There is a notion that exists within the realm of the nondualists whereby the Void, that state of pure potential, is seen as the original condition and that everything else that we experience is somehow inferior or less than this original state. There are a lot of high-minded teachers who have espoused this, so in speaking into it means I am coming up against a lot of people whose own experience stands in a more monolithic way for some people. The curious thing, though, is that at the end of the day, even when we come back to the poor pitiful state of our daily illusion, of the dream of the false self as the earthly self is called by these folks, we remain here with this self. No one seems to even question WHY this false self even exists. Some say it is through karma that this self exists and that through this reasoning, is the reason for this kind of cosmic error in our being. To me, this is nothing different from what has taken place within Christianity as the Fall whereby through sex we must emerge here, an experience which they have considered sinful and whereby a god-man came to free us from. It is present in Hinduism and other traditions, no matter how high-minded or “spiritual.” This sense of self loathing exists in various forms and it all comes down to much the same thing. WE have this sense that this place, this body, this self, is somehow less than that “other” state which is pure and untouched by the vagaries of psyche, emotion, and desire. Afterall, aren’t these all the things that have gotten us into so much trouble?
But what, I must ask, might happen, if we were to learn that the self, which some call false, was actually intended for a new way of learning about the dream, this illusion so many speak of?
The thing is, there is an application of this bias about the self vs the soul-self that seeks to suggest that those who do not agree with this notion that these folks have about the pure state or primordial state that anyone who diverges from their argument or ideas are themselves somehow not fully enlightened or awakened. And you know, it isn’t that I dislike someone saying I am this or that, but rather it is more a simple matter of perception, perspective, and awareness. I don’t even think that they are even all that wrong with their notion. There is a lot about it that is entirely on the mark, except when it comes to the self. It smacks of a deep unidentified loathing for this existence that even they would deny, I think, feeling.
The one thing that I have been afforded in this experience is being able to ride the coat-tails of the energy present in awakening whereby I have seen so many things. I am an adventurer and I like to go waaaay out. Down into the subatomic structure of the universe. Down into the coding of the atom and how everything is itself holographically formulated in order to wed everything to everything else at a deep fundamental level. Sitting deep in thought I am drawn into a revelation of how consciousness expands “outward” into larger and larger aggregations of conscious energy which goes to form our experience, then our world, and then still other realities of which we but simply are aware. It is akin to a series of wheels within wheels (thank you Ezekiel) whereby one wheel rises to meet another which turns at a larger arc in the heavens and whose own heaven is turned by still greater and greater wheels. At each seeming level, different phenomenon occur as a result of creative energy. The one common thread is awareness. In bearing more awareness, we naturally bear more energy. As we learn to handle this energy, we also learn to handle still “larger” forms of consciousness.
I know that the makers of this world were themselves dreamers. For them, their art was in simply dreaming such incredible dreams that we here experience their productions as a stable template upon which we exist and agree upon. We all see the same tree grow and die. We each see the same sky, the same clouds. And yet, the flexibility built into this realm is the ability to transform it, or seemingly transform it, by simply being….different. And it is here that we get into something that leave those who feel that the body is so limited in the dust.
Instead of loath the body as imperfect, I see it as misunderstood. Entirely. Within us lies the promise of paradise, the kingdom, nirvana, here and now. Encoded within us is the possibility for the seeming impossible to emerge. We don’t understand how this could be because it stands, or seems to stand, so far out of people’s own limited sense about this world. One side of our awareness is mirrored through the left brain which is a linear processor while the right brain is a parallel processor and which is VERY different from its left sides compliment. These two brains also mirror the current of the yin and yang that moves through us and helps to enunciate their underlying truth, which itself is a still deeper truth about the form our own consciousness takes, which is this seeming dual form of awareness. Whenever I have sought to bring both sides of my brain function into a closer unity always the result is the same; an explosion of inspiration. This inspiration leads to all manner of new ideas, new creations, new ways of seeing, feeling, and knowing. It is in this place where I have been taken into places that have revealed the inner workings of a vast array of things that are commonly referred to by the yogis as “secret knowledge.” The only thing that served to limit my perception of this information and experience was how I was allowing my own awareness, as defined partly at least by my own brain function, to be. We call this by many names, from awakening to kundalini. When I awoke, I awoke to find that the world was a different kind of place, and that it seemed as though the world awoke when I awoke. Not coincidentally, this was a notion expressed by Buddha, I would discover just a few years ago as I began to investigate whether what Buddha experienced was the same as I had. While where we go in awakening may differ, and while our own journeys are themselves individual, there are many common markers, which, if you know about them, you can begin to identify.
So this is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot has not been covered, but I will leave you with this parting thought; what if, instead of the false self, we simply say that this is our earthly vehicle whose potential we are now only beginning to glimpse. And for the world being illusion, what if we were to instead call it a creation. By calling it this, by thinking of it in this way, we are then suddenly free to create anew, or to recreate how we see and respond to it. An illusion itself suggests something that is false, but what if this illusion actually speaks or mirror a deeper reality about who and what we are? And instead of the great Void as being JUST the pure original state, it is just as many have experienced including myself; a vast endless “realm” of energy existing in potential. Now, potential is itself great to feel. It is. It is pure bliss. And yet, the Creator itself is….well…CREATIVE. Isn’t it in our nature, all of our natures, to create? And is it not through what we create, that we have the opportunity to learn from? For good or ill? And isn’t this all a function of freewill, which was granted us as a central form of our being and which while it has been blamed for so many ills could also just as easily be blamed for all of our miracles and great discoveries about how to build a better world? I mean, really, isn’t this a dual world after all? So instead of saying it is this or that, what if we sought to merge the two into a new synthesis of being and get off our high horses and learn the great secret of our being, which is to unlock the potential within us in order to realize that here we can have a paradise…..that we can wed the pure potential to the world of how that potential is realised, utilized, which is the same as it has always been; to create. Sitting in a pure state yields only that, but it is like a boat in a harbor; it was not made for that. Out of the potential, we draw and we project and thus create. We want to say that creation is folly…based in desire….and yet if the teachings are to be believed, the highest form of consciousness we know, created all of this because such an act was so fundamental to consciousness.
It is known that nothing that we experience here in this less than perfect body is not registered unless the brain is able to process the information at least at some level or another. So that sense of the Void, it is compliments of your brain. See into the infinite? That is your brain again. In fact, while some suggest that the brain is unable to conceive of the infinite, we are learning that there are parts of the brain that actually serve as filters and that the very process of awakening seems to serve to remove those perceptual roadblocks. In people who have had damage to their left hemispheres, often their experience blooms into what is described as something very similar to mystical experiences had by monks, yogis and more. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is one such individual who was able to observe what happened when she experienced a stroke that happened in her left hemisphere. Speaking at a Ted Talks Conference, she described what was for me, eerily similar to what I had been experiencing during my awakening process, and illuminated a sense that I had had for years that the answer to accelerated consciousness lies in our ability to shift our focus from a left-brained dominance as a species to one that was more balanced with the right brain being given a broader expression or awareness in our own mind. I have posted this talk before in a previous blog entry and it is posted here for you to consider.
What happens when we cease seeing life as illusion and see it as a creation? What happens when we cease seeing the self as false and see it more as designed to do things that we currently are unable to realize but can actually learn to conceptualize by using our brains (both of them) to experience what was previously thought impossible? Is it just possible that the real problem in all of this is that we simply have not learned to balance these two sides and that maybe, just maybe, by learning a better balance, we might learn a new synthesis that is itself evolving in human beings even as I write this?
Waking The Infinite 