The Return: What Are We Really Returning To?
The Deeper Conversation
We speak a great deal about *Return* in The Sovereign Self. Returning to ourselves. Returning to the heart. Returning to presence. Returning to who we really are.
But what does any of that actually mean?
Return to what? Have we been somewhere else? Have we lost something along the way? And if we have, how do we get it back?
Perhaps the most important question is this: What difference would any of this make to my life?
These are fair questions, and they deserve more than a few comforting words about finding ourselves.
So let's explore what we mean by Return, including something much deeper than simply changing the way we think or behave.
Have We Really Lost Ourselves?
Think about your life for a moment.
From the time you were very young, you began learning how to live in the world. You learned what was acceptable, what was expected of you, what brought approval and what brought disapproval.
You learned how to fit in, how to protect yourself, how to succeed and how to avoid being hurt.
Some of those lessons were valuable. Others may have left you believing things about yourself that were never really true.
Perhaps you learned that you had to achieve something to be worthy of respect. Perhaps you learned to keep your feelings to yourself, to please other people, or to appear strong even when you were struggling.
Over time, these ways of living became familiar. So familiar, in fact, that you may no longer question them.
You simply began to believe that this was who you were.
And here is where our conversation becomes interesting.
What if much of what you believe yourself to be is actually what you have learned to become?
I'm not suggesting that everything you have learned is wrong, or that the person you have become is somehow false. Your experiences, relationships, achievements and difficulties are all part of your life.
But they are not the whole of you.
There is a difference between who you are and the collection of beliefs, habits, fears, expectations and stories through which you have learned to live.
Recognising that difference is where Return begins.
So What Are We Returning To?
We are not returning to our childhood, to some earlier version of ourselves, or to a time when life was supposedly easier.
Nor are we trying to recover a perfect person who once existed before the world got hold of us.
We are returning to something far more fundamental.
We are returning to awareness itself — to the consciousness that is the very foundation of our being.
Let me explain what I mean.
You have thoughts, but you are not limited to your thoughts. You experience fear, anger, sadness, excitement and joy, but none of these feelings defines the whole of who you are.
You have a personal history, but that history does not have to determine every choice you make today.
And yet, for much of our lives, we identify so completely with these thoughts, feelings and experiences that we believe they are who we are.
We become the story of ourselves.
But there is something deeper.
There is the awareness in which all these experiences take place. The simple, immediate knowing that you exist, that you are here, that you are conscious.
You don't have to think yourself into this awareness. It is already present, even before you begin describing or explaining your experience.
This is the beginning of the deeper Return.
Because when we return to awareness, we are doing more than observing our thoughts. We are beginning to inhabit consciousness directly, rather than experiencing life exclusively through the interpretations of the mind.
And this opens the door to a much deeper understanding of who we are.
The Deeper Return: Consciousness, Source and Our True Nature
This is where metaphysical theology becomes important to our conversation.
At the heart of The Sovereign Self is an understanding that we are more than our physical bodies, our personalities and our individual histories.
Our essential nature is consciousness, and that consciousness is inseparable from the Source of life itself.
Call that Source God, the Divine, Infinite Intelligence or simply the Source of Being. Different traditions have different ways of describing it.
The name is less important here than the relationship.
In this understanding, we are living expressions of the Divine Source, not separate beings struggling to find our way back to something that has abandoned us.
Our connection with Source is not something we have to earn, manufacture or become worthy of.
It is intrinsic to our existence.
What happens, however, is that we become so identified with our conditioned personalities, our thoughts and our separate sense of self that we lose awareness of this deeper relationship.
We continue to live, think, work, love and struggle, but our experience of life becomes dominated by the mind and its interpretations.
We begin to experience ourselves as isolated individuals, attempting to control a world that often seems unpredictable or threatening.
From that perspective, life can become an endless exercise in protecting ourselves, proving ourselves and searching for something that will finally make us feel complete.
And here lies the significance of Return.
