We are not who we think and feel we Are

This was written by "chip".

"You can laugh because you cry
Live because you die,
Eat because you're hungry,
Love because you're lonely,

It's all the same, nothing other.
The big secret is knowing it's nothing other, really knowing it,

The imagination of the imager imagining,
Not the puny imagination of the personal you.

We're talking
The big honking,
Humungouse,
All inclusive,
Omnipresent,
Beginingless endless Awareness,
That projects you as it's persona.
There is no space."

The Two Truths

Buddhism talks about 2 Truths, the relative and the absolute.

The relative truth in the world of relativity, duality. Of Form. Of movement. Our physical form, body the world, ourselves, our individuality. The world of mind, of thoughts, of feelings, where we can compare, differentiate between individual person, place and things. The relative truth always has an individual 'me' (I am) in relation to something 'else'. A subject and objects in space and time. I call it the head realm and its been oh so familar to the 'me'. What We Witness. What we are Aware Of. What we are conscious Of.

The absolute truth is headless, not just the Witness, or Awareness, or Consiousness or God, there is no name for it, no state for it. Where all things, me, you, inner, outer, subjects, objects are empty of inherent existence in themselves. There is no actual person, place or thing. No space or time, ultimately. All that exists only in the context of our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, in the head realm. The relative realm.

Some accept these Two Truths as One Truth. Not Two. Where the two worlds, the two truths, are inter-dependant and inseparable, paralleling the tenets of the Heart Sutra "form is emptiness, emptiness is form". The two is One, not two.

Another way of seeing the two truths, which resonates with me, is like bubbles and waves of the ocean. The bubbles represent the relative world of mind-body-form, which is still water, still the ocean, but not independently, not inherently existing.

The irony is despite knowing all this, despite all the enlightenment practices one can carry on for decades, or lifetime, we almost never get hooked onto the Absolute Reality. We are almost always hooked on the relative and on what we are Aware of, looking at, searching for, striving towards, struggling to improve, to evolve, to get somewhere, spiritually, materially, or both.

So even striving to be with God, or merge into God or Spirit or awake or be enlightened or ascend or whatever, is still a condition of mind, of thought, of visioning a goal. Of the Relative world.

Like someone once said "You need to have a self before you can lose one" and eventually the "I am" lets us go.

Richard Rose put it very well. "You need to fatten your head before you chop it off".

Unlosable Love

Promises were never made by Love,
Love was never ours to keep,
A Heart was never ours to lose,
Never frozen under nights cruel tears,
Until its wings soared with the sailing sun riding the horizon.

Self-enquiry and a little mind trick

Robert Adams was awakened or self-realised (in my opinion). He studied under Ramana Maharshi and Paramhansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi) and knew Osho, Ram Dass, and other singificant spiritual figures but never sought the limelight or fame.

One of the simplest teachings he offered was a line of self enquiry.

Whenever the mind is angered, frustrated, flustered, or disturbed,or thinking or feeling intensely simply ask "Who am I?" or "Who is getting frustrated?" or "Who is getting pleasure out of this situation?". All day long. Just ask the question without answering the question. If you're tempted to answer ask "Who is seeking an answer?"

This line of simple self-enquiry has extraordinary unexpected results. For one, it stills and baffles the mind in its track, seemingly stilling time. More importantly, it reveals the constant flow of minds' projections, the projection of the personal 'me' that is in relation to every projection of mind.