or We Can’t Catch the Wind in a Paper Sack
Michael Mendizza
Download this post as a PDF: One Enlightenment
In 1987, Samdhong Rinpoche and I met first in Sarnath, near Varanasi (Benares) in India. Sarnath, the Deer Park where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, gave his first teaching around 528 BCE. Rinpoche, a Buddhist and Sanskrit scholar, is unique in the world. One of the Dalai Lama’s closest colleagues, raised in the same culture, trained by many of the same teachers, the First Elected Prime Minister of Tibet in Exile and the only person with his training, history and scholarship to meet personally with J. Krishnamurti over many years.
During our first of many interviews, spanning nearly three decades, Rinpoche described how the Buddha and Krishnamurti shared the same ‘absolute’ reality. ‘The perception is the perception,’ he said. Separated by over 2,500 years, each described this absolute reality, direct perception as opposed to conditioned or imagined memories, differently, shaped by their unique moment in history, the language, culture, temperament and expectations of the audience. Rinpoche explained, there is only one enlightenment, not 31 flavors, my paraphrase. What is realized is common. The differences are the metaphors used to describe what is perceived. We are going to explore how this one core message, realization, or story has reincarnated throughout the ages. And, what it means to you and me today.
Scholars estimate that small band hunter gatherers, SBHG, embodied the mentality or consciousness of 95% of human evolution. Approximately 10,000 years ago, the rise of agriculture, the domestication of humans and animals, plus emerging civilizations, changed the human brain forever. To SBHGs an apple on the tree was simply an apple on a tree, free for taking and sharing. With domestication, property, livestock, and inventory the concept of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ was born. Our relatively new ‘me-and-mine self-worldview’ represents only 5% of humanity’s evolution in consciousness. Thus, we have two distinct states, or realities. The original human mind, and a mind conditioned, domesticated, dominated and influenced by symbols, words and the mental images these evoke.
The Axial Age
There was a time, known as the Axial Age, marked by the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more complex, agrarian-based civilizations, roughly between 800 and 300 BCE. This period represented a pivotal era in human history when significant religious, philosophical, and intellectual developments occurred independently and in various parts of the world. Confucianism and Daoism in China, Buddhism and Jainism in India, Zoroastrianism in Persia, ancient Greek philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. And the Hebrew Prophets, seen as messengers of God, delivering divine messages to the people in the Levant. Ancient Levant is a historical region in the Eastern Mediterranean, encompassing modern-day countries such as Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. During this period, it was as if the whole world began ‘thinking’ in new ways simultaneously.
Tao Te Ching
Most recognize the Tao Te Ching, also known as the Daodejing, written in eighty-one chapters, as a classic Chinese text attributed to the sage Laozi. The Tao Te Ching is believed to have been composed in the late 400 or early 300 BCE. The opening chapter or stanza begins with a simple observation: “The name that can be named is not eternal. The name that can be named is the beginning of ten thousand things (confusion and conflict).” The eighty chapters that follow emerge from this core insight.
That which is real, eternal, true, what is perceived directly, can’t be captured in words. Again, we have two states, the mental dream or enchanted inner world created by words, and everything else.
Garden of Eden
Scholars believe The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament was, like the Tao, composed during the Axial Age, around 500 BCE. Some argue it could have been written as late as 300 BCE. The first story in the book of Genesis (the beginning), begins with the Garden of Eden. A story about the creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve (therefore every human thereafter), and their lives in paradise.
As the story goes, God creates the world and places Adam in the Garden or paradise. Later, God creates Eve to be his companion. Eden is a beautiful, bountiful garden where Adam and Eve live in harmony with nature and have a close relationship with God. They are allowed to eat from any tree in the garden except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
A serpent (often interpreted as Satan in Christianity, or for the Gnostics, Demiurge, a malevolent creator deity who rules the material world with its ‘Archons’, psychic parasites, powerful beings who are responsible for the evil thoughts and actions of humankind – tempts Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, promising it will give her wisdom. Eve eats the fruit and shares it with Adam. After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve gain knowledge of good and evil, realize they are naked, and felt shame and countless other hallucinations. God discovers their disobedience and expels them from paradise, a symbol for the original human mind. (Of course, there was no need for a God to punish Eve and Adam). The emerging capacity to imagine, predict and judge did the trick. As a result, from that event forward, humanity is subjected to dream-like enchantments, self-induced delusions, suffering and fear of mortality.
