Where does reality come from, anyway

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But now once again; we can get back to your questions. So here are some more comments and questions from Bernard:

Hallo Michael,

   Thank you for that message. I see that I am always getting trapped in my own imagination and stories and in this way keep separating myself from my own centre of awareness. You keep bringing me back to that awareness and the recognition that I am not that which I am aware of. It’s quite astonishing how I keep slipping into the mind space again and forget that I am the process of awareness and not the mind with its thought and images.

     The thought that in deep sleep only the mind disappears but not awareness ….could you please expand on that. It gives a totally new slant to the process of awareness as I am not aware that I am asleep. If dreaming occurs then this is still the mind dreaming and awareness is aware of the dream. If dreaming stops then can awareness still be present even if  awareness is not aware of itself……….as I write this the thought comes up that awareness cannot be aware of itself. In deep sleep with the mind out of the way then what happens to awareness. Is there nothing else to be aware of? If the mind is no longer present (death) then what kind of awareness is present?

 

                      Thanks again for this conversation.

                                   Bernard

 

Hi Bernard, 

Thank you for your further questioning. The thing to recognize is that when you notice you’re trapped in imagination, at that very point you are free. That’s because you are no longer standing as a thought in the mind. You are standing in your natural state of Awareness.

Here you can also see that the whole time you were pretending to be entangled in your thoughts, you were really free. You did not just create your freedom; you just recognized what was always true.

The sign of this freedom is that you were aware of the one who appeared to be trapped. He wasn’t you at all. He was just a thought in your mind. The mistake was taking the character in the story to be you, which allowed the whole story to develop.

This is like a man thinking he is a purple kangaroo. When his teacher said, “Sir, you are not a purple kangaroo, you’re a human,” he started to struggle with his mind. He said, “I am trying to return to being a human, but I always come back to the purple kangaroo. How can I get rid of the purple kangaroo?” His teacher said, “You were always a human. You were never a purple kangaroo.” At that point the man found his freedom from the purple kangaroo.  

So if you can just step out of self judgment, you can learn this most valuable lesson from the “traps” that you seem to run into. You are not creating a new identity. You are just returning to what you always where. In fact it is because your nature is freedom that you experience limitation as suffering. The limitation you experienced was taking a thought in your mind to be you.

Now for the second part of your question: I am glad that you are questioning if Awareness can be Aware by itself or if it needs another Consciousness to sense it. And of course here is where words fall short. As soon as I say find your awareness, you posit yourself as the one outside awareness, looking for it as if it were a separate object.

That’s why I use words like, it is your center, or direct experience, or your identity. All of these words point to the fact that you know awareness because you are awareness, not as a separate thing. Awareness shines by its own light, without the need for a separate light to experience it.

Then the next question comes, when the world and mind disappear something very significant must happen like a big bang, right? This assumes that the sense of reality that you experience when you see your mind and the world, comes from the mind and the world itself. But the thing that makes the world seem so real is your awareness of it. This means the sense of reality comes from you and not from the world.

That’s why when you slip into the dream state and the waking world is gone, it feels like so little has really changed. Reality is still there but now it’s projected onto the dream world. For instance if a dream character asked me, “Michael, don’t you miss the waking world with your family and all of your friends?” I might reply, “What are you talking about, this is the waking world!”

That’s because in the waking state, the waking world seems real and in the dream state, the dream world seems real. But the one thing that remains constant is the sense of reality. That’s because reality comes from you. 

Then when you slip into the deep sleep state where all of the worlds and thoughts are gone, you barely recognize that anything has changed. That’s because the sense of reality is still there even though all of the objects are gone. That’s why people are not afraid of deep sleep. In fact they enjoy it and crave it. And when they wake up they know if they had a good night’s sleep or not. That knowingness comes from awareness. 

One place where people sometimes notice this state of no object is when they are in the hospital under the influence of anesthesia. When they wake up from an operation they may feel that something very profound was there, but they can’t quite put their finger on it or grasp what it was. This is non-conceptual awareness. 

If this doesn’t make sense to you now it’s ok. The waking state is a perfect place to practice and wake up to the nature of reality. Just return the sense of reality to its source. 

If you find that there are certain thought patterns that tend to draw you back into limitation, recognize what they are. Right now these patterns may seem so much apart of you that it’s as if you don’t see them. When you finally do see these patterns you will take the sense of reality right out of them. The seeing and the releasing are one and the same thing, not two different motions.  

The last pattern to go is the sense of a separate I that can stand apart from Awareness. With this gone there is nothing left for you to do.

As for death, practice now while you can consciously release limiting frameworks. While death will release the sense of 'I' that you are used to here in the waking state, it will not destroy your belief in limitation. You have to do that consciously. Without limitation, the transition from life to death is no transition at all.

I am sure this will raise many questions in your mind. Here questioning is a good thing. We take so many things to be normal that aren’t normal at all. So questioning is the process of retuning reality to its source, which is existence, consciousness and bliss, free from any limitation.

And if you need help, ask here and we can explore and find answers together. If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs please tell your friends.

Best Wishes,

Michael