.... And this is just language play. Remember that a container is formed by its edges, walls or boundaries. Space, time and your present awareness don't seem to have any.
Awareness of space and time configures experiential limits , and limits, as the poet, Charles Olson, and the mathematician, Gödel, note, 'are what any of us is in side of.'
Limits are absolutely required to experience existence, both words that point out the excluded domain we are now entering, as does the word 'exile.'
The actual configuring of the space-time limits that create experience involves mental functions far beyond the capacities of our conscious minds. Not noticing this, we proudly proclaim, "You create your own reality." As conscious, ego centered persons, we live quite out of touch with that which generates both ego and other.
"There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are, but you never know who you are. The person only appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot."
-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
As the Buddha and Subhuti concurred in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, none of the structures of consciousness exhibit the slightest degree of independent existence.
A well meaning deluded guru wannabe may think that he or she represents some special evolutionary occasion serving the awakening of humankind. A truly awake Guru knows that he and his drunk pals watching the Super Bowl are equally bereft of independent existence. A yoga student once asked Paramahansa Muktananda, "What is the difference between the average person and an enlightened Guru?" Muktananda replied, "The Guru knows there is no difference."
Awareness of space and time configures experiential limits , and limits, as the poet, Charles Olson, and the mathematician, Gödel, note, 'are what any of us is in side of.'
Limits are absolutely required to experience existence, both words that point out the excluded domain we are now entering, as does the word 'exile.'
The actual configuring of the space-time limits that create experience involves mental functions far beyond the capacities of our conscious minds. Not noticing this, we proudly proclaim, "You create your own reality." As conscious, ego centered persons, we live quite out of touch with that which generates both ego and other.
"There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are, but you never know who you are. The person only appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot."
-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
As the Buddha and Subhuti concurred in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, none of the structures of consciousness exhibit the slightest degree of independent existence.
A well meaning deluded guru wannabe may think that he or she represents some special evolutionary occasion serving the awakening of humankind. A truly awake Guru knows that he and his drunk pals watching the Super Bowl are equally bereft of independent existence. A yoga student once asked Paramahansa Muktananda, "What is the difference between the average person and an enlightened Guru?" Muktananda replied, "The Guru knows there is no difference."
... consciousness is disposable.'
- Nisargadatta
Consciousness, to Nisargadatta, is awareness attached to, identified with and cognizing objects. Awareness prior to consciousness is neither improved nor harmed by the arising and subsiding of subject-object events. That awareness, unfathomable, indescribable, is alone real.
Non-duality embraces duality. This is why it’s okay to die and why puppy dogs and drunkards fall into the Golden Eternity as freely as Dharma Heroes and Sages. Duality, on the other sleight of hand, pretends to exclude non-duality, generating convincing pseudo-scientific falsehoods that non-dual awareness is:
- irrelevant
- unnecessary and unimportant
- fictional
- more boring than reality television
- impossibly difficult to achieve.
Yet, falsehoods have a way of doing themselves in, eventually. Inclusion is higher and truer than exclusion because it has no enemies, or, to put it more dramatically, love conquers all.
Pay close attention to how you separate yourself from ANYTHING and you will start to wake up. Exclusion only seems to be, endlessly repeating the illusory parlor trick of excluding itself. It merely ex-ists, from Latin ex-istere, to stand out from, to be separate. To be in the 'ex' place is to be already unreal. Ex nihilo is an oxymoron.
Existence is exclusion, but it’s okay because inclusion includes it. Ex-istential separation is entertainment, running a gamut from sublime epiphany to horrific pain and suffering. It defines a realm of becoming, not of being.
The Ordinary of Being is infinitely more profound than the Ex-ceptional of Becoming, though, commonly, we are attached to the latter as though our very lives depend on it and ignore the former as though it doesn't ex-ist, which it doesn't.
