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Awaken The Guru In You > Blog > blog > Why Is It Important To Know Who You Are?

 The Benefits of Awakening

On The Coming Home Retreat – an enlightenment intensive

Lotus 3

The benefits of awakening are related significantly to greater fulfillment in life.

You can take any workshop on success psychology, on how to be more effective in achieving and manifesting your goals in life, and to a certain degree you will be happy but if you do not know who it is that has attained the success you will have failed at being fulfilled in life. You will have become a successful failure. History is full of highly accomplished people who at the end of their lives have sadly grieved because they did not find true happiness. The tragedy is not that they died but that they did not truly live.

To truly live means to be living truly

This means, you are fully being who you are and totally being in life. The catch is, you cannot truly be yourself if you don’t know who you are and you cannot fully engage in life if you don’t know what it is. This is such a simple and obvious fact that we overlook. Why do we do this?

The problem is that most people believe they know who they are and what life is. The reality is they only think they know. They are living from an intellectual concept that has been reinforced over time by the family and culture they grew up in. It is as if we are all actors born and raised on a stage, taking our cues and roles from all the older actors. We gain acceptance from others, by taking on an act and think this acceptance verifies that our self-image is who we are. It is not. It is just a socialized personality.

If you are not fulfilled in life, yes it maybe that you are not reaching your goals but it may also be that you are not fully in your life because you have a mistaken idea of what life is really all about and you don’t know who is living your life. We are busy being someone else trying to fulfill a goal in life that is not real.

This is one of the main problems: we are unconsciously stuck in a personality thinking we know who we are but we really don’t. We suffer out of our own unconsciousness, not really knowing why we suffer.

When you live from a personality, you live in a reduced state of experience.

The personality is in reality a false identity state that is created from a belief about yourself and life and others. “I am no good”, “ I am unlovable”, “I don’t exist”, “I am not important” or “Life is too hard”, “You can’t trust others”, “Love hurts”. Every experience you have is filtered through this personality and accepts or rejects the life experience that reinforces or does not reinforce the belief. You only see what you believe and reject the rest. The false belief is in reality superimposed like a shell, over yourself and you act according to this belief and continue to re-create the same suffering. If you believe that you are unlovable you will act this way and of course people will treat you as not lovable.

There are thousands of seminars and techniques that propose that the remedy to all of this is to just change your beliefs. “Change your beliefs and change your life” i.e. to affirm, declare or even implant in the subconscious (through forms of hypnotherapy) that you are lovable. But this is just changing around the furniture in the mind. It is superimposing another personality over the self. It is still a mask.

So to live from a personality means that all life is buffered and that experience is experienced selectively only from a point view. Your aliveness is dulled and you live in a prison bounded by the walls of your personality. Existing this way, will give some degree of happiness but you won’t find true fulfillment in it.

The Possibility For Greater Fulfillment

However if you directly experience who you are or the one that is behind the personality and in fact the one who created your personality, the chance of greater fulfillment exists.

The possibility is that you can become more engaged in your life. You are more available to all experiences in life. You will experience joy more fully and also sadness more fully. You will laugh more and more deeply and when it is appropriate to cry you will cry more deeply. You will allow your experiences in life to flow through you and complete them rather than block them, deny them or suspend them because of the filtering quality of your personality. Therefore you will feel more in the flow of your life.

You will have more rewarding relationships because you will be more available to others. Relationships are all about the authenticity of the connection. To truly have a satisfying intimate relationship it is essential that you know who you and what others are. If you do not who you are connecting from and what you are connecting to, you will only connect to others through the mask of a false personality. Trying to navigate through the maze of two personalities to truly touch one another when you are not self-realized is impossible.

With awakening you are more engaged in life

You can take any growth technique or religious practice and make more rapid and on-going progress with it because you can bring to bear your own personal power of choice to be open and grow. In the success area of life, you can make real progress toward real goals, and actually be happy, because it is now the real you living your life.

It can turn a person on to truth and the actuality of that truth in day-to-day life. A person can discover that there is more to life than just gratifying the senses; that this whole business of life is not just some random occurrence with no direction or purpose. One can make these discoveries not as ideas but as living facts. Such discoveries fundamentally alter one’s life.

When you realize that essentially we all want to be seen for who we truly and relate to others authentically, you will understand that just on a daily basis you living from your true self in real contact with others actually uplifts others.

In the end, however, life has only one purpose: the realization of your true nature. Experiencing directly who you are is the fulfillment of life. That union with Truth, no matter how brief, is our purpose, and fulfilling that purpose is the greatest benefit gained from enlightenment.

One of the quickest and most powerful methods of experiencing self-realization is through self-inquiry through the use of the  question “Who am I?” combined with communication to a listening partner. This practice is employed consistently on a modern retreat called The Coming Home Retreat also known as an enlightenment intensive. It’s no longer necessary to spend months or years meditating in a cave to achieve this state and to bring more life to your life.

The Wonderful Side Effect

As a side effect, people on the intensive people gain communication skills by practicing the self-inquiry technique almost without realizing it. Lack of real communication and real listening without evaluation or interruption causes the greatest suffering in life and on a Coming Home Retreat people can make significant gains in this ability just by participating in the retreat.

To find out more about the retreat click on: THE COMING HOME RETREAT

After a Coming Home Retreat, participants commonly report feeling:

Participants also commonly report having greater capacity to:

A few of the many testimonials about the Coming Home Retreat

Had I not attended your Coming Home retreat back in the spring, I would not now have the unshakable strength of knowing deeply who and what I am which sustains me on a moment to moment basis in a quiet, steadfast, joyful way. 

I don’t know why nor can I explain it but I continue to wake up happy every day, thankful every day and smiling at work even though I’m in an impossible situation.  Now that can only come from the direct experience I had at your retreat and without it, I’m sure I’d be discouraged, depressed, muddling through, cranky and grousing like everyone around me.