We are not trying to reach the Divine. We are remembering that our very being is already an expression of it.
When we return to awareness, we begin to recognise this connection directly.
We are no longer merely thinking about consciousness, reading about spirituality or trying to understand our relationship with Source as an intellectual exercise.
We are becoming present to the consciousness through which we exist.
This is what I mean by inhabiting consciousness directly.
It is a shift from knowing about our deeper nature to experiencing ourselves from within it.
And when that awareness begins to inform how we live, our relationship with ourselves and with the world changes.
What Does It Mean to Embody Awareness?
There is an important difference between becoming aware for a few moments and actually living from awareness.
You may have experienced a moment of profound stillness, clarity or connection. Perhaps during meditation, while sitting quietly in nature, or even during an ordinary moment when your mind suddenly became quiet.
For that moment, you were simply present.
But then life continued. The phone rang, somebody needed something, a problem demanded your attention, and before long you were back in your familiar ways of thinking and reacting.
The experience of awareness was real, but it had not yet become the way you lived.
Embodied awareness is what happens when consciousness begins to find expression through the way we actually live.
It is when presence becomes something we bring into our conversations, relationships, decisions and ordinary responsibilities.
And this brings us to authenticity.
When we live predominantly through the conditioned personality, much of our behaviour is influenced by what we have learned we should be.
We try to appear confident, acceptable, successful, agreeable or strong. Sometimes we even convince ourselves that these performances are our true identity.
But as we become more deeply established in awareness, the need to maintain these identities can begin to loosen.
We become more comfortable being who we are.
And something remarkable becomes possible.
Our responses begin to emanate from our true nature rather than being dictated by our conditioning.
Compassion no longer has to be something we perform because we believe we should be compassionate. It can arise naturally from our recognition of our connection with others.
Honesty becomes less about following a rule and more about being true to ourselves.
Courage becomes possible even when fear is present, because fear is no longer the unquestioned authority over our decisions.
This does not mean that we become perfect, permanently peaceful or incapable of making mistakes.
It means that our actions can begin to express the deeper nature of our being.
That, to me, is authentic living.
And it is a central purpose of the Return.
Why Do We Need to Return?
Because it is remarkably easy to lose touch with this awareness in the business of everyday living.
We become occupied with responsibilities, relationships, work, money, family and the countless demands placed upon us.
Our minds are constantly busy. We replay yesterday's conversations, worry about tomorrow's problems and imagine situations that may never happen.
And somewhere in all this activity, we can become so accustomed to reacting to life that we barely notice how we are living it.
Consider how often your day is influenced by something someone else says or does.
A critical remark changes your mood. An unexpected message creates anxiety. Someone disagrees with you and you immediately feel the need to defend yourself.
Before you know it, your thoughts have taken over, your emotions have joined the conversation, and you are reacting almost automatically.
Later, when everything settles, you may wonder why you said what you said or behaved as you did.
You weren't necessarily making a considered choice. You were responding from a familiar pattern.
We all do this.
And in those moments, our experience is being governed by the conditioned personality rather than by conscious presence.
This is why Return matters.
It brings us back into awareness, where we can begin to recognise what is happening without being completely identified with it.
And from that awareness, a different response becomes possible.
The Return From the Mind to the Heart
Another expression we use in The Sovereign Self is the movement from a mind-led life to a heart-governed being.
What do we mean by that?
Our minds are extraordinary. They help us reason, remember, calculate, organise and solve problems. There is nothing wrong with thinking, and the purpose of this work is certainly not to stop thinking.
The difficulty arises when we allow our thoughts, fears, assumptions and learned beliefs to govern our lives without question.
We can become so involved in what our minds are telling us that we lose touch with our deeper awareness.
When I speak about the heart, I am not referring simply to emotions or sentimentality. Emotions themselves can be impulsive and unreliable.
I am speaking about the heart as the centre of our authentic expression, the place from which the qualities of our deeper nature can find their way into our lives.
