If we wish to understand the nature of reality,
We have an inner hidden advantage.
We are ourselves little portions of the universe,
And so carry the answer within us.
Our everyday life,
Our everyday identity,
Is like being a whirlwind.
We move about and leave our footprint on the world.
Awakening is like discovering that our true nature is there in the eye of the storm.
Where it's calm,
Where it's peaceful.
In one sense,
Our usual experience and the awakened state are two very different realities.
One troubled,
One at ease.
But in another sense,
They are the same.
The whirlwind looks like a powerful being,
But it is just air.
It is air moving in such a way that it's seemingly taking on a temporary shape,
Personality and influence.
The eye of the storm is also just air.
It is air at peace.
Looking around,
The world really seems like it is outside of us,
Doesn't it?
Looking out of the window,
I see buildings,
I see trees,
I see the ocean in the distance and the mountains in the horizon.
It really feels like I'm separate from all of that,
That I'm in here,
Inside of this little body,
Looking at the world outside of myself.
Being aware of the identification with this body and aware of the assumed distinction between the body and the rest of the world.
Looking out at night,
I see the moon and the stars and the universe looks so much bigger than me,
Feeling like an insignificant speck of dust,
Only here for a microscopic cosmic moment.
It really feels like I'm in here,
Inside this skull and the universe is out there.
Just being aware of the direct experience of light,
Of seeing,
While contemplating how the light,
The photons emitted by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei due to the pressure and temperature in the sun,
Travelling through space,
Bouncing off the moon,
A few of them travelling straight into my eye through the pupil,
Exciting the photoreceptor cells in the retina,
Then alternately being translated between electrical and chemical signals,
Many many times through the optic nerve,
Up to the brain,
Where some processing occurs in the visual cortex and in some not understood way,
Ending up as this present subjective experience of seeing the moon.
I am seeing the moon,
Noticing the questions that stir in the mind.
Is it the moon I'm seeing,
Or is it the sun,
Or the photons travelling,
Or the nerve signals?
Noticing how for granted I take it that the world really is the way it looks to me.
Seeing the emotions this evokes in me,
Contemplating that what I see is a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation,
That I have no way of knowing what original looks like,
If it even looks like anything at all.
Being thoroughly amazed by the acknowledgement that my whole visual world is a painting in 3D created by my own mind.
It may be based on the whole universe unfolding,
But nevertheless all these colours that is being seen,
They are painted by my mind.
Just being with my ordinary present moment experience,
Observing,
Acknowledging that the same applies for all my other senses,
Sound,
Out there so to speak is just fluctuations in air pressure,
But in awareness is beautiful music,
The voices of my loved ones.
Taste and smell,
Chemical interactions out there,
But in here distinct experiences of cinnamon and the smell of spring.
Out there mechanical or energetic interactions,
In here the experience of my wife's hand on my back.
All of it the beautiful painting of life,
Made by the mind,
The foremost of artists.
Acknowledging the assumption that consciousness is confined to some little place inside of the skull as misguided.
Acknowledging how all of experience happen in awareness,
Not outside of it.
Acknowledging that I can't even conceive of having experience outside of awareness of this is awareness.
Noticing that a dissolution of the assumed distinctions of me and not me,
Inside and outside,
Mind and matter has occurred,
Just being.
The pure knowing,
Being like the eye of the wild wind,
With all the seen,
Heard,
Sensed and cognized,
Whirling around it,
All of it,
The knowing and the known,
Just air,
Just one.
Noticing any emotional reactions to this contemplation,
Just acknowledging that.
Noticing any resistance,
Just being aware of that.
Noticing any thoughts,
Try to figure it out,
Argue against it,
Whatever.
Just being aware of these thoughts,
As thoughts,
Just letting it be.
Just being,
Seeing how location in space is a construction of mind,
When looking closely,
Realizing that all is just in experience.
It is all just here,
Just being,
Seeing that there is no past,
No future,
Only now,
All of experience happening now.
Time is the eternal now,
Seen through the narrow slit of the mind.
We are living in a culture,
Entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time,
In which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future.
We have no present.
Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation.
We do not realize that there never was,
Is,
Nor will be any other experience than present experience.
We are therefore out of touch with reality.
We take that which is unreal to be real,
And that which is real to be unreal.
You are awareness,
Disguised as a past.
There was a man who visited heaven and hell.
He went to hell first and saw the tormented souls sitting across from each other at long tables laden with food.
But they were starving,
Because their spoons were so long they couldn't get them into their mouths.
And that was their torment.
Going to heaven,
The man saw exactly the same scene.
But the souls of the blessed were well fed despite having spoons the same size as those in hell.
They were all fed,
Because they were feeding each other.
You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in your mind.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.
