The Conscious Process

“God is in himself so exalted that he is beyond the reach of either knowledge or desire. Desire extends further than anything that can be grasped by knowledge. It is wider than the whole of the heavens, than all angels, even though everything that lives on earth is contained in the spark of a single angel. Desire is wide, immeasurably so. But nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want, is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness, and there God shines.”

~ Meister Eckhart

Wisdom reveals that the appearance and disappearance of all phenomena constitute an interdependent functioning of one dreamy universal totality – Consciousness Itself. Within this Consciousness, a quality of individuation appears as singular form, an apparent independent entity manifesting with the separate self-sense that is the common experience of every born being.

Prompted by this sense of separation, or individualization, the moving mind of desire is spawned. Desire in turn serves to confirm and reinforce that separate self-sense, creating an endless loop of craving and aversion, and along with it, the story of “me and mine”.

In a nutshell, this is the core of suffering. What the Buddha noted 2500 years ago is as true now as it was then. The alternating cycle of craving and aversion, or love and fear, leads to attachment, to clinging or fixation, which is the root of dissatisfaction, stress, suffering. Moreover, this drama will continue to re-capitulate itself in endless variations on the same theme, compounding itself in an entanglement of energetic interactions with all the complexity of a vast spider’s web.

Furthermore, we live in a world of “others”, and that is pretty much undeniable, based on the so-called “objective” evidence. We arrive in this world and find ourselves in association with and dependent on others, and so a dilemma arises (otherwise known as “self-interest”, the womb of craving and fear). In the course of this adventure, the complications of relationship define our sense of separation, and in turn feed the mind of desire – the desire that circumstances and conditions be different than they are, the desire that life conform to our will, or the desire that it all ends, all the apparent strife of born existence itself.

Desire births strategy, schemes, methods, and goals. All religion, politics, and personal relationships are permutations on the fundamental strategy — the satisfaction of desire. However, experience demonstrates that these strategies don’t really work, and thus we suffer. No strategy has ever satisfied desire, and even the temporary pleasures one might attain only serve to inspire the demand for more: more bliss, more stuff, more experiences, more, more, more — life after life, devoted to the pursuit of what can’t be satisfied, can’t be grasped.

Why? Because nothing lasts, nothing can be clung to for long. Whatever appears in all of the dimensions and realms of experience is smoke-like in its essential impermanence. It all slips away. Even the most thrilling passion, glorious vision, intense orgasm, the most blissful ecstasy — it all fades, and we are left with a lingering thirst, a chronic sense of dissatisfaction and disconnection embedded within the independent self-identity.

So, what’s love got to do with it? Well, what most of us regard as love turns out to be simply another name for desire, since it generally implies a duality of subject and object  — hence, the acknowledgement of distance, otherness, separation and the consequent search for the imagined relief of idealized union. In other words, love is co-opted into just another figment of the search, even though the motive to love and be loved, when liberated from the need for self-confirmation, is as true as it gets on this human stage.

Alternately, the philosophically minded may resort to an intellectual effort to dis-identify with the projection of a separate self-consciousness. However,  since the contraction is rooted in the subconscious, such efforts merely create an experience of the concept of freedom, rather than the direct realization of it. Moreover, they may feign a kind of immune aloofness that would lift them above and beyond the grosser manifestations of the suffering heart, but even this is simply a variation on desire — the desire to be free of desire and all the messiness associated with mortal existence.

At the root of our perpetual seeking, what is it that we invariably want? Upon thorough investigation, it might be recognized that what we really want is to finally be free of wanting, free of the ache a of unfulfilled desire, even to be released from the stress of consciousness itself. And yet, do we ever encounter anyone free of wanting, any lover, philosopher, or spiritual aspirant? Aspiration itself is a form of embodied desire – the search to have things be other than they are, the yearning to have one’s perceived reality be more comprehensively aligned with some arbitrary idealism born of dissatisfaction with life and relations as they appear.

The magnificent Nityananda Bhagavan, an epitome of divine evolution in human form in the last century, told his devotees that he would forsake taking his final Samadhi and continue in his physical body if even one among them could stand before him, honestly free of desire. Nobody could, of course, and thus he shuffled off this mortal coil that day.

When the implications of our inevitable failure to attain lasting liberation from desire become frankly undeniable, the struggle itself reveals its inherent futility. No distraction has the power any longer to obscure our fundamental sense of boredom, doubt, and discomfort. The emptiness of all options and alternatives we could employ has become obvious. Nothing really works.

Paradoxically, this can be a very auspicious moment. As Siddharameshwar Maharaj remarked: “The bored and the indifferent are on the verge of leaving the lure of the temptress Maya behind, no longer swayed by her shiny attractions. They are on the verge of waking.”

Here, in what has been termed by some mystical writers “the dark night”, we have become disinterested in the seductive propaganda of this world in all of its guises. For the first time, a space of free attention becomes available in which a mysterious and transformative power called “grace” can operate.

At such a momentous juncture, the endless narrative of seeking and desire can be directly understood, seen through, and even released. As it is brought into the clear light of awareness, the contraction that has dominated our existence and spawned every scheme and strategy for liberation is rendered increasingly obsolete.

When the blinders that have obscured the recognition of our true nature finally drop away, we discover that our resistance to life has dissipated, and we begin to open like a flowering blossom. At last, something clenched and restless deep within can soften and come to genuine blessed rest. The war with ourselves is nearing its end. With a mighty exhalation, we can relax and just let go.

At that moment of insight and realization, we are no longer compelled to try and force life to conform to our will, no longer moved to cling to or cherish beliefs, forms, or phantasms. We are no longer inclined towards any artificial scheme of attainment. Life happens by itself, and we recognize that we are not other than this life. Opening our eyes, we see that same life pulsing through everyone and everything. It is obvious. We are being lived.

Everything is being lived. We are not in relationship — we are relationship itself — relationship with no limit, no boundary. We are not in conflict with desire. We are not in conflict with ourselves. We are the activity of Love Itself. We begin to recognize our presence here as Love’s Play, embodied in the form of ourselves and our relations. As co-creators, we can begin to take responsibility for our behaviors, once we cease our habitual identification with empty self-images.

In the process, what we can notice is that the stress that has plagued us was not spawned so much by desire, but by fixation. When attention fixates, life comes to a standstill. It ceases to flow. We become seduced and then paralyzed by some fanciful image of ourselves in a mirroring pond, like Narcissus, and so become trapped in identification with the activity of grasping for the desirable and avoiding the undesirable. Such activity leads inevitably to attachment, fixation, and thus the whole chain of causation is set in motion, producing the inevitable dissatisfaction and suffering that obscure our native happiness.

We find that it is not desire and the enjoyment of life that is the source of the problem. Rather, it is the primal contraction born of mis-identification that binds us. Clinging, attachment, fixation – these activities create identification with a separate self-sense. This is how consciousness is tricked into the trap or illusion of suffering.

One potent antidote to such self-imposed distress is the practice of non-dwelling. What is non-dwelling? It is the persistent refusal to fixate attention on any passing thought form, experience or memory, any potential object of craving or aversion, or on any provisional self-image believed in need of confirmation, preservation, or validation. This is simply allowing consciousness to reveal itself without the superimposition of grasping or rejecting, fear or fixation, to the point of Self-awareness. Working with such attention and intention, we can notice how the sense of concrete and independent personhood becomes more and more transparent, like a thin cloud briefly floating through a sky of endless blue.

In such an approach to recognition, we observe how we are always trying to grant a reality to that which is not actually real, and furthermore, we recognize how we have unconsciously and habitually been clinging to that sense of independent and enduring self, taking it to be who and what we are. By staying with the practice, the feeling of solidity of the “person” becomes increasingly suspect, and conversely, as it does so, the knot at the heart is able to loosen and uncoil.

The great 8th century Chan Master Hui Hai gave this succinct summary (in his treatise on “The Essential Gateway to Truth by Means of Instantaneous Awakening”):

Q: Whereon should the mind settle and dwell?

A: It should settle upon non-dwelling and there dwell.

Q: What is this non-dwelling?

A: It means not allowing the mind to dwell upon anything whatsoever.

Q: And what is the meaning of that?

A: Dwelling upon nothing means that the mind is not fixed upon good or evil, being or nonbeing, inside or outside, or somewhere between the two, void or non-void, concentration or distraction.

This dwelling upon nothing is the state in which it should dwell; those who attain to it are said to have non-dwelling minds — in other words, they have Buddha-minds!

Going hand-in-hand with non-dwelling is inquiry into the whole edifice of self-interest. Just who and what is this “self” at the matrix of desire and fixation? Upon honest and sincere inspection, what is revealed is a collection of thoughts, memories, sensations, and impulses, all strung together on an imaginary clothesline of “I”, and yet empty of any actual concrete and continuous “person”.

As the sage Nisargadatta Maharaj notes: “When you happen to desire or fear, it is not the desire or fear that are wrong and must go, but the person who desires and fears. There is no point in fighting desires and fears which may be perfectly natural and justified; It is the person, who is swayed by them, that is the cause of mistakes, past and future. The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end.”

In fact, the whole conceptual designation of personhood can be recognized at last as a provisional mental superimposition, an interpretive fantasy with no inherent substance. Amazingly, there is nobody there. There never has been. All along, there has only been this activity of desire, of expansion and contraction of consciousness, of interweaving thought energies sprung from the interaction of various causes and conditions, all playing out as Love Itself against a background of timeless and motionless Awareness.

