(unknown artist)
One of the more curious paradoxes of living life as a human is that we experience ourselves as limited, separate beings.
It’s natural for separation to be part of our development. We have to recognize we’re separate from our mother to become a person, for example. And to recognize how we’re different from others to know what we have to offer.
But once we know the platform for our life, it’s important to explore who it is that is having these experiences and return to our more universal nature.
We’ll do this from a point value or specific perspective. We can’t embody infinity until we are established in the point. We can’t embody enlightenment until we’re established as a person.
Awareness, from a high Unity perspective, is aware of itself both globally and at every point. Infinity is both boundless and collapsed at every point. We are each one of those points of experience coming to know our perspective, then expanding back to our global nature.
This allows the whole to know itself in all the details, in all the perspectives, in all the points. Then we bring that back to wholeness.
However, in the cycles of time, consciousness becomes more or less awake to itself much like the seasons bring growth and slumber to nature. When the value of consciousness available is reduced, we become lost in the content of experiences.
We lose touch with wholeness, and then with our soul or point value. What remains is what we still know. As a child we discovered our body, our thoughts, and our feelings. If we don’t keep developing, we naturally conclude these are who we are. The point value experiences asmita, mineness.
Contributing to the illusion, the collapse of infinity into objects of experience makes them very dense. They seem stable, solid, and real. Yet science tells us it’s just wave probabilities.
We have forgotten who we are and how the world came to be.
And yet, if we stop and look at our experience, we can see we’re observing our body, our emotions, and our thoughts. They are the content of our experience rather than who we are. Who is having these experiences? Sometimes, we need to turn back from looking out and look in on what is experiencing.
Life also brings us tastes of a bigger perspective. This can trigger a search and perhaps spiritual practices. Millions have taken up such a quest. This has driven rising group consciousness. Some have begun to remember who they are, behind their experiences.
The Yoga Sutra calls this kaivalya, singularity. The point wakes up to its whole. And thus begins the unfolding of awareness to itself.
Davidya
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. . .”in the cycles of time, consciousness becomes more or less awake to itself . . .When the value of consciousness available is reduced, we become lost in the content of experiences.” Whose idea was THAT? Who decided that should be a thing? Seems like a bit of a design flaw to me. I think everyone would be a lot happier if that had been left out of the equation.
That is the snake in the Garden.
Hi Gina
(laughs) Yes, there are some cosmic quandaries. Another is if the purpose of creation is for source to know itself, why does the cycle repeat?
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It’s less a design flaw and more an issue of our vision. The system is incredibly vast and there are multiple ways of looking at it. I mentioned 2 in this article:
https://davidya.ca/2012/01/02/why-does-creation-repeat/
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Another approach is the variable of free will. While consciousness does go through rising and falling cycles, it is a choice as to how we respond to that. Free will allows learning to take place. But it also creates the potential for ignorance (lack).
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Even polarities like right & wrong and light & dark are an effect of perspective.
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There isn’t a single “right” way of seeing but rather a number of ways we can progress through.
It’s curious that the west sees snakes and dragons as evil whereas most eastern cultures see them as bearers or protectors of knowledge.
Even the snake you refer to brought knowledge. 🙂
(laughs) Yes, as Neil Gammon and Terry Pratchet say in “Good Omens”, Can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil.
It was actually the snake, Crawly, who said that.
(laughs)
I suspect the original story is about a descending age. Innocence is lost and perception of duality arises. The apple tree is probably about karma. Paradise is lost.
Liking the new addition as podcast. Very nice Thank you. Excellent description of ego as point value.
Thanks, Lorey
To be clear, it’s soul or jiva that is the point value. The intellect recognizes that as ahamkara or ego. The I sense.
When we lose touch with wholeness, we become progressively more identified with the I until it becomes My, asmita.
“We can’t embody enlightenment until we’re established as a person.” -This was an “oh bummer” moment for me since I’ve had many glimpses of Oneness and never felt fully differentiated. I just can’t convince myself of the separateness fully enough to feel “established as a person”. This has had many unpleasant repercussions but I’d hoped my flimsy transparent ego was at least less to wade through moving toward Freedom…hopes dashed. -But seriously, instead of “ego softening” should I be focusing on appreciating and embodying even more that which is uniquely “mine”…the perspective of as small a point as I can feel truthful taking the perspective of?
Hi Dawn
Ah – perhaps I needed to define that a little more. By “established as a person” I mean matured and functional. It’s difficult to sustain enlightenment if the physiology is still growing. That’s around 25 for men, a little earlier for women.
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Some disorders that cause instability of the person may also impact it.
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If you’ve grown up much less identified than most people, that’s a very good thing. Then it’s just a matter of timing and perhaps working out some karma.
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Awakening isn’t a process we do so there isn’t something we can manipulate to help. I don’t recommend a renunciate approach for most people. We’re here so living in the world is part of the equation. Enjoying what is here is good. What form that takes is something you learn by doing.
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Make sense?
I love the picture, poor sap awkwardly thinking he’s a person. wearing his important person suit.
Yep – and then a suit of armor over that.
The funny thing is, the only person who believes it is ourselves. And even that is faking it. 😉