AwakeningMindPart2 - The Mind Unveiled

To enter the human experience is to
enter a great forgetting.

The veil of the conditioned mind obscures
the truth of who we really are,

casting us into a world of
separation, limitation and doubt.

So who are you really?
Are you just a mind living in a body,

navigating through life, trying to find
happiness and avoiding suffering?

Or maybe something else entirely,
something much deeper, something eternal.

Something that can't be explained
in words. Something that when realized

brings true peace and true fulfillment. 
Here we're going to look beyond the veil

of the mind, beyond thoughts and
sensations, to find out the truth

of who we really are.

So what is the mind?

Throughout history, this question has been 
asked countless times. From humanity's

earliest spiritual and scientific
inquiries the human mind has been

conceptualized and understood in
various ways across different cultures.

Humans have used philosophy, psychological
and scientific theories as well as

methods of direct investigation to
penetrate the mind's secrets.. to find out

who we are beyond the mind and body.
Ordinarily we think of mind as being

maybe something inside the head like
the brain and it's do with thinking

and cognition but the mind is much deeper
than this. The mind is actually duality.

It's also known as Maya or Illusion.
It's also known as ego.

In Latin the word ego means simply "I".
When the sense of "I" is limited to some

thing it is maya, illusion, but when it's
unlimited... when it wakes up as

consciousness itself, within which all
phenomena arises and passes away,

then there's no longer an identification
with a separate "I".

The true meaning of the word "I" is
infinite awareness, infinite consciousness

That's the only "I" or the only Self
there is. However for most of us

our sense of our self has become so
entangled in the content of experience...

thoughts, images, feelings, and so on,
that we don't perceive ourself as we

essentially and originally are. But we
know ourselves in a modified way... mixed

with the content of experience. And this
mixture of the true and only "I" of infinite

awareness or infinite Consciousness with
the content of experience makes for this

illusory self which is what is usually
referred to as the the ego or the

separate self. The ego is an idea very
persistent very strong, very solid, that

we are a person... a separate entity
inside a body mind. Or sometimes

we think to be just a body mind. The ego
is an aspect of the mind which forms

at a young age and it's that aspect which
gives us a sense of I am an individual me.

The ego is literally a made up entity
and it's not real and it's that which

we identify as the body. It's the part of
the mind that thinks it's separate.

The ego is the personal sense of me
but it's not the true self.

It's a whole imagined construct of me
it's not ultimately who I am. Ultimately

who I am is that which is deeper and this
underlying presence that's always here.

The dualistic mind is made of two
fundamental aspects... the witness and

what is witnessed. There's the phenomena
of the world made up of sensations

perceptions and egoic preferences, and
then there's the sense that there's an "I"

that is separate, witnessing. Awakening is
waking up from this duality... from the

split between witness and witnessed.
Between subject and object, to realize

primordial awareness that is ever present.

If you look at young children, young 
children don't have an ego and they live

in a state of participation. They live
in a state of exhilaration, because

they are not separate to the world.

When we're born we're dependent and we
don't yet have conceptual thinking.

As we develop, we develop concepts and
what's called self-awareness, which is the

ability to reflect on what we're doing in
order to become independent.

So that thinking process becomes
this internal identity.

The formation of the ego begins soon after
birth. We begin to develop a personal

identity which we eventually call "I" or
"me". The mirror stage in human

development is the point at which a child
recognizes themself in a mirror, usually

around 6 to 18 months of age. And it is
just one part of the formation of the ego

via the process of identification. It's
not that we get our ego from recognizing

a character in the mirror. It's part of a
socialization process or conditioning

as those around us begin to treat us as a 
separate person, as a separate "I".

We learn to identify a sense of "I" through
the sensations that arise on the body,

through perception and conceptualization
of things. The mind divides and separates

one thing from another, and then we develop
preferences towards those things.

Some things we like, some some things we
don't like. This "I" becomes our

individual separate and unique identity
as we move through life.

It is the story of who we believe we are.

And the consciousness that we are, starts
to believe it when we are very young.

When we are children and it grows with us 
until we are completely convinced

to be a person. As people grow and move
towards adolescent and into adulthood they

develop a sense of separation; a sense of
being an "I" who lives inside their heads.

So they become separate egos
who live in a state of wanting,

a state of incompleteness, whose lives 
are dominated by a desire to

accumulate things to compensate for
their incompleteness.

It's the mind that causes all the issues
all the problems. The mind is a power

that creates the entire
illusion of separation...

The entire illusion or appearance of
being a person living in a world.

