Essence Contact
BY SHEPHERD HOODWIN
Essence contact occurs when the personality opens to its essence or to the essence of another. It brings growth and joy, and if the opening is great enough, ecstasy, even if the contact only lasts a moment. Brief essence contact gives some indication of what is possible when barriers are finally eliminated. Essence contact can occur with any essence, incarnate or otherwise.
The most important essence contact is with yourself. You cannot contact another’s essence more deeply than you contact your own. There are many aspects of self, but the source of self is your essence, so knowing your essence is crucial to knowing yourself. It is not hard to love yourself when you know yourself, especially your essence.
Most people fear essence contact and consequently have had a very limited experience of it, if any at all, because false personality (the fear-based ego) is dissolved in essence. If you go deeply enough into your essence, you reach the Tao itself, for your essence is cast from the Tao.
Is there a letdown or hangover, so to speak, after ecstasy, or a greater experience beyond ecstasy?
When you open to your essence, you feel empowered. Because essence contact accelerates your growth and deepens your connection with yourself, old fears may surface in the aftermath. However, you also feel greater strength with which to deal with them, although you might need some outside assistance as well.
You often experience ecstasy when you leave your body as you sleep, but because the waking personality is not equipped to deal with it (ecstasy does not fit into its landscape), the personality blocks the memory of it.
You will not allow yourself to experience more than you are ready for. Perhaps in holding eye contact for a moment with someone you care about, you experience essence contact. Although it is very pleasing, a moment may be all you can handle. Maybe next time you will be able to handle two moments.
Whenever you open to yourself—thinking about yourself in a newly loving way, for instance, or seeing yourself as you never have before—you make essence contact more readily available.
There are degrees of openness to your essence, and it is always possible to open more. When you increase your openness a great deal at once, you feel an ecstatic “rush” of expansion. When you get used to a particular level of openness to your essence, it no longer feels like ecstasy in the sense of something explosive or revelatory. However, your everyday level would be experienced as ecstasy by someone accustomed to a much lower level, if he opened to it all at once. It would tax his capabilities to open that wide. It would be thrilling yet frightening at the same time. Even if it were momentary, it would bring much growth. He would remember, at least unconsciously, how it felt and would have something new to work toward. He might resist it, because such a change in function would require much of him. The false personality is devoted to the status quo, but the essence seeks ecstasy, so we all eventually keep moving.
Essence contact requires coming fully into the present moment. When you “plug in” to the socket of the present moment, the circuit completes, energy moves, and the light comes on; you “get it.” You see the impact of the moment. You see who you are, and who the other person is, if it involves another person.
Does the personality fall away upon plugging in to essence?
No. It becomes enlightened. The light comes on; the personality becomes light as opposed to heavy. In other words, it becomes the true personality rather than the false personality. In enlightenment, all parts of the personality become open to receive and transmit love. Think of a neon sign as representing the personality. Not plugged in or turned on, the sign can be rather dingy. Its true colors do not show, and it may even be an eyesore. Turn it on, and it looks totally different. You can see it from several blocks away. This is what essence contact does.
Two people who “fall in love” with each other may momentarily put aside their fears about intimacy and allow essence contact. There have been many things written about the way people who are in love glow. If you “fall in love” with yourself, you can have a similar experience. Your relationships with both others and yourself can teach you much about developing and sustaining essence contact. Allowing barriers to fall and improving communication can help provide a stable foundation upon which essence contact can happen more regularly and deeply. However, that is not the essence contact itself. Essence contact with another person often happens seemingly by accident. Sometimes you both just happen to find yourselves in the present moment and before you can stop it, there you are, in contact!
Is there a realistic limit to striving for essence contact?
The limit is how much you are willing to be conscious. Some people find it too much trouble. Even those who remain mostly unconscious may have some essence contact, and therefore, growth. However, the growth is more laborious, painful, and slow than when there is conscious opening to your essence.
