The existence pearl is the new development of the personal aspect of Being. It is quite amazing to see how Being resolves a particular issue, or answers a real question, not by an insight or idea, but by the presentation of an essential form of its own truth. The resolution is an experience of Being, in one of its pure and universal forms, and not merely the dissolution of an obstacle or the end of a conflict. The beautiful thing about such a resolution is how exact and precise it is. Being responds with the precise state needed for the resolution, a state not anticipated by the mind, arising as an unexpected discovery. Such experiences demonstrate the awesome intelligence that Being possesses, which can only fill us with awe, and heart-felt gratitude and trust. The concern that I started with involved the belief that there would be no personal life if there were no enmeshment in it. I believed I would not exist as a person if I were not enmeshed in the particulars of my life. Being revealed, through its messenger, the nous, that my personal existence is an essential manifestation of Being, independent of mind and situations, and hence stands on its own, independent of mental reactions. In other words, I can live a personal life by merely being, for my personal existence is a part of Being. There is no real threat to my personal existence. Before this point, I had not experienced existence of Being, itself, as a personal presence. The response of Being to my concern is exquisitely precise, beyond all expectations.

That night, during dinner, the leaden heaviness appears again, scattering the attention and presence for about an hour. The leaden heaviness becomes so dense that it disintegrates most of my capacity for attention and presence. Strong resistances arise, feelings of rubbery thickness, wooden dryness, amorphous states of consciousness, and many other confused and chaotic sensations. I feel the leaden rounded heaviness pushing from inside, scattering whatever consciousness it meets in its way. At this point I realize that the power of this heaviness arises from the transformation of the leaden consciousness into something much more substantial and powerful. The lead pearl has transformed into the shiny gray existence pearl, like a large pearl of hematite. I feel personal but immense, a person of Being so dense that my substantiality eclipses the physical substantiality of the body. The most definite feeling is a sense of personal existence. I feel intensely real, existing so fundamentally that the mind cannot conceive of this reality. I experience myself as a person, and this person is composed of pure existence. Existence of Being, essential and fundamental, and independent of the mind, forms the very atoms of what I am. I am existence, beyond all thought of existence. The sense of truth and reality is immensely profound; it feels deeper than the universe itself. And this unimaginably real sense of existence has a very subtle sense of being a person—a person not defined by history or mind, not confined by character traits or relationships, but a person who exists, and that is all. The sense of existence has an unquestionable sense of certainty, independent of any content of mind or experience. I recognize at this point that there is no basis for the concern that there will be no personal life if I am not enmeshed in it.