In such direct recognition, there is a deep letting go, a lasting relaxation and true peace at heart. We realize that desire has created the body, and all that appears simultaneous with it. Desire fuels the perfect functioning of the universal totality, producing the infinitely modifying expressions of the manifest and un-manifest cosmos. How could desire be other than love? Only love could emerge from the womb of the pure Source, of which all the flickering realms are but quicksilver reflections flashing in vast emptiness.

Like babies born with an innocent glow, it is only through conditioning programs of human greed, envy, hatred, and ignorance derived from fixation and attachment that our natural innocence is twisted and distorted into the myriad forms of suffering that infect this poignant prison world of mad children.

Originally, all desire is love’s radiance shining existence into the wispy forms of birthed light we are — traveling without moving through an enormous dark, a Saturday Night in timelessness, all bundled up in our longings, thoughts, and memories, which are themselves but twiggy kindling to warm us during the icicle winter of desire’s death.

It’s been said that a death in the snow is difficult at first, but not unpleasant towards the end. Just so, when the thoughts finally burn out, desire is happy. It is a happy death, to die back into the Source of mind, of love — the aware space, the Heart. We need not fear such a death, we can welcome it with open arms, for it is nothing more than dropping off a tattered old costume, and running naked and free like a child with the wind!

See also:

The Practice of Non-Dwelling

https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/emotions/

In reality we are all creators and creatures of each other,

causing and bearing each other’s burden.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the so-called “alternative” media, we are often warned not to “sell our soul” to “The Powers That Be” — a hidden, powerful cartel of the international elite believed to be controlling world events behind the scenes for nefarious purposes. However, a human being cannot “sell its soul” any more than a character/avatar in a video game can sell its human player. Nevertheless, all of the character’s virtual experiences will go into the player’s file, as recorded data, and that file will consequently help to determine the player’s next adventure in gaming.

This apparent “world” is, in reality, a subjective psycho-physical realm, and more like an interactively staged theatrical production with all sorts of custom-tailored props, than an actual concrete place. In a virtual reality game, where is a “place”, or when? The very concept of time that most take for granted as an objective characteristic of the human experience is itself a conditioned belief we are tricked into by the mirage of the 3-D game. This belief in turn yields a consensus perception of past, present, and future – and likewise the memory associations and anticipatory projections that seem to confirm the reality of a separate and continuously enduring person (“me”).

Indeed, the grand charade of creation itself, a multidimensional hologram complete with all the seemingly endless dramatic struggles and frequency fluctuations to which we grant an unquestioned reality, is first and foremost a temporary fabrication — a provisional modification of consciousness — with all the substantiality of a fleeting dream.

Haplessly, we keep falling for it all, as if for the first time, and so we remain confused in our amnesia, professing various beliefs one day, contradicting them the next, and rarely if ever noticing the cognitive dissonance inherent in the attitudes and self-images du jour we assume to be our own.

One thing that we can observe is, the more invested we get in that seductive spider’s web woven from strands of the world’s propaganda, our own wry sense of self-importance, and uninspected, fixed beliefs, the more seriously we tends to take ourselves, and in turn the more annoyed we will become at whatever is perceived (correctly or incorrectly) to challenge our staked-out positions.

The first casualty of that entrenched attitude, alas, is the sense of humor. Gradually, a contentious line is drawn between “us” and “them” – those creations of our own minds arbitrarily designated as “perpetrators”. In doing so, of course, one necessarily assumes the complementary role of “victim” in the circular game of blame.

The final step is typically war. In terms of gaming in virtual reality scenarios, Earth could be designated as a war planet. It’s been that way for all of recorded history, and there are abundant indications that it will remain so for some time to come. As a realm of conflict (both internal and external), the players are tested to see how they will react in fairly primitive developmental scenarios related to choices of love or fear, violence or peace, selfishness or selflessness. Those that find this game unacceptable would do well to inspect and address the nature of the attitudes and fixed beliefs that brought them here. When they can take responsibility in a mature fashion for their own reactivity, they will be ready and able to “clean up their acts” and move on to higher levels of adaptation.

This stage is designed the way it is for a very specific purpose, and although the props will vary depending on the current crop of actors, it serves most of us as a classroom for our soul evolution. As long as we choose violence, for example, we will likely continue to be drawn back to the denser realms of conflict until we finally are able to recognize the futility of that game strategy. Just as in a movie with which we might be fully identified, the characters’ deaths may seem very real, but nobody actually dies. Nevertheless, we walk away affected by the drama we participated in, even though it was in reality just a play of light on a screen.

Upon thorough investigation, what’s clear is that it is never life’s situations that make us happy or sad, it is always the attitude we assume in the midst of arising conditions. To fully take advantage of this rare opportunity — this gift of life — attitude is key. Some people take longer than others to change their attitude. We only see one infinitesimal dot, or pixel, of the greater picture. In other words, we basically see nothing at all as long as we are identified (fused) with the fictional character we take ourselves to be in the game.

Arriving at any kind of judgment with such extremely limited data can give us an attitude of righteousness that bears little if any resemblance to the actual reality of the matter, but we must nevertheless make choices. That is our function here. The game must go on, at least until we see through it and wake up to our true nature and condition — transparent awake awareness prior to and simultaneously beyond any human notions of fate, free will, judgment, or any kind of conditional mental fabrication.

Given that, it seems that we are not so much here to change this game, as we are to be changed by our experience of it. How? For starters, we can learn how to behave and live a kind, thoughtful, and loving life of impeccable integrity, renouncing greed, envy, hatred, ignorance, and pride. We can lend a hand whenever the opportunity presents itself to help our fellow being, both human and non-human. We can inspect ourselves to the point of awakening to some crucial insight about what we are really made of — our true nature. And yes, we can make it fun, just as children do, enjoying the play of physical embodiment with a sense of humble gratitude for the very appearance of anything at all. Indeed, one of the biggest lessons we can learn during our time here is that gratitude is a powerful antidote to the emotional contraction at the heart which so many of us carry around inside us.

Having come to such recognition, we may choose to leave this harsh realm behind and never look back, or we may even choose to return and help others navigate through the dust and fog. After all, unconditional love will sacrifice itself for the elevation of others, even if it means putting itself in less than agreeable circumstances. In Buddhism, that is called the path of the Bodhisattva — the one who hears the cries of the world and remains here to serve the awakening of all sentient beings.

Nevertheless, it is easy to be lured into a romantic idealism in regard to “saving the world” and mistakenly assume that we are at a level of spiritual maturity which in actuality might not be true of us. Remember who rules this realm. It is usually easier for us to get pulled down by “their mind” then for us to pull it up into the light. The “Matrix” energy of that mind feeds on our resistance. That’s the conundrum — as soon as we engage, it scores, because we are granting it reality, confirming its existence, and empowering it in that very way. Fortunately, there is another option — go beyond. However, that requires us to have at least recognized the utter futility of all the other gaming options.

Each of us has different stuff to get right, usually very personal stuff which has little to do with “saving Mother Earth” or any such idealistic slogans commonly propounded by the alternative media. First, we need to inspect our real motives and from there begin to clean up our own act. As it so happens, that is plenty of homework for any of us touring this earthly life. In doing so, we must be honest about the one who is appearing in our own mirror, the one who might imagine themselves as a noble crusader charging the windmills which we have projected from our own inner contraction.

Again, Nisargadatta nails it when he says: “Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich, or ennoble your own image of yourself. And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one’s own body. By body I mean all that is related to your name and shape — your family, tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one’s name and shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for. Or, you may say, he is equally ‘selfish’ on behalf of everybody he meets; everybody’s welfare is his own. The feeling ‘I am the world, the world is myself’ becomes quite natural; once it is established, there is just no way of being selfish.”

Once we have recognized that to some extent – that we are not the body/mind, nor the tribe that we fantasized about saving — our view on the whole matter of “fighting the evil elite”, for example, will change considerably, just as our life view and goals change considerably from childhood to adulthood. At a certain point of maturation in our view, we may come to realize that we are not here to “fix samsara”. That cannot be done, any more than one can fix last night’s dream. In fact, a few levels up in awareness, and we may come to recognize that the ones we were struggling against were none other than ourselves. We’ve been throwing stones at a mirror, pulling our own hair out, pinching our own flesh, without realizing that we ourselves are the Source of this and every world.

As we explore even deeper into the matter, we might even realize that there has never been an “other” — that there is only One, of which we all are unique expressions, and to which we all return when the game of manifestation has been played out. As the great Persian poet Hafiz once wrote: “I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.”

Eventually, we may come to recognize that even this “One” is a conceptual designation, empty of any inherent self-nature. Such a realization is not a matter of intellectual attainment or mere verbal conviction, but rather requires a direct insight into a vast Mystery beyond human comprehension. Moreover, the purpose for the majority in coming here is clearly not about scaling such spiritual heights, but more a matter of simply enjoying the unique experience of being human, with all the vivid thrills and spills, all the joys and sorrows, all the complications and “Aha moments” which that adventure might entail. However, as long as we are determined to grant reality to the fantasy of defeating the powers of this childhood realm in some kind of heroic battle, then we will persist in being a convenient part of their game, a game in which they hold all the virtual marbles.

