THE REALIZED STATE - PART 23

This series will offer direct pointers to the natural state. What these pointers do is illuminate the way – revealing the cul-de-sacs or false paths. It is easy to become lost in the variety of mystical experience; yet these pointers bring you back again and again to the correct direction. The natural state can never be described, as this would make it simply another object in consciousness, splitting the unified field into subject (seeker) and object (realization). Instead, these pointers have the effect of eroding the false, dissolving the mistaken sense of self-identity and creating the conditions for the return to the non-dual state. .


In every transformation of reality, in every change of form, or every time the stature of a thing is altered, the abyss of nothingness is crossed and for a fleeting mystical moment becomes visible. The reason it is difficult to notice this abyss of nothingness is that, first of all, its appearance is exceedingly brief. Secondly, our attention is conditioned to focus only on things, but the abyss of nothingness is not a ‘thing’. Consequently, our attention habitually ignores this nothing as it compulsively searches out the next phenomenon to arise. 


If, however, we can train our attention to remain stable and clear, then all that is required to “point to” this abyss of nothingness is an ordinary gesture of the most mundane kind. This is why Zen students, for example, who have been ripened through practice, can attain Enlightenment simply by seeing a candle being blown out or hearing a bird cry. In the “intervals” just before and after the arising and passing of these phenomena, Consciousness-without-an-object stands for a split second unveiled in all Its nakedness.


 –        Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom of Barcelona Fourteenth century


Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

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