ESSENCE
Reconnecting with our True Nature
Reconnecting with our True Nature
White Essence – Will: Main themes Intention, Centering and Trust. Gives us the support that we need to stay on the path to finding ourselves and have a clear intention. It has to do with a feeling of inner solidity, inner support and a sense of value. It is the relaxed confidence that comes when we are in contact with our Being. It is grounded, resourceful and committed. Provides the basic ground to experiencing the truth and stay steadfast and present in the journey of discovery.
Red Essence – Strength: Main themes Courage, Freedom and Love. The capacity to connect and use your personal resources as well as moving through the obstacles on the path. The key to fulfilling relationships and sexuality. Strength has to do with our capacity to be an individual; it brings the courage to separate from old structures that no longer serve our evolution and uniqueness. It is passionate vitality, enthusiasm and the capacity to go into the world with all its challenges. It offers fundamental certainty and protection: I can!
Green Essence – Loving Kindness: Main themes Compassion, Integrity and Wholeness. As we learn to love ourselves, we discover the depth of humanness in its vulnerability and glory. We experience a profound understanding and compassion for our ego structure. It is the compassion and understanding which allows us to go deeply into our wounds and heal them. It gives us the capacity to do the same with others. We honor and celebrate the mystery of being human.
Black Essence – Peace: Main themes Emptiness, Silence and Power. Through this quality we enter the Absolute dimensions of Being and we come to know ourselves beyond body, mind and emotions, as immense and unlimited. Here we honour our Love of the Truth and longing for Peace. It is a very deep dimension of looking in and realizing a state of inner mastery. Here we face our concepts and fears as well about death and confront the main layers of ego defence.
Yellow Essence – Joy: Main themes Innocence, Curiosity and Devotion. Letting go of suffering and the search we celebrate life unfolding richness and abundance. This dimension of True Nature more than any other helps us to integrate the Love for the Truth in day-to-day life. This subtle dimension of our Being is like an inner sun shining in our heart that brings healing and lightness. It is a place where our old negative self-images and seriousness are dropped, and our light-hearted innocence is regained.
Other components of the course are:
The foundations of this work are presence, openness and understanding: an honest exploration of our structure and the capacity to be with “what is” through meditation, self-inquiry, exercises and sharing.
In these courses we will experience and reconnect with specific resources of Being, true potentials of our spirit. They give us clearer perception, deeper understanding, much stronger capacity to function efficiently and in alignment with our deepest longing and desires as well as a more conscious and loving attitude towards ourselves and the others.
Suggested reading:
A.H. Almaas – Essence
– The Unfolding Now
Avikal E. Costantino – Freedom to Be Yourself. Mastering the Innner Judge
– Without a Mask. Discovering your Authentic Self
Avikal has been teaching Essence since 1998.
For info and booking contact avikalcostantino@gmail.com
The Stupa is one of the vehicles of our Personal Essence. It is the vehicle of totality, true autonomy and uniqueness.
As we understand and start transcending ego boundaries and their implicit sense of separateness we experience the possibility of existing both without boundaries and identity. This process manifests as an integration of the Stupa that replaces the personality structure, becoming our real structure. True Nature then unfolds in each of us in an original and unique way. As we have heard Osho saying many times, Existence does not produce carbon copies.
The presence of this vehicle gives us the sense of natural authority, true adulthood and self-mastery. We feel capable of doing and manifesting whatever we wish on the level of Being; we can actualize and create. The Stupa is like a supercharged energy generator that makes us capable to utilize all our resources and essential qualities in a creative and powerful way in the service of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
As we understand and uncover more and more how we have identified with a false sense of self conditioned by family and culture and how this identification is based on survival fear, two questions become fundamental: “Who am I?” and “What is the meaning of my life?”. This is the journey of discovery of the Authentic Self, which we call The Being of Light. The Being of Light is the unique manifestation of the Absolute, of God, of Primary Awareness, in each of us.
The Authentic Self is Being experienced as our true identity. It is the Universal Self embodied in me, you and everybody else. It is the deep memory of our divine nature shining within.
This light is obscured by the false identity that we call “I” and our identification with it in order to survive and feel special. This illusion of being special ends up hiding the reality of being unique.
The main issue of this part of the work with Essence is Narcissism: what it is, how it manifests, how it separates us from reality, how it blocks our evolution, how it keeps creating images and fictions that make us dependent from the approval of others and become barriers against discovering our original face.