Does this mean that we are powerless to affect any positive change? Not at all. There is plenty we can do, especially if we begin by discarding all reliance on fixed identities and limiting conditioning programs. Let go of all beliefs and second-hand knowledge until we come at last to the essence of mind itself. Understand that whatever appears is a projection of mind. From there, we can consciously tune our intent towards genuine loving kindness. We can awaken and recognize all of the areas in our life that manifest as less than love, and so heal them with love without condition. Our brightening light will then heal the collective consciousness. That is the only way it will heal — if we each become what we came here to be, that luminous expression of divinity.

See also:

Saving the World

The Game

Shaking Others Awake

To Do Something

“I tell you, there’s no Buddha, no Dharma, no practice, no enlightenment. Yet you go off like this on side roads, trying to find something. Blind fools! Will you put another head on top of the one you have? What is it you lack?”

 ~Rinzai (Linji Yixuan)

I had always heard that, if one were to embark upon a spiritual path, it would be most advantageous to seek out and find an enlightened master — one who would know what being enlightened is all about, and in turn would be willing to guide me to the attainment of such a desirable state. Consequently, for varying lengths of time I found myself involved with a number of such purported characters, usually based on their reputation, books they had written, or other secondary sources.

For many years I never stopped to thoroughly examine, much less deeply question, my primary motivation for the search. All the spiritual literature claimed that enlightenment was the way to go, so I was willing to put on the blinders and jump right in. As a result, there was always an idealistic element to my efforts, and in turn a lack of any real inquiry. I could have stepped back at any moment along the way and turned the spotlight around to inspect what it was I was really looking for, but there was a tacit, fearful suspicion that if I were to do so, it might be like pulling a thread on a sweater that would lead inexorably to the unraveling of the garment itself. This in turn would throw my whole life strategy into doubt, and that was too frightening a prospect to contemplate, at least until it became obvious that all my seeking was actually comparable to a dog chasing its tail.

Various melodramas and lessons ensued, as they do regardless, and in the midst of it all, “Help” was always available. It is not the immediate consolation one might expect, however. Indeed, sometimes it might seem like just the opposite. Truly, we need look no further than our own mirror, but if we are not scrupulously honest with ourselves, and instead rely on external authority figures to determine our path, then we will never awaken to who and what we really are. On the contrary, we will be condemning ourselves to wallow in an indefinite state of dependence, like children who are never able to grow up and stand on their own two feet.

I had to discover, sometimes the hard way, that the role of the teacher is to point back to the student’s true nature, which is exactly the same as the teacher’s true nature. If the teacher is pointing in any other direction, especially to themselves in a self-aggrandizing fashion, than that is an immediate reason for suspicion.

Life in all its variety is perpetually offering us a cornucopia of gifts and teachings, but they may not necessarily be what we would have asked for, given our conditioned preferences. In fact, they might often appear to be some sort of painful tribulation. Only the discerning heart can recognize them for what they are — opportunities to grow and deepen in awareness. The fabulous conductivity of this human appearance is the mysterious benevolence of the One who is living us now. We assume such benevolence would be an agreeable thing, but that conditional presumption might be reconsidered when “push comes to shove”. Even calling it “benevolent” or “grace” is adding something extra. It just is what it is — Life as it is. Nor does it need to be other than it is, except in the imagination fueled by desire, hope, and fear.

Comparative mind always wants something it doesn’t seem to have. Whatever the current situation, it wants things to be other than they are — brighter, shinier, fuller, more agreeable — and so suffering, dissatisfaction, and stress are born, granted a reality, and then perpetuated. In reality, there has never been anything truly lacking, but mind likes to imagine, until imagination becomes the habitual response to experience, superimposing layers of interpretive fantasy onto the innocent simplicity of raw life itself.

So, what is it that persists in dilemma, compelled by a sense of lack? What is the accumulating momentum of compulsion that drags one relentlessly from blossom to blossom, thought to thought, life to life, even as each fragrant flower eventually shrivels and withers in the hand that would try and grasp its petals? What drives us out of Eden, what motivates the search, but the compelling sense of lack, of insufficiency?

From birth, it appears that we are dependent on some external food source, without which we cannot survive. As we grow, we find ourselves dependent on people, objects, and events in order to get by and thrive, and so it is natural that we would come to regard ourselves as needy, and by our very nature lacking the necessary self-sufficiency required to prosper in the spiritual arena. After all, there is a deeply hardwired aspect of our genetic make-up, in which reliance on some Alpha-type leader is a necessary component for tribal success. It is part of being a human animal.

Consequently, it is totally understandable how we would then transfer that sense of physical dependence and neediness to the assessment of our spiritual condition, conflating the two, and granting reality to the assumption that we require a good measure of external support in order to realize our destiny in that respect. For example, consider the common meme of the Priest who is elevated to the role of mediator between the human and the Divine. At the extreme end of the spectrum, there is the “perfected” or “enlightened” Master who arrives on earth to guide aspirants to a level of salvation that would be otherwise inaccessible to them if left to their own devices. In some religions, a god-like status is granted to such exceptional individuals, requiring various rituals of reverence and worship.

Of course, it is true that we live in an inter-dependent universe in which everything relies upon everything else for its origination, and indeed very existence. However, the danger arises in subsequently concluding that we ourselves are lacking in some essential quality necessary to realize our true nature, and so must rely on others of a supposedly superior spiritual status to enlighten us. This is how so many sincere but naive aspirants get lured into and then trapped in the “Master Game”.

There is no question that a qualified guide can be extremely helpful along the way. For example, they can save us from wasting time and effort on dead ends that have already been tested and recognized to be merely distracting detours. Nevertheless, if they do not direct us back to ourselves, they are ultimately doing us a disservice. They are binding us to reliance on them, rather than pointing us back to our own prior and true freedom, of which we have never actually been lacking. As the Sage Nisargadatta remarked:

“In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depths there is perfect peace. All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself.”

No second-hand method, practice scheme, or remedial strategy can result in liberation, since liberation is not an acquisition, but a recognition of that which has always been the case, even as we chase our tails running after teachers and masters. In that regard, the great Adept Dilgo Khyentse summed it up well when he said:

“The everyday practice . . . is just everyday life itself. Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some “amazing goal” or “advanced state”. To strive for such a state is a neurosis which only conditions us and serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons – we are naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing.”

A true “Spiritual Friend” will always turn us in that direction — to the recognition of our own true nature, condition, identity. Indeed, to find such a one who wants nothing other than to support us in our own awakening to the truth of our being, and who also has the depth of wisdom to quicken that process, is a rare blessing!

And what is that truth which has always been the “case”? We are free, powerful, immortal spiritual beings who enter into the playgrounds of human incarnation as a way to become increasingly self-aware of who and what we truly are, throughout all the dimensions of this magnificent dream of the Great One. We are in fact That One, expressing Itself through the infinite forms of each unique creation that we momentarily represent as apparently individualized beings. The role of the Master is to serve us in coming to the recognition that the real Master is none other than ourselves, and that we have never for one instant been lacking anything. Then their work is done.

“The real work is in the Heart:

Wake up your Heart!

When the heart is completely awake,

it needs no Friend.”

~Rabia

see also: https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/the-myth-of-enlightenment/

https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/mind-character-will/

“When you are infected with the ‘I-am-the-body’ virus, a whole universe springs into being. But when you have had enough of it, you cherish some fanciful ideas about liberation and pursue lines of action totally futile. You concentrate, you meditate, you torture your mind and body, you do all sorts of unnecessary things, but you miss the essential, which is the elimination of the person.”

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

In these essays, I utilize terms like “true inquiry” and “the conscious process of recognition and liberation”, so as to differentiate what is being referred to from mere introspection, psychological analysis, or self-absorbed meditation. Classically, true inquiry arises in the compelling form of “Who and what am I — prior to, behind, and beyond all names and temporary identities?” However, if it is approached intellectually, as if it were a mental riddle, it will not bear fruit, but only stir up clouds of conceptual sediment.

Small mind cannot be used to grasp “Big Mind”, any more than consciousness can account for that which is prior it — that in which it arises and dissolves. Nevertheless, if the yearning for genuine awakening is not passionate, but more like an intermittent or artificial affectation, or if the effort itself is inconsistent, little will be revealed of one’s real nature and prior identity.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj notes: “The urge to find oneself is a sign that you are getting ready. The impulse always comes from within. Unless your time has come, you will have neither the desire nor the strength to go for self-enquiry whole-heartedly.”

True Inquiry is not a strategy or scheme employed to change one’s state to a more idealistic condition, or to fabricate an enhanced sense of self. It is not a yoga of self-improvement, or a technique to calm oneself by manipulating thought forms. Along the way, certain methods may be employed as expedient means, such as the practice of non-dwelling and the discipline of silence, in order to break the bonds of memory and self-identification. However, allowing attention to turn back to that which is always already aware — the knowing of the knowing, regardless of the transient contents of what may be known — is the essence of this process.

Being aware of being aware is not an addition to or modification of consciousness, but on the contrary, involves both a clear recognition, and spontaneous letting go, of self-created obstructions and deeply-seated impediments in the form of conditioned programs that have been obscuring the fundamental presence of one’s own original awake awareness. The process of such true meditation (including the practice of non-dwelling and discipline of silence), amounts to a refusal to grant reality to the passing parade, or cling to any of the parade characters as if they represented one’s actual identity.

