Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

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Yesterday I was enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend and was asked if I had any ideas as to new programs that might be offered at the centre specifically around the subject of “Transformation of Human Consciousness”… My response was something like, perhaps I wasn’t the right one to ask as I don’t have any belief that there is anybody who needs to be transformed and from here there isn’t any such thing as ‘human’ consciousness, or even, as science tells us, a stand alone human being as a real solid object for that matter. As I drove home thoughts came about assumptions and old beliefs. So when I got home I opened “Simply Notice” to where the bookmark was and this is what appeared…   Chapter 11 “Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” “The focus of noticing will shift for the next several chapters. It will shift away from Life’s ease of present awareness, to noticing more about the five senses. The reason is that the senses seem to create illusory appearances. The senses seem to fool us by making the world and daily living appear other than they really are. Some illusions are minor – such as an illusion of a mirage in the desert – and they have little impact on daily life and society. Other times, an illusion can have a huge impact. As said in the beginning of this book, one such illusion appears to be affecting your every waking moment of every day. Yet this illusion for the most part has gone totally unnoticed by the general public. Even more important – the illusions give rise to false beliefs, and the false beliefs severely restrict how we live. Before getting into specifics, it helps to put all this illusion talk in perspective. The biggest breakthroughs in the so-called history of man often involve a dramatic change in ways of seeing, or understanding. What basically happens is that the old, limiting beliefs are seen through or new discoveries are made. What these dramatic breakthroughs often boil down to is a simple matter of noticing something that wasn’t noticed before. The classic example of breaking through illusions and limiting beliefs would be the now-clichéd flat earth. The following may seem as if it is badly overstating the obvious. It’s done only to refresh your thinking about the power and influences of un-detected illusions. It’s also a warm-up for exposing the other illusion that is largely unnoticed today. Supposedly, earth at one time was believed by some to flat and so massive that it was the centre of the universe. It could be said this belief was not accepted by civilizations worldwide – but it helps to illustrate an important point. Of course the realization eventually came that earth is a relatively tiny sphere, apparently floating in a vast universe of space. The key question to ask is, “How could such a belief have started?” It was due to two illusions. Both illusions involve the human sense of sight. The first illusion is the earth’s horizon, which appears when seen by a human body standing on earth. Of course, the body’s limited sense of sight is incapable of seeing the earth’s natural curvature. The second illusion involves planetary movement. Each day (or night), the sun, moon and stars come into view. Again, to the human sense of sight when standing on earth, it appears as if these heavenly bodies rise above earth’s horizon. It also appears as if these bodies all rotate in space around earth. So – to the untrained eye, it really does look as if the earth is a massive flat object. And it really does appear as if earth is at the centre, and the universe is geo-centric – with the sun, moon, planets and all stars rotating around it. What counts are the beliefs that arose out of these illusions. The most famous was, “Don’t dare sail beyond the horizon of this flat earth, or you’ll fall off.” Needless to say, people’s acceptance of the beliefs acted like self-imposed barriers which were incredibly limiting. Again, all due to illusion. Here’s the point in dredging up this old example. Today we pride ourselves on being much more savvy, advanced and enlightened that the flat earth folks. We don’t like to think of ourselves as still capable of accepting illusions and ignorant beliefs.  Yet unwittingly we are.  

A Flower Opening?

