At the beginning of our journey, when we are not able to be ourselves, value appears more in terms of what our mind thinks is valuable. But when we are real, when we are genuine, sincere, we recognize that true value is actually the same as recognizing the truth of the moment. Then we experience a kind of value that is not mental, that is heartfelt, that makes our heart feel satisfied. As we progress on the journey, we recognize that the value of the experience is where we are, the presence of where we are. True Nature manifests its value directly by revealing its presence, not by camouflaging it in one form or another. Eventually, we reach the advanced stages of the journey where it is revealed that everything is itself and its nature—and hence inherently valuable, inherently beautiful, inherently precious. At that point, we realize that all manifestations, whether we can recognize them specifically or not, are that inherent value and preciousness of reality.

This process of clarification—which is the clarification of the soul—is the development of the Personal Essence, what we call the Pearl Beyond Price. The development of the Pearl is a process which keeps moving towards further clarification until it becomes the Supreme Personal Essence. Each essential state has become personalized as the personality has become clarified, as each essential aspect has become you. You yourself become the personal essential reality, and thus, this reality can be integrated at the level of the Pearl. When you experience Compassion, that Compassion becomes you. “I, personally, am Compassion. I am Value, I am Truth.” When you own it, it is no longer you experiencing it, but you know you are it. The personality becomes so permeable that it is completely merged with the aspect. This is what I call the personalization of the essential state. As the essential aspects are personalized—Compassion, Merging Love, Will, Peace, Value, Identity, and so on—you will reach a further, a more boundless personalization, which is the personalization of the Supreme. The surprise is that this is what you have been all the time. It’s never been otherwise. You’ve always been the supreme person, all the time, in your very substance, including the substance of the personality. That’s why you have always identified with it, that’s why you cannot disidentify from it: It is you. How can you disidentify from that? How can you get rid of that? It is ultimately you. Here we see that to try to disidentify from the personality and live from a transcendent identity is to leave the very ground of the reality that was never truly separate from personality.

There is another more universal and general reason why we don’t value our Essence. We talk here about how much of your suffering, how much of your conditioning resulted from the lack of love in your environment. Your environment wasn’t supportive, wasn’t loving, did not respond to you appropriately according to your needs, did not see your value. That is true. But we don’t see the fundamental thing that happened. The fundamental thing that happened, and the greatest calamity, is not that there was no love or support. The greater calamity which was caused by the first calamity is that you lost the connection to your Essence. That is much more important than whether your mother or father loved you or not. You lost your own love because of that.

In other words, one does not gain value from one’s accomplishments; these accomplishments are, rather, the expression of one’s self-existing value. When one depends on any external manifestations, such as performance, achievement, excellence, or anything, to feel a sense of value or love, then one has not yet personalized the essential aspect of value. To depend upon external manifestations for self esteem means one has to use one’s mind; one has to remember these accomplishments. But the value of Being is self-existing, is a presence independent of the mind, and of the past. This is not possible on the ego level, where self-esteem is always inferred from one’s manifestations and accomplishments, and always somewhat removed from one’s Beingness. This distance between one’s value and one’s Beingness becomes especially obvious in the case of the narcissistic personality. The narcissistic personality has no sense of value except from external approval, admiration, recognition, acceptance and appreciation. This need for such external mirroring is incessant and bottomless. One must keep performing and achieving in order to keep the narcissistic supplies flowing. So achievements are not expressions of who one is, but are pursued to give oneself significance and identity. One’s life, with all its activities and accomplishments, constitutes a shell that is empty and devoid of any sense of self or Being. In such a character, a momentary failure of or disidentification with one’s external achievements makes one feel that one’s life is empty and insignificant.

Understanding the property of life in the soul deepens and expands our appreciation of life for its own sake. We begin to recognize the intrinsic value of life, and especially the value of human life, for it is the life of the human soul, the soul with infinite potential. Appreciating and loving life is inseparable from loving and valuing the soul. We want our life to be full because it is the fullness of our soul that is our window onto the universe, our organ of experience. We not only want to be free and detached; we want to be free and detached and at the same time for our life to be full, rich, and fulfilled. And because we understand that consciousness is more fundamental than life, we realize that to be free we need to center ourselves in pure consciousness. We love pure consciousness because it is our very identity, truth, and substance, but we also love our living soul because she is what completes it. She is the daughter of primordial pure consciousness, but also its infinite potential.