The late adept Urgyen Rinpoche made an eminently practical and succinct recommendation in this regard: “When a thought moves, simply recognize the thinker. The thinking then dissolves. No matter what the thought is about, the thinking and the thinker are empty. A thought in itself is not made of any concrete substance; it is simply an empty thought movement. By recognizing the empty essence in a thought, it vanishes like a bubble in water. That is how to deal with any particular present thought at hand. Once you know how to let the present thought dissolve, any subsequent thought can be dealt with in exactly the same way, as simply another present thought. But if we get involved in the thought, thinking of what is being thought of, and continue it, then there is no end.”

Once set in motion by the heart’s deepest yearning for self-awareness, coupled with the willingness to question one’s fondest beliefs and self-images, the “process” will actually take over and run itself. All the aspirant need do is to resist the temptation to interfere by claiming personal doership. In that sense, it truly is effortless. Indeed, effort itself may only serve to complicate, by reifying the illusion of being a particular someone – a “me-self” – that is climbing a stairway to heaven.

Rather, this inquiry essentially involves paying attention and observing how the mind creates the illusion of a separate and enduring self-sense out of the body/mind organism’s energies. Instead of identifying with that projection, however, these transient and non-binding perceptions are just recognized for what they are (and aren’t), and attention remains stabilized in the space between the arising and dissolving thought-forms.

The same process can also be applied to the world of phenomena that appear to be external (including the sense we have of so-called “others”). In other words, just as with the sense of self, the apparently objective “world” of time, space, and objects only has the reality which we arbitrarily grant it, based on our conditioned filters and interpretive mechanisms. Even the quantum sciences are beginning to acknowledging the role of consciousness at the root of the holographic projection that constitutes the world of appearances.

In the course of true inquiry, perseverance may ripen into an explosive revolution in consciousness after attention is turned back on itself at its root. Here, the recognition of the empty and transparent nature of all appearances, thoughts, emotions, and sense of self will spontaneously begin to arise. At such point, the “narrator” of one’s personal story is clearly exposed as a conditional mental construct, a superimposition on the boundless purity of vast and infinite being-ness. The fictional character one has heretofore taken oneself to be is directly revealed as a complex fantasy of interpretation on perception, a movement in consciousness that never could amount to a concrete and substantial person.

Even though that fanciful charade may be laid bare, however, the habit energy of ego-mind will attempt to rebound in a panic to re-assert its dominant position. Nevertheless, one cannot “un-see” what has been directly seen, nor pretend any longer that the imaginative screenplay we’ve been buying into represents a separate and enduring “me”. Moreover, the process does not stop at the revelation of the essential emptiness of the personal story, but if allowed to fully unfold, the emptiness of all we have taken to be “the world” is also directly recognized from the impersonal position of the silent and detached witness.

In the process of true inquiry into the source and motive of our own subjective storyline, previously uninspected subterranean streams of stressful programming are uncovered and brought into the light of awareness, like sunlight over the well. The insinuations accompanying every level of consciousness, including those prowling in the darker areas currently known as “the subconscious”, will continue to arise, since they have already been set in motion, but the thrill is gone. Nobody is actually implicated, nothing jumps out to claim the flotsam and jetsam that once seemed like fearful, or precious, or non-expendable elements of the persona we’ve been masquerading as. Even as the subconscious may persist in projecting some semblance of a character in search of liberation, the writing is on the wall, so to speak, and the energy required to buy into that story is no longer readily granted.

True inquiry is not a psychotherapeutic technique to resolve old ghosts. Ghosts will be ghosts — let them howl, let them wail, let them come home and rest at last, it doesn’t matter. Inquiry will not make “me” well, or better, or happier, or holier, since the very concept of a “me” is undermined in direct recognition – understood, seen through, and released.

It’s a serious blow to the ambition of the one who believed themselves in need of being saved, defended, redeemed, or elevated into some dreamy facsimile of “Illumination”. That’s the catch of liberation – the seeker who wanted to be liberated was always the very impediment to real liberation.

If we remain faithful to the inquiry, the whole romantic facade of “the seeker” is stripped away. That house of cards, built on a foundation of some independent and enduring self, is taken apart brick by brick, or sometimes there is even a rapid series of implosions when our vanities are revealed as the empty figments of imagination that they are.

Indeed, we may come to suspect that even our play at love is nothing but a strategy to support a sense of independent self in dilemma, to manipulate dream characters in order to appease the stress of embodiment itself. Again, this can be very disappointing to the one who believes they are progressing higher and higher towards some idealistic state of “Enlightenment”.

By moving contrary to the ego-mind’s desire to be confirmed and triumph, true inquiry creates a friction that rubs against the grain of the self’s momentum and presumptions, and eventually even rubs it out. If one persists with honesty and sincerity, humility and humor, “Me and Mine — the Movie”, eventually will come to a whimpering end. Surprisingly, what remains is what has been here all along, though we’ve been too blind to see, too encumbered with the eye baggage of our own projections, our own disguises dreamt up to shelter “me” from the unknown of our actual condition.

Nevertheless, as noted above, this inquiry will continue to be humbling in light of the fact that, even as our charade is plainly exposed, the efforts to recoup some semblance of a new and improved self-image are already underway. This is because the root of suffering has not been thoroughly severed. The mind will typically revert to its habitual dualistic perception in which appearances are divided up into subjects and objects that don’t actually exist separately, but only seem to, in a fantasy of interpretation on perception.

Consequently, the conscious process inevitably must include seeing through and going beyond the expedient silent witness position and into the recognition of the non-dual nature of reality. Instead of thoughts, emotions, appearances, or perceptions occurring in consciousness; consciousness is recognized to be those very thoughts, emotions, appearances, and perceptions. The knower and the known are not two. There is only awareness, rather than a separate awareness experiencing separate phenomena.

As the Sage Ramana Maharshi noted: “Talking of the `witness’ should not lead to the idea that there is a witness and something else apart from him that he is witnessing. The `witness’ really means the light that illumines the seer, the seen and the process of seeing. Before, during and after the triads of seer, seen and seeing, the illumination exists. It alone exists always.”

In other words, the ocean can’t witness its waves because the ocean is the waves, the waves are the ocean. There is no distance between them, in the same way that there is no distance between the seer and the seen. As the late Jean Klein noted: “If we consider the knower independently of the known, it reveals itself as pure witness. When knower and known are not-two, there is no place even for a witness.”

Moreover, it can also be recognized that subjects and objects exist only as conceptual fabrications, or conceptual designations, and therefore all experience of self and phenomena is actually empty of any independent or objective existence. All thoughts, images, memories, beliefs, sensations, emotions and perceptions are absent of any concrete substance or solidity, like clouds in the sky, or holograms with no inherent reality, except what the mind might grant them. Seer, seeing, and seen are mental constructs, and their very transiency is the proof of their unreality.

At a certain point, if one stays vigilant, probing deeply into the inquiry “Who is aware, what is aware?”, the aspirant may notice that something just lets go — an ancient contraction at the root of our being melts away. In the ensuing joyous recognition that there is no longer anyone or anything to defend, nor even any separate witness to stand aloof from experience, we can finally own up to the failure of our previous plans, the failure of our loving, the failure of our personal and cherished self-images, the failure of our efforts to be transformed, ascended, perfected, and immortalized. Interestingly, that very failure can be both spiritually relaxing as well as illuminating, if allowed to soak in and pervade the once-anxious heart.

Like a tightly-clenched oyster, the root contraction, by Grace, opens up and reveals the pearl of our original happiness, our primordial nature, prior to the superimposition of the search to find what we have always already been. In Zen, it is called “the original face before our parents were born”. We surrender (or rather, surrender surrenders), and in that gesture, our true freedom emerges from the shadows where it has been patiently waiting for us to awaken. The subconscious ceases projecting a “me-story”, and in that flash the self-narrative which separates knower and known collapses.

Releasing the cumulative burden of that effort is experienced invariably as a great relief, a profound exhalation. Rather than fixating identity in the little separate character we once believed ourselves to be, we begin to recognize ourselves as the limitless aware spaciousness in which all the universes appear and disappear.

It is a revolution at the core of attention itself, in which the sense of identity itself is reversed. We no longer are prone to conceive of ourselves as some entity appearing within the body-mind, but rather, we now begin to realize that the body-mind appears in us – the pure and timeless awareness in which that wobbling thought-form momentarily arose and then melted away.

As the process unfolds, all conceptual fantasies are undermined by non-conceptual wisdom, and any seeming solidity of self or world is supplanted by the transparency of awake awareness, our primordial “state”. In such recognition, anything that arises in consciousness, whether it be thought, emotion, memory, sensation, or perception, is naturally seen as it is without effort or motive to manipulate, and thus “self-liberated”.

Simultaneously, the miracle of truly unconditional loving kindness and heartfelt compassion awakens as a natural and spontaneous functioning in the midst of relations, but without the previous sense of a subject being the doer, or of an “other” being the recipient. It is Love alone which recognizes itself in all. Being nothing, having nothing to claim or cling to, no position to assert and nothing to turn away, one’s life blooms as a generous offering, a selfless radiant expression of clear light, expanding to infinity.

“To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious . . . Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy.”

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

See also:

https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/true-inquiry-part-2/

True Meditation: Recognizing Basic Sanity

The Practice of Non-Dwelling

Discipline of Silence

“You already have all the experience you need . . .you need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method (sadhana) you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will not take you beyond.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

We often hear the familiar dictum from teachers and guides that one must have direct experience of a subject in order for it to amount to “authentic knowledge”, otherwise it just remains on the level of concept and speculation. That is certainly true, at least as far as it goes, and yet there is more to be considered in regard to the matter of direct experience.

