Evolution of love

AWAKENING 2

All in the step of a foot, everything disappeared. What arose was an image of what seemed like an infinite number of past incarnations, as if heads were lined up one behind another as far back as I could see. Awareness realized something like, "My God, I've been identified with various forms for umpteen lifetimes." At that moment, consciousness—spirit—realized it had been so identified with all these forms that it really thought it was a form right up to this lifetime.

All of a sudden, consciousness was unconfined to the form and existed independently. It was no longer defining itself by any form, whether that form was a body, a mind, a lifetime, a single thought, or a memory. I saw this, but I almost couldn't believe it. It was like someone just stuck a million dollars in my pocket, and I kept pulling it out as if I didn't believe I had it. But it couldn't be denied either. Even though I am using the word "I," there was no "I," only the One.

These two experiences happened together, one following within a few moments of the other. In the first, I became the Oneness of everything, and in the second, I became the consciousness or spirit that totally woke up out of all identification, even out of Oneness.

When the Oneness dropped away, there was still a basic awakeness, but it had two different aspects: I'm everything, and I'm absolutely nothing. This was the awakening, the realization of Self.

The next thing that happened was that I took a step, just an ordinary step. It felt like the way a baby does when it takes his first good step and then smiles and looks around as if to say, "Did you see that?" and you can see his joy.

So I took a step, and it was like, "Wow! The first step!" and another step, and then another, and I kept moving in circles because every step was the first step. It was a miracle.
In each "first" step, formless consciousness and Oneness just merged together so that the awakeness that had always identified itself as form was now actually inside of the form, unidentified. It wasn't looking through any thoughts or memories of what had come before, just through the five senses. With no history or memory, every step felt like a first step.