The tree represents psychological knowledge and the emergence of the social ego. Eating from the tree signifies the moment humans gained awareness and self-consciousness, leading to moral understanding and the complexities of civilized life.
(Note: A core and primal capacity is proprioception, the inner experience of a separate body moving through the outer world. Ground the emerging capacity to use symbols and language in this primal feeling of separateness, and we have the perfect storm for the image of ‘self’, me and mine to appear.)
The garden symbolizes a state of innocence and purity, the original human mind, a paradise where humans lived in harmony with nature and the divine. The Garden is often seen as a representation of the soul’s original state of perfection before being tainted by worldly desires and actions. Eating the fruit of Knowledge, or the known, is viewed as a transition from innocence, humanity’s original mind now dominated by reified mental images, projecting and controlling. Expulsion from Eden signifies the loss of this original consciousness or innocence. The name that can be named is the beginning of ten thousand things.
These stories are metaphors that describe the nature and function of the neocortex and intellect. The development of the neocortex marked a significant shift in human evolution, enabling abstract thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to imagine, reflect, and plan for the future. But it also and simultaneously percolates self-deceptions and delusion that spread and infect entire cultures.
David Bohm on Misperception and Self-Deception
“We don’t really understand the nature of our thought process; we’re not aware of how it works and it’s really disrupting, not only our society and our individual lives but also the way the brain and nervous system operate, making us unhealthy or perhaps even someway damaging the system. We recognize that thought, rational, orderly, factual thought, such as in doing proper science, is valuable but the kind of thought that is so damaging is self-centered thought. At first sight one might wonder why self-centered thought is so bad. If the self were really there then perhaps it would correct to center on the self because the self would be so important, but if the self is a kind of illusion, at least the self as we know it, then to center our thought on something illusory which is assumed to have supreme importance is going to disrupt the whole process and it will not only make thought about yourself wrong, it will make thought about everything wrong so that thought becomes a dangerous and destructive instrument all around.”
“If the self (which is actually a mental image) is considered to be something supremely important and whatever it needs is regarded as absolutely necessary, it cannot yield and therefore it takes first priority and pushes everything aside, including even the requirement that thoughts should be correct and true. Therefore, it immediately starts self-deception to justify whatever that image needs. That is why thought becomes dangerous. Thought that deceives itself is very dangerous.”
Plato’s Cave
Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote “The Republic” near the end of the Axel Age, around 375 BCE. In “The Republic,” Plato presents the allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, prisoners are chained inside a dark cave, facing a blank wall. They can only see shadows projected onto the wall from objects behind them, which are illuminated by a fire. These shadows represent the prisoners’ perception of reality.
To understand Plato’s metaphor, it is important to note; the word ‘mystic,’ in ancient Greek means ‘hidden.’ Specifically, hidden from the mind of image and concept. As with Laozi, implicit is the existence of two states or qualities of mind. Conditioned memory, words, thoughts and their mental images, and everything which is not that.
One prisoner escapes the cave and discovers the outside world, filled with real objects and sunlight. He realizes that the shadows on the cave wall were mere illusions and that true reality exists outside the cave. When he returns to free the other prisoners, they resist, unable to comprehend or accept his newfound knowledge.
The allegory highlights themes of ignorance and enlightenment, suggesting that most people are trapped in a limited understanding of reality, only seeing “shadows” misconceptions, or mental images, not true forms, or direct perception. The Shadows on the Wall are the illusions and false beliefs that people mistake for reality. We are those Prisoners, unenlightened individuals who are trapped in ignorance, accepting shadows and illusions as reality.
The Escapes; represents individuals like Siddhartha or Krishnamurti who discover the ‘absolute’ reality, or direct perception, what Krishnamurti described as Freedom from the Known. The Outside World represents the direct perception of deeper, eternal truths beyond the what is imagined. The Return to the Cave describes the responsibility of those who have discovered and embody the difference between what is imagined and direct perception, and share with others the critical need for them to discover this in themselves.