Firstly, let’s consider how any experience is processed by the neural net. Every perception must be filtered through a sensory apparatus, then through a conditioned memory-association station, where portions of the experience will be deleted, and perhaps elements that were not even true of the initial experience added, after which a fantasy of interpretation is assembled to provide some sense of provisional meaning, which will be unique to the perceiver having the experience. Based on all the intervening filters, any particular experience will be assigned some level of import, from mundane to life-changing.

Of course, big life-changing insights about the nature of things qualify as direct experience, but forgetting all insight can too. Forgetting is no less direct than acquiring. Furthermore, if one is not having some big insight or revelatory experience at the moment, whatever experience they are having is nevertheless just as direct. They are simply having the direct experience of nothing special, which happens to be, interestingly enough, what truly insightful experiences turn out to be anyway, so we can enjoy ordinary mind without feeling as if we are missing out on something more direct and genuine.

Even “awakening” experiences such as Zen “kensho” are not necessarily going to be truly transformative if they are not subsequently integrated fully into how we live and relate. From what I have observed over the years (both in myself, in fellow practitioners, and even in teachers), the real challenge is not so much the experiencing of so-called spiritual breakthroughs, or attaining glimpses of the Absolute, or having some penetrating insight into emptiness, dependent origination, and anatta (non-self), or having the kundalini energy running up and down one’s spine.

That is not to say that such direct insights and divine gifts are not expedient. Indeed, they can be welcomed, but not any more than the ordinary miracle of just appearing here in the first place. Nevertheless, until we are able to substantially embody such insights and revelations into our life and relations, they end up being mere experiences. That is the real challenge of spiritual life – making it all “real”, in the midst of the “dusts” of this world.

All experiences are essentially transient modifications of consciousness, and are never liberating in and of themselves. Those chasing after such experiences are themselves actually obstructing true liberation by doing so. Most spiritual practitioners are always attempting to alter their current states of mind for a more peaceful state, or a more powerful state, or a more agreeable state. It’s rarely noticed that the one attempting to pacify the mind is itself the mind’s turbulence in action.

Consequently, the old masters recommended vigilant cultivation, in order to align any insight with the way one acts and behaves. This is also why we find the alarming cavalcade of roshis, rinpoches, swamis, and gurus who may have had sublime awakening experiences, and yet often display behaviors that contradict their realizations. It is because they have yet failed to fully embody that which they were shown in moments of revelation.

On the other hand, unless there is an initial clear and direct seeing/recognition of one’s true nature, there is no ground for any substantial transformation from the start. Delusion will merely compound delusion. To insure that such experiences do not just become more of ego-mind’s story, however, they must be fully integrated into one’s life and relations.

A good portion of genuine realization entails the discovery of what we are not – the self-image, and the ensuing fixation of identity that leads us to the mistaken assumption of independent and enduring personhood. How one goes about their life from that sort of insight will require impeccable character and will, not more experience, regardless of how profound or direct it might seem to be, based on our conditioned interpretive filters.

It is not a matter of viewing life through a religious lens or not, or even adherence to any kind of belief. When you see how things really are, you either align with them, or resist and suffer. Religion, belief, and philosophy are for those who are still guessing.

In any case, we can’t step out of direct experience, since wherever one could step would merely constitute another form of direct experience. Likewise, even the most altruistic sense of selfless service is actually rooted in selfishness, otherwise there would be no functioning at all. Without the prior self-sense, where would the motive to act selflessly arise?

Of course, one might note that there’s a big difference between hearing and thinking about water, and actually jumping into water and splashing about in it. Yes, this is so, but to hear and think is to be having the direct experience of hearing and thinking. Jumping into water is having the direct experience of jumping into water. “Water” is just some name we apply to something, but we never really know what it is – what it truly IS. When we are directly experiencing, we don’t have time to know — we are it. We are this functioning, directly experiencing itself as us, right now, in whatever way it may, in whatever way we are, and nothing could be more direct.

Certainly, in a manner of conventional speaking, we can say that Bill went to Japan and had a direct experience of Japanese culture, while Charlie stayed home and watched a Toshiro Mifune/Akira Kurosawa movie on the television. Big difference? Yes and no. Japanese are having the direct experience of being Japanese, but they do not think: “I am having direct experience of Japanese-ness.”  They are just what they are, which is a mystery to them, even as they stand in the middle of downtown Tokyo. What is their actual experience? Is it more direct than Charlie’s, sitting at home in front of the tube, chewing on some Safeway sushi while reading sub-titles?

How many different thoughts rise and fall in the time it takes to have a direct experiential perception? Are any of them direct? Does one perception among the countless billion stand up and say, “Hey now, I’m the direct one, and all the others are blurred around the edges?” Mind is funny that way, since even the most direct human experience merely represents a fraction of what the universal totality can reveal beyond our own perceptual limitations. This is not to mention the direct experience of the space between perceptions. What are we going to call that?

Today I have been applying a rich stain to a table that I refinished. In between coats of varnish, I pause to let it dry. When I rub on the stain, I am having the direct stain-rubbing experience, and when I am waiting for it to dry, I am having the direct waiting experience. These two activities appear to be separate, but they are not really, nor is experience really divided up that way, except in the imagination. There is actually only one experience, expressing itself in unqualifiable ways, but when I try and take any ownership of it, things begin to get confused, because by doing so I separate out from the experience – stand apart from it in order to try and grasp it. What a funny mind! How can it hold onto a dream?

Just so, we often hear spiritual authorities recommending that we “go within”, assuring us that the best way to directly locate the Real is by discovering it within ourselves. However, whatever objects, perceptions, experiences, or identities we may find in such a search invariably turn out to be nothing but conditional projections of mind, non-binding and transitory modifications of consciousness.

Moreover, contrary to the consensus presumption and belief, this mind is not within us. If anything, we are appearing within mind, along with the whole cosmos. There is nothing outside of mind. Actually, there is no within/without, inside/outside, no high/low, near/far, no sacred/profane, no wise/foolish, not even any enduring me/you dichotomy. As the great 20^th century Chinese Zen Master Hsu Yun poetically stated: “Only the person who gets rid of within and without escapes from birth and death and ascends to eternity.”

Nevertheless, when we conceive of ourselves as independent entities, there does indeed appear to be an inside and an outside, a light and dark, a me and you. However, if we really investigate the situation, we can recognize that we are arising and appearing, thriving and vanishing, along with the whole universe, and there is not an independent molecule in it. It is all dependently originating as thought energy birthing thought energy, ad infinitum.

Yin and Yang, direct and indirect, external and internal, right and wrong, are expedient games we play as humans in duality, but that duality has no enduring reality except what we grant it in our programmed amnesia. This human experience itself is actually more of the nature of a video game — one in which we may get so engrossed that we forget that it is, after all, a virtual reality. Such concepts as “within and without”, or “direct and indirect”, are simply useful mental fabrications we employ to account for and navigate through the unfathomable realm in which we seem to appear. Truly, not knowing is our actual condition. We don’t know where or even what we are, but only that we are.

Keeping the focus of attention on the awareness of being itself (rather than on its modifications on the screen of consciousness), can yield a realization of our essential nature, including the emptiness of both self and phenomena. From that recognition, it is clear that nobody goes anywhere. When “inside” and “outside” are seen to be merely provisional propositions, then the whole dualistic construct collapses. The notion of an independent “I” loses its validity unless there is an “other” or world to stand in opposition to it. Now we can recognize that we are the whole thing — we do not have awareness within us, we are awareness itself, and that’s about as direct as it gets!

You are the sky.

Everything else —

it’s just the weather.“

~Pema Chodron

Related reading:

The Quest for Experience

View and Conduct

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”
~Hazrat Inayat Khan

One habitual pattern of reactivity that hobbles most humans in their relationships with each other, and even with the Divine, is the Game of Rejection. It’s a developmentally immature tit-for-tat syndrome, based on a contraction at the heart. It could also be characterized as a wound of love upon which we have emotionally fixated, even at the subconscious level. This contraction tends to manifest in our social interactions as the chronic complaint and retaliatory mood: “You don’t love me, so I will withhold my love from you!”

As self-contracted individuals, beset by a classic struggle waged internally amid conflicts born of grasping and avoiding, we compose this running complaint into a fixed self-image (the rejected one, the unloved one, the offended one), and so strike out in hurt and anger to punish the perceived cause of our wound – our relations, the ones who fail to adore and please us, who fail to confirm our existence in the manner we would prefer.

If we honestly inspect our own core identity program, we can notice that fear is at the root of this self-contraction, and that the function of it is self-preservation – the survival and even elevation of the ego-mind-self we have imagined ourselves to be. Conditioned by the divisive propaganda of the world, this mental construct is based on a fantasy story in which we have been investing an assumed reality since first becoming self-conscious – the absorbing narrative of “me and mine”.

After all, what are we perpetually striving to assert, protect, and defend, if not some fundamental image we cherish of ourselves? The self-contraction’s primal orientation is fear, and so all efforts at preserving the self-image only tend to reinforce this malignant attitude of fear itself, even to the extent of rejecting all relations which would appear to challenge our identified positions.

Everyone knows exactly what unconditional love feels like, just as everyone knows what it is like to be perfectly happy, perfectly at peace, and free of wanting. However, that knowledge has become obscured to a greater or lesser degree by forms of ignorance which we have cumulatively superimposed on our innocent and pure knowing. That obscuring contraction at the heart manifests in life and relations in the form of greed, envy, hatred, arrogance, anger, and all self-serving strategies of fear, separation, and prejudice.

