Right now, there is a wakefulness, you might know it as "awareness" - it's a simple and ever-present presence, an effortless knowing, a cognizing which seems to contain objective content, yet upon investigation the very content of wakefulness is wakefulness itself.
It is the mind which attempts to divide this wakefulness into inner and outer, into here and there, into now and then.
This wakefulness is the most obvious aspect of reality - It is, what IS. Efforts to "find" it take place within it. Efforts to "seek" it overlook it's inherently present nature. The "seeker" is also a state or experience or idea or thought within it, although in differentiating what IS by the words "state", "experience", "idea" and "thought" is part of the mechanism which seems to divide the wakefulness.
Therefore there is no reaching wakefulness - there is no attaining wakefulness. This pure "state" is already fully present, fully already the case. THAT which the word "enlightenment" or "nirvana" point - THAT IS your true essence or nature already.
Another quote from the author, Ken Wilbur, from the book A Brief History of Everything:
"Every experience you have is already nondual, whether you realize it or not. So it is not necessary for you to change your state of consciousness in order to discover this nonduality. Any state of consciousness you have will do just fine, because nonduality is fully present in each state... recognition is the point. Recognition of what always already is the case. Change of state is useless, a distraction... subject and object are actually one and you simply need to recognize this... you already have everything in consciousness that is required. You are looking right at the answer... but you don't recognize it. Someone comes along and points it out, and you slap your head and say, Yes I was looking right at it..."
It's a bit of a shame that the one blog that tries to tie all the pointers together doesn't get more lively commentary. There is nothing new under the sun...yet each apparent unfolding is completely new; we are all everything we see, touch, hear, feel, etc. yet we are not that, we are what makes it possible; these and other paradoxes, unheld by concepts and simultaneously "true", are what all religions and philosophies that address life and its meaning (or lack of meaning) attempt to express. God is awareness; hell is samsara; nirvana is heaven. Life is lost when it is organised, and simple being is divided and taken to be the characters and situations that merely express being; and yet it is never lost. The fact that all expressions are one is something, although as meaningless as anything else, that's worth pointing out. Thanks Randall for giving it a go.
ReplyDeleteHi Suzanne,
ReplyDeleteWell said, thank you for the comment.
love
randall