TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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CONSCIOUSNESS and AWARENESS
Reality
Ironically, much of “the journey” along “the path” to understanding Reality (and reality) is spent in focusing on that which is not real. Krishna said, “Those alone who understand that I, the Absolute, am beyond the states of being and non-being realize my true nature, and all others are fools.” So Krishna suggested that fools can be known by these facts:
1. Fools do not understand that states-of-being (of believing that they are being “this” or being “that” and playing roles and accepting them as a true identity) are false.
2. Fools do not know that, post-manifestation, there is no beingness or even non-beingness. There is no false self that will be; nor is there any Self that will be, so there is not any Infinite Self or Supreme Self that will be either. Nothing with any identity or shape or defined space will be.
No selfness or Selfness exists. Only That which is beyond both beingness and non-beingness shall remain. All that there will be is the unmanifested energy in the universal pool and the matter which cannot be destroyed.
And those who do not understand that truth are fools (that is, they are persons who have been fooled by taking the dreamed up beliefs of other humans as gospel. As one famous social critic said, "There is no belief that has been dreamed up by men that is worth believing").
Peace and Therefore Happiness
(and / or Ease and Contentment)
Someone said that the key to peace and happiness is acceptance. Tell that to the person sitting in prison. The key to peace every day, and therefore to happiness, is freedom. And what robs persons of freedom? Primarily, programming, conditioning, accculturation, under-functioning body organs, assumption of roles, and delusion.
Upon full realization, it is seen that all spiritual knowledge was nothing more than a part of that massive accumulation of learned ignorance which burdens persons with the heaviness of their “something-ness” rather than the lightness of the “nothingness.”
To fixate at that knowing stage—at the so-called "spiritual stage"—prevents abidance as the pure, universal consciousness and prevents eventual abidance as the Absolute;
therefore, the final step of the “journey” is not marked by the gaining of spiritual knowledge but by an understanding of the functioning of the totality that happens in the absence of any “Understander” or any “Knower” or any “Spiritual Person” or any other “good” identity that is being assumed in order to replace former “bad” identities.
The re-purified consciousness will lead to de-accumulating, to understanding the bliss of the nothingness, to touching the validity of the void, and to being free of the insanity of the relative existence.
Since it cannot be stated, no one can share truth. Among “the realized,” the “emptiness,” the Void, the Nothingness is understood even as the beingness continues (which is the only time that it can be understood);
it is assigned and / or assumed personas (false personality identifications) who engage in the doingness and who think that they are full of knowledge and intelligence when they are actually full of self.
When those roles are finally abandoned (and they - along with an imagined Supreme Self or Infinite Self - are always the last to go) then the Void or the Nothingness or the space can be understood and the true stillness of the de-programmed, de-personalized consciousness can happen. The corrupting process, and how to become free of corruption, was explained thusly to one seeker:
Seeker: And how has my consciousness been corrupted, according to you?
F.: Via impressions - or samskaras - as my teacher called them. Here’s an analogy: imagine you’re at the beach, a few yards from the water’s edge. As you walk, you leave behind impressions of your feet. Are those impressions real?
Seeker: For the moment, yes.
F.: Really? What’s real about those impressions? They are only space - nothingness, emptiness - that seems to your eye to be “something” when in fact they are nothing. Will they last?
Seeker: They’ll last until the tide comes in and washes them away.
F.: So are they an actual form, or just a temporary space that appears to have shape and form?
Seeker: OK . . . they’re temporary.
F.: So it is with everything you think you see. It’s only an appearance, and appearances are distortions, and distortions trigger misery. You look at the body called “floyd” and all that is there is a space, but you think you are seeing some thing.
In fact, it is almost exclusively emptiness . . . nothingness . . . just a handful of elements with air and energy temporarily circulating through the space. If you remove the water that is within the body, then the remaining elements will not even fill a small urn.
Realization is like the wave that can come along and sweep away all the false impressions imprinted on “the mind.” Realization makes you aware that the nothingness that you’ve always taken to be something is not that thing at all.
Those impressions were never real. You mistook an empty space to be something, and that’s what persons do all day long, all month long, all year long, year after year after year. Most spend their entire relative existence convinced that their perceptions are the “right” perceptions when if fact they have never seen anything “rightly.”
