I have known for a long time that I have no will of my own. Whatever will I have is God's will, whether it appears to be good or. Bad. This is why Jesus continually counseled to "Not judge."
Once you acknowledge that you did not create yourself (your body, your mind) you can no longer maintain that you make choices. Even if for many years you struggled to make a choices, and it seemed like you decided, you only decided based on the genes you were born with, the experiences you had, and concepts and beliefs you picked up or developed. Can you see that even though you may feel that you've made choices, they were not your own.
Of course, to accept this is to know that you have never had any free will. This is a hard pill to swallow. No matter how much may feel that you have personal will, objective analysis will, if can stand it, provide clear knowledge that you never made a personal decision in your life. That which created everything, including you, set the ground rules that determined how you would decide.
That which is the source, the creator of everything, set this up. The appearance of you is no difference than the characters you dream at night. Do any of your dream characters make their own decisions? Do they have freedom of choice? We can admit that the characters in the dream may struggle to make a decision, but whatever they decide is a product of the dreamer, the mind that you take to be you.
So the dreamed characters are you, your mind playing out it's issues, creating the characters and situations. Are waking life seems more real as we wake up and say, wow, I dreamed I was in such and such a situation, and it was pleasant or unpleasant. But how real was it upon awakening?
It the same when the personal mind wakes up to its actual situation. It is a dreamed character! It is no more real that the characters in a dream. That is why enlightenment is called waking up, or realization. That which you took to be yourself, a decider, a doer is seen through. When the appearance known as you is seen through, you wake up to reality.
The reality you wake up to is not personal. When you realize that you are character in a dream, you are That which created the dream. That which sees the character cannot be named, cannot be described, and yet, you can be nothing other than That. When the sages say, "You are That," that is what they mean.
So, are you awake? Or are you still caught in the dream?
Once you acknowledge that you did not create yourself (your body, your mind) you can no longer maintain that you make choices. Even if for many years you struggled to make a choices, and it seemed like you decided, you only decided based on the genes you were born with, the experiences you had, and concepts and beliefs you picked up or developed. Can you see that even though you may feel that you've made choices, they were not your own.
Of course, to accept this is to know that you have never had any free will. This is a hard pill to swallow. No matter how much may feel that you have personal will, objective analysis will, if can stand it, provide clear knowledge that you never made a personal decision in your life. That which created everything, including you, set the ground rules that determined how you would decide.
That which is the source, the creator of everything, set this up. The appearance of you is no difference than the characters you dream at night. Do any of your dream characters make their own decisions? Do they have freedom of choice? We can admit that the characters in the dream may struggle to make a decision, but whatever they decide is a product of the dreamer, the mind that you take to be you.
So the dreamed characters are you, your mind playing out it's issues, creating the characters and situations. Are waking life seems more real as we wake up and say, wow, I dreamed I was in such and such a situation, and it was pleasant or unpleasant. But how real was it upon awakening?
It the same when the personal mind wakes up to its actual situation. It is a dreamed character! It is no more real that the characters in a dream. That is why enlightenment is called waking up, or realization. That which you took to be yourself, a decider, a doer is seen through. When the appearance known as you is seen through, you wake up to reality.
The reality you wake up to is not personal. When you realize that you are character in a dream, you are That which created the dream. That which sees the character cannot be named, cannot be described, and yet, you can be nothing other than That. When the sages say, "You are That," that is what they mean.
So, are you awake? Or are you still caught in the dream?
No comments:
Post a Comment