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.

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.

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.