We are here to learn again — to re-cognize — through the experience of being human, just what our original face looks like, the divine face of Love. Due to the density of our amnesia, most of us seem to require a demonstration of what we already know in our hearts, to remind us of our original nature. When we witness acts of true love, for example, something resonates behind the armor we have constructed over time (based on perceived hurts) to protect and defend our transient self-images.

In order for us to resume our natural state, the spontaneous innocence of original nature, the Game of Rejection based on this heart-binding self-contraction must be investigated, seen for what it is, and whole-heartedly discarded. It must become thoroughly obsolete in the revelatory light of awakening to who and what we really are (and aren’t). What we have been expressing through the Game of Rejection is our failure to adapt to and mature beyond the adolescent and destructive moods of un-love with which we habitually infect our relationships.

We need to directly recognize how this fear-based self-contraction is being constantly played out in conditioned and repetitive patterns, constantly being re-confirmed in the form of the neurotic message “You don’t love me, so I won’t love you”. Through all the personal and social media, politics, religion, and family life, we are chronically inserting that childish message of conflict and ambivalence. It is all-pervasive, and the cause of most of the turbulence we experience in this human realm, particularly when coupled with the uninspected sexual motive and impulse. Once this is fully understood, then we can begin to release its fixated grip on our emotional life, little by little, or in great leaps.

The only solvent to this complex Game of Rejection is love, but prior to recognizing who and what we are, prior to awakening to our own Divinity, love is simply another “four letter word”. Thus, life itself requires that we be humbled enough to recognize our error of judgment and appreciation, and in such recognition, in such genuine humility, allow what is prior to emerge from slumber. That which is prior is Awareness itself, and the function of Awareness is selfless compassion, the natural projection of unconditional real Love, limitless and free.

Moreover, if we will be Love, we must constantly encounter, understand, and see through the game being played out by others who may still be trapped in the vicious cycle of complaint and retaliation, and be willing to lovingly bear the wound, in order to skillfully transcend it through uncontrived forgiveness, rather than habitually falling back into the mood of un-love ourselves.

The Game of Rejection requires its players to defend themselves against the wounds of Love, and to react as if every wound is a personal attack. However, if we attempt to become immune to the feelings aroused by apparent rejection, we would also need to become immune to Love Itself. That is the essence of the self-contraction.

What is possible is to surrender our grievances, to relax and let go of all grudges and stories of betrayal and rejection that have characterized our relationships. Only by doing so can we begin to awaken to our fundamental identity as a unique manifestation of Source’s own unconditional Love. When we are able to recognize the apparent “other” as our self, then compassion has at last become real in our case — Love re-cognizes Itself.

To do this, we need to stop acting betrayed and offended in reaction to the feeling of being apparently rejected. We need to persistently understand, see through, and go beyond that tendency conditioned into our emotional being by the hateful propaganda of this realm. That is, we must stop punishing and rejecting others as a matter of habitual reactivity, stop withholding love, even if it seems as if the natural reaction would have us to strike back in self-defense. This is difficult, and takes sincere and dedicated practice, but what is the alternative?

Love does not fail us when we are apparently rejected, betrayed, and not loved. Love only fails when we ourselves reject, betray, and withhold love. Our habit of reacting to the apparent rejection by others as if it were a personal insult always coincides with our reactive habit of rejecting others. Unless this dark equation is interrupted by heartfelt insight, this game inevitably escalates, imprinting notches in the grooves of the relationship program which are increasingly difficult to erase.

Since all relations are energy interactions, the only way to resolve the ensuing contraction of that angry game of rejection is to re-adapt our own energy vibration and feeling-being to the heart-sense of the innocent, the child-like, and become once again utterly vulnerable in love. This is also why the Christ archetype suggests we become again like little children, if we would awaken to our true radiance. By remaining vulnerable in love, we will still feel Love’s wound, but we will manage to persist in Love. Therefore, the most direct way to know Love in every moment is to be Love in every moment. Nothing else will pacify our heart.

“Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are sufficient. And if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. Don’t be greedy for experience; you need none.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

Many spiritual paths emphasize “direct experience” over a mere conceptual understanding of the nature of the universe. However, the possibilities and permutations of experience are endless, though rarely does any experience itself yield a truly transformative consequence. Rather, experiences alone (even sublime ones) invariably serve to merely fatten the file of memories which ego-mind habitually employs to confirm its existence.

Any experience in and of itself, however transcendental or even terrible, is nothing but a transitory modification of consciousness, with no inherent or enduring significance, except for that which the interpretive mind might grant it. As such, experience can never amount to any enduring truth, although if we pay attention, we can all learn from our experiences, particularly in the conventional sphere. However, even realizations resulting from profound awakening experiences, if not consciously embodied in the way we live and relate, inevitably become mere figments of memory.

Real wisdom begins to awaken with the realization that memory itself is ephemeral and even arbitrary, and therefore reliance on any experience or collection of experiences to construct and support an independent identity (even an “enlightened” one) is ultimately an adventure in futility. What becomes obvious is that all the ego-mind is really doing is employing memory and experience to endlessly renovate the same self-concept, as if a different costume might somehow grant the illusion some believable solidity.

With the benefit of True Inquiry, it becomes apparent that attachment to any self-image whatsoever, based as it is on conditioned interpretations of experience, is like settling down in a house of cards, and believing one has arrived home. When all such dreamy constructs crumble (as they must), what is left is not an experience, is not time-durational, and cannot be grasped nor clung to nor fashioned into a more subtle and impervious identity.

Such a realization deeply frightens and offends the sense of independent and enduring self that seeks the secure haven of any identity, even a “divine” one, within the infinite theater of experience. In its ensuing desperation, ego-mind will go to increasingly frantic lengths to assert its cherished existence until the very lynchpin of belief — the assumption of a separate self — is ultimately revealed to be nothing but a fantasy, a child’s sand castle assembled from filtered bits of experience and memory, and propelled by the relentless engines of hope and fear.

Behind that everyday desperation, most of us humans seem to be searching for some sort of experience that we hope would resolve our deepest yearning, whether through material acquisition or the exploitation of relational possibilities. Nevertheless, we will invariably discover (if we persist in the investigation), is that mere experience, regardless of how glorious and profound, will never truly satisfy our longing at the heart.

No matter how seemingly sublime or remarkable, all experiences are still essentially temporary modifications of consciousness, filtered through the conditioned perceiving apparatus of the senses, whereas genuine awakening reveals the emptiness of consciousness itself, as well as of the senses.

As the Buddha noted in the Bahiya Sutta: “In the seen, there is only the seen, in the heard, there is only the heard, in the sensed, there is only the sensed, in the cognized, there is only the cognized. Thus you should see that indeed there is no thing here; this is how you should train yourself. Since there is for you in the seen, only the seen, in the heard, only the heard, in the sensed, only the sensed, in the cognized, only the cognized, and you see that there is no thing here, you will therefore see that indeed there is no thing there. As you see that there is no thing there, you will see that you are therefore located neither in the world of this, nor in the world of that, nor in any place betwixt the two. This alone is the end of suffering.”

In reality, there is nobody there. In reality, nothing happens. However, such a tacit recognition is not satisfying at all to the ego-mind, which wants to be elevated and confirmed by special and unusual experiences. In fact, it is quite a disappointment — a crushing blow to the ambitions of the seeker — which paradoxically attests to its authenticity.

The seeker hopes that there will be some experience that will settle their boredom and doubt, and relieve them of all discomfort. However, persistent and honest investigation will inevitably reveal that there is no experience we can have that will equal truth, since truth is not an experience. It is not something that happens to a character in a dream, though that very same character turns out to be the “me” we take ourselves to be in our amnesia.

Moreover, dreaming does not end with the release of the physical body to the elements, since we are not now nor have we ever been the physical body exclusively, except in a dream state that most call “my life” – an adventure on the material plane for which the body-mind serves as a kind of bio-vehicle. This became vividly apparent in the course of what some call a “near-death experience”: all that seemed to constitute an “I” was revealed to be essentially without substance or reality – or as the illumined Kashmiri poetess Lalla once noted, “only a somewhat something moving dreamlike on a fading road.”

Of course, it might be interesting to hear stories of other people’s anecdotal experiences, but such tales often merely add to the conditioned expectations mind has been long accumulating, which in turn keep the dream-weaver weaving and the sense of a permanently separate “I” alive and thriving.

That sense of separation includes the programmed belief that we are incomplete, and that the full truth of our being can only to be discovered elsewhere, outside of us — perhaps in some experience that is still waiting to materialize, if only we press the right spiritual buttons, pull the right practice levers in the right order, or maybe gain some special favor with the “higher-ups” and so be granted our hoped-for boon.

What we invariably fail to do, however, is to take the time to inquire into the root of experience itself. After all, who or what is having these experiences, regardless of whether they are perceived as good or bad, desirable or not? That’s the one question ego-mind fears the most. And why? Because such an inquiry plunges us into the unknown, and that’s the last place mind wants to venture. It cannot control the unknown. Instead, we dash off pursuing mind’s proliferations and projected manifestations through endless realms of experience, in this world and countless others, exhausting ourselves in the process.