Love, compassion, understanding, courage and truth are no longer merely ideals we try to live up to. They become qualities we can express through conscious being.
In the understanding of The Sovereign Self, the heart-governed life is therefore much more than making kinder decisions or learning to manage our emotions.
It is allowing the awareness of our true nature, and our relationship with Divine Source, to govern how we live.
The mind does not disappear. It remains an extraordinary instrument through which we navigate the world.
But it no longer has to be our master.
Our thoughts become something we can use rather than something that constantly uses us.
And our choices can begin to reflect who we truly are.
This is the reorientation at the heart of The Sovereign Self: from a mind-led life to heart-governed being.
What Does Return Look Like in Everyday Life?
Let's use a simple example.
Imagine someone says something that deeply upsets you. Perhaps you feel disrespected, misunderstood or unfairly criticised.
Your immediate reaction might be to defend yourself, retaliate or withdraw.
Your mind begins building its case. It reminds you of previous occasions when this person behaved in a similar way. Before long, the present disagreement has become connected to a whole collection of old experiences.
Now imagine something different.
You notice that you are upset. You recognise the familiar thoughts appearing. You feel the anger or hurt, but instead of immediately acting upon it, you allow yourself a moment.
And in that moment, you return to awareness.
You recognise that the anger is something you are experiencing, but it is not the whole of who you are.
You no longer have to allow the conditioned reaction to speak on your behalf.
Perhaps you still need to speak firmly. Perhaps a boundary needs to be established. Perhaps the other person genuinely has behaved badly.
Return does not require you to become passive or agreeable.
But now your response can come from a different place.
You can speak honestly without needing to attack. You can establish a boundary without being driven by resentment. You can disagree without losing your connection with yourself.
And here is the deeper significance.
You are no longer merely managing your behaviour. You are allowing awareness to be expressed through your behaviour.
Your response is beginning to reflect your true nature.
You have not escaped the situation. You have returned to yourself within it.
That is what embodied awareness can look like in an ordinary human interaction.
What Will Returning Actually Do for Me?
This is probably the most practical question of all.
What is the benefit of Return when there are bills to pay, relationships to manage, responsibilities to meet and difficult decisions to make?
The benefit is not that your problems magically disappear.
It is that your relationship with those problems can change.
You may begin to notice that you are less easily drawn into arguments that achieve nothing. You may find it easier to recognise when fear is influencing a decision, or when you are agreeing to something simply because you don't want to disappoint someone.
You may discover that you can listen more openly without feeling personally threatened by a different opinion.
You may become more comfortable saying no when no is the right answer, and more willing to say yes to something that genuinely matters to you.
And perhaps one of the greatest benefits is that you begin to spend less of your life struggling with yourself.
Consider how much energy we use trying to control how others see us, worrying about things that haven't happened, reliving things that cannot be changed, or attempting to become what we imagine we should be.
What might life feel like if even some of that energy were available for living the day actually in front of you?
But there is a deeper benefit too.
You can begin to experience life as an authentic expression of your own being, rather than as a continual struggle to become someone you believe you should be.
Your connection with Source is no longer simply a belief you hold or an idea you find comforting.
It becomes something you can increasingly recognise and express in the way you live.
You may find a greater sense of belonging, not because the world has suddenly become more agreeable, but because you no longer experience yourself as fundamentally separate from life.
You may discover a growing sense of inner trust, because you are learning to live from awareness rather than relying exclusively upon the mind's endless calculations.
You may feel more at ease with yourself, because you are no longer measuring your worth entirely through achievement, approval or comparison.
None of this means you will never experience anxiety, grief, anger or uncertainty.
These remain part of being human.
But they need not define your identity or govern every response.
And that is a profound change.
How Do I Begin to Return?
You don't need a special place, an elaborate ritual or hours of meditation.
You can begin exactly where you are.
