If you know that the sun rises every day, is that knowledge or a feeling? It is knowledge. It is understanding. You realized it as a young child.
Now, you may have a feeling when the sun rises. If you are going to see a friend, it might be joyful. If you are going to work it might not be so pleasant. Either way, the knowledge that the sun will rise doesn't change. What I am trying to point out is that knowledge is primary. The sun doesn't come out on days you feel good, and not on days you feel bad. It always comes out.
If you want to call knowledge intellectual you may be diminishing its importance. There are many mystical, explosive, luminous experiences that may come with realization, but they are usually experienced after the realization. Looking for the big enlightenment experience can prevent one from the simple realization that awareness is the fundamental fact of the universe.
As an intuitive I was always aware that some fundamental knowledge was escaping me. The cliche of looking behind the curtain was my childhood sport, and continued into my adulthood. When I heard the word enlightenment and what it implied, I was off on the journey. The tiger definitely had me in its mouth.
I was looking for the big experience that would blow my head off and tell me in no uncertain terms that I was enlightened. Basically, I was chasing experience. Looking back, that was a mistake. It cost me many years of not acknowledging the simple fact that anything I might experience would be in awareness. A new, big, grand experience was not going to get me any more into awareness than I already was.
Searching for enlightenment takes place in awareness. Searching for the big experience takes place in awareness. Everything you think, feel, or intuit takes place in awareness. Just realizing that is enlightenment. It becomes an understanding, or knowledge. From then on you don't have to think about it.
You don't have to think or feel that the sun will rise tomorrow. It's knowledge. You realized it a long time ago. It's a fact of life. Awareness is like that. A simple fact. Having a grand awakening experience won't change the fact. A feeling of love, devotion, or oneness won't change that fact either.
After many grand, unitary, ecstatic experiences that didn't make me feel enlightened, the fact of awareness, present, always, dawned on me. The realization was just seeing this fact. The knowing that I was this awareness, was the realization. It was a quiet evening spent reading Robert Wolfe that finally delivered the realization. No explosion. No big experience. Just a simple realization. I thought, "Oh, that's it." I knew my search was over. I went to bed and had a good night's sleep.
Now, you may have a feeling when the sun rises. If you are going to see a friend, it might be joyful. If you are going to work it might not be so pleasant. Either way, the knowledge that the sun will rise doesn't change. What I am trying to point out is that knowledge is primary. The sun doesn't come out on days you feel good, and not on days you feel bad. It always comes out.
If you want to call knowledge intellectual you may be diminishing its importance. There are many mystical, explosive, luminous experiences that may come with realization, but they are usually experienced after the realization. Looking for the big enlightenment experience can prevent one from the simple realization that awareness is the fundamental fact of the universe.
As an intuitive I was always aware that some fundamental knowledge was escaping me. The cliche of looking behind the curtain was my childhood sport, and continued into my adulthood. When I heard the word enlightenment and what it implied, I was off on the journey. The tiger definitely had me in its mouth.
I was looking for the big experience that would blow my head off and tell me in no uncertain terms that I was enlightened. Basically, I was chasing experience. Looking back, that was a mistake. It cost me many years of not acknowledging the simple fact that anything I might experience would be in awareness. A new, big, grand experience was not going to get me any more into awareness than I already was.
Searching for enlightenment takes place in awareness. Searching for the big experience takes place in awareness. Everything you think, feel, or intuit takes place in awareness. Just realizing that is enlightenment. It becomes an understanding, or knowledge. From then on you don't have to think about it.
You don't have to think or feel that the sun will rise tomorrow. It's knowledge. You realized it a long time ago. It's a fact of life. Awareness is like that. A simple fact. Having a grand awakening experience won't change the fact. A feeling of love, devotion, or oneness won't change that fact either.
After many grand, unitary, ecstatic experiences that didn't make me feel enlightened, the fact of awareness, present, always, dawned on me. The realization was just seeing this fact. The knowing that I was this awareness, was the realization. It was a quiet evening spent reading Robert Wolfe that finally delivered the realization. No explosion. No big experience. Just a simple realization. I thought, "Oh, that's it." I knew my search was over. I went to bed and had a good night's sleep.
4 comments:
This is the sentence that could save one from those abject years of yearning and chasing:
"I was looking for the big experience that would blow my head off and tell me in no uncertain terms that I was enlightened. Basically, I was chasing experience. Looking back, that was a mistake. It cost me many years of not acknowledging the simple fact that anything I might experience would be in awareness. "
And yet perhaps we are so conditioned to see the content and not the context, that all those years of failure are the necessary solvent of the effortful 'I's' strivings…
Thanks! Few will read this and most won't get it. Took me a long time to see it.
…and now, the quiet joy of, once seen, always present…
Yes. Experience contributes to knowledge, but it is the extracted knowledge that is superior. With knowledge, peaceful quiet joy has a better chance of arising. As traditional Advaita teaches, ignorance is the problem, not lack of experience. I am not saying that experience is not a great contributor to knowledge, just that chasing the big experience can be a side show that can prevent deep understanding.
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