If we are NOT imagining/thinking, there is only isness, conceptually undivided. If the mind is quiescent, we live in unknowingness. There's no difference between someone who has seen through the illusion of separateness than someone who is attached to the idea that the world is composed of separate things, but the person who lives in unknowingness and has penetrated the illusion of selfhood does not imagine a whole host of nonsense that keeps most people psychologically imprisoned and jerked around by the mind.
Seeing that a "wrist" is a useful distinction rather than a separately-existing thing doesn't significantly change one's life, but seeing that there is no separate entity, which is the same kind of realization, has profound implications. Pride, envy, shame, blame, shoulds and oughts, etc. disappear in one fell swoop because it is realized that there is no one at the center of these attitudes and activities. It is seen that isness is a unified whole. Knowing that "I am 'what is'" means, for example, that there is no entity who can feel pride about some accomplishment. If the body/mind gives money to some charity or individual who needs help, there is no smug sense of "I feel good because I did something good." That entire psychological process centered on an imaginary individual is utterly absent. Everything has a matter-of-fact quality.
If someone blames us for something we did, it isn't taken personally and internalized. We know that they don't see the bigger picture.
Is someone thinks we ought to do X, we recognize that it is his/her thinking and has nothing to do with reality. We remain psychologically unified with the vastness of being, and always do exactly what we must be doing, oftentimes ignoring what other people think we should be doing.
Past insults and hurts are gone along with fantasies about the future. We live NOW, in a dynamic presence, free from ideas that other people have about what should be happening. It is like standing on a rock in the middle of a turbulent sea. We watch peeps being jerked around by all kinds of silly ideas while we calmly manifest the mysteriousness and obviousness of "what is." We are the entire universe condensed into the doingingness and beingness of this moment.
The consequences of seeing through the illusion of separateness, and particularly the illusion of selfhood, cannot be overstated. It is huge! Friends and family often have big problems with people who wake up because they lose all power and control over them. Psychological games are seen to be psychological games and are therefore ignored.
For anyone interested in what freedom and wakefulness looks like, and how it affects friends and relatives, Byron Katie's books paint a pretty good picture of it. Her description of how her children responded to her after she woke up is particularly humorous. Someone who lives in the mind and spends all of their time imagining cannot imagine what life is like for someone who is free of the mind. Someone who is free of the mind is like a force of nature, utterly fearless, unified, content, accepting of "what is", and happily manifesting what we might call "the will of God." Such a person is, in Jesus' words, "under orders," but there is no resistance because "the orders" are the flow of being.
The body/mind knows what to do through the body--because the body is one-with the living truth and the mind no longer obstructs or distorts the flow of truth.
Seeing that a "wrist" is a useful distinction rather than a separately-existing thing doesn't significantly change one's life, but seeing that there is no separate entity, which is the same kind of realization, has profound implications. Pride, envy, shame, blame, shoulds and oughts, etc. disappear in one fell swoop because it is realized that there is no one at the center of these attitudes and activities. It is seen that isness is a unified whole. Knowing that "I am 'what is'" means, for example, that there is no entity who can feel pride about some accomplishment. If the body/mind gives money to some charity or individual who needs help, there is no smug sense of "I feel good because I did something good." That entire psychological process centered on an imaginary individual is utterly absent. Everything has a matter-of-fact quality.
If someone blames us for something we did, it isn't taken personally and internalized. We know that they don't see the bigger picture.
Is someone thinks we ought to do X, we recognize that it is his/her thinking and has nothing to do with reality. We remain psychologically unified with the vastness of being, and always do exactly what we must be doing, oftentimes ignoring what other people think we should be doing.
Past insults and hurts are gone along with fantasies about the future. We live NOW, in a dynamic presence, free from ideas that other people have about what should be happening. It is like standing on a rock in the middle of a turbulent sea. We watch peeps being jerked around by all kinds of silly ideas while we calmly manifest the mysteriousness and obviousness of "what is." We are the entire universe condensed into the doingingness and beingness of this moment.
The consequences of seeing through the illusion of separateness, and particularly the illusion of selfhood, cannot be overstated. It is huge! Friends and family often have big problems with people who wake up because they lose all power and control over them. Psychological games are seen to be psychological games and are therefore ignored.
For anyone interested in what freedom and wakefulness looks like, and how it affects friends and relatives, Byron Katie's books paint a pretty good picture of it. Her description of how her children responded to her after she woke up is particularly humorous. Someone who lives in the mind and spends all of their time imagining cannot imagine what life is like for someone who is free of the mind. Someone who is free of the mind is like a force of nature, utterly fearless, unified, content, accepting of "what is", and happily manifesting what we might call "the will of God." Such a person is, in Jesus' words, "under orders," but there is no resistance because "the orders" are the flow of being.
The body/mind knows what to do through the body--because the body is one-with the living truth and the mind no longer obstructs or distorts the flow of truth.
