[ seeing clear thru to the bottom of words and images, dept. ]
Let’s explore a few spiritual words like ‘Self,’ ‘knowing’ ‘love,’ ‘being,’ ‘mind’ and its attending ‘conflict’. Ah, words and images. Oh, how they convey, portray and betray yes? Indeed, words – religious or sectarian – are freighted with trainloads of heavy, accumulated meanings, intonations, indications, preferences and denials…they’re loaded and gain their ‘weight’ not so much from their meaning as from belief in that meaning. So it may be useful to look more deeply at how words and images influence and indeed, define, control and limit most of us from living fully in a natural freedom and harmony that’s in fidelity to reality. The key here may lie in seeing below the surface of words like, say, ‘Self-knowing.’ What is that?
In Self-knowing, all words and images – sacred and profane – are entirely seen and understood as being merely pointers, symbols of something ‘else’. That something else is That which is actually seeing these words; that which is aware of all that’s happening in consciousness here/now – all the words and feelings, things, events and ‘experiences’ that come and go like the weather, in the sun of nonpersonal awareness. That which is choicelessly watching these words now is wordless, imageless, awareness.
Indeed, reality is not a concept, not a set of ideals however seemingly revolutionary; not a personal perspective. What IS defies all comprehension or description, all cerebral ‘knowing’. In aware living, nothing is known, all is simply, directly apprehended and recognized as Self. This includes conformity and nonconformity; there’s no duality in reality, so to speak; there’s just One thing going on here and now, and like truth, it is not to be known in any way that involves a knower. We are and this is, totally unknown, yes?
In fine, ultimately, it’s up to each of us to lovingly see from our own understanding and authority, the real actions and not just the words – of supposed ‘teachers’ peers and influencers. To first and foremost, see for our Self, from directly knowing out Self nature which is unalloyed, unchanged, love, beauty, peace and joy…way beyond changing, conditioned, seemingly ‘personal’, thoughts and feelings.
SELF-KNOWING LEADS TO SELF-UNKNOWING, SO TO SPEAK.
Anyone, apparently wise or otherwise, who tells us he or she knows, does not know. At bottom, and with respect, he doesn’t understand there’s no knower, no knowing and nothing that can be truly known in the flux and flow of a continuous reality. There IS some essence we may call love, peace, beauty, joy and delight, but it’s up to each of us to bypass all the wordsmithing, all that’s personal, that’s conceptual, that separates, that creates conflicts.. then, and only then, mind and heart is empty, and may be graced to discover that one IS that which all words and images merely represent.
These words are an invitation to be one’s own authority, to draw back one’s own curtains and let in a little light. In allowing that discovery, in that Self-knowing we may see and ‘know’ only what is false – what we’re not. Paradoxically, there’s truth, wonder and delight only in direct Self-UNknowing. In not knowing. We don’t know the truth, we are the truth. In loving what IS here/now, as it presents – absent any filtered ‘knowing’ of it – one is beautifully alive, free and happy simply to be. To love and wonder.
AT THE BOTTOM OF BEING LIES LOVE AND WONDER
In regard to simply being, perhaps it’s useful to look for love as the genesis in all actions; for real spontaneous compassion simply arising from Self-knowing; for love acting in the healing and the up-lifting of common suffering. In aware living, moment-to-moment, That which we are – love – totally acts, directly, immediately, lovingly. Love cannot arise and act ever from a conflicted mind. Love, and be well. 🙂
