There is nothing mind can do to make a realization happen. I kinda like Silence's "grace" because realizations are a kind of grace. A realization is kinda sorta when Truth collides with a belief and the belief is exposed as a fiction.
My first realization sufficiently significant to remember was one that I described in a past post. Two or three years after Carol and I got married, we made a New Year's resolution one year not to prosyletize anyone with our ideas. We didn't like being around people that we called "True Believers," and we decided that because we sometimes acted the same way it would be a good idea to stop doing that. We talked about it, and decided that when attending parties and having discussions with friends, we would not talk about existential stuff, Zen, reality, etc. We had decided to change this "bad" character trait.
Today, looking back, this idea we had seems extremely funny because we were both totally consumed by our inquiry into the nature of reality and our interest in truth. Carol was asking, "Who am I?" and I had my own list of forty or fifty major questions. The idea of not talking about the most important thing in our lives is hilarious, but that's what we did.
Subsequently, we went to some parties and stayed away from our favorite subject. We talked about what anyone wanted to talk about, and refused to let the conversations morph into the one area we found most interesting. As we did this, an internal pressure began to build up. As an extrovert who loves to talk and teach about everything, my psychological effort to adhere to a crazy idea could only keep the truth of who I was at bay for a limited period of time.
One day I was driving along and I suddenly had an epiphany--a realization--that could be summed up as a shout of joy and an exclamation, "I AM a prosletizer! I love to talk and teach!" That was the truth of who I was at that point in life. A belief in a stupid idea, and a great deal of internal confusion, had caused me to suppress my true nature. Once seen, the truth was hysterically obvious, and I felt incredibly stupid to have put myself artificially under the spell of a silly idea.
Most realizations are like that. The truth is suddenly seen, and beliefs are blown to bits. I have no idea how that happens. Its sort of like a collision between mind and reality, and reality is way more powerful.
Most beliefs are not self-imposed in the way described above. They are more subtle and come from conditioning by parents, friends, teachers, culture, etc. and that is what SomeNothing was pointing out. We gradually acquire all of these crazy ideas about the world, and NONE OF THEM IS TRUE!
Little children do not need to have realizations, because they haven't yet gotten psychologically invested in all of adulthood's crazy ideas. They are still innocent of the world.
You may have enormous faith and confidence in the power of mind/intellect, but it is useless for directly seeing the truth. This is why people talk about being humbled. You maybe haven't yet realized that all of your knowledge and intellectual brilliance is worthless in the search for truth. Until you are willing to let go of all of your ideas, you will remain trapped in an artificial abstract dead meta-world created and projected by mind. You are NOT who you think you are, and the world is NOT what you think it is. You will be much more likely to find the truth by shifting attention to what can be seen or heard for a few weeks than by a million years of thought.
The truth is staring you in the face, but you haven't yet seen it. Give up everything you know and become like a little child again, innocent of the world. Go for a walk in the woods and just look. You already know what you want to know. Now, relax, stop thinking about it, and just look!
My first realization sufficiently significant to remember was one that I described in a past post. Two or three years after Carol and I got married, we made a New Year's resolution one year not to prosyletize anyone with our ideas. We didn't like being around people that we called "True Believers," and we decided that because we sometimes acted the same way it would be a good idea to stop doing that. We talked about it, and decided that when attending parties and having discussions with friends, we would not talk about existential stuff, Zen, reality, etc. We had decided to change this "bad" character trait.
Today, looking back, this idea we had seems extremely funny because we were both totally consumed by our inquiry into the nature of reality and our interest in truth. Carol was asking, "Who am I?" and I had my own list of forty or fifty major questions. The idea of not talking about the most important thing in our lives is hilarious, but that's what we did.
Subsequently, we went to some parties and stayed away from our favorite subject. We talked about what anyone wanted to talk about, and refused to let the conversations morph into the one area we found most interesting. As we did this, an internal pressure began to build up. As an extrovert who loves to talk and teach about everything, my psychological effort to adhere to a crazy idea could only keep the truth of who I was at bay for a limited period of time.
One day I was driving along and I suddenly had an epiphany--a realization--that could be summed up as a shout of joy and an exclamation, "I AM a prosletizer! I love to talk and teach!" That was the truth of who I was at that point in life. A belief in a stupid idea, and a great deal of internal confusion, had caused me to suppress my true nature. Once seen, the truth was hysterically obvious, and I felt incredibly stupid to have put myself artificially under the spell of a silly idea.
Most realizations are like that. The truth is suddenly seen, and beliefs are blown to bits. I have no idea how that happens. Its sort of like a collision between mind and reality, and reality is way more powerful.
Most beliefs are not self-imposed in the way described above. They are more subtle and come from conditioning by parents, friends, teachers, culture, etc. and that is what SomeNothing was pointing out. We gradually acquire all of these crazy ideas about the world, and NONE OF THEM IS TRUE!
Little children do not need to have realizations, because they haven't yet gotten psychologically invested in all of adulthood's crazy ideas. They are still innocent of the world.
You may have enormous faith and confidence in the power of mind/intellect, but it is useless for directly seeing the truth. This is why people talk about being humbled. You maybe haven't yet realized that all of your knowledge and intellectual brilliance is worthless in the search for truth. Until you are willing to let go of all of your ideas, you will remain trapped in an artificial abstract dead meta-world created and projected by mind. You are NOT who you think you are, and the world is NOT what you think it is. You will be much more likely to find the truth by shifting attention to what can be seen or heard for a few weeks than by a million years of thought.
The truth is staring you in the face, but you haven't yet seen it. Give up everything you know and become like a little child again, innocent of the world. Go for a walk in the woods and just look. You already know what you want to know. Now, relax, stop thinking about it, and just look!
