Ask: Have you experienced a sort of "energetic indwelling"?

          “I have noticed a kind of embodiment of something…Holy Spirit, the Heart…not sure how to articulate, but an energetic indwelling…have not seen any reference to this in ACIM…another egoic experience or something aligning with HS, Source, etc.? Have you experienced anything similar?” – MG 

“Energetic indwelling” is rather vague, but I know these experiences are hard to describe. I assume you mean that you are experiencing something within that is out of the ordinary. The fact that you initially want to describe it as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit or the Heart, by which I think you mean it feels loving, means that you are pretty sure it is something aligned with truth, but you have your doubts.

Here’s how you can tell the difference between an experience of truth or of something new from ego that you think might be truth: Truth is quiet and unmoving. It just is. You use the word “energy”, but many use that word when they want to express something they feel is powerful.

Ego, on the other hand, is active and assertive. And those rare times it is not, it can’t fully hide itself. For example, I recently had an experience of something here that was still and nonassertive that I recognized as the thing that was always the “me” here. Was this the “true self” I thought I’d come to see does not exist or was this ego? It was quickly clear it was ego because, first, I recognized it as what had made a reality and then set itself up to be the arbiter of reality even if at that moment it was not asserting its own reality and, second, I detected mild smugness. Its temporary quietness did not fool me.

Now, let’s confuse the issue. Often when truth rises toward conscious awareness you feel a quiet lightheartedness, a gentle peace, an awareness of wholeness, a gentle light fills your mind, or some or all of these. You know what you are feeling by its quietness and gentleness. It flows in for a while and flows out just as gently. Maybe this is your “energetic indwelling”. But sometimes you may have a powerful experience of love, oneness, joy, and expansive light. That this can be brought about by drugs, a brain tumor, a stroke, etc. indicates it is a physiological response. This is dramatic and full of energy and so ego much prefers this kind of mystical experience. But it is rough physically and unsustainable. The good news is it can indicate truth rising toward conscious awareness and it just so happened to trigger a powerful physiological response. The physiological drama does not negate the awareness of truth that triggered it, but the energy of the response is also not as significant as ego makes it out to be. The point is, while ego likes more dramatic experiences, drama does not always indicate only ego is involved. Truth may lay behind more energetic experiences as well. 

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