Enlightenment Now

 I was mowing the lawn earlier today and thinking about consciousness. Thinking about the different dimensions of being interwoven within each other like nesting dolls. The utter mystery of all of this hit me acutely. The utter mystery that all of this is--the way that it is--the fact that it is. We can experience being with total intimacy yet no absolutely nothing about it, never being able to wrap our heads around it. This nature is so vast, the mystery so expansive. There are moments that I believe we all have in which we step out of the hypnosis of our daily routine, our daily rituals, and see the complete mystery of our existence. This is more than wondering at the stars. It's deeper, I think going to the core of our existence, which is far beyond our material universe. It's something along the lines of how all of what we call reality comes out of an indescribable nothingness that no one knows anything about, that we completely forget in the hum drum of life. Yet we among strangers in a gray world are among beings with the same exact mystery at the core of their existence. The same exact unknowingness to the why of their life and their reality, the unfillable hollowness beyond the superficial personality each one of us carries waiting to awaken again. When I have glimpses of this profound mystery I am reminded of the deep distraction that my life is against this deep awareness that is at the root of the purpose of my being. In these moments I know that seeing this, contemplating this is of the utmost importance and interest to myself, that my anxiety over living and dying in this world, all the likes and dislikes of my soul are simply distractions to the ultimate question. Why are we here? What is this? Who am I? The distraction of living beings takes on eons of activity in the universe of creation. 

I don't think our attitudes are appropriate in dealing with such profound material. I think in the West, we are far too casual and analytic to meet this. We keep ourselves at a distance and we are deeply lost in the seemingly perfect comfort and squareness of our practical materialism. More than adopting other belief systems and traditions, I think we need to learn how to step outside of our own experiences, or learn to reorient our experiences in this deep mystery, to recognize how they come from this deep place. Their is a origin to all the common themes and structures of our culture. We don't necessarily need to adopt or start over, or try to go back, if only to go back to remember where we came from, where who we are now came from. 

We try to erase the present because we don't value it. I think it's value is to do more with perspective than it's objective worth. Everything in the present holds the keys to unlocking the mystery of life, the mystery of our suffering, and all the deep questions we have about who we are. Everything in us is oriented because of the way the world is and how we have been shaped. The secrets are written in the patterns of this orientation. We fail to recognize them because of the beliefs we hold about them, about ourselves and our hurt feelings. Great catharsis always lies in our wounds. The antithesis is the solution. It is the mirror image. We have to have be graced with the gift of being pushed through our pain so we are no longer dominated by it. It is not our pain that is wrong, nor the perspective it induces. It is simply that an awareness eventually arises out of the pain that allows us to see. 

We try and try to escape the pain of being because we are deeply afraid of dying. Also deeply afraid of looking out to see where we are. We are afraid of being hurt. Simply afraid and ignorant. Somehow we have fallen from our most basic nature, though only in our own minds and hearts. We become something that we are not, something that cannot be. We become something apparently disconnected from everything else. We try to perpetuate this illusion at all costs even though it creates constant suffering and tension. We have forgotten that we are simply afraid to look at things as they are. 

Everything we hold has power. Power that can be actualized in an instant if we only look at it indiscriminately without any thought of our self, without any thought at all. The shackles around Earth, around the human soul struggling to awaken over the centuries keep us in fear of our power, of the power of our mind and of our suffering. Yet the Light is pouring out, the wall is cracking, and many of us are beginning to escape. Know that all of this occurs within your own mind. Within your own awareness. This awareness is an awareness beyond you or anyone, it is awareness outside of the idea of awareness. If it is in your mind, then you have total power over it. It is your own relationship to what lies in your mind that perpetuates how a thing is expressed. Do not fear this relationship, you fear the thing, yet you fear more the light it may shed on the total experience of your awareness. You fear what you will wake up to, you fear the light. You fear your true self. Your true nature. When you know in your innermost self how deeply you adore who you really are and how false this fear is. 

Let us cast our darkness, let us cast out fear. Not through  the oppression and combat, but through recognizing the symbiotic relationship of all dualities in the cosmos. All dualistic pairs point to the One that lies within. The One that perfectly holds pleasure and pain, triumph and defeat. Holding these, yet unaffected by them. When we see we are the One that does not need to be any way, yet is all ways, what do we have to gain? When we are this, what is there to lose? 

We are the One, We are God, we are Infinite, Infinity. We are perfectly formed as we are. This is our truest nature and the nature of everything that is. We have forgotten that this is our most basic nature, our most basic self. It is always ready to awaken again, all we have to do is look and see.