, allowing myself no particular thoughts as the bear and no attachment to thoughts – just living, breathing, observing a taking life one moment at a time. I felt myself looking at life through this bear's eyes and simply being. What other choice could there be, as an animal, without the consciousness to label things, to think about time, to make plans and conscious choices? I allowed myself to be in the exact state that this animal would exist in each moment of it's life. I felt it as deeply as if that is the life I was inhabiting at that moment. When a thought that would have been a thought Steve would have had tried to appear, I rejected it because a bear would have no such thought and no use for such thought!
That is when the light bulb went off and my mind became completely empty.
I was there, peacefully existing without any extra thinking whatesoever.
Then it hit me, the connection between this state and humanity, as all of those thoughts came together in a rush and I had a vision of a scenario of primitive humans, living the same way as that bear was . . . until one day, something happened that would change that and forever launch human on a new evolutionary path.
One which I now fully understand and will explain in this book, and by living it in my daily life.
Please join me . . .
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