The next time you notice yourself becoming upset, anxious, defensive or overwhelmed, see whether you can stop for a moment.
Not to suppress what you're feeling, but simply to recognise it.
Notice what your mind is telling you. Notice what is happening in your body. Notice the urge to react.
And then become aware of something else.
You are here.
You are conscious of what is happening.
The thoughts and feelings are present, but so is the awareness in which you recognise them.
For a moment, see whether you can simply rest in that awareness without needing to explain, change or judge anything.
You are not trying to create consciousness.
You are allowing yourself to recognise what is already present.
And from there, ask yourself a simple question:
What would my response be if I allowed it to come from who I truly am, rather than from what I have learned to fear?
You may not immediately know the answer.
You may still react in exactly the same way you always have. That doesn't mean you have failed.
The fact that you have begun to notice is already significant.
And with practice, awareness can become increasingly familiar, something you return to throughout the day rather than something you experience only in quiet moments.
This is how awareness begins to become embodied.
Not through thinking about it more, but through living from it more often.
Is Return Something We Eventually Complete?
I don't believe it is.
It is tempting to think of Return as a destination: a state of peace, awareness or inner certainty that we will eventually reach and remain in forever.
But our human lives continue, with all their challenges, relationships, responsibilities and unpredictable events.
There will be moments when we become caught up in our thoughts, when we react without thinking, when fear gets the better of us or when familiar patterns return.
Even after years of reflection and personal work, we remain human.
And there is something important to understand here.
We do not move in and out of our essential nature. We move in and out of awareness of it.
Our connection with Source is not broken every time we become angry, afraid or distracted.
Our essential nature does not disappear because our minds become busy.
We simply become so absorbed in our experiences that we lose sight of the consciousness in which those experiences are taking place.
Return is the recognition of what has remained present all along.
As that recognition deepens, awareness can become the foundation from which we live rather than an occasional experience we try to recover.
That is not a demand for perfection.
It is an invitation to live more consciously, more authentically and more fully as the beings we already are.
Perhaps We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question
We began by asking what we are returning to.
Perhaps another question deserves our attention.
What is it that keeps drawing us away from ourselves?
Is it the need to be accepted? The fear of failure? The belief that we are not enough? The constant pressure to prove ourselves or meet everyone else's expectations?
Or have we simply become so accustomed to living through our thoughts and habitual reactions that we have forgotten we can live differently?
Only you can begin to answer those questions for yourself.
And that is really what The Sovereign Self is concerned with.
Not persuading you to become someone else. Not giving you another set of rules to follow. Not asking you to exchange one authority for another.
But inviting you to recognise the deeper reality of your own being, your intrinsic connection with Divine Source, and your capacity to live as an authentic expression of that consciousness.
This is where personal sovereignty takes on its deeper meaning.
It is more than independence, self-confidence or the freedom to make your own decisions.
It is the recognition that your authority to live authentically arises from within your own being, rather than from the approval, expectations or judgments of others.
And when we begin to embody that awareness, our lives can become expressions of who we truly are.
That is the Return I speak of.
Not a journey backwards.
Not an escape from the world.
Not the pursuit of some extraordinary spiritual experience.
It is the return to awareness, the recognition of our true nature, and the conscious expression of that nature in the lives we are already living.
We are not returning to become something greater than we are.
We are returning to remember, recognise and live what we have always been.
And perhaps that is the most important thing to understand about Return.
A Question to Sit With
If I were to set aside, even for a moment, everything I have learned to believe about who I am, what would remain?
And what might change in my life if I began to live from that awareness?
The Return is something to be experienced, not simply understood. It is the recognition of the awareness already present within you, your connection with Divine Source, and the true nature of your being.
If this conversation has stirred something within you, I warmly invite you to experience The Sovereign Remembrance Ceremony. It is an opportunity to move beyond the words and experience for yourself what it means to Return.
There is nothing you need to become and nowhere you need to go. You are simply remembering what you have always been.
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About Brian
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