On the other hand, if only we were willing and able to bring that search to a halt one day, long enough at least to take a good look into our own mirror, we might finally realize that we are the one that we have been seeking all along – we’ve been chasing our own tail. As Ramana Maharshi said: “We think that there is something hiding our reality and that it must be destroyed before the reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

True Inquiry (or Real Meditation) helps to establish an inner availability which in turn becomes the grounds for the subconscious mind to recognize its error and so cease projecting the fantasy narrative of a “me-story”. Subsequently, all experiences are then recognized as holographic figments appearing and disappearing within the space of our unchanging awake awareness, Love’s knowing presence. Moreover, they are spontaneously self-liberated in that recognition. From the very beginning, there was nothing to grasp or hold on to. All efforts to do so merely crimped the flow.

Once this is directly seen, we have the opportunity (especially if we are fortunate enough to have qualified guidance) to cultivate such realization until it becomes fully integrated, transforming our experience from mere self-confirmation to luminous wisdom. In such recognition, life’s experiences need not be employed to construct some new and improved version of “myself”, nor clung to as if they had some enduring significance. Instead, they can be welcomed as the non-binding gifts they truly are, granted to us for the purposes of deepening and broadening our appreciation and awareness.

Even saying “our awareness” is not quite accurate, however, for it is only when we try to claim any of it as “mine” that clinging and attachment are spawned, which in turn create the illusion of a separate “me”. Conversely, the more profoundly we awaken to an authentic compassion beyond the separate self-obsession, the more we are able to serve as transparent prisms for Spirit’s true nature, which is our own true nature – pure and unconditional love – to illumine all experience within the sphere of life and relationships.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

 ~Meister Eckhart

Related reading:

Direct Experience

“Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

At its root, unhappiness is essentially the activity of contraction, based on a fixated sense of independent self – “me and mine”. Most take this “me story” seriously, having become convinced that it is real – that it is what they are. Identifying exclusively with this perception, rather than simply relaxing as that prior condition within which the transient sense “me” arises and dissolves, can turn millionaires into imaginary paupers. On that premise, let’s inspect this apparent case of mistaken identity, and see where it leads us.

For we humans in general, whether things are going smoothly or not, or whether we imagine that we’re doing well or maybe not, and regardless of whatever temporary circumstances and environments that may currently pertain, there is something that we can notice. It is always there, because it is something that we are always reinforcing in thought, word, and deed.

As verification, by carefully and honestly inspecting our own habitual activities, we can recognize for ourselves that there is something that we are compulsively doing in the midst of all conditions and relations: grasping and avoiding. This vicious cycle of grasping and avoiding characterizes and serves to define the life of the ego, creating an inner running narrative — the “me-story” — which requires constant care and feeding, and yet never yields true satisfaction or happiness at the heart.

On the other hand, how rare is it to ever actually pause in the midst of our compulsive pursuits in order to fully and completely inhabit this very body here, relaxing into the senses without trying to have life be other than it is – without grasping and avoiding, or fabricating an ongoing storyline? What we might find if we do so is that this body is a wonderfully revelatory portal, a transparent prism of reality itself.

The Buddha asked, “What is called true reality?”

Mañjuśrī replied, “The view that the body is self is true reality.”

The Buddha asked, “Why is the view that the body is self true reality?”

Mañjuśrī replied, “Viewing the body as the appearance of suchness, which is neither real nor unreal, neither coming nor going, neither body nor non-body, is called true reality.”

Just so, what can be observed here, when we stop for a moment and pay close attention to the way we typically “live the body”? Well, whether we are seemingly calm or tense, and essentially in any circumstance, there seems to be a kind of knot in the being, a persistent contraction. It takes the form of a dissatisfaction that is continuous and primal. It’s a stressful discomfort that, when really inspected, is found to be the root motivator for all of our seeking and searching — not just “spiritual” searching, but seeking itself.

It’s a search to change the state or condition of our being, so as to neutralize and relieve this primal sense of  . . . unhappiness, dis-ease, dis-comfort, dis-satisfaction, dis-stress – felt acutely as the body itself. We try food. We try sex. We water our plants and are nice to animals and neighbors. We try to be “spiritual”. We think about sacred things. Perhaps we want to have a confirming relationship with something “beyond”, something “greater”, so as to “transcend” this root contraction that we are always feeling, as the body. Perhaps a little astral travel just might do the trick!

Long story short — we want out!

Consider the history of our species in this regard: one prolonged effort to  escape this knot, felt in and as the body. What is the relentless propaganda programmed into and transmitted through our contemporary cultural media: “Consumers, by acquiring enough money, food, sex, recognition, longevity, or meditation, you can manipulate life to achieve release, and be rewarded with freedom from this nagging sense of embodiment. With the right strategy, earnestly applied, you’ll no longer have to deal with this clench around the heart.”

Yes, the HEART!

Tracing this felt contraction, we always are drawn right back to our own heartbeat. This beating heart! Right here! The conviction that we are exclusively the body, and that the body is us – could that be the root of this sense of contraction, of dis-satisfaction? Could this also be where the initial sense of separation/alienation is arising? Right here, at the heart?

Moreover, it’s not even really under our control, is it? We are not beating our heart. It just beats, beats, beats, and all the worlds of experience are born here. All the strategies are devised here. All remedies are imagined here. Here is where the search begins! This is the seed of all seeking – our REACTION at the heart to this oppressive sense of embodiment.

Spurred on by this beat, we track through a seemingly endless realm of experience, all simply modifications of the original sense of contraction. All in reaction to life itself. We are always clenching up at the core, and manufacturing the search as a reaction to this clench. Even the strategy to relax this clench is only another form of clenching, of reacting. All provisional remedies merely constitute more of the same chronic activity — the activity of the contraction — our present and continuous activity.

Furthermore, there is ultimately no way out. Even stopping the physical heart will only yield a temporary respite. Forget about stopping thought! Even yogis in exalted Samadhi must eventually come back down to normal consciousness and deal with unresolved emotional/sexual afflictions. Indeed, has any “grasping or avoiding” strategy we have ever devised led to true and enduring Happiness?

At a certain point in life, our personal investment in the possibilities of experience (based on belief, hope, and fear) can begin to lose appeal, and a consuming doubt about the whole story may arise. Some might say that this is a moment of Grace. We just can’t seem to generate the same old “juice” for that now broken-hearted pursuit which was scripted to make us happy in the ongoing narrative of “me”. The search itself finally becomes suspect, as well as our stake in it.

There’s an old poster slogan floating around in the sea of pithy maxims that states: “You cannot become happy, you can only be happy.” By observing the mechanics of the quest for happiness, we can notice how miserable we typically tend to become while pursuing it (even though we are guaranteed the right to such unhappiness by the U.S. Constitution itself).

That is, in trying to become happy, we necessarily consign ourselves to a de facto state of unhappiness, since the pay-off is projected out into some future time where the search ideally culminates in a choice job, a desirable mate, an ample bank balance, a slim and attractive body stylishly adorned with shiny bling, or even high “spiritual” states of absorption and ecstasy.

How many of us along the way have inadvertently tricked ourselves into the cognitive trap of submission to a fabricated belief system which posits that real happiness is something to be attained through various schemes of energetic manipulation — whether mental, emotional, physical, or some combination thereof?

When that whole desperate strategy is ultimately recognized as futile – a failure — true transformation can happen, but usually not until then, and certainly not through some intellectual effort to surrender. There must be a direct, visceral recognition of the futility of the search to become happy. Sri Nisargadatta put clearly: “Mere verbal conviction is not enough. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up.”

When we really see how the dog has been chasing the tail, a shift can occur, and in such a revolutionary shift in the angle of vision, a free transparent spaciousness opens within us, a vivid shine of genuine happiness that had been dormant at the heart.

As the American Adept Robert Adams noted: “When you give up all hope of ever getting anywhere, you’re really surrendering. And that’s a good sign. You’re surrendering your ego, your thoughts, your feelings, and then you become still. It is in the stillness that things begin to happen, in quietness, when things begin to happen.”

If the stress starts at the heart, doesn’t it make sense that the healing must begin there too? It’s here that the innocent radiance of Awareness wakes up to itself, and once awakened, embraces all the varied forms of itself, including this humble, magnificent body through which consciousness incarnates to express itself and, in the process, to become fully Self-aware.

What we discover, if we are faithful to our inquiry, is that our natural and native Happiness only truly and fully emerges when we have at last let go of even the motive to strive for happiness, when we are no longer picking and choosing, or hoping and fearing. Moreover, unlike the conventional ideal of happiness, which is free of anything that can cause pain and sorrow, true happiness is all-inclusive, embracing even sadness and suffering, while simultaneously transcending any quality or attribute.

Of course, this is the opposite of what we have been told by the propaganda of this world, imbued as it is with the memes of hope and fear, and the perpetual search for escape routes and strategies of grasping and avoidance. How liberating to recognize that our own primal happiness is always and already present as the feeling of being itself, prior to and beyond the necessity of pursuit and acquisition! And yet, should it really come as a surprise that it has been here all along, waiting for us to simply wake up and “smell the roses”?

See also:

The Pursuit of Happiness, Part 2

Getting High

1. Core Motive

In any investigation of consciousness, the best place to start is with oneself. This does not necessarily mean that we need to resort to some kind of traditional psychological analysis, or even to the usual efforts of seekers to accumulate intellectual, emotional, or even so-called spiritual knowledge about ourselves. All of that may be included along the way, of course, but prior to any of those elaborations, there needs to be an in-depth inquiry into our core motivation — the basic script or personal narrative at the foundation of our sense of self, our identity. What is really driving us?

