It seems to me that throughout a lot of exploratory inquiry into the nature of Life, Love, Consciousness… there are common themes. We go up, to come back down. We leave body-mind behind, to find greater heights… and then inevitably, what we find is (has to be) brought back down into our existence in the world. For Truth is nowhere else but where we are. And if it is- we live in a sorry state!
3 stages, perhaps:
1. EGO BODY MIND – We find ourselves in a situation that- if it is not ‘just how it is’ in terms of being something we just put up with and go through the motions of…- feels less than true/total/whole. Surely there is more to life than this? What is this reality? Who am I? We follow these questions- these questions that are our own. We follow them because maybe there is a feeling of limitation, of something missing… an inner sense that things are not quite as they seem… or as they could be… or there is something important and necessary to find out- apparently obscured to our current point of reference, or just beyond our field of vision. And (when there is not a total investment/identification/lost-ness in individual self identity…) we are driven to find out what this ‘something else,’ this ‘greater truth’ (we feel exists but can’t quite place…) is. And as we search, we uncover… because we loosen our hold on all the assumed truths we see that on close inspection are not perhaps so true… and so they loosen their hold on us as we loosen our hold on them. Because this is, indeed, all our own consciousness in motion. If this is the case, we search because we must search… and inevitably (however long it takes)… we find.
2. THE WITNESS / PURE CONSCIOUSNESS – As illusions of ourselves are stripped away, we remove the blocks to the shining of our greater life (through this process of the search, or some divine revelation of insight). We come to see the Light of our own Consciousness. We apprehend the Source. Pure Being! God! We have transcended body and mind, and the fixed-ness of consciousness within this individual, particular, separative reference point. For we see that the body-mind identity is a contraction- amidst many such contractions- of the Ultimate Essence. It is this Ultimate Essence that then becomes the domain of meaning for us… where ‘something more’ rests. This resplendent shining light! We feel this Bliss, this Life, this Wider View. This is wonderful. This is our True Nature. We feel it. We know. The answer to all your questions is none other than your own Life! And yet… soon we may ask, from this place of no question and no answer- but the harmony that is the meeting of both and none… ‘So what now…?’ For without this quest-i-on- this journey-quest that we are on- we may get lost here too… hanging out in non-dual God-Consciousness. Which is beautiful… and maybe our goal is to transcend limitation and that’s enough. But maybe we are born into a body and mind for a reason… Maybe we are here to embrace our own journey- which is none other than the movement of this Light, this Life… the Journey of Consciousness is the Journey of us- This One of Us- all of us- …and so now there is context… now there is meaning… now there is reason and purpose… and you come back round… For you go out to come back in, and you come back in to go out once more, and this is all the Journey of Self dis-covery…
3. INTEGRATION – And so in attempting to really know yourself- perhaps there is a bringing together of ultimate and relative planes of reality. Through your own movement, you reconcile, for yourself, all that you now know. The movement of your consciousness essentially becomes a bridging- and a bridge- across the worlds. You see that all that appears within the Light of Consciousness- all that is born from it, returns to it, and exists in it here and now- all that- all THIS… is the crystallised, manifest form of that Light, having its play of what it is. Pure Seeing in seer and seen. The Non-dual in subject and object (dual!). All that is witnessed in Consciousness is Consciousness also. We remember that we are boundless, and we are bounded… timeless and existing in time- beyond space and contained within it- space itself and an appearance within it. We remember that we are divine… we remember that we are human and the human being is the local expression of the Universal. The time and the space worlds are not just limitations (the limitation that the searching being- the knowing soul may at first feel…), but opportunities- chances for Love to pour through in the living of its chosen path, way, direction. Which is your chosen path, way, direction. Because for all the distinctions and opposites we invent and are invented within life itself- there is just one Life happening. We see this. Love expresses itself through each realised soul- in accordance with its will- and the degree to which the vessel can let that energy of Life flow. This variation is beautiful. Not only because it is varied- but because it is United together in an integrated consciousness that sees all life as Life… that sees the root and the flower as One. The root and the flower and everything inbetween as different… and everything as Love.
THIS KNOWING IS VITAL. ESSENTIAL. PERTAINING TO ESSENCE. OF THE ESSENCE. FOR THE ESSENCE… AND ALL BEINGS, ESSENTIALLY- THE EXPORATORY WAYS OF AND IN AND FOR ITSELF. LOVE! REMEMBER THIS!