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During a dyad exercise a few days ago, while contemplating the question “What am I?”,  a number of very interesting insights arose.  The contemplation began with a seeing that an “I” thought would arise and then immediately another thought would assign a significance to the first thought, would give it meaning.   The creation of the reality of an “I” was happening moment by moment through thought itself giving substance to the idea of a “me”.  Without this meaning given by thought the arising of a concept of “me” would have no significance.   The attention then naturally went to the looking at why thought was continuously doing this, being active in creating the “me” moment to moment.  It was seen that thought was reacting habitually to avoid the void.  Thought was aware (or was reacting to the awareness) that it is transient and dissolving into the unknown each moment.  Thought was moving away from a perceived emptiness or not-knowing each moment.   As this process was observed there came a sense of falling back into the not-knowing aware space and a sense that this space was more truly “what I am” than anything thought could produce.  The mind became very still and silent.   Staying in that still sense of being, there arose spontaneously a clear sense of timelessness and the word “eternity” presented itself as a description.  Not eternity as never-ending time but as totally outside of time, in another dimension entirely.  “I” was eternal, timeless Being.  A sense of being was arising out of the Unknown.  Somehow there then arose the perception that what I really am is not the limited “I” created by thought but that the roots of “my” being are grounded in the Source of everything, unbounded Life itself.  “I am That” became completely true:  I cannot be other than the Totality, the Source of all.  This was much more than an idea:  it was a fact.   Then in the effortless looking or seeing it became clear that even “I am That” was dualistic:  “That”, or Source, was being conceived as an object.  It was being conceived out of the unknowable source and was in a sense grounded in that Source and at the same time the objectification of it was happening in thought and perception.  When this was seen the duality collapsed into a pure not-knowing.  The “I” that had been the object of inquiry had dissolved.  Laughter arose in this seeing that the natural culmination of the search for “who” or ‘what” I really am is the complete forgetting of myself.  So much so that there is no knowing of a self or of there not being a self.  There is nothing left to say about myself in that state of truth where the difference between “I” and Truth has dissolved.   Thought can come up with approximations and descriptions of that which is beyond description and this we have such proclamations as “I am That”, “I am the Truth”, “I am love, freedom, bliss, consciousness”, and so on.  These are beautiful expressions of what ultimately is beyond all expression.   And then comes the question, “Is it beyond, or is even that just another duality of thought?”  The answer comes not in words but as a further falling away of division.  In that or out of that or as that arose the perfume that might be called love.   What value is there in sharing these types of experiences with others?  I don’t know.  Krishnamurti says it’s like a flower opening to reveal its beauty to that which can perceive it and be moved by it.  Life itself expressing itself within and as the play of duality and the melting away of the duality which never really existed.   Interestingly, since that experience and the writing about it there have been some fairly strong movements of such emotions as anger and sadness.   Go figure!  When felt and observed they melted away.    

The Challenge of Nothingness

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In another dyad recently I entered a contemplation on emptiness and formlessness. An image arose which seemed to describe my situation in life these days. I am sitting on the edge of a cliff looking out at a vast emptiness, nothingness, or void. Everything that used to give meaning to my life has been falling away and this nothingness is what remains. There is a sense that I am still here in some way, separate from this void. Sometimes there is more openness to the emptiness, sometimes less. The thinking mind resists the void and contracts in fear in the face of it, either subtly or obviously, and this is felt in the body-mind as a flatness, dullness, lack of full aliveness.

This image was pleasing as it seemed to represent closely how I was conceiving things to be these days. But then the seeing happened that even this seemingly “true” image was completely unstable and subject to dissolving at any moment into complete not-knowing of anything, not having any representation, picture, or thought about my self or my experience. It was then seen that a deeper “truth” is the need to completely surrender everything, all knowing, into the not-knowing, to let go of every way of conceiving my self and my life and to “trust” the Unknown, that which is beyond thought and the conceiving mind. And this had to happen right now. But there was no way to “do” that, no movement of thought, no strategy that was not part of the known, the realm of thought and concepts.

Somehow in seeing all this clearly there was a sudden melting and a welling up of lightness, joy, and laughter. I’d been making a big deal of it and suddenly there was such an ease, simplicity, and obviousness to it all. A letting go or shift happened with no manipulation of thought and there I was, or Beingness was, just simply being. Such a sense of bliss was present, permeating every cell of my body, and a feeling of everything being resolved and at rest or peace in this Beingness.

There came a sense that in contemplating these matters so many times and having the experience of coming home to my true nature then moving away from it, then returning home again so often that there is easier and easier access to “home”. However, the resistance to the perceived emptiness, to complete not-knowing, was lately creating a subtle sense of separation from home much of the time, a kind of dissatisfaction and even cynicism with my experience of life. The joy and bliss is here as I write this and any thoughts about its continuing or being lost are just thoughts without significance arising in the space of not-knowing from which the joy is arising and expressing itself.