Many people seem to have an Enlightening experience, then subsequently loose it. There is then the sheer frustration of trying to get it back.
But once it is seen that what you essentially are is the spontaneous ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’ in which all perception takes place, there is no possibility of forgetting it or loosing it. This is because, once seen, it is obvious that any further thought, doubt, emotion or action, only ever appears within ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’. No amount of mental noise nor the opinions of others can then dissuade you from the obvious fact that any appearance, any phenomena, perception or experience can only ever arise within ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’.
When you realise that you are essentially that knowing awareness then it is impossible to loose yourself, for you see that you always were and always will be everything and nothing.
4 comments:
Disagree. There is a time, in my memory, when i knew, felt, lived as Oneness. I knew genuinely that Benjamin was a manifestation of This. The light, allah, whatever name was to be put on it, did not matter. There was peace, even in times of trouble, an obvious knowing that This is ever what there is, nothing else, not even a knower of This. And yet, one day you wake up and feel dispossessed, confused, emotionally overwhelmed, lost, in panic. There is nothing to be done. The knowing and not knowing is something of the mind. Whether there is someone opens or closes his eyes, the sun shines. Whether you know or not to be this awareness does not matter to awareness. Knowing is opposite of not knowing, it is phenomena too. Even if this Benjamin entity's brain emotionally is settling with the identity of "awareness" even as non-conceptual, there can still be death, and post-death. What knows what will follow? Ignorance again? Search again?
The first part of your comment is beautiful - it is clarity. But then suddenly you write:
And yet, one day you wake up and feel dispossessed, confused, emotionally overwhelmed, lost, in panic.
Who is this YOU which has suddenly come back? The mind loves to blah-blah-blah.
From the ultimate perspective you are nothing but knowing-awareness arising and falling as appearances.
But if you doubt this and are suffering again, thinking 'do I have it???? I want it back!!!' then you are not seeing from this perspective for that view treats all such thoughts lightly.
To say
'I'm frustrated and suffering but its ok because all is this even though right now I don't feel like all is this',
is like telling a blind man all is light when all he knows is dark. You are assuming all is awareness without knowing it.
If you see all is THIS, then complaining stops.
Panic, doubt, depression, are only flavours of awareness, colours of pure light. They are no problem as long as no-body claims them. There can be confusion, but when 'Ben' is confused, you have constricted yourself and you will suffer.
After 'Enlightenment' all is light. You worries, depressions, fear, doubt.....anything, all of it, is only light. It is the dance of emptiness, a rainbow of pure light.
If you see clearly that Ben has never existed and can never exist, then it's over.
When you see This then you do not need to become aware of it again.
Once seen as a fact, you do not need to assert it further or convince yourself that it is true. You see clearly that all is this without exception and do not need to 'work at it' any more.
You cannot get enlightened twice.
This is precisely what i mean, with another conclusion.
You say: "From the ultimate perspective you are nothing but knowing-awareness arising and falling as appearances.
Indeed from the ultimate perspective. For now you are seeing from this perspective, so was i (so to speak because i was this perspective).
In order for a the knowing of "You worries, depressions, fear, doubt.....anything, all of it, is only light" etc. to happen, there is a mind.
What often happens in non-dual talk, is denying that the mind takes part in this. But it does. Reality is always what it is, it is in plain sight, here. But it is the mind which changes to accept this reality as the only true thing.
What is experienced as oneness and what is experienced as plurality is the same thing. A thing which appears as duality or oneness.
Asserting "once seen as a fact, you do not need to assert it further or convince yourself that it is true" requires an understanding, indeed from direct experience and not from intellectual games. But asserting something has a beginning (i.e. "onece seen as a fact") then you cannot deny the end of it.
There is no one to control awareness-phenomena, if it changes into forgetfulness indeed: "who is there" to prevent it to come back?
I am not saying i am suffering, i am saying i am simply not "experiencing" oneness, although i know there is oneness as me, from past experience, from inference, from plain seeing of the inevitability of "reality".
Experiencing oneness with butterflies in your belly and feeling the Friend is with you is different from experiencing oneness as "a game of duality", yet both are the Friend's work.
Ok.
I guess I agree. But what you call duality and Mind, do not have the power to convince you that they are REAL.
Yes, we experience them as many flavours - and suffering is one of them.
But even though I may be lost in thought or emotion or the apparent feelings of 'separateness' they are still known as only appearances of unity.
Unity in flux,
the one-as-(apparently)-two.
If you know the apparent duality is only ever the true One then there's no problem.
You can enjoy apparent 'separateness'.
Ultimately these are still just labels which divide our experience.
There is only This....
But the true name of this is silence.
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