There are 3 basic phases in the dawning of clarity, much like the phases of a sunrise that gradually illuminates the world for us each morning as a new day dawns. Each successive phase makes reality a bit clearer, each phase of greater light helps us see more clearly, with greater brightness, more accurately. And yet, while each successive phase further illuminates and expands on or builds on the preceding phase, it never negates it. Each phase of the journey revealing itself simply brings the previous phase along with it into a bigger, more vast and clearer context. 1) In the first phase of the perception of reality, we seem to experience and believe that all we are is this separate individual who is experiencing all kinds of other separate individual things that impact this individual in many different positive or negative ways. This way of being in our world feels very small, contracted and vulnerable and defensive. We feel that we must hold onto all the things and experiences that we like and see as positive, and we feel that we must constantly push away all the experiences and things we dont like or see as negative. This holding on and pushing away becomes our primary goal in life, but we will always feel quite insecure about it as a goal, because it soon becomes clear that we can never really achieve it completely. We know in our hearts that such a goal is essentially unattainable, that it simply is just not the way our life, or anyone elses, actually unfolds. So we go through life either elated and happy about getting our way, for now, or we go through life rather frustrated and often discouraged, depending on whether we are at a point of winning over life or at a point where life seems to be winning over this individual we believe our self to be confined to. 2) If we have enough grace and good fortune we will go through the 2nd phase of clarity. We begin to see that on the deepest level we are actually the silent witness that simply witnesses everything and every experience without any judgement whatsoever. The witness has no like or dislike within it. It is simply and completely aware and present to whatever arises in this moment, here and now. This silent witness, this peaceful presence, which observes all the experiences, all the people, places and things constantly coming and going, remains utterly untouched by all the comings and goings. Living life in this witness consciousness is certainly much easier than living in the consciousness of the exclusively separate individual who likes or dislikes everything and is in a constant fight with reality in the hope of getting it to always come out on the terms of the individual. The individuals battle with reality can be traumatic and painful and places us in the midst of constant, perpetual struggle. But the thing about living in the witness consciousness exclusively and believing that who we are is simply the witness and not an individual at all on any level whatsoever, is that this places us in a rather dry and sterile and detached attitude that is not very heart-centered but can actually be rather clinical and cold and unmoved by anything or anyone. We forgo the chaos and pain of the separate individual but we also forego the juiciness of life and become very calm and placid and even kind of numb to or bored with life and life experiences. 3) But eventually, even though we may be utterly convinced that we are exclusively the witness and we become wholly identified with the silent witness and we may come to believe that this witness is who we really are exclusively, on an absolute level, or in some ultimate sense, we will discover, to our great surprise one day, that the witness itself will actually collapse. It will either gradually or suddenly, begin to dissolve and disappear. What actually begins to transpire is that this peaceful observer, this silent witness, begins to be recognized as not actually separate from all that it witnesses. We begin to see that the witness itself, while a more subtle identity than the individual me is, nonetheless, an identity structure that is being artificially separated off and believed in by the mind. The observer and the observed become (or rather, come to be recognized as already being) one within observing. That observer, observed and observing are actually not really separate, that witness, witnessed and witnessing are one seamless whole, which we might call Reality. We begin to see that all there is in reality is witnessing observing, pure consciousness or sentience itself. All there really is, is pure awareness, aware of itself! This is the true unity, the deepest non-duality, the clarity of seeing the ONE without a second. So in the end we see that we ARE the individual, we are just not ONLY or separately that individual. And so we see that we ARE the witness, we are simply not exclusively or separately the witness. We also ARE the witnessed phenomena that is constantly appearing and disappearing within the consciousness of the witness, that is witnessed by the witness. We are the individual person, the witness that witnesses the individual person, and we are also all the witnessed phenomena that is constantly arising and ceasing. We are the seamless whole of Reality itself, which includes absolutely everything and excludes absolutely nothing. We are essentially seeing that all there is, ever was, or ever will be.......is....... GOD ALONE, the ONE. The ONE who was, and is, and is to come, till the end of the ages and beyond, world without end.....amen!
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:27:26 +0000
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