Arriving Unannounced

My "being created" is just the simple fact that I didn't create this body or mind. It is obviously the product of some creative process that this human being had nothing to do with. I arrived here unannounced even to myself. Had to discover what the hell was going on.

Obviously, from the body perspective, it's a setup. Experiences happen a certain way because of how the form is made. When I look honestly at my humanness, not of my making, I can't even find free will. Sure, I feel like I make choices, but I don't see freedom in them.

The only freedom I have is that I also know that the essence of who I am has to be that which created me. Like the Bible says, we are created in the image of God. Yep. We are that. And if we take that on, we are totally fee. And then, beyond that, there is nothing to oppose The Absolute, so where is there bondage or freedom. It's just this, as it is, without anything to judge.

The Void

Someone asked me how my experience compared to Bernadette Roberts experience. This was regarding her book "The Experience of No Self. 

Below is my answer.

===============================================

I didn't read Bernadette Roberts till about 10 years ago, so I had already gone through hell years before. I lost all my so-called Christian beliefs suddenly when I went to college. It was hell because every reference point and meaning left overnight. It's hell because the void has no reference point and therefore no way out. This makes it feel eternal. I've heard the void described as blissful, but that was not my experience. 

The only thing I had was common sense, which told me that what I was feeling could not be the final answer, as no one would want to live like this, suicide would be the best answer, and if this was correct, the human race would extinguish itself. So I went about trying to make a life worth living. Not easy with no reference point. It took a long time. 

Since I could not live in a meaningless void I went looking for meaning. It took many years. Atheist for years, then agnostic, and then to a spiritual understanding of God. God had to be there because I was a created being. It just had to be a new God, a different God, or we could say, a new understanding. 

Roberts did the same thing. I was a little disappointed with her because in the end, she clung to some of her classic Christian tradition, such as the Trinity. In the end she couldn't let go of everything, even if it was only an empty shell. 

I totally agree with her that if you are feeling a sense of unity, then there must be a separation that feels unified. There is a step beyond that. There can't be any separation when "You are That." You know you are in essence That, while at the same time expressing That as the relative human appearance. It gives you the freedom to be the person you are, warts and all. 

Being a human is God's problem, not yours. On the other hand, knowing the essence of yourself as That, what harm would you want to do? 

Where Do Principles Come From?

Some still claim that consciousness arises from the brain. If that's the case, where do the principles of mathematics lie? Are those principles created by the brain, or are they discoveries that some of us discern? For thousands of years these principles were not known, or little known. 

Does quantum physics come out of our brain from a new combination of neurons? Or does it seem more logical that the principles of mathematics and quantum physics have always existed? These types of principles seem to be behind the principles of matter and determine how physics operates. It defies logic to believe they came out of matter, or came out of a brain, millions of years after the big bang. 

It makes sense that these principles existed prior to matter, and that they underlay matter, and are the principles that determine how matter operates, and how the neurons of a brain operate. 

What exists first, the principle of music, or the creator of music. Does the composer create the principles of music, or does he come to know them, understand them, and then create with them? 

The consideration of these examples, surely points to the fact that these principles existed prior to matter, prior to neurons and brains. Only consciousness perceives these principles, and it is obvious that these principles were prior to the creation which makes use of them. 

How long will it take for science to let go of the prejudice that neurons create consciousness? Brains and neurons are more like radio receivers that filter out static and tune in to consciousness. Better radios get better signals, and subtler brains grasp deeper concepts. But everything the brain discovers comes from somewhere else, beyond matter, beyond time and space. 

The Absolute and its principles are prior to anything our brains discover. The whole universe is nothing but an appearance in awareness, the function of the Absolute experiencing itself. 

Time

Time is the measurement of change. Without change, time would not exist. 

If there is a time of the year when you have no schedule and one day seems like the last, time seems to slow, or as we say, drag. The only measurement may be that the sun went up and came down, or that there was a change in the weather. 

When the sages say that the Absolute is changeless, they are pointing out that the Absolute is outside of time. This is why the identity shift of a realized person gives them the knowledge that they are eternal. This is why they can say, "I was never born, and therefore cannot die." They become the measure, not the measured. 

All form changes, be it matter, thoughts or feelings. Awareness sees the changes because itSelf is changeless. 

To know oneself as awareness is be outside of time, to be deathless, to be the observer, the subject of all that is.