Hi - I just ran into the Great American Think Out site and will definitely be promoting it on our site http://evolvingbeings.com Great idea - our planet and our being needs this greatly!
Let me, in words, try to translate my Avatar experience of enlightenment into, essentially, a paraphrase of what Tolle is saying in his book (A New Earth).
Avatar: http://www.avatarepc.com/
What keeps us from enlightenment is that we name (label), and then judge, and then identify with our judgement of (thoughts about) everything we experience in this world. So what we experience is our ego, which consists of the endless internal dialogue running through our heads made up of our worded judgments (interpretations) of what is out there. As a result we do not feel what is out there, or experience it, at all.
The fact is, we defend ourselves from truly experiencing and feeling that vastness"out there". Experiencing it on a constant basis would make it hard to survive in a world where the vast majority are disconnected from that vastness. We need to focus on surviving amidst those beings, finding our personal job so as to afford the ability to obtain and maintain our separate domiciles, our separate food supply, our personal vehicle, and so on. The mind has been our guardian in this defense. But the guardian has become our captor, imprisoning us in a tiny world of our own making.
Through Avatar exercises, we learn (experientially) about the nature of labelling, judging, and identifying with our judgments. Then, in one exercise in Part II, we're invited to stop judging.
In my own experience, just prior to that exercise, I was doing another exercise in which I had become painfully aware of how my tendency to label everything was interfering with and drowning out my ability to simply and peacefully experience everything as it was. I literally ran into my teacher's house and asked if I could take what I saw as the next step, and stop labeling things. Coincidentally, she said, that is exactly what the next exercise called for me to do - experience without judgment or labels - with a wordless mind.
So I did. I picked up where I'd left off, re-experienced my dislike of the constant naming and judging of things, and simply stopped. It took me a few tries, but when my intention took hold, my thoughts simply ceased. At that point I felt like I'd been carrying around two suitcases full of rocks for my entire life, and it felt as if I'd simply dropped them. I felt much, much lighter.
The next thing that happened was truly unexpected and amazing. I began to realize that, without labels, there were no real boundaries between the car and the road it was on, between the tree and the sky, between me and everything that exists. Without the artificial boundaries created by labels and judgments, there is only consciousness and the object of consciousness - the universe. Then, in an ever deepening silence, I knew that there was no boundary between these two either. There was only me, at one with all that is. A single, definitionless awareness that was not separate from anything that exists. And I knew that I was not different or separate from the awareness in any other being through all of time and space. I knew that the only thing that kept them from realizing their oneness with me is the labels and judgments with which they identify themselves, and to which they cling.
I was the One that I and they had sought for so long. The aware will that is the creator, sustainer, and destroyer of all form - the infinite, eternal, I am.
It was sunset, and, afraid I might float away into the vastness, I found my legs and walked back to my teacher's house. I laughed and cried as I told the two masters what I'd experienced. They completely understood. As I struggled for words to describe my experience, the word "sublime" kept intruding itself into my head.
2 comments:
Hi - I just ran into the Great American Think Out site and will definitely be promoting it on our site http://evolvingbeings.com Great idea - our planet and our being needs this greatly!
Let me, in words, try to translate my Avatar experience of enlightenment into, essentially, a paraphrase of what Tolle is saying in his book (A New Earth).
Avatar:
http://www.avatarepc.com/
What keeps us from enlightenment is that we name (label), and then judge, and then identify with our judgement of (thoughts about) everything we experience in this world. So what we experience is our ego, which consists of the endless internal dialogue running through our heads made up of our worded judgments (interpretations) of what is out there. As a result we do not feel what is out there, or experience it, at all.
The fact is, we defend ourselves from truly experiencing and feeling that vastness"out there". Experiencing it on a constant basis would make it hard to survive in a world where the vast majority are disconnected from that vastness. We need to focus on surviving amidst those beings, finding our personal job so as to afford the ability to obtain and maintain our separate domiciles, our separate food supply, our personal vehicle, and so on. The mind has been our guardian in this defense. But the guardian has become our captor, imprisoning us in a tiny world of our own making.
Through Avatar exercises, we learn (experientially) about the nature of labelling, judging, and identifying with our judgments. Then, in one exercise in Part II, we're invited to stop judging.
In my own experience, just prior to that exercise, I was doing another exercise in which I had become painfully aware of how my tendency to label everything was interfering with and drowning out my ability to simply and peacefully experience everything as it was. I literally ran into my teacher's house and asked if I could take what I saw as the next step, and stop labeling things. Coincidentally, she said, that is exactly what the next exercise called for me to do - experience without judgment or labels - with a wordless mind.
So I did. I picked up where I'd left off, re-experienced my dislike of the constant naming and judging of things, and simply stopped. It took me a few tries, but when my intention took hold, my thoughts simply ceased. At that point I felt like I'd been carrying around two suitcases full of rocks for my entire life, and it felt as if I'd simply dropped them. I felt much, much lighter.
The next thing that happened was truly unexpected and amazing. I began to realize that, without labels, there were no real boundaries between the car and the road it was on, between the tree and the sky, between me and everything that exists. Without the artificial boundaries created by labels and judgments, there is only consciousness and the object of consciousness - the universe. Then, in an ever deepening silence, I knew that there was no boundary between these two either. There was only me, at one with all that is. A single, definitionless awareness that was not separate from anything that exists. And I knew that I was not different or separate from the awareness in any other being through all of time and space. I knew that the only thing that kept them from realizing their oneness with me is the labels and judgments with which they identify themselves, and to which they cling.
I was the One that I and they had sought for so long. The aware will that is the creator, sustainer, and destroyer of all form - the infinite, eternal, I am.
It was sunset, and, afraid I might float away into the vastness, I found my legs and walked back to my teacher's house. I laughed and cried as I told the two masters what I'd experienced. They completely understood. As I struggled for words to describe my experience, the word "sublime" kept intruding itself into my head.
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