Clasting Icons, Words, and the Physical World: Your Mind Thinks It Lives in a World of Reflections of Your True Nature: Experience Is Divinity, Part Seven — Killing Buddhas on the Path
All Roads Lead Home
We are fixated on these physical things around us—the world of matter—which, in actuality, are only projections of Reality. They are not eternal and unchanging, and certainly they are not real. Even our sciences show us that what we deem to be substantial, solid, real is actually empty, arbitrary, subjective. The bottom line is material things cannot be ultimately real, for they depend on the perception of the seer for their existence!
And there it is again—perception. Another clue!
If you do not yet see this, it is not failure for not getting it. For there is no such thing as failure. That’s part of the point, too. For all roads, everything that I am saying leads to one and only one thing.
But before I spill the beans…. I just had a funny thought. Have we already forgotten that God’s essential nature and that which we humans alone share with Him is that ability to laugh? Laughter. There it is again. Another clue, if you will.
Like I said, all roads lead there…to this one thing…to this one thing that is God.
Kill the Buddha on the Path
Let us say we see what happens if rather than trying to bring to awareness through gentle tugging at things you know inside but are not ready to remember, we try instead a simple but effective way. I love iconoclasm.
Plato’s Cave
What’s an icon? It is a piece of God that is described. And now described it is no longer seen. For with that, what is being described is no longer focused on, just the icons, just the description. It is similar to the classic misdirection magicians use to make things seem to disappear, and it is similarly mesmerizing.
Words, Icons, the Physical World
Well, there are all kinds of icons that we accept as totally real. All of them block out reality … and cause you to not see the reality you are immersed in. They “describe” Reality … they point to it … but in doing so they block it from view. Because of this, your mind thinks it lives in a world of reflections of your true nature. These reflections are called words, icons, and even the physical world.
What they all have in common is their ability to block out your perception of your true nature as God. What they also have in common is their ability to reveal your truth, when, in seeking God, you consciously decide to remove them from your perception. Words, icons, and the physical world constitute the hypnotic show of human reality, which both conceals true Reality yet can be used to reveal it at the point when you are ready to accept it: As the Asian saying goes, at an advanced stage of spiritual growth, when you see a “Buddha” on the path, kill Him.
Words = “Monkey Mind”
Some of this might be more obvious than others. We talk about words and verbal mindplay distracting one from actually experiencing Reality; we say not to get caught up in the “monkey mind.” The idea is that if you could stop doing that you would be closer to perceiving truly, closer to enlightenment.
But it is the same thing with icons and the physical world. They conceal; and can also be removed to reveal. We go beyond “Buddhas,” idols, and gurus at a certain point. We also can retreat from the physical world into old-fashioned contemplation and meditation, or using one of the “new-age” techniques of sensory deprivation we can reduce our overwhelming awareness of “things.”
Reality Is Unity, So…
There is another way of breaking through the haze of reflections that blocks out the apprehension of Reality. First, keep in mind we have all heard it said innumerable times what the nature of God and Reality is.
We have come so far as to know, somehow, that Reality is “One.” We all say Unity is what is Reality.
We Do Service Because…
Well the other ways we attempt to experience…there I go, again!…attempt to experience this Unity, and therefore Actual Reality, is through service. In serving the unfortunate we invariably feel our heart—there’s another icon that we should dispense with…well maybe another time….
We say the heart “opens up.” We say it opens to others, and we sense our Oneness, our Unity with others. We say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Ultimately we experience our Unity with all things, living and nonliving.
What I am getting to is that the sense of Unity that we are trying to achieve, what we describe as where we are headed, and the Ultimate Reality of it all, is always described aaaass –>> One.
The Universe Is One Vast Expanse of Experience
And what is that One Reality we apprehend in doing service? We get a sense of the experience of another human being. We sense that our experience of the World is the same. This is called empathy; it is called compassion. But what that means is really that we sense that other people are just like us, they are “other me’s,” and that what distinguishes us is not what we are inside—meaning our experience or subjectivity of the World—but is merely the set of events and circumstances that that One Experience or subjectivity is confronted with, deals with, and focuses on. We are One Experience; the Universe is One Experience. It happens to be “looking” in different directions. We are simple foci of Awareness in the vast expanse of Experience.
Continue with The Biggest Secret and Why the Bodhisattva Waits: We Remove the Essence of Divinity from Our Ideas of the Divine
Return to Our Divine Adventure in Forgetfulness Has Us Misunderstanding the Pain We Give Ourselves to Wake Up: Experience Is Divinity, Part Six — The Poignancy of It All
To Read the Entire Book … on-line, free at this time … of which this is an excerpt, Go to Experience Is Divinity
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