Living in a Mind-made Reality
Your Mind is a processing tool that is powered by Consciousness. This Consciousness is not personal to you; it is not your property nor is it something that is unique to you. It is the one Consciousness that powers all of Life, all Minds - cellular, microbe, plant, animal and human; just like electricity powers a vast world of technology each one with different aptitudes and processing capabilities. The electricity is no one appliance's property but is utilized and shared by all technology equally and indiscriminately, regardless of the function of the appliance, regardless of any benefits or harm that may result. Similarly, your mind is powered by Consciousness and outputs versions of reality that are a result of Consciousness interacting with the Mind's mechanisms and controls.
You are accustomed to living a story. It is the story of your life as related to you by your mind. And this story relies on the history of a past and the promise of a future as its basis. Without a past and future, there is only this moment which does not offer enough yarn for your mind to weave its complex storylines. Without a past and future it is impossible to develop a plot line. Without a past and future, this protagonist that you are is hardly worth mention. There are no circumstances transcended, no tragedies endured, no joys experienced, no defeats or triumphs, no foes vanquished, no victims nor oppressors, no lessons learned, no self-realization, no transcendence. Without a past to compare with and a future to project against, this present moment becomes utterly meaningless to your mind. And so its interest with the present moment is only in context to the past and the future. As a result, the reality that you live in is a state that is produced entirely by your mind, based on its abstractions.
This is in stark contrast to the true nature of reality. Because in reality, the present moment is all that exists. The past and future have no real existence of their own, rather they derive their relative existence from the present moment. The past only exists as memories and records, which in turn only exist now. You cannot experience the past; you can only experience a remnant of it in the form of some symbol of its existence. Yet even that symbol (whether it be a bullet hole in a wall, a fossil, a page of a history book or a memory in your mind) exists only in this moment. If it ceased to exist, the past it linked to would be simultaneously lost. Similarly, the future is a derived reality that only exists in connection with its symbols, in the form of your projections and predictions that in turn exist only now.
Your Mind can only produce and work within derived realities. It has no context to the present. Even when it refers to the present what it is really referring to is an image or a mentally constructed abstraction of the present. Just like a camera can capture only a 2 dimensional image of a 3 dimensional reality, similarly the mind is limited by design to create a static image of a dynamic reality. As long as your awareness is limited to the reality produced by the mind, you remain convinced that it is the only reality that exists. Even if you were to speculate that there exists some larger reality outside of it, this would only be another image generated by your mind which is just another extension of your current reality.
Awakening to Pure Consciousness
However, it can sometimes happen that as a result of certain catalysts such as severe psychological trauma, prolonged periods of depression or anxiety, intensely tragic circumstances and intensive meditative inquiry, the mind becomes temporarily debilitated. This may last for a period ranging from a few seconds to a few years. This 'event' that some traditions term as Awakening or Satori, is an experience of a profound and empty flow. It is the experience of Pure Consciousness. While some of the more rudimentary mental processes that allow you to interact with your environment in a basic way still continue operate, most of the thought processes that usually dominate and influence your experience of Life become temporarily disabled. This Awakening then becomes a life-changing experience for you because it is the first glimpse into the true Nature of Reality, unfiltered and undifferentiated by your Mind. Even when your Mind recovers and resumes its normal functioning, that experience of the Pure Consciousness lingers and becomes the driver that propels you on the quest for Self-Realization.
This Awakening while powerful is usually insufficient in creating a permanent shift in your experience of reality. This is because there is a significant amount of mental conditioning that is still very dominant and which easily clouds your judgment. Your Mind continues to produce realities that are distorted because there are certain dysfunctions that are inherent within its own unique makeup. A faulty camera will continue to produce faulty images, regardless of the expertise of the photographer.
The purpose of Awakening is not to create some permanent state of effortless existence. Rather it has the potential to create a shift in the way in which you perceive your own mind and as a result changes the way in which you relate to it. Until Awakening you took your own mind's word as the law, but that single momentary experience of Pure Consciousness, exposes a whole new truth. This truth once known can never be unknown.
Your experience of Life now becomes one of constant inquiry and reflection. Even as you feel compelled to act in accordance with your past conditioning, you become simultaneously aware that this is only a means of perceiving reality and that ultimately everything you see, feel and experience is a choice you are making to comply with the story your mind is telling you. A rift now begins to appear between you and your mind whereas previously none existed. Previously you and your mind were one and the same and to suggest otherwise was ludicrous. But now, you realize that what you are always experiencing is some version of yourself and not your real Self and you begin to feel an internal rebellion brewing.
Becoming The Witness Self
Your experience of your own hypocrisy begins to generate great amounts of anxiety and suffering. In periods of deep meditation or contemplation you are able to connect with that state of Pure Consciousness you perceived in your moment of Awakening, yet this contact is often shaky and short-lived and leaves you hankering for more. Even as you realize that you cannot attempt to grasp for it, you grasp for it. You can't help it; you are compelled by a driving sense of lack and desperation. You begin to perceive yourself as two Selves - the one who operates beyond the Mind ie the Witness Self and the one that exists as an image of the mind ie the Ego.
