Many belief structures are extremely deep. They are so much a part of our way of seeing and interacting with the world that they go totally unrecognized. After fifteen years of silent retreats and experiments with dozens of meditation techniques, I still felt like there was a "me" that needed to find a way to stay in a unity-conscious state of mind. Only when the "me" was seen to have vanished and to have been a figment of imagination in the past did the search finally come to an end. Only then did it become obvious what had motivated the search for truth--the deep belief/idea/sense/set-of-thoughts/story that there had been a separate "me" who needed to understand reality. Only then did it become obvious that what I AM is Reality, Itself. The dog had unknowingly been chasing its own tail. ha ha.
As an experiment, you can stop for a moment and look around. Imagine not knowing the name or concept of anything. It isn't possible to know what's looking, and nothing in the field of view is known, conceptually. There is seeing, and what's seen in obvious, but the mind is totally silent. There is no name or concept for what is seen. The past is not remembered, the future is not imagined, and even the present is not imagined as a point in time. There is only "what is." No distinction is possible because the mind is momentarily inert and inactive. Take a few moments to walk around and look at the world in this state of empty unknowingness. Even if the mind jabbers a bit, ignore the jabbering and just look. This is the world that sages and little children live in. Even the tiniest glimpse of that world may help shift one's perspective somewhat.
As an experiment, you can stop for a moment and look around. Imagine not knowing the name or concept of anything. It isn't possible to know what's looking, and nothing in the field of view is known, conceptually. There is seeing, and what's seen in obvious, but the mind is totally silent. There is no name or concept for what is seen. The past is not remembered, the future is not imagined, and even the present is not imagined as a point in time. There is only "what is." No distinction is possible because the mind is momentarily inert and inactive. Take a few moments to walk around and look at the world in this state of empty unknowingness. Even if the mind jabbers a bit, ignore the jabbering and just look. This is the world that sages and little children live in. Even the tiniest glimpse of that world may help shift one's perspective somewhat.