I have more energy now than I’ve ever had in my life, my husband has been unendingly and enormously supportive and understanding and life is good.  Tough, but good.  Sometimes life has to slam me up against the wall and let me deal with it so I can discover more of who I really am.

So thank you Russell for helping me to see the reality and beauty of life, how I am not separate from all life but am one with all life and how the Universe supports us on so many levels in so many subtle and very palpable ways.
Gail Buss Philadelphia


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Having just completed my first Coming Home Intensive I am amazed at how the process used at the retreat can produce such a deep awakening experience, not just in myself, but in others who also attended the retreat. Before the retreat, I had no idea what to expect or what would happen, I just trusted that it was something I needed to do. And to my surprise, on the third day something did happen; there was an opening, a shift in consciousness, and everything became obvious. I came home.

I am that infinite timeless space, the Watcher, the Supreme, the Absolute, the peace that passeth all understanding. That which cannot be named.

I now realize that what I have been searching for is already here, it has always been here, just waiting for me to notice. It surrounds me, is in me and expresses through me, the other and all things. It is the eternal ever-present.
Helen Simon – Mississauga

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My biggest realization is that I have never been anywhere else but here.  I can now see that throughout my life, I have always been here. That I was never absent once, never alone from myself.

Even the awakenings, the peak experiences that I had, were just bigger demonstrations of my presence. But they were, you could say, just larger or more evident exhibits of My presence, perhaps more noticeable.  All along though, I just couldn’t see myself, which was extremely confusing even as my desire, longing and sheer drive to see my Self continued.

Every experience, every relationship, every heart break, every disappointment, every love, every sunset, every teacher, every tree, flower and blade of grass, always pointed back to me; they have all been reminders and sign posts.  It’s taken me a long time, though, to recognize Me, to see Who they were pointing to.

This morning I was even grateful for the feeling of self-consciousness, because the feeling of self-consciousness points to the Self, to Me.  When I realized that I had always been here, in full view, never really lost, the most obvious and familiar thing to my entire life, I just started to laugh.  
Pat Parisi – Toronto

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Hands down, THE BEST thing I ever did for myself.

A little over 2 years ago, I was in a bad place . I felt like I lost myself and when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t recognize the person staring back at me. I was desperate for something, anything, that would pull me out of the fog that had precipitated into my life with no signs of clearing any time soon.I needed to get away with myself.

For 4.5 days, I embarked on a journey of self-rediscovery in a simple yet effective way. I came out of it connected to ME again. It was the best experience of my life. It is something one cannot EXPLAIN but can only be EXPERIENCED to truly grasp.

This retreat set the tone for MAJOR transformation in my life. I am now stepping into the life I want to create for myself, I know who I am and the self-love and growth continues to expand daily. This experience WILL change your life. It is not religious and it is not listening to someone talk about concepts and theories. It involves participants going deep into themselves in a very caring and supportive environment.

If anyone is feeling lost in life or is interested in spirituality, I highly recommend this retreat. That is how important this work is to humanity. Do something for yourself and go! You won’t regret it!
Janine Beamish – Oakville

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I have found the practice of Coming Home to be an invaluable experience along the journey of discovery. I more or less stumbled on my first one, not really knowing what I was getting myself into. However, it has had a lasting effect on my daily life.

I feel a greater sense of confidence, equanimity and, surprisingly…wonder. The methodology combines a form of Zen koan practice with Western relational psychology, though it is not aligned with any theoretical or philosophical school. The format is simple and demanding.

To discover the truth of ourselves and of existence, we must necessarily move beyond the numerous and ingenious devices we employ to avoid its raw reality. For some people, the search for that truth is the only really meaningful activity of life. I would recommend the practice to anyone who falls into that category.

When I emerged from the retreat . . .all of my worries  about the future and my resentments about past hurts seemed, in that moment, very small when compared to the vastness that is both what I am and the reality in which I participate.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer. From THE INVITATION(c) 1999 published by Harper San Francisco. All rights reserved. Edited and presented with permission of the author

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I have now stepped fully into my Self and My Life.

I continue to face fears and clear false beliefs (every day since the intensive!) but have such energy for this. I am now intimately acquainted with my personal power and strength. I AM that power and strength! I know how to take full responsibility for my life and this is a LIBERATION, not an arduous task.

Everything I have ever lived has brought me to this point of true awakening. I feel such immense gratitude and feel my heart opening wider and wider. It’s incredible, really. I can’t believe how beautiful life is. There are no words.

Name any self-help book: I’ve read it. Any motivational speaker: I’ve heard them. Audio programs, MP3 downloads: I’ve listened to them. Yes, they contain incredible insights that point at the Truth but these cannot take you there. Only radical self-inquiry of your OWN Truth can take you there. The Coming Home Retreat was the only thing that took me there. It will change your life
Kathyrn Jefferies Phd Barrie – author of Awake Education for Enlightenment

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Coming Home Retreat Leader

Russell Scott. is one of the new generations of “no dogma teachers” and the author of the best selling and award winning book: “Awaken the Guru in You”. He has led over 300 retreats in Canada for the past 35 years. As a former owner of the Ecology Retreat Centre in Ontario, he pioneered programs in green building, sustainable living and spiritual awakening. He has guided 1000’s of people in his one-to-one and group programs break through past limitations so that they can walk in the beauty, honesty and magnificence of who they really are.His greatest joy in life is watching people fall off their seats in fits of laughter when they realize their true nature.

For more information about the Coming Home Retreat (the enlightenment intensive) contact Russell Scott at russell@awakentheguruinyou.com or go to: THE COMING HOME RETREAT
Website: www.awakentheguruinyou.com