Tired of being used as a pawn, you begin battling, denying and rejecting your mind and its thoughts, dismissing them, chastising them, suppressing them. Your Ego (the person that you are under the influence of your thoughts) becomes your sworn enemy and on the quest for Self Realization you convince yourself that the ultimate challenge is for you to slay this Ego. There is now a clear line of demarcation drawn between you and your mind. You have set yourself up as the 3rd party Witness to the phenomena of your life. You begin to regard everything from a distance, observing all the events, relationships and activities of your life as different derivations of your mind, which you clearly want to avoid. You begin to value the moments in which your mind's activity subsides and are wary, even afraid of moments where your mind gathers momentum. You being to develop more and more sophisticated strategies for avoiding your own mind. These may take the form of certain philosophical perspectives, self-help strategies or spiritual outlooks. You manage to achieve an uneasy status quo where you develop a sort of cold and aloof relationship with your own mind and its processes, a kind of cold war. Every thought that occurs is met with criticism and harsh scrutiny and emotions begin to be regarded as weaknesses.
Yet, despite having achieved this distance there is a sense that this detached state of existence is not the liberation you were craving. Even though this detachment from a mind that previously dominated, even tormented your experience, was initially perceived to be liberating, after a while the experience becomes arid, fruitless and unfulfilling. The realization then dawns that true liberation is not an experience outside the Mind but can only happen within and through it. The true purpose of that initial Awakening moment is now seen. It is to bring awareness to the many ways in which the mind malfunctions and is constricted and to heal those constrictions to allow a steadier and more unobstructed flow of Pure Consciousness.
Reintegrating with the Mind
At one point you see that this Witness Self that is observing the Ego at work and is keeping it at an arm's length is just another version of the Ego.
The real experience of Pure Consciousness is really one of effortless flow and of non-separation. It is the experience of No-Self - a Self that cannot be identified, referred to or localized. It is not a Self in the ways the Mind perceives a Self to be. It is not a person. Rather anything and everything experienced is felt as the Self.
However, when the mind reflects upon this experience of Pure Consciousness in hindsight it generates an image of an enlightened Witness Self that experienced that state and is somehow separate and other than the Ego. This is enlightened Witness Self is then accredited with being that experience of Pure Consciousness but really what it is, is an imposter created and perpetuated by the mind in a kind of mental espionage. When you see that what this Witness Self is actually an alter ego you created in order to cope with the onslaught of your Mind, you are faced with a strange paradox. It is that you exist in two simultaneous realities in every moment. One is that of Pure Consciousness, of pure potentiality that encompasses everything. And the other is that of the Mind as an Ego and an entity that is in interaction with the world and the environment. The one lays the foundation for the other and the two are in fact inseparable. Without Pure Consciousness the Mind cannot exist and without the Mind Pure Consciousness would have no means of being aware of its own existence. They both work in tandem.
What remains then is to develop and enhance the flow of Pure Consciousness by smoothing and refining the mechanism of the Mind. This is achieved by a process of Conscious Acceptance. The Self that you are in any given moment is constantly shifting and changing depending on your experience of the moment. When the Mind subsides, you are the No-Self of Pure Consciousness. When the Mind is at work, you are the Ego with its personality and viewpoints. Who you are is the image of whatever your experience reflects to you in the moment. You true identity is the Awareness that precedes it all.
Developing an Attitude of Acceptance
Working with rather than against the Mind, your attitude becomes one of surrendering to the experience of the moment in whatever form it takes. You are able to see that resisting or chastising your Mind for its dysfunctions or constrictions only creates another dysfunction or constriction. You no longer buy into the stories the mind creates nor do you resist them. Instead, you see these stories as relevant clues to unearthing yet another dysfunction that needs healing, another constriction than needs relaxing. Only by accepting its existence can you allow the wound to heal. Your journey becomes one of discovery and your attitude one of compassion.
You are not afraid to experience emotions that are difficult because you can see that difficult emotions are like compressed gases that build in pressure until they explode. To gently release the emotion each time it arises without denying it nor identifying with it, is the means to depressurizing its negative effects. Ultimately, all emotions, even those perceived as negative ones are beneficial. It is only when an emotion is suppressed or incited that it begins to pressurize.
Your thoughts are passing phenomena that have only a relative reality and relevance. Any thought that persists is indicative of a direction in which you may need to focus your attention. Excess negative thoughts are indicative of an aspect of yourself that needs healing, while excessive positive thoughts are indicative of aspects of yourself that have inflated beyond proportions and may need to be deflated as they also have negative repercussions. Each thought process, each emotion has its own flavor and points to another direction that you can further relax and open to the flow of Pure Consciousness.
This attitude of Consciously Accepting your thoughts, emotions, mental positions as well as perceptions of the world around you can only happen because you are simultaneously aware of yourself as being rooted as in the Present Moment. The present moment is no different than the experience of Pure Consciousness and the recognition of No-Self. They are all different perspectives on the same one undifferentiated reality. With one foot firmly anchored in the Present you step into the reality of the Mind.
Conscious Acceptance develops a more and more balanced view and expression of Life. As more constrictions are released and more dysfunctions healed, what emerges is an ordinary yet deeply stable sense of existence and a Life that is experienced as effortless flow. While the experience of the Ego is one that is constantly refining and deepening, this refining and deepening is allowed to happen from the deeper perspective of Pure Consciousness that is always already whole and never lacking. The moment of Awakening that you once experienced as a profound moment of clarity has gradually become your normal experience of Life.
You clearly see that you are both the Creator and the creation, the Author of your story and the protagonist of your novel; you are the audience to the drama that you yourself have directed.
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