Nothing touches us more deeply than the implicit value of our own beingness. It is value beyond mind, beyond concepts, beyond ideals and hopes and dreams. This preciousness of simply being here now with awareness and understanding fills our heart with contentment and satisfaction. We realize that where we are, which is what we are, is also the most real and precious nature of life itself.

Being ourselves is a delight. It is an intimacy; it is a genuineness, a preciousness. It is indescribable how satisfying it feels to us. But what I want to point to here is the fact that being ourselves implies an openness, a kind of gentleness. When we are being ourselves, we feel intimate, we feel close to ourselves. Our heart is open, our mind is clear, our soul is settled; there is no sense of thickness or inner agitation or fighting within ourselves. We experience an inner unity that feels peaceful, relaxed, contented. And whether we are feeling one specific quality or aspect of our being or we are feeling True Nature in its transcendence or boundlessness, we enjoy a delightful freedom and satisfaction.

The insight of the Work will have to penetrate our lives in a very genuine way if we want to live according to the truth. We actually have to go about creating our life by acting according to the knowledge of who we are and what reality is. Living according to the truth means taking care of yourself. If you recognize that you are precious, then you have to treat yourself as somebody who is precious. If you realize that human beings are precious, you have to treat everybody as if they’re precious. If what the world is and who you are is preciousness, then you can’t walk into your closet and put on a dirty shirt because there are no clean ones. If you’re precious and you haven’t got a clean shirt, you go wash one right then. You let your knowledge and experience live through your actions.

In essential experience, however, the Self is not only definite and singular, but also feels like a sense of freedom, lightness, joy and delight, as we saw in the report above. There is a sense of excitement, playfulness and adventure. One suddenly feels interested in oneself, excited about one's life, wanting to live and enjoy it. One feels one's own preciousness and specialness, and the preciousness and delight of living. Life feels like an adventure, of unlimited potential and exciting possibilities.

The sense of confidence, certainty, meaning, preciousness, and value implicit in the presence of a state of realization is not necessarily recognized. You just don’t question; you just live life as if it is precious and has meaning. There isn’t necessarily a particular meaning you can articulate. That’s not the point. The sense of meaning is there because there is self-realization. You are there. Your very reality is present and you are it. The very reality of you, or whatever dimension of reality you are realized on at that time, is the significance, the meaning, the preciousness, and it gives everything about you and your world significance, meaning, and value.

However, the moment you recognize that true nature is such a beauty, such a preciousness, you will do anything for it. No sacrifice is too great to realize that beauty, that radiant, lustrous preciousness. It is difficult to convey verbally the sense of this preciousness, this beauty, and the wonder and magic of it. Physical beauty is a very pale reflection of the beauty of Being, which is the nature of your soul. If you really recognized that the truth of who you are is so beautiful, so precious, so full of value, and so magnificent, you would devote the totality of your life to it. Everything in the universe, from beginning to end, is like dust compared to this magnificence, and every action and situation is expendable for this preciousness.

When you wake up to the preciousness of what exists, the feeling is that of celebration and uplift. You feel amazingly uplifted. You feel celebration in a joyous way—celebration of Being, Essence, Truth. You can even hear the celebration, the preciousness, as it expands the head. The brilliant champagne drink has a music of its own, similar to the music we just heard; but it sounds more like the tinkling of diamonds together. Ever hear that sound, how diamonds tinkle? A very delicate and subtle sound. But the inner sound has a musical tone as well. As it twinkles it tinkles. [Chuckles] And the tinkling has an effect on the brain: It relaxes it, expands it, and opens it up from within, as if the cells themselves open up. The more there’s the tinkling and the relaxation, the more there’s brilliance and intelligence; and the more there is an awakening, the more there is an awareness of the preciousness that lies within us. It’s our Being.

We have seen that we are always looking for the preciousness that was lost, thinking we can get it from the outside. But it is the innermost. It is so private, so deep, so inner, that there is nothing more inner than this. Who you are is so inner, so private, so precious, that when it is experienced at its depth it is felt as an absolute sacredness. To really be oneself is to eliminate the chasm, to unify the two sides of oneself, to fully become one. It is not as if you are someone who has a body, someone who does this or that, someone who has an Essence. You are it! You are the whole thing. Meaning is not something we can get to with our minds; it is not an answer found in the mind. It is not an ideal or an image we’re fulfilling. It is not a result of anything. It is just falling into one’s nature. To be able to simply fall into one’s nature, is, however, not easy. It is the most difficult thing there is. It takes perseverance, patience, sincerity, and compassion for oneself. And it may take a long time.

Brilliancy attains more qualities here. It is not just a luminescent, radiant, brilliant, and shining presence, but that fluid, flowing, and shining presence is now the flow of brilliant diamonds. The luminosity attains a crystalline quality, a diamond quality, which gives it a sense of clarity and awakeness. What do you become clear and awakened to? Your nature, to what is you. You become a light, but the light—by becoming light—becomes awakened to itself as a light. You become a light unto yourself. What you awaken to, which is a specific effect of the brilliant drink, is that your nature itself is pure preciousness itself, the utmost preciousness that there can be. So you realize that your nature is not only luminous and brilliant intelligence, but that it is precious. You see and appreciate now the sense of preciousness of Being, which is your essence and the substance of your consciousness. It is this preciousness that awakens, it is this preciousness that wakes you up, and it is this preciousness that you awaken to. This is the preciousness of Being, of Essence, and the preciousness of what a human being is. But it is not like you are seeing something that is precious. This is only the Brilliancy itself when it is diamondized, when it is in the diamond or crystalline form. In other words, this presence of diamond Brilliancy is the essential prototype of the quality of preciousness. It is Being manifesting its preciousness, or manifesting as preciousness. That by itself feels like the presence of preciousness.