“To be a complete human being, to be a totality and experience wholeness, to be able to experience all possibilities and all potential for a human being, first we need to be ourselves.” – A.H. Almaas
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ve no doubt noticed that the primary thrust of recent posts has been more narrowly focused on the direct approach to self-awareness and spiritual realization. The evolution of my understanding of these matters has led me away from the more general and wide net of considerations that go into knowing who I am and more pointedly to the essence of being itself. While I do not discount the value of understanding psychological underpinnings that reveal facets of who I believe myself to be, those findings now seem to be secondary to the reality of being. That is, through a lifetime of conditioning, the “alpha I” was colored by life experiences, upbringing, cultural norms, and influences and so they have shaded what was my original nature. There are of course therapeutic approaches to understanding how these various influences shaped the character that I have become since birth and there is value in understanding how we came to think, feel, and view the world the way we do. I have done a fair amount of these explorations with professional guidance and through self-directed examination. These explorations have shed light on “why” I think and feel the way I do, and admittedly there is value to knowing how I came to be this person/personality. However, beyond understanding, I yearn more deeply to uncover or recover the essential self. In religious terms, the essential self is “the image and likeness of God”, or the Christ. Gratefully, I have come to realize that original nature is never lost and only appears hidden behind the clouds of conditioning that hijack the pure being and make it (appear) as its own limited “image and likeness.”
Although conditioning seems to run deep in us, there is a perspective available to everyone that allows us to discern that what we have come to believe about ourselves never actually touches or stains our essence. The approach allows us to see the unreality of our “conditioned self”. All those subpersonalities, the “wounded self”, the “angry self”, the “lonely self,” the “needy self,” et al are rightly seen as mere colorings upon the canvas of pure being. Who you and I really are is a blank canvas. So how do we bring forth the clarity of right seeing that we might know ourselves as we truly are? It only requires that we submit to background investigation. The reality of our true nature is hiding in plain sight. How so?
The metaphor of the movie screen can open our eyes to this truth. When we are watching a movie, we get caught up in the content of the film. Depending on the nature of the movie we become more or less engaged in the story and its characters, and if we are completely immersed, we lose ourselves in it. We can even forget that it’s a movie and experience a whole range of emotions as if we are the characters enduring the ups and downs of the story being projected on the screen. We’ve all had this experience and maybe have had to take a reality check to calm ourselves from being overtaken by an intense drama, finding relief when we remember, “Ahh, it’s only a movie. It’s not happening to me!” All the while we are engrossed in the movie, we are looking at the screen, but we lose awareness of the screen by our exclusive focus on the images projected upon it. Of course, in fact, we are “seeing” the screen, but its presence is seemingly overwritten by the images that capture our full attention. Yet, without the screen, there is no movie. All that there is to the movie is the screen. Take away the movie and the screen is still there. Take away the screen and there is no movie.
What of us is like the screen? Awareness. Or consciousness. Or simply, knowing. Amidst all the drama of our personal lives, we fall into a spell that has us immersed in the content of life experiences and overlooking the background of awareness in which all of life’s events, sensations, and perceptions are made knowable. Not only is awareness ever-present no matter the content of experience, awareness is indeed the pre-requisite for all experience. No screen, no movie. No awareness, no experience. So here’s the very disruptive notion that has eluded the majority of humans from time immemorial; what we essentially are is not the body, nor the mind with its myriad thoughts, memories, sensations, and perceptions. None of these are always present and unchanging, all are limited in time or space. But what about awareness? Is it limited by time? Have you ever experienced a moment without awareness? I haven’t. Do you find any boundaries to awareness? I don’t. What do we call something that is without bounds and timeless? Infinite and Eternal come to mind? And what do we say is infinite and eternal? God. Spirit. Divine.
The whole human search for happiness and freedom is confounded by a failure to recognize that it is not the content of experience that is in the way of this ultimate goal, it is the overlooking of what we essentially are. The light of awareness shines amidst all manner of life circumstances and is never limited, obstructed, tarnished, or diminished by what happens. When we recognize its presence, we are in the promised land of pure being, and we see with shocking clarity that what we have been looking for is what’s looking. And like Dorothy Gale, we see that the whole harrowing journey is a feckless pursuit because lo and behold, we’ve had it all along.
Namaste,
Rev. Larry
Amen, Brother!!!!!