So looking for value is looking for oneself. People ask, “What is the meaning of life, what is the value of life?” The answer is not in words, as you see. When you see yourself as value, it becomes much easier to let the Essence really unfold, in its beauty, its majesty, its grandeur, with its pleasures and joys. You will see, when you experience value in yourself, that value is the ground, the basis, of what we call the Personal Essence, what is in you that is you. You are based, then, in value. Value is so definite, so palpable, that it has a color, and a taste, and a texture.

Value is truly nothing other than our heart’s intimate contact with the immediacy of the moment—with each moment, with where we are precisely. In that contact, in that being with and knowing reality as it is, we recognize the unquestionable rightness and preciousness of where we are and what we are. 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.

States of self-realization can occur in many dimensions. Self-realization can be on the individual level, on any of the boundless dimensions, or on a nondual level. The basic element common to experiences of realization in all the dimensions is a sense of not being concerned about reality, of not being concerned about who you are. There is a sense of certainty about yourself and about your perception of reality. It also manifests as a sense of completeness, as a sense of things making sense, as a sense of having meaning to yourself, to your life and to your world without necessarily knowing what that meaning is. Everything has an implicit sense of a meaning, value and preciousness; there is no questioning of it. Your life originates from this sense of meaningfulness, significance, and preciousness that is implicit and not questioned. Your life, your action, your activity and creativity originate from that pure and certain sense of significance to your world and who you are. 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.

The moment we posit a particular state as ideal, we also fall into the mode of comparative judgment. We’re comparing where we are now with that ideal state. This becomes a fertile ground for the superego. The superego loves this position. This is exactly the gap it needs to enter into your experience. When you make a comparative value judgment, you become engaged in: “Here’s where I am, and over there is where I am supposed to be. Where I am is not as good as where I’m supposed to be, so where I am should change to be that other place.” When you say this, you are rejecting where you are at the moment. And when you reject where you are at the moment, not only do you disconnect from your personal thread, you also disconnect yourself from your true nature, from your beingness itself. When you reject where you are at the moment, you cannot simply be, because merely being means not acting on yourself in any way.

So you see, the value of existence at each moment is not the result of something else; it is its own nature, its own reality. It is not a matter of cause and effect. We do not value something because of something else. At the beginning stages of our work, we might be unclear or a little deluded and think that the reason we value reality is because it gives us a great experience or it makes us happy or it opens up some new capacities or it gives us some other benefit. It is true that it does all that. But the more clearly we recognize what is manifesting in the moment—what the meaning of the moment is, what teaching is manifesting through any particular form—the more we recognize that the very existence, the factness, the pure, self-existing value of each moment, is not related to a reason. Its value does not come from doing this or that; its value is inherent. When we recognize this inherent value of reality, when we experience it ourselves, our heart cannot help but be suffused with a sense of appreciation. And it’s not that we value it because we think it is great. The value is not something that I give to or impose on reality; the value is reality itself—or reality is the value.

To recognize inherent value, to experience it directly, is the same thing as being in the immediacy of the moment. And this is what allows our True Nature to manifest itself in a way that fulfills the heart, that fulfills life. We feel a sense of an inherent value. We understand that we don’t have to accomplish a thing in our life for our life to be worthwhile. Whether or not we have success, invent something, accomplish some difficult feat, create a great piece of art, write a bestseller, or become famous is secondary. None of those things is necessary for us to recognize our sense of value because value is not something that is accomplished; it is already here.

Right, that’s what we're talking about: your existence itself. It is not valuable; it is value. It is the source of value; it is what makes anything else have value. We usually don’t let ourselves see that deeply. Value, value-as-such, is an aspect of Essence. It can be experienced as absolute value. Some of you here have experienced this. It is independent of what the mind says. My value is independent of what my superego or anybody else’s superego says. It is independent of what happens… So this is one of the ways we can experience Essence – as value itself. Value can exist without any object. I am value. That is how Essence manifests. All the qualities of Essence are fundamental on this level, just as truth, for Essence, is not truth about something, it exists as truth.