Friday, November 13, 2015
Red Pill vs. Blue Pill - Take Both
Using the term spiritual enlightenment when talking about waking up to no separate self is very much like treading on thin ice. There's just too much opportunity to drop through the cracks of misleading people into thinking that they need to have a religious or spiritual background to see the true nature of reality.
But this no self stuff? It's one of the most practical truths I've ever come across. As a matter of fact, the success of our inquiry sessions, whether at www.liberationunleashed.com or through email, can so often become derailed by ideas and concepts that this is a spiritual pursuit.
Let me clarify.
Inquiry has to be done as a factual exploration of the nature of reality. We need to peel back the layers of thought to expose our direct sensory experience and not an interpretation of it. This means that not only is it necessary to put spiritual teachings aside, but any teaching at all, including the early education your well-meaning parents have given you. Sometimes it's impossible to see that our view of how the puzzle pieces of the world fit together is created within the structure of language.
You probably don't remember when your mom pointed to your nose and pronounced it, "Your nose", but that's the very kind of thinking we question when engaging in inquiry. Our examination goes back that far into your personal history because the separation between a you inside and mom outside started with those first instructions. But it gave you only half of the story. It also led you to believe that you are separate from the rest of the environment and is how and when you probably began to feel alone and insecure in a big and strange world. In effect, you swallowed the Blue Pill.
So Just Take the Red Pill Too
Though the Matrix movie would have us believe otherwise, it's not necessary to choose. The truth is closer to the discovery that the experience of life is not one way or another. It's a combination of both. We can have our separation, and an understanding that there is only one thing happening, too. It's not spiritual, though. It's not about merging with everything or becoming oneness. It's very ordinary and evident if we know how to look. And how do we look? By taking our sensory experience at face value, then seeing what kinds of truths that view leads us to. We find that there's nothing in here that needs to merge with what's out there because life has always been a singular event, including the idea that there's an individual "you" inside the mind.
Practical vs. Spiritual Inquiry
Where practical investigation gets mixed up with spiritual inquiry and talk about higher consciousness is in that finding the truth about reality does indeed reveal something very mysterious. The amazing mystery, however, is in the fact that we completely miss the obvious. We have trouble seeing what's directly experienced because we rely on those early teachings which were based in language structure that included nouns. Our intellect overrides our sensory input to the degree that we discard one for the other.
We think in language structure. But if we just look, there are no nouns. Life is only ever a verb.
For more, email me or visit liberation unleashed.
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