THE WAY BACK HOME
By Jean Pool
It is essential to understand that the human mind and thought, while pretty amazing and very useful, are not highest. Behind the human mind is awareness, the very awareness taking in these words. This awareness (Soul) is highest: It is the image and likeness of God (True Self). Don't identify this awareness, who is looking, with any thought, such as body, mind, background, vocation, memories, personality or any authority (idea). In fact, the first way out is to separate them. Keep separating , what is Awareness and what is mind/body etc. Not intellectually, but by bringing attention back to who is looking, thinking and feeling, instead of paying attention to what is seen, thought and felt. It is entirely appropriate, and very useful, to engage yourself this way in meditation for a year or two. See what happens when you do.
The second way out, which is the opposite of what is said in the preceding paragraph, is to pay attention directly to every unpleasant emotion and unpleasant sensation. Try to bring every unpleasant emotion and sensation into clear awareness, while letting go of what is on your mind. This implies that you must be able to distinguish your emotions and unpleasant sensations, felt inside your body, below your neck, from what is going on upstairs, inside your head, as thought. If you cannot do this yet, then practice the first method, bringing attention back to awareness: who is looking, who is thinking, who is feeling, who is experiencing everything. Keep doing this till you are able to distinguish thoughts from reality.
It is easy enough to distinguish verbal thoughts from reality. However, what is poorly understood, and must be recognised directly by each person, are those non-verbal thoughts that arise from verbal thought and non-verbal cues in the environment. These arise automatically, without any intervention, inside the brain, being of a visual, image nature, masquerading as reality. These image complexes, which are intimately related to your brain's unique wiring, are superimposed on reality. It is like putting on a virtual headset. The result is the Fall: you toil by the sweat of your brow and you know birth and death. The result is that you don't experience the perfection of God's creation. What you experience instead, is what is not there, and not what is there.
So, you need to drop all authority, and you need to directly detect those thoughts in your own brain, that pose as reality. You must drop both.
The two techniques are also authorities. Of course. Therefore they initially perpetuate the sense of self, separate from other selves. However, if you use them only to orient your attention in one of the two ways described, awareness will destroy these authorities too. You begin seeing and experiencing what your mind is not superimposing on reality. This must be experienced directly to be believed. You must undertake this journey for yourself. Each person must do so for herself, by herself. Nobody can do it for you. This journey is not through your mind: the authority.
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