The Buddha Mind
In the Buddhist tradition a mind grounded in this direct perception is called the “Buddha Mind.” The “Buddha Mind,” also known as “Buddha Nature” or “Tathagatagarbha,” is a central concept in various Buddhist traditions. It refers to the inherent, pure, and enlightened nature present in all beings. In essence, the Buddha Mind represents the ultimate state of enlightenment where one fully realizes the true nature of reality, characterized by wisdom, compassion, and non-dual awareness. It is a state of being that transcends ordinary perceptions and experiences, leading to profound inner peace and understanding.
The Buddha Mind suggests that all sentient beings possess an innate potential for enlightenment. It’s not something to be attained from outside but rather recognized and uncovered within oneself. The Buddha Mind represents a state of non-dual awareness where one perceives the interconnectedness and unity of all things.
This state is often described as being characterized by “emptiness” (Shunyata) and clarity. Emptiness refers to the lack of conditioned mental images and the false beliefs and actions they inspire. The Buddha Mind is imbued with boundless compassion and profound wisdom. These qualities naturally arise when one perceives the true nature of reality. The actions of someone who has realized the Buddha Mind are spontaneous and natural, arising effortlessly from an enlightened state of being. These actions are free from the social ego-driven motivations and are in harmony with the flow of existence.
The Buddha Mind is not an intellectual concept but a direct and experiential realization. It is often accessed through deep meditation, mindfulness, and practices aimed at dissolving the ego and unveiling one’s true nature.
Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds.
We should always try and remember: the clouds are not the sky, and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and non-dependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.
So where exactly is this Buddha nature? It is in the sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, it is fun, dimensionally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity. To talk of this nature of mind as sky-like, of course, is only a metaphor that helps us to begin to imagine its all-embracing boundlessness; for the Buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the radiant clarity of awareness. As it is said: It is simply your flawless, present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake.
Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
A Completely New Approach
Returning to my conversations with Samdhong Rinpoche, he used the term ‘conversion’ in describing the difficulty the unenlightened mind has grasping or experiencing what is being described by those who are realized. We ‘convert’ what is being described, to us the unknown, into ideas or concepts we already know, thus we often miss the point completely. Zen Koans address this challenge by providing paradoxical riddles that force the mind to go beyond logical reasoning and tap into a more intuitive understanding. ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ is a classic example. Again, David Bohm:
“We are faced with a breakdown of general social order and human values that threatens stability throughout the world. Existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach. I am suggesting that the very means by which we try to solve our problems is the problem. The source of our problems is within the structure of thought itself.”
If silence, and therefore the infinite potential implicit in emptiness, occurs when the mental images we call thought are absent, those mental images, thoughts and concepts cannot be used to experience or understand the state called silence. ‘Existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach.’
How Words Dominate
From childhood, intensifying from the age of eighteen months onward, exploding at age five when compulsory skooling befalls us, the use of words, abstract symbols, syntax, logical sequencing, verbal and written skills dominate, shoving primary perception, upon which language arts depend, off stage. And this continues, unrelenting for the rest of our lives. Of course, we use these symbolic and abstract skills when attempting to understand and digest realized descriptions and metaphors. Appreciating this, what is that, ‘something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach?’
Simply, rediscovering primary perception, beginner’s or the Buddha Mind, and from this ground exploring deeply the structure of thought itself – that is the insight. This means understanding the nature and structure of thought and metaphor. Instead of getting stuck in the metaphor, we look through the story and experience in ourselves, as direct perception, what the metaphor invites.
Know Thyself
Having an insight into how metaphors enchant, how imagination, creating mental images not emergent from the senses, ferment dream-like realities, mental abstractions that, without careful attention, are mistaken for ‘real,’ is the journey called ‘knowing thy self.’ ‘Knowing our self’ is not marinating in our preferences and personalities rather, discovering how the operating system works. Misperceptions taken for real are deceptions, delusions, hallucinations which have a compelling sense of reality, including hallucinations about ourselves, others, and culture.
