Photo by jez.atkinson
There are word lessons, and there are world lessons. A word lesson is an effort to convey an experience via spoken or written symbols. A word lesson can be informative or enjoyable or inspiring. A word lesson is an expression of someone’s belief. A word lesson should not be confused with a world lesson.
—ReSurfacing®: Techniques for Exploring Consciousness, by Harry Palmer
My awareness can become so attached to I, that I forget that I am not it!
We can become so attached to our minds that we forget that we are not it.
If you have read a lot of enlightenment literature, from Zen, to Eckhart Tolle, to many others, this concept (the thought) should be familiar to you.
This morning, doing one very simple perception exercise taught in the Avatar® Course, outside on my street, I experienced it, again.
Yet another layer deeper. Yet another life lesson.
I am life;
I am the play of shadows on a sun-dappled street in early April;
I am a field of presence.
I remember when I would study the great teachers, and I would read about how I was not my body…
I was not my mind, and awakening was not going to come through my mind.
I was bigger, brighter, and more beautiful, than I knew myself to be.
I was not even any idea I thought of as “me”.
Outside of all definition, outside of all time and space and everything, I was this definitionless presence.
Those notions were beautiful and comforting. Something they had witnessed, and were charged with bringing back to the rest of us.
Of course, what they wanted more than anything to help us experience it. “Don’t get captivated by my words,” they would always say. “Seek to find the experience.”
Condsider:
What is the difference between eating an apple and studying what an apple tastes like?
—ReSurfacing
Yet, as much as I tried to understand this with my mind, this did not get me all that far, all that fast. Worrying, struggling.
Meditation came the closest. It was so powerful. But it was so hard, too. If I was honest!
Sit there, and notice your breathing.
“But, I just remembered, I have to make a phone call…”
Meditation gives you a powerful respect for the strength of the mind.
One of the main things that is so special to me about Avatar, is that it is a path directly in to this state of awakening. Through the simplest of techniques, that takes only a day or two to learn, I am able to shift out of myself (as I have defined myself to be), and realize that I can be anything.
There is a gentleness to it, like softening in to a yoga posture, or a hot tub.
If you would like to know more about the tool I mentioned, or The Avatar Course in general, you might want to come to an introduction. It’s all about tasting that apple, and seeing what it tastes like!