As a result, they will suffer from one false impression after another, not unlike all the impressions in your “mind.” Footprints in the sand appear to have some shape or form, just as mirages in the desert appear to have a shape or form, but the reality is that all impressions and all mirages are just a part of the fiction of the “mind.”
To be “in touch with reality” is to be able to differentiate between what is illusion and what is real, between what is delusion and what is truth, and between that which appears to be dualistic as opposed to that which is One and truly real.
If realized, however, it is known that this beingness is temporary and that the non-beingness is the completely natural state (as opposed to unnatural states or supernatural states as adopted by non-realized persons who are still attached to their accumulated learned ignorance and ignorant and insane beliefs).
Nothing more than this is happening: energy manifests and is aware of the beingness, then energy unmanifests and has no space or form by which the beingness can be known.
To abide in that manner NOW offers an opportunity for perfect peace to manifest (or at least for some degree of contentment and ease to remain when the relative existence hurls at humans what the Advaitin poet Shakespeare referred to as “the slings and arrows” of the relative existence).
To abide in that fashion in not unlike the respite which comes when in the delta-level-sleep-state of brain movement during deep sleep. The non-beingness is that natural state with no body, no mind, no form, no space, no . . . anything. It is the Void, the Nothingness, when THAT which is does not even know that it is.
Call it "bliss" if you like, but the realized understand that bliss can only be known during the beingness if the Void and the Nothingness are realized during the manifestation of conscious-energy which has been unblocked and freed of all distortion-and-delusion-generating beliefs.
If one is at perfect rest during a deep sleep, that might appear to be a blissful state, but the human in deep sleep does not know that it is and is not conscious of the "bliss."
Only when fully awake, aware and conscious can the bliss be understood (and only then if fully realized). Bliss is the stuff of being manifested and fully realized during the period of Amness. The non-being state which follows the manifestation has no awareness of awareness.
Having transitioned into the non-beingness, the consciousness Is, but it cannot know it is. So enjoy it NOW, for no other opportunity exists and no other opportunity will ever exist.
That allows for peace to happen every day (or for one to be able to avoid becoming emotionally-intoxicated when peace is challenged). So does a clear understanding of what bliss is and what bliss is not.
The only thing “blissful” about re-absorption into the Absolute is the bliss of the Void, of the nothingness, of the no-mind, no-body, no-personality, non-beingness and that which is even beyond the non-beingness. If one is “wanting bliss,” then it can be known now, but it cannot be experienced in the way that most want to experience it. Why?
Post-realization, there is no experiencer. Actually, bliss is nothing more than a vibration which continues to vibrate without any disturbance. It is like a heart which is beating at a normal rate and which is functioning with a steady rhythm rather than a heart suffering from atrial fibrillation.
Those who seek the state which persons mistake for “bliss” are being set up for disappointment by their belief in a bogus, unattainable conceptualization.
If peace during the relative comes in the void (in the nothingness of sleep) and if peace awaits (in the nothingness of that void when unmanfested consciousness returns to its former “at-rest state”) then how might persons find that void in the NOW and experience that bliss
(a) while awake rather than in deep sleep
and
(b) while the consciousness is manifested rather than unmanifested?
The peace of the void cannot be known by persons driven to seek more rather than less.
Consider the meaning of the prefix “con” which means “together,” “with,” or “together with.” The very prefix reveals the presence of duality. Consciousness cannot be the non-dual reality. The non-dual reality is beyond dualistic consciousness.
Awareness is thoughtless (that is, no-thought) unmanifested consciousness. It is no-mind consciousness. This is far beyond any talk of samadhi or its five types.
Awareness does not provide a temporary respite from thoughts and desires and fears. Awareness is permanent freedom from the fictitious mind and the beliefs and desires and fears that originate therein.
“Being in touch with Reality” is actually about being in touch with nothing . . . freed from being in touch with anything that is not real, that is phenomenal, and that is mind-generated or culture-generated. Awareness removes all identification with anything other than the void or nothingness, which means there is no identification at all.
Abidance as the awareness can happen even during the manifestation of consciousness and is the unconditional “condition” referred to by the terms fully realized, enlightened, liberated, actualized, etc.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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THE EXPLANATION
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
