What is True Sacrifice?

When Baha’u’llah directs us to “Sacrifice all things”, what is he speaking about? What does this really mean?

He is not speaking about people giving their possessions away in the world, all the while believing they have some inherent value. That would just be switching an experience of feeling comfort for another experience of feeling discomfort. Or switching an experience of temporary satisfaction for another experience of feeling temporary unsatisfaction. No. Rather, when He speaks of sacrificing all “things”, He is speaking of turning away from the illusion of things; (the believed in independent separateness of thoughts, beliefs, concepts, feelings, sensations and perceptions), and turning to the One Experience that knows them. This is the Knowing Reality, God, the True Nature of OurSelf. It’s about ceasing being exclusively fascinated by whatever one is objectively aware “of” and being interested instead in the experience of one’s own awareness of simply being aware.

Ask yourself, “Are you aware, right now?”

This is the key to the Kingdom, not in some future exotic state-of-mind experience of bliss & enlightenment. Being aware is right now, right here. It’s ordinary. It’s simple. It’s one, unified, experience. It’s Oneness.

All objective, divided experience includes all those “things” to sacrifice. They include the illusion of “things” that thought has called “body, mind & world”. These concepts are illusion. These “things” are not the things we ‘think’ they are. They are only “called” body, mind & world, implying they are real separate objects, separate entities, separate things. They are not. Their Reality lies hidden behind another illusion; and these are simply a cluster of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions within awareness. And the Reality of these “illusory things” lie hidden behind the experience of thinking, feeling, sensing & perceiving within awareness.

The experiences of thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving, are still illusory things, but we are getting closer and closer to their Reality. It is the multiplicity of illusions of Reality that Bahaullah says we must turn away from, not the One, Unified Reality. If we are to know Him, God, our True Reality, our True Awareness, then we must keep going.

So, digging deeper, what is thinking, feeling, sensing, and perceiving made of? How do we know of their existence?

Turning to the experience of knowing that knows all things, this is where we will find God, Truth and the Reality of body, mind and world.

All experience of thinking, feeling, sensing, and perceiving, are made out of the direct experience of the of being aware, of the non-experience of “knowing”, independent of what is known.

Therefore, and in conclusion, all “things” that Bahaullah has commanded we sacrifice, (or as I would call surrender), is really the “objective experience of body, mind & world”. We don’t actually give their Reality up, we give up their illusions.

The stuff which makes up the illusion of body, mind & world is the objective experience of “thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions”; which are, in turn, made up of the objective experience of thinking feeling, sensing and perceiving. Going deeper, and to the True Reality of all things in these objectives experiences is the non-objective, infinite, ever-present Direct experience of “being aware”. It is the most simple, and fundamental non-experience that is our very Truth, our very Being; God’s very Being.

All bodies, all minds, all worlds: their objective qualities are illusory thoughts that ultimately and originally point to the reality of the pure, direct experience of Pure knowing. What every “thing” has in common with every other “thing” is the One Experience of Knowing; of Being aware. It is a direct, non-objective, ever-present experience, without limits, of being aware of Pure awareness itself.

This is our True Purpose here & now: to disentangle our One, Pure, Direct Experience of being aware, from the notion that all “things” have an inherent, separate existence apart from our One Experience of knowing. It is in the thoughts & beliefs of “separate things” that take our attention away from our One Experience of being aware. This is the Oneness we all know in Truth. It’s not a belief, it’s the Direct experience of God, of Our Beingness, our Singleness, Truth of Truths, Reality of Realities.