Upon inspection, what we can notice is that there is an underlying quality of stressfulness and dilemma that characterizes our existence. At the very root of our being, there appears to be a persistent contraction of life energy that in turn is always spawning a search for relief, whether it be of the body, the mind, or the spirit. In pursuit of an always elusive happiness, humans have sought since time immemorial to change their current state, devising and employing myriad idealistic strategies in the process.

To compound the matter, the exoteric religious teachings which humans have created infer that this human life itself is some kind of error or unfortunate occurrence — something to transcend, make right, awaken or escape from — some sin or even something of the nature of a stain on the immaculate canvas of the soul. Most even propose that our very nature is tainted simply by virtue of having taken birth in this realm.

Indeed, there are all sorts of theories humans have devised to account for their pervasive sense of dissatisfaction about being here, such as suggesting that prior misdeeds in previous lives are responsible for this unfortunate circumstance of life on earth that we currently must suffer through. Others attribute it to the will of some Supreme Being or Beings, who manipulate our fate for mysterious reasons. By investigating comparative cultural myths, we can find all sorts of variations on that blame game.

However, if we persevere in the inquiry, we can come to recognize that consciousness manifests as form for an obvious reason. It manifests as form in order to be conscious as form, to experience itself as form. That’s the wonder and beauty of this ordinary human birth. It provides a 3-D platform for the expression of Spirit.

Our present life is not a mistake. Consciousness itself can become self-aware through this very human form! It can not only become self-aware, but can express that self-awareness through form, through our human-ness, in all of the complex and often paradoxical ways that we live and relate in this dimensional field of space and time. There is no greater purpose than just being, just living this amazing, miraculous experience of life as it is, in whatever way it is!

To be “liberated” from being a human being is not actually the point at all. Spirit touches matter, and consciousness is born. There is an urge, an irrepressible impulse, to manifest itself in this world of space and time, or else it simply wouldn’t. Nevertheless, this is where a sense of complication, or confusion (avidya), invariably arises. In the maturation process of evolving into self-awareness through materiality, consciousness seems to forget itself, its true nature, in a kind of temporary amnesia when it contracts into form.

The Formless appears as form, but in the process, “it” imagines that it is that form exclusively — a self or person — separate and divided from all else (not-self) which is perceived to arise simultaneously within the sphere of awareness. From this apparent case of mistaken identity, a lot of toil and trouble ensues, typically revolving around issues such as hope and fear, love and hate, ignorance and integrity.

2. Identity

Even so, what we call “mis-identification” (when consciousness manifests as an apparently individual formation and temporarily takes itself to be that form) may actually represent a natural part of a cosmic process, the totality of which is still beyond our human comprehension, but in simple terms, consists of something along the lines of “losing ourselves to find ourselves”. In other words, it is not an aberration at all, but an aspect of the Play that we attribute a negative value to, based solely on arbitrary human concepts.

The only real “problem”, as mentioned above, is when energy and attention fixate on any temporary manifestation, halting the natural flow of the universal functioning and contracting into a tight and unyielding solidity. Such a contraction represents a quality of suffering, since the evolutionary movement of consciousness is towards infinite expansion.

Nevertheless, with the benefit of the “bigger picture” perspective derived from expanded awareness, it can be seen that all such challenges simply constitute the labor pangs of consciousness remembering its own true nature — our own original innocence. However, the ensuing developmental struggle to adapt and fully embody that recognition in all of life and relationships can and does generate a lot of stress, reflected in the pervasive conflict and discord which permeates this realm.

3. Virtual

Another way to view this condition of amnesia with which we arrive here is to use the analogy of a virtual reality game, in which we identify with the avatar to such a degree that we momentarily forget our true identity. By doing this, we are able to get the full impact of the virtual reality experience. Just so, by identifying with the human bio-vehicle, we are able to get the full experience of being human, and that appears to be our chief purpose for incarnating, but it comes with a catch — the aforementioned case of mistaken identity.

For the Formless to be fully aware in and as form, functioning unobstructed, and without contracting into a story of lack and limitation – this is the direction in which consciousness seems to be evolving. It’s a birthing from an act of indescribable Love, a Love that seeks to embody itself in matter, just as much as in the ethereal light of the higher planes.

Manifesting in and as these human forms is certainly not a kind of terrible mistake or punishment which we need to redress by escaping into some hopeful elsewhere, some idealized locale where we will finally be able to be what we are — we can never be anything other than what we are, limitless and all-inclusive!

In the realm of spiritual endeavor, there are those religious teachers who claim that, unless the ego is removed, one will remain in delusion. However, in this human circumstance, if the ego is removed, one would not be able to function in the objective world. We wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed.

The ego is not the problem. The problem is our obsessive fixation on the limited egoic identity, to the point that we have come to believe that it is who and what we are. In other words, the ego is a natural function of the human body-mind mechanism, but due to ignorance born of mistaken identity, we have enthroned it as an entity — an entity consumed with an instinct for survival at any cost. This is why the sages talk about transcending or subduing it, in the same sense as they suggest practices geared towards taming the self-absorbed “monkey mind”.

In any case, the ego itself is not an entity, like some ghostly person residing inside the brain, sending out commands and directives. It is a tool, and like any tool, it must be used wisely, otherwise problems ensue. To learn how to manage this function is the art of life. Trying to remove it, on the other hand, is simply perpetuating a war with oneself that can never be won, since we are jousting with our own shadow.

When the futility of that effort is finally recognized, a kind of spaciousness or free attention becomes available, which was previously occupied with cycles of alternating craving and aversion, desire and fear. Within such awaking awareness, it becomes apparent that we are not the identities we have taken ourselves to be. Rather, we seem to be more like a formless, impersonal witness, or observer, of all thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, and perceptions.

We also notice how we have been linking our thoughts, emotions, etc. into a kind of narrative, or story line, that has resulted in an apparent subject-object dichotomy. This dualistic narrative has been habitually dividing consciousness into fantasies, or mental fabrications, of self and other, but as we persist in recognition, we come to realize that consciousness is actually a unity — oneness.

4. Oneness and Beyond

In the “place” where consciousness is really unified, where it sees the true nature and indivisibility of both formlessness and form as it’s own nondual truth, such phrases as “I am That” are actually true. It is no idealistic platitude, since one’s sense of self actually “expands” to include everything – all phenomena. Here nothing is really outside of the indivisible molecular presence of itself. This view of unity consciousness is even vaster than the views of formless consciousness and egoic consciousness which preceded it.

It would initially appear that this experience of unity consciousness is complete, once there is the realization that “I am That”, “I am everything”. It may seem that there is nothing more to see. Many pause and settle here, and why not? Nevertheless, if the inquiry proceeds further, there is something very simple yet crucial that is still awaiting recognition.

Even in this unity consciousness there is still an awareness of this unity consciousness. There is an impersonal aware knowing of this unity consciousness’ arising. This awake awareness has no perceivable qualities whatsoever – not even divine ones. Sometimes this open spacious awareness is called Emptiness, yet it is even empty of any qualities of emptiness, silence, bliss, or light. Here there is no self or Self, or even any Witness, which are all immediately recognizable as conceptual designations, fantasies of interpretation on perception.

It is not even a state of consciousness, and yet it does not cancel or invalidate that of which it is prior. Discursive mind cannot go there, because it is before that stage of attention — prior to consciousness’ arrival. Formless consciousness, separate self-consciousness, unity consciousness — all are arising within This, all are being birthed within this timeless aware space, this transparent “knowingness”. Nothing needs to be manipulated, modified, subtracted, or enhanced, since the nature of everything is already this emptiness — perfect as it is. Here, all states and levels are actually illuminated, and thus spontaneously “liberated” from any fixation within this embrace, as is any sense of division or impediment.

Since everything arises from the very no-beginning within this spacious awake awareness, there is nothing that needs to be eliminated. The only obstacle to the free flow and flowering of consciousness was the contracting fixation on any level, and subsequent attachment to limited perspectives. However, from this prior, unobstructed angle of vision, all states are spontaneously recognized to be manifesting non-exclusively and interdependently, as perfect expressions of an unfathomable, unconditional love.

When this is truly and deeply Seen, and all stifling fixation has been gracefully exceeded by the recognition of Reality, the realization dawns that this awareness, which one IS, does not need to cling to egoic consciousness, to formless consciousness, to unity consciousness, to any experience, view, or position – it loves them all by granting them all the power to exist. It functions through them all, but is always already free of any story, even the story of freedom. After all, freedom implies bondage, but such dualities are tacitly recognized as mere errors of appreciation, and rendered obsolete in the shine of unbounded awareness.

Here, the purpose of the evolution of consciousness would appear to be fulfilled, and yet this realization is more like a good beginning, and what now waits to be explored and discovered in the multiversal halls of Infinity is beyond any human words or concepts that could be applied. Such is the divine adventure that beckons us all, as we let go of all superimposed and limiting fixation with which we have heretofore defined ourselves.

Having integrated both the light as well as the shadow elements of our nature into dynamic balance, and having also seen through the dreaminess of fixed identification with any of it, we are now capable enough to fully “embody” or real-ize (make real) our natural potential as powerful spiritual beings and conscious co-creators with immortal Spirit Itself.

“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.”

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe

See also: https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/stages-of-human-spiritual-development/ https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/in-search-of-self/