Investigating how thought operates, its use as a creative tool, and its overwhelming capacity for self-deception is what is meant by “Know thyself,” a philosophical maxim inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. Socrates, 470 BCE – 399 BCE, emphasized the importance of self-knowledge as the foundation for acquiring other knowledge. Individuals often lack understanding of concepts due to their lack of self-knowledge. By understanding oneself, Socrates argued that one can gain a better understanding of others and the world. “Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach. The source of our problems is within the structure of thought itself,” not in the metaphors or their assumed content.
Note: By contrast, Nietzsche had a critical view of Socrates. Nietzsche believed that Socrates represented a turning point in Western thought, one that prioritized rationality and logic over instinct and the natural, life-affirming spirit. Nietzsche viewed Socrates’ method of questioning and his focus on abstract ideals as a departure from the more instinctual and artistic values of earlier Greek traditions. More or less tossing the baby out with the bath water.
The Oracle of Delphi was an important Greek priestess and soothsayer who practiced divination in the Temple of Apollo at the ancient sanctuary of Delphi. Sometimes high on botanical plants or toxic fumes, the oracle entered a trance and channeled the god Apollo to foretell the future. Appreciating the limitations and inherent allure for self-deception common with ordinary thought, medicinal plants and other ‘trance inducing’ practices were used to access what Bohm, Krishnamurti and others call ‘insight-intelligence,’ spontaneous wisdom and other nonlocal fields of meaning enfolded in Bohm’s infinite quantum potential. The core of Krishnamurti’s collected insights, that of the Dalai Lama, and perhaps others have a similar intent; ‘Know Thyself.’ The first step is gathering attention. Next, using the illness as medicine, we apply a strict for of reason and logic to negate our belief that all the images we have about ourselves and others, including culture. There is only one enlightenment. Implied is waking from the enchantment or dream, a quality of attention Rinpoche described as ‘Always Awakening.’
Madam Blavatsky, Theosophy & the Returned Buddha
One of history’s most bizarre stories center on Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), and her prophesy in ‘The Secret Doctrine,’ published in 1888, of a coming World Teacher, the Maitreya, a bodhisattva who in the Buddhist tradition will appear, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma. But there is a twist. The Buddha Mind is not a person, it is a state, what Blavatsky called the ‘Christ Principal.’
When we say Buddha, we naturally think of the Indian prince Gautama Siddhartha who reached enlightenment in the sixth century B.C., and who taught the spiritual path followed by millions all over Asia, known today as Buddhism. Buddha, however, has a much deeper meaning. It means a person, any person, who has completely awakened from ignorance and opened to his or her vast potential of wisdom. A Buddha is one who has brought a final end to suffering and frustration, and discovered a lasting and deathless happiness and peace.
Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
H.P. Blavatsky distinguished between “Chrêstos” and “Christos” (Christ). According to Blavatsky, “Chrêstos” refers to the human, suffering body of Jesus, while “Christos” represents the divine, spiritual principle within every human being. Blavatsky believed that the true “Christ” is not a historical figure but a divine principle that resides within each person. In her view, the goal of spiritual practice is to awaken and manifest this inner divinity. The World Teacher is one who realizes this divine spark in themselves (the one enlightenment) and helps other attune to this natural quality or state within by negating ignorance or beliefs in false mental images.
In 1909, following Blavatsky’s prophesy, her successors, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, began searching for a human body suitable as the ‘vehicle’ for the World Teacher, the Maitreya, or Christ Principal. Leadbeater discovered J. Krishnamurti, a fourteen-year-old boy from a Brahmin family in India, and believed he was the boy. Outwardly young Krishnamurti was less than impressive. Having almost died from malaria, fed quinine for years, the boy was dull, dreamy, and many assumed he was retarded. What C. W. Leadbeater saw remains a mystery.
In 1922, after years of intense preparation, Krishnamurti had a life changing experience, “I could feel the ant and the blade of grass. I was in everything, or everything was in me. I have seen. Nothing can ever be the same,” rejecting the image and role of the World Teacher, but not the Christ Principal, and distancing himself from the Theosophical Society, with his iconic statement, “Truth is a pathless land.”