We could experientially verify
that every time we experience

psychological suffering we can always
trace it back to the belief to be this

separate person, this separate entity.
There are no exceptions, no exceptions.

I'm not talking about physical pain, but
psychological suffering is absolutely

unnecessary it is predicated upon the
belief to be this separate or

apparently separate body mind.
Because we're like fragments who've been

broken away from the whole, like jigsaw
pieces that have become disconnected and

spread far apart. So there is a feeling
of "something's missing",

"something's not right". The mind seems
like an insurmountable obstacle.

How can we overcome the mind?
The mind seems to have no end.

Attempting to conquer the mind using the
mind creates an endless struggle.

Akin to trying to lift oneself up by
pulling on one's own bootstraps.

The ego structure can feel devastated,
lost and confused, feeling that life

has no meaning, and as that seeking mind
struggles we experience what St John

of the Cross called The Dark Night of
the Soul. This is a necessary part of the

disillusionment process. It is only by
letting go of seeking and the false

identification with the seeker that
we come into direct union with life.

I was in a good place in my life. I had
sort of given up on the spiritual search,

not because I'd given up as such but
because there was nothing else really to

look for. I wasn't seeking enlightenment.
I wasn't seeking a awakening. I was

seeking peace and I was seeking happiness
and I found that surrender to what is was

the only way and that life was my teacher.
After many many many years of searching

everything fell away. The structure of the
me that I knew myself as fell away.

I was sitting in my living room 
and over a period of a few weeks a great

sort of inner desolation seemed to appear
in me. So this was unexpected, this vast

inner landscape of darkness... a kind of
abandonment... an existential abandonment

from life itself. And I noticed how the
mind's movement wanted to move away from

this inner landscape of darkness.
And I asked a question to myself:

"What is the meaning of suffering?
What is the nature of suffering?

How can suffering end?" Or perhaps it
doesn't end and in that question what

arose was this willingness to not move
from where I was, to not move away from

that dark landscape, and to surrender
in that even if it meant the end of me.

And I didn't know what that meant, the end
of me, but it came up as a kind of knowing

that wasn't yet conscious, and in that
moment totally unexpectedly the whole

structure of self died. It's like the whole
'me' identity died, and surprisingly

there was a merging with life itself that
ended the separation between me and life.

And from that point on I knew that I and
life are one; there is no separation...

it's all in the mind's movement. And from
that point on the whole structure of this

'Amoda' that had been built on a victim
identity, not just a victim of

circumstances, but a victim of my feelings
a victim of emotions, a victim of

thoughts, and therefore constantly trying
to change those, to change thoughts to

change feelings, to make them better, to
make them more positive, to make them more

uplifted... that ended. And without the 
victim it was as if I was born anew.

So I died and I was reborn in that.
It's like all the veils of perception that

were built on the identity of Amoda as a
me with her history, with her thoughts,

with her beliefs, with her experiences,
just came undone. So it was totally naked

from that moment on and it's
never changed since then.

In Buddhism the first Noble Truth 
is that there is suffering. There is this

inherent dissatisfaction within the
conditioned mind. Dukkha or the chronic

dissatisfaction of the mind encompasses
not only physical and emotional pain but

also more subtle forms of dissatisfaction
such as the inherent impermanence of all

things and the inability to find lasting
satisfaction in worldly pursuits.

True happiness or fulfillment cannot be
found in external material pursuits.

Even when things go the way we think they
should. Even when we're following

the script, being a good person, we have 
successful relationships, successful

careers, even then there's often this
underlying sense that something's just not

quite right. Something that we're missing,
something that we're not perceiving

accurately, and the closer we look at that
often it becomes more vivid, more obvious.

So what I often say is the first step in
the awakening process is acknowledging

that we suffer. We could summarize it
by saying it's a sort of sense that life

just isn't functioning right, or perhaps 
I'm not functioning right within life.

But it's uncomfortable... it's grace that
it's uncomfortable because it leads us

into this investigation that can take us to
places that we never could have imagined.

Why do people suffer? If we talk about
physical pain we have to understand that

the reason why we experience physical pain
is because physical pain is a protection

device that we have genetically inherited.
If we never experienced pain we would

constantly bump into objects and our body
would drink sulfuric acid and our body

wouldn't last for too long. The reason of
psychological pain is different. It is:

"you're making a mistake".
So psychological pain is not a problem,

it is the beginning of the solution.
Psychological pain is telling us a lesson

about another mistake we make which is to
believe we are a separate human being.

That's a mistake... that's a fundamental
mistake. It is the original sin;

the original sin that kicks us out of the
Kingdom, out of the garden of Eden.

