What is real?

This was part of a discussion on what is real.

The way I see goes like this. We are consciousness. Pure, unbounded, silent, transparent consciousness. The only reason this is hard to grasp is that we try to experience it in our habitual ways – through the mind & senses. But how can something silent and transparent be perceived?  It cannot. We can only remember it. We are That.

Consciousness, being everywhere, experiences Itself. The process of that experience creates mind. A field created by the relationship of Self with Itself. Note that the mind is not the subject nor the object, but the process only. Being between, the minds skill is in discrimination. In categorizing. Black or white, good or bad, yes or no. As part of the natural growth cycle, the mind then comes to identify with its perceptions. It divides its perceptions into “me” and “not me”. I am this body, these thoughts, these feelings. I am not this chair, that wall. This construct is called the ego. It is only a construct of the mind. The problem then arises that we get stuck there. We think this is “reality” , so we pause on the spiral of development and get lost in the side effects, lost in the adolescence of consciousness.

If we correctly understand the world and who we are, we will recognize this as a stepping stone and begin to step past the ego construct. Wake up to our true nature. This waking up is not usually some big flashy thing. Not about sitting on a mountain top or in an ashram. It is remembering who we already are. Natural, full, and complete. And its happening all over the world, all the time now.

The concept that we each live in a parallel and overlapping universe or that there are many almost but not quite the same versions of reality is a trick of the mind. The mistake of the ego in thinking we are separate (me, not me). From the ego’s viewpoint, it is true. No one has the same life experiences or background so none of us have the same mental constructs. The person standing behind you in the grocery line may be living a life of terror, the person in front the “God was one of us” of the recent song. You cannot tell from appearances alone. What you perceive is your perception alone. There is no “objective” (isn’t that a laugh?)

The video link posted illustrates this idea nicely. We are as if living in a little box (a very tiny little box) with small holes in it, interpreting the environment. But science is telling us this has nothing to do with how it is. We see only the colours reflected by an object, not the colors absorbed nor the nature of the object itself. Sight itself is only a tiny part of the spectrum and even then, much of the information is filtered off. And so on. And on.

In the same way, when we first begin to experience other forms of reality, we may see them as separate. Another set of dimensions. Another plane of existence. But from a higher perspective, they are not separate. It is all happening right here, right now. Its all concurrent. Nothing else is real.

The material world is an expression of our response to the impressions of the mind. The mind creates ideas about “how it is” and projects those onto consciousness because consciousness is experiencing itself through the mind. It seeks information it can use to corroborate this palace of illusion. The senses are a feedback loop for our projections. So it is ironic that we place so much credence on our sense perceptions when they are just feeding back our subjectivity. The mind likes to play games with itself like that. Make itself right.

We see that “making right” behavior throughout the human experience. All the anti this, all the denounced that. All the war and conflict and noise is simply a result of the ego’s need to be right. If we can even have a taste of the freedom that comes when we experience who we really are, then none of it is necessary. Conflict falls away.

When you wake up, you become the observer. Sometimes, before you wake up, you can have periods of time “witnessing”, feeling you are separate from everything and that life seems to take care of itself. After waking, the inner Self begins to move “out” into the experience, absorbing what was once separate and adding to the whole. The Observer becomes all things.

You manifest your desires, but not just physically. In thoughts and feelings as well. In emotional relationships, in your world of ideas, and so forth. The entire idea of ‘world’ and ‘me’ is created in the mind. (we have such great imaginations, eh?)

From the observers point of view, it is beyond mind so there is no “wrong”, no “bad”, no “negative”. It is all experienced as perfection. Thats a little hard to fathom when we see all the pain in the world. But that pain takes place inside the illusion. Inside the mind of all those people who see themselves as separate and alone. Outside mind, there is no pain. Instead, there is only Love and bliss. And from great literature we know that this love and bliss is far beyond what the mind can even conceive of. Far beyond “happiness”. The peace that passeth understanding. We are that.

From the perspective of Oneness, you are the creator. There is no “co-creator”. There is only One. And in the One, the world we knew is an illusion, but the full expression of the One is now a part of us, more real than the “reality” the physical world ever was. The illusion is gone but the Universe still exists, as a much smaller part of the whole. As an expression of the One, not the individual mind.

To me its not so much we must abide by the rules or suffer as that its all in balance so anything done to throw it off balance has to be rebalanced. Cause and effect. If we are in the flow, synchronized with the world, nothing we do is out of balance. It all just flows. When we resist what is, whatever it is, we are pushing against the flow and causing an imbalance that has to be rebalanced. So the experience comes around again. And Again. The wheel of karma. Until we stop resisting. We allow what is. Then balance is restored and life gets MUCH smoother. The suffering itself is how we respond to events, not the event itself. No event has any ability to cause suffering if it is experienced from beyond mind.

To me, there is nothing to control. Thats a concept of the ego who sees an ‘us’ and ‘them’. When we are One and its all perfect, what is there to control? It is only to be.