Here we can say that Krishnamurti experienced entanglement implicit in quantum consciousness, where the doors of perception open to the infinite potential enfolded in Bohm’s quantum fields. As the wave-form and particle-form are two expressions of the same field or meaning, we have the physical brain and its biological processes representing one expression. And ‘meaning,’ or our inner preverbal experience representing the other. One of the capacities of that brain is to translate nonlocal fields of meaning into ‘insights’ that brain can understand and process. Insights, being the conversion of nonlocal ‘meaning’ not in the brain, into ideas or information. Joseph Chilton Pearce used the savant as a classic example of this conversion of meaning into insight. See ‘Evolution’s End’. This opening of perception to nonlocal fields of meaning happens naturally, without choice, when the brain is not filled with self-induced, conditioned mental images, the Buddha Mind.
Nobody is left unchallenged. People may have different theories, but no one who reads Krishnamurti can add to what he was saying, happily boosting their egos. That does not happen. Krishnamurti made it a bit uneasy, challenging. Not being able to easily disagree prevents us from reaching conclusions and casting Krishnamurti into another brick. That challenge stimulates curiosity, and stimulating curiosity and inquiry is a great thing. It is a great thing to stimulate the inner intelligence that we have set aside for such a long time. You might say this is the significance or value of his life. Creating a state of constant challenge in his audience is his real contribution, his true legacy.
Of course, the word, the symbol or metaphor is not the real thing. But the words, the books and videos carry Krishnamurti’s challenge to people all over the world; the challenge, as we just described, is the real meaning being transmitted. And that shakes the core, the foundation of ignorance, which is the ego.
To understand, to know the real teaching, you need to transform yourself. Transformation is not common, not so easy. Apart from that, once a person is transformed, they will no longer fit in with the unenlightened crowd. He or she will have stepped out of that stream.
Our general view of past teachers and their teachings is that they appeared in the world at different times, in different circumstances, and spoke to the majority of people with different attitudes than today. Buddha appeared. Buddha first summoned five disciples and all five were transformed. They understood. They lived the teachings. After that, the Buddha taught during his entire lifetime and each day many people were transformed, enlightened.
Because Buddha appeared for them and they were prepared, the spark from both sides converged. When this happens, it is easy to become enlightened. After Buddha’s passing, when people had to depend on scripture, on interpretation, on commentary, or on the various traditions, this sparking power was no longer there.
It gradually gets diluted. The same thing has happened to every spiritual tradition. During the founder’s lifetime, many people benefit directly. Afterwards, the understanding goes down, down, down, but the tradition remains.
In the twentieth century when the Theosophists appeared, almost every tradition had become dogma. Most simply repeat the words, believing they are achieving something else. In such a world, a new vocabulary is needed; a completely new approach, and new type of challenge is necessary. It was in that set of circumstances that Krishnamurti appeared. And, his basic task was to challenge, to shake up, to make people think, to not take everything for granted. Taking everything for granted is the most dangerous form of conditioning at this moment in history. Krishnamurti worked in this way throughout his life. We may not understand his process or understand him completely but we are all challenged. And because we are challenged, our conditioning, our ignorance is shaken, which demands that we begin to inquire, begin to question. If you say this is the significance or value of Krishnamurti’s life and teaching, I have no objection.
Samdhong Rinpoche
In essence, Krishnamurti encouraged individuals to embark on a journey of self-discovery, to question their assumptions, and to seek a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Simply, he invited us to ‘Know Thyself,’ how the image making system operates and to distil the process leaving only clear non-delusional forms.
His insights aim to liberate the mind from its limitations, self-deceptions and to foster a state of inner freedom and clarity. He believed that self-awareness and self-inquiry are crucial for personal transformation and the resolution of inner conflicts. He described how individuals are often trapped by societal, cultural, and psychological conditioning. True freedom comes from recognizing and breaking free from these conditioned patterns of thought and behavior. Negating ignorance and belief in false images begin by experiencing how preconception and the movement thought creates the appearance or feeling of an inner observer, or self-image, who is assumed to be the source of thought and thinking. A core insight is that thought creates this observer, not the other way around.