The original meaning of the word sin
means "to miss the mark".

Egoic consciousness is a pathological
state of mind whereby we constantly

miss the mark. This is the meaning of
"the fall". We are focused on the fruits

of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, focused on thoughts.

The dualistic mind is made of the phenomena
that forms the perceived world of form;

made of sensations, perceptions, egoic
preferences, and this sense that there is

an "I" that is separate, witnessing. It is
this "I" thought that is at the root of

identification with the ego.

Whatever we are experiencing it is I who
am experiencing it. If I am sad or anxious

or lonely it is I who am having that
experience. If I'm talking with you

it is I who am talking. If I'm seeing the
world it is I who am seeing the world.

So all our experience revolves around
this "I". "I" is the central character

in all our experience so that the essential
investigation... the prerequisite for

awakening, is to explore
and recognize the nature of the "I"

or the self that we really are.

In the heart Sutra one of the most revered
teachings of Buddhism it says that to be

liberated we must realize this entire
mechanism of the dualistic mind

to be empty of self. When the "I" thought
drops, then duality itself collapses.

Form is realized as exactly emptiness,
emptiness exactly form.

In the samadhi state, emptiness dances
as fullness, stillness is inherent within

movement, silence inherent within 
sound. Life is experienced directly,

not mediated via the filter of the mind.
When we no longer go after the fruits

of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
when we no longer interface with the world

in the old way, it is liberation,
the end of suffering.

As long as we believe to be having our own
mind or our own ignorance or our own ego,

it is because we are viewing this from a
separate point of view and this is okay

you know at the beginning that's how you're
going to see it. But it's not how things

are in reality. In reality there is only
life. That's it. Only pure life into action

So suffering is this resistance to life,
resistance to our yes,

resistance to our no, resistance to
anything that is appearing,

because we feel separated. And awakening
is the healing of this separation,

of this idea to be separated.

We can start to understand egoic 
resistance in the mind by observing the

larger principle of how all energy moves
in the universe. One way to understand is

by looking at something called a
Lichtenberg figure. A Lichtenberg figure

is a pattern that occurs when high voltage
electrical discharge passes through

materials. The electrical discharge
creates a pattern of branching channels

that look like trees. Here electricity is
going into wood. In this example the

Lichtenberg figure is created by injecting
trillions of electrons into an acrylic

block using a 5 million volt particle
accelerator. All physical matter, in this

case the acrylic block, is a resistance
or slowing down of energy.

In a thunderstorm the resistance of the
air affects the formation of the conductive

channel and the current flow. When we
observe the treelike structures created by

the energy we're seeing the path that
energy took through the medium

through time. These treelike patterns or
branching patterns are found at all levels

and scales of nature, from the micro to
the macro. The very fabric of the universe

is a play of form, a play of resistance;
one giant mind playing a kind of hide

and seek with itself. Samskaras or
unconscious patterns are created when the

charge of an experience is high. Energies
come together and the "I" thought appears.

Resistance appears. If there's no
resistance then energy just passes through

life flows through. But when there's
resistance, when "I" appears,

then the energy branches off, creating
new pathways in the unconscious mind.

These patterns run autonomously, hiding
and growing in the shadows until they're

revealed again and consciously integrated 
into the whole.

The very first memory I have is of being
really scared and I didn't know why I was

scared and feeling like something was going
to go wrong in any particular moment,

and that feeling persisted throughout my
whole life and intensified in my 20s.

And I sank into a deep depression even
after having four children.

And I ended up going through probably 3
or 4 years where I was really searching

for something but didn't know what that
was. I never heard about awakening, didn't

know what that was. And over time it began
to become clear that whatever I was looking

for wasn't to be found in my outer life.
I had a good family, good business at the

time; all the things that anyone could
want. And yet still felt really empty

inside, and eventually as part of healing
from my depression I discovered meditation

and dived into that, found some kind of
peace, some deep sense of contentment,

and for the first time in my entire life
that sense of dread or fear had disappeared

just momentarily for that first time ever.
So I began to try to find out everything I

could about what had happened, why that
change. And why it had come back again,

that feeling of fear. I began to research
different spiritual pathways and came

across this term awakening, enlightenment,
and began to try to understand

what that is. Eventually 15-20 years later
came to recognize that it is

when we're not believing our thoughts
anymore. Thoughts might still be going on,

but the fear was coming from believing
my thoughts, believing that I was just

a person or someone who was going about
my life, and came to see I was a lot more

than that. I am infinite and that over a
period of 5 years that began to stabilize

for lack of a better word. I had to look
at everything that was coming up

in the way of that, the sense of not
being a good enough parent, the sense of

this feeling of inadequacy in my core. 
I had to really look at that and

investigate that and contemplate that.
And eventually the peace became stable

effortless, and even joy and love,
sometimes even bliss. A deep sense of

everything being okay, feeling at home,
feeling safe, feeling that I can love

myself, I like myself which is something
that was not possible before for me.

