Close your eyes and pay attention to some physical sensation, such as the feeling of your feet on the ground. Can you get the sense that the sensation is glowing out of a dark background? Not the visual glowing of light, exactly, but the glowing of experience itself? You are experiencing something there rather than nothing, and that something-ness might also be called glowing.
This glowing-ness is the stuff of which experience is made. Notice that sounds are also made of glowing-ness, despite their overt differences from physical sensations. However different physical and auditory sensations may seem, they share the same essential component: they glow. The same is true of all your physical senses, as well as your mental field: all thoughts, memories, emotions, beliefs, etc.
Look carefully, and you'll see that all of what you call "reality" is somehow made of it.
Consider the experience of time. Notice that you never actually experience time. It's always now. Instead, you experience "memory" -- itself nothing but another form of glowing -- and another manifestation you label "anticipation," and finally something called "reasoning" convinces you that time must exist, and that you've actually experienced it.
Given that you've never actually experienced time, why does it feel so strongly like you have? Maybe you just haven't looked closely enough yet....
What about the constellation of sensations you collectively call "me"? When a certain glowing called "body" arises, it's followed quickly by the feeling "that's me." When the sound of a bird glows, it doesn't generate that feeling. Nothing inherent in the glowing differentiates them as "me" or "not-me." All glowing is impersonal.
If all of what you experience is impersonal glowings, then to whom is all this glowing happening? Must there be some invisible and intangible and forever unknowable person there, experiencing it all? After all, anything experienceable is just more impersonal glowings.
Or perhaps the glowing experiences itself, and there's nobody else there needed to experience it: maybe this whole show is just glowing-ness glowing to itself. Maybe this is what you're marveling at whenever you feel gratitude for being alive. Pure magic.
Suppose you now think: "oh, this is no big deal, it's all just a trick of the brain." That thought is a glowing, just like any other. But it gives you an excuse to take it for granted, to turn your back on the one thing that constitutes your entire life, existence, reality.
Awakening isn't about you waking up; it's about the light of experience waking up to itself -- and discovering that this entire dream of space, time, matter, and a self navigating it, is one glorious manifestation of itself.
We think we have a pretty good idea of what's going on in reality, that our beliefs are firmly grounded. But until you actually get down and dirty with the fundamental stuff of which thoughts, beliefs, and reasoning are made, don't be too sure. The most astonishing of illusions is being played out, and it would be a shame not to chase the rabbit down the hole.
This glowing-ness is the stuff of which experience is made. Notice that sounds are also made of glowing-ness, despite their overt differences from physical sensations. However different physical and auditory sensations may seem, they share the same essential component: they glow. The same is true of all your physical senses, as well as your mental field: all thoughts, memories, emotions, beliefs, etc.
Look carefully, and you'll see that all of what you call "reality" is somehow made of it.
Consider the experience of time. Notice that you never actually experience time. It's always now. Instead, you experience "memory" -- itself nothing but another form of glowing -- and another manifestation you label "anticipation," and finally something called "reasoning" convinces you that time must exist, and that you've actually experienced it.
Given that you've never actually experienced time, why does it feel so strongly like you have? Maybe you just haven't looked closely enough yet....
What about the constellation of sensations you collectively call "me"? When a certain glowing called "body" arises, it's followed quickly by the feeling "that's me." When the sound of a bird glows, it doesn't generate that feeling. Nothing inherent in the glowing differentiates them as "me" or "not-me." All glowing is impersonal.
If all of what you experience is impersonal glowings, then to whom is all this glowing happening? Must there be some invisible and intangible and forever unknowable person there, experiencing it all? After all, anything experienceable is just more impersonal glowings.
Or perhaps the glowing experiences itself, and there's nobody else there needed to experience it: maybe this whole show is just glowing-ness glowing to itself. Maybe this is what you're marveling at whenever you feel gratitude for being alive. Pure magic.
Suppose you now think: "oh, this is no big deal, it's all just a trick of the brain." That thought is a glowing, just like any other. But it gives you an excuse to take it for granted, to turn your back on the one thing that constitutes your entire life, existence, reality.
Awakening isn't about you waking up; it's about the light of experience waking up to itself -- and discovering that this entire dream of space, time, matter, and a self navigating it, is one glorious manifestation of itself.
We think we have a pretty good idea of what's going on in reality, that our beliefs are firmly grounded. But until you actually get down and dirty with the fundamental stuff of which thoughts, beliefs, and reasoning are made, don't be too sure. The most astonishing of illusions is being played out, and it would be a shame not to chase the rabbit down the hole.
2 comments:
Thank you Aditya for blogging your experiences. Your posts and videos have been tremendously useful for me - for some reason -can't explain really well. But once again thanks - it is directly or indirectly helping me continue my practice
Sorry I didn't see your post before! I'm really glad it's been helpful! Thanks for sharing.
Post a Comment