When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation, which is insight without any shadow of the past, or of time. jk
Krishnamurti stressed the importance of living in the present, free from the burdens of the past and the anxieties of the future. Mindfulness, what he called ‘choiceless awareness,’ leads to a deeper connection with life and a clearer perception of reality. He believed that true intelligence arises from insight, which is a direct perception of truth. This insight is not the result of intellectual analysis but comes from a quiet and attentive mind.
The natural order of the Buddha Mind, which is our mind, is love, compassion and a movement towards wholeness for everything, what the Tao Te Ching described as ‘living in harmony with the way or nature.’ This movement towards wellbeing and wholeness for everything arises naturally when one is free from fear and self-centeredness.
The flowering of the mind can take place only when there is clear, objective, non-personal perception, when it is not burdened by any imposition upon it. It is not what to think but how to think clearly. Flowering implies freedom… the awakening of the heart, which is not sentimental, romantic or imaginary, but is of goodness which is born out of affection and love; …When the mind, the heart and the body are in complete harmony, then this flowering comes naturally, easily and with excellence. jk
The idea that human consciousness has remained relatively unchanged for tens of thousands of years suggests that fundamental aspects of human cognition and perception are deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. Within this context, the concept of enlightenment can be seen as timeless and universal.
If truth is not merely a conceptual understanding but an embodied experience, it can be described as a profound and direct realization that transcends ordinary thought and perception. Experiencing truth involves being fully present in the moment, free from the distractions of past regrets or future anxieties. It is a state of heightened awareness where one is completely attuned to the present reality.
In this state, the boundaries between the self and the external world dissolve. One perceives the interconnectedness and unity of all existence, recognizing that separateness is an illusion created by the mind. This realization brings a profound sense of peace, harmony and beauty.
With the direct perception of truth, freedom from the known, there arises natural and boundless compassion. ‘We are the world,’ Krishnamurti often described. One understands shared human experience and feels a deep sense of empathy and kindness. This state of being is infused with unconditional love, which transcends personal desires and embraces all of existence. In essence, Krishnamurti’s emphasis on self-inquiry and self-discovery calls for a shift from relying on conditioned intellect and second-hand knowledge to experiencing reality directly.
The Dissociative Ego, Culture and Intrinsic Entanglement
From ‘the name that can be named not being eternal,’ to being tossed out of the garden, to Plato’s Cave, and always awakening to the Buddha Mind, what’s the problem? Again, to David Bohm:
If the self is a kind of illusion, at least the self as we know it, then to center our thought on something illusory which is assumed to have supreme importance is going to disrupt the whole process and it will not only make thought about yourself wrong, it will make thought about everything wrong so that thought becomes a dangerous and destructive instrument all around.
Benjamin West, 1791, Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
The Original Sin or Mistake
Depicting the Origin of Self-Centered Thought, Culture and Shame 300-500BCE
The Name that can be Named is not Eternal 400-300BCE
One Story – One Enlightenment
“Know Thyself.” The social self-image or ego, and its twin culture, is an imagined defense against actual or projected, inner or outer threat, trauma, conformity, not belonging and fear. Pain and pleasure encode the developing brain to become neurodissociative or neuroassociative, which drives two moralities, one towards connection, bonding, entanglement and peace, and the other towards separation and violence. At our normal low levels of attention, the mechanistic, spontaneous and reflexive flow of internal imagery takes over. Being struck on the head by an acorn, Henny Penny falsely believes the sky is falling. And so it is with the social ego. Having an insight to the implicit enchantments this powerful tool called imagination creates, Always Awakening from the dream and rediscovering a completely different reality outside of Plato’s Cave is, and always has been, the challenge.
This awakening is not a concept, rather a quality of attention and presence, a state that fundamentally alters our interpretation of self, other and the natural world. We see directly that the imagined snake is just a coiled pile of rope, returning again and again to the natural sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, fun and beautiful, dimensionally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity. And from this ground, we dance.
M
Download this post as a PDF: One Enlightenment