The Essential Vehicle of Manifestation. Expression of the Abundance, Richness and Diversity of reality. This vehicle enpowers us with the ability to manifest our individuality through the abundance flowering of our uniqueness. It is manifestation on all levels: material and spiritual, physical, mental and emotional. The center associated to the Chandelier is in the throat and it points also to the Logos: the creative word. We learn to express, articulate and communicate by putting in the universal field the information needed for a continuous and shared creativity. We recognise that we are co-creators of this reality, each moment.
The Chandelier implies clear intention, freedom and response/ability as well as an understanding of the karmic laws. It is a complex and exciting cocktail where we use the Essential Qualities (Lataif) to manifest and give shape to the world we live in while we allign with the Mystery in its eternal unfolding.
In this course, we will introduce what is called the Diamond Guidance. This is the vehicle of objective consciousness, the guidance towards our true self. With a compassionate attitude towards ourselves and others, and with clear presence, the Diamond Guidance enables us to perceive what is true in every situation. We will explore how to awaken and strengthen Guidance in ourselves. This includes seeing through the specific obscurations in our minds that veil this jewel of consciousness, and thus the perception of our true identity.
The Diamond Guidance sees without preference. Accessing it allows us to experience the Absolute (the True Nature of reality) and gives us the courage to relate the clarity of the mountaintop to the living market place, bringing the individuated soul to the world. Living a conscious life brings lightness and joy to our soul.
This aspect of Being is obscured from the presence and continuos activity of the Superego (Inner Judge) and it’s judgements, habits, and prejudices. Through self-inquiry we learn to disengage from this activity and remain present in the experience of the moment. Supported by the alignment of our attention, awareness and energy, the Diamond Guidance starts functioning, revealing “what is” in a direct, simple and impersonal way.
Diamond Guidance sheds its light on every aspect of life through understanding, revelation, and embodiment.
This is the very intimate and precious experience of ME as the personal manifestation of Essential Nature. It is what Osho calls INDIVIDUALITY.
All the different qualities of Essence: value, power, will, strength, peace, loving kindness, joy etc. exist as impersonal, ever present universal qualities.
As we realize our true nature and align ourselves with Truth all the qualities begin to integrate in us and we develop and evolve as integrated human beings. The Truth becomes embodied in our flesh and we evolve towards becoming the true embodied manifestations of love and awareness.
As we recognize that Being does not only exist as a vast and impersonal reality but also as a very personal one than we feel complete, full, an individual. The conflict between individualism and individuality is solved and we become harmonious, contactful and involved.
Great part of the journey is about polishing the Pearl until it shines to its full potential.
As all other essential qualities of True Nature, Love is a multidimensional manifestation of the abundance of Being.
When we look into Love from personality most often we tend to define it as an emotion, a feeling, an accident, a fall, a dream, a need…or we lack words completely.
Most rarely we understand – and especially experience – Love as our True Nature, who we are and what reality is.
In this course we will take first of all this step: coming back home and realizing Love as a state of Being, not an attribute that comes and goes. We will also experience how Love manifests itself in many different forms and with many diverse qualities that express the richness of Essence: Unconditional Love (Pink Essence), Nourishing Love (White, Gold and Pearl), Merging Love (Red and Gold), Intimate Love (Black and Green), Passionate Love (Pomegranate) and more…
This will not only make Love an absolutely personal experience but will also support us in understanding how it changes, what specifically we might need moment to moment and how to support ourselves in expressing our needs and manifesting that particular aspect of Love.
How shall I describe the Mystery? How to describe the experience of the Ultimate Nature of Reality? The Absolute is Being, vastness and unlimited space, creative source of all that is, includes everything and, at the same time, is beyond all form and manifestation.
The Absolute is “Always and Already”: always here and already present. There is nothing we need to do to reach it neither we need to seek in time and space; the Absolute is here/now, ready to be experienced: we are immersed in it and we co-create it. When we do experience it every distinction disappears, every concept dissolves, the witness comes to know
himself and the whole world as pure presence which is the flow of universal consciousness.
In this course we focus on the obstacles that hinder our experience of the Absolute, the fears and the beliefs that support and re-create a description of reality made of objects, we face our prejudices and spiritual concepts so that we can have a direct experience of the Great Spirit, the Source.
