Sunday, May 30, 2010

Your Self at Play

What are you presently aware of?

The first answer you give is already false.  Any answer is born from memory, from accumulated, relative knowledge.  The word used is entirely arbitrary - it could have been called anything.  This learned knowledge is not absolute - it is subject to re-definition, to re-interpretation.  Once the world was seen as flat - it was seen as the center of the universe.  This was absolute until someone took a boat to the edge or developed a telescope strong enough.

The world you take as real, made up of things, is entirely false.  It is merely a changing totality - if we must call it anything we can call it Consciousness, as Consciousness is the totality of it.  This world of things and people comes anew each morning and passes without a trace at night.  What we CALL Consciousness IS itself the world - in fact you never see anything BUT Consciousness. 

Consciousness is not a property of an individual - the individual is a relative appearance IN Consciousness.  Is this not the most obvious fact?  Without Consciousness this individual cannot be formulated, conceptualized, the various sensations and perceptions cannot be put together in a sweeping imagination and called "ME".

We can narrow the definition of reality down to two things - You and Consciousness.  YOU are that which knows Consciousness, including all that comes with it - the imagination which creates the idea of "World".  Yet what we CALL Consciousness is not actually apart from YOU.  When we look at it this way, it might become clear that Consciousness is simply a movement of that presence, a wave of that present ocean of knowing.  For Consciousness is not a thing apart from YOU.  It is simply a shadow of the absolute reality that you are.

Nothing needs to be done except to give up the relative definitions, the imagination which is taken for absolute reality.  When the appearances of Consciousness are no longer attached to, when the various changing attributes, the names and forms, are no longer taken as independent things but aspects of the totality, there is the possibility to recognize the wholeness of your Self.

Then that Self is not special, not new, not some spiritual revelation but the most ordinary and obvious reality.  It always has been this way, only it was taken as separate, a world of independent things.

All you ever know is Consciousness - and Consciousness is simply your own Self at play.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Randall,

During the search for Truth I really struggled with the term Consciousness. Consciousness for most people suggests some ‘thing’ which comes and goes. Some ‘thing’ that is interspersed with another ‘thing’ called the unconsciousness. Eventually of course it is seen by nobody that all ‘things’ are conceptual manifestations and ultimately unreal. Consequently I much prefer the term Oneness to point to the holistic nature of Reality. For ‘me’ it is unambiguous and embraces All.

Heartfelt thanks for your excellent blog,

richard

Randall Friend said...

Richard,

Hello my friend. Good to hear from you.


love
randall