“It could be said that the purpose of this life between birth and death is to find our true nature, and that all events that happen conspire, so to speak, towards taking us closer to this experience.”
”If you don’t search for the truth, the truth is going to search for you in your life, and the way it manifests is through suffering. The suffering we experience is the truth calling us. When we answer the call, we suffer less and less and less.”
When We Fall Asleep
In order to experience the imaginary world of our dreams at night, we must fall asleep.
Within the dream state we forget our sleeping self in order to assume a point of view from which we experience new environments, characters and objects, but the dream stuff out of which everything is made is the product of a single mind. The dream is one seamless whole with no real, independent parts separate from the witnessing consciousness.
Likewise, the infinite, indivisible awareness or reality behind the concept of God knows the world in subject-object relationship by spontaneously and simultaneously generating a world and manifesting within that world as a finite, aware being, as an apparently separate subject of experience.
By perceiving the apparently physical world of subject-object relationships through the necessary limitations of a finite mind, infinite being temporarily sacrifices direct knowledge of itself in order to experience a multiplicity of localized perspectives within itself.
Infinite being, then, finds itself through spontaneous acts of grace, when the apparently separate mind glimpses the oneness of being beyond the illusion of separation and gets a taste of its source. From the finite mind’s point of view, this unveiling, this collapse of separation, is experienced as the fullness of love.
Using religious language we could say: Once I was lost in the drama of experience, in a felt sense of separation, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see that the ultimate reality of what I am [awareness] and the ultimate reality of the Father are one and the same.
When Jesus cites Psalm 82:6 in John 10:34 and repeats the statement, “You are gods,” he is not referring to a separate self attaining godhood, for there is no such self. The reference is to our shared being of the one, ever-lasting Self, infinite awareness, in which we live and move and have our finite being.
When We Wake Up
When the body dies, awareness doesn’t go anywhere—although, like in a dream, it may seem to—for there isn’t some other separate, independent space outside of awareness to which awareness can relocate. When the body dies, awareness simply loses the limitations imposed by the body-mind.
Think of the space in your room. That space is not separate and independent from the space outside your room, though from a limited point of view it may appear to be. When the building is eventually deconstructed, the space in your room will not go anywhere; it will not return to its source. The space in your room is the source. The walls and ceiling are just a temporary enclosure within a single, physical space. So in the broader context, the perception of separate space is an illusion, and the vast, physical space only appears to be divided from a limited point of view.
In the same way, sensations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings make up the temporary enclosure of the body-mind, and just like physical space, awareness cannot be tarnished or harmed in any way.
When we wake up from the dream of separateness, our true essence as infinite, divine awareness will shine.
Jesus did not come to redeem our true essence because the divine presence of awareness doesn’t need redeeming. Rather, Jesus shows the way for the troubled mind entangled in thoughts and feelings. Jesus experienced directly the oneness of being, which he called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, and his message of grace has the potential to save the troubled mind from the perceived threat of a dark, existential death. So for the self that feels lost in the world, the way of Jesus is the way back to our essential being.
Another Version of Our Self
When we understand the nature of each other’s being, we do not become so enmeshed in the content of experience, in attitudes, actions, narratives or relationships. When we not only understand but feel that each and every other is simply a different aspect of our shared being, enclosed in a temporary collection of thoughts and feelings, and lost, perhaps, in the everyday drama of the self, when we fully understand reality at this level, our attention isn’t so constrained, and we are granted access to our inherent freedom.
Secrets of the Kingdom
People lead busy lives. As a result, the message of the church is accessible and relatively relatable in order to pull people in and retain them.
But there is a deeper understanding, and the gate to this knowledge is narrow and perhaps not as accessible. Additionally, there may be an obstacle in the way.
In Matthew 13:10, Jesus is asked by his disciples why he speaks in parables to the large crowds who gathered to hear him. He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them…. Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand…otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn [emphasis added], and I would heal them.”
The turn here is away from the egocentric self, away from the sin of perceived separation; it is a turn toward wholeness.
The Substrate of All Experience
Jesus, speaking as awareness, said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me” (Thomas, verse 77).