Many people get a glimpse of awakening
but then seem to lose it.

There's this game of I've got it and then
I've lost it, or I'm awake and now

the mind has come back. This happens when
awakening is not fully recognized

for what it is. Often there's a pleasant
state when samadhi occurs; energy, bliss

or a change in the mind consciousness or 
perception and a sense of ease or freedom.

And one will naturally mistake the
phenomenal state for the truth

of who you are. Often after a glimpse of
awakening one will start seeking states

or experiences rather than recognizing
the awareness that is already present,

and realizing it to be the source of true
fulfillment. The truth of who you are

is not a temporary state or experience.
The phenomena comes and goes but the one

who remains, primordial awareness, always
IS. If you continue seeking states

or experiences, eventually the seeker will
get stronger and stronger and you will get

farther and farther from the truth.
The Seeker always misses the mark

by chasing what is impermanent, just
like an addict chasing temporary highs,

and just like the addict the false seeker
will always come

to a crisis point or failure point.

Life is a festival of addictive patterns of
behavior and when I say that I don't mean

only addiction to drugs like alcohol and
nicotine. Everything that is preponderant

in society tends to be addictive
patterns of behavior; addiction to

reality television, addiction to celebrity
life addiction to buying the next pair of

shoes, and why is that? The reason for
that is that we are desperate to find a

way to escape the profoundly meaningless
and unnatural way of life that we have.

But we don't know how to escape that so
we try to compensate for it by engaging

in addiction. Now understanding reality 
has this peculiar characteristic of making

life more natural, making life better
aligned with the rhythm and flow

and the directions of nature. If that
happens there is no need

for the addiction anymore, and we will
live more fulfilling, healthier overall

better lives without skewed perspectives 
like the notion that your life is about you

and my life is about me, which is one of
the most unnatural things imaginable.

It's like the blossom on my apple tree
thinking my life's about me and I need to

survive forever. If the blossom had
its way there would be no more apples

and no more apple trees.

Once we understand the truth there
is naturally a flip from an ego centered

life or a life that is constantly feeding
the patterns of craving and aversion,

to a life that is more natural,
more in the flow.

And then it can happen at a certain point
that this idea goes into crisis and maybe

we start to seek spiritually or maybe
before then some psychological inquiry.

Then comes a moment in which we are ready
to see beyond this illusion of being

separated and let's say a conscious
spiritual seeking starts. This spiritual

seeking might starts before we are
aware that we are spiritually seeking.

When it's conscious we can see this
unfolding of life no more as something

to fight against, but as an
invitation to wake up,

so we start to be more open to life.

Also suffering is the best
natural tool to foment insight.

We don't ask the deep questions unless
we are suffering. If you're not suffering

we just sort of ride the wave of life in a
very Epicurean lighthearted superficial

manner, and we never stop to think about
what is happening. Who am I?

what is this about? No.
What is the purpose of it all?

What's the meaning of it? We don't ask
those questions unless we suffer.

So suffering is a tremendous tool.
It's very conducive to insight.

Now we make it worse than it needs to be.
We invent unnecessary superfluous suffering.

I like to call it meta-suffering, and meta
suffering comes from that little voice

in your head that says you are suffering
and you shouldn't be. That doubles the

suffering right there. Because now not
only do we still have the suffering that's

natural and part of your life and you can't
avoid, now you have the meta-suffering for

being at war with nature, for being at war
with the original suffering. The game is

not to get rid of a natural process
conducive to insight, a key tool

of nature, the game is to not exacerbate
it unnecessarily by waging war against it

When we drop resistance to suffering then 
it is no longer suffering. It transmutes

into something that is for your benefit.
Often in spiritual circles we hear the

phrase "love what is." It is possible to
love whatever pain is arising by learning

to surrender egoic preferences
understanding that what is arising

is simply intense phenomena that actually
takes you deeper into connection with life

By remaining equanimous with what is,
we begin purifying the patterns of

resistance within the ego structure.
This brings us to the surrender paradox.

The surrender paradox is realizing that
whatever you resist persists.

The resistance actually gives power to the
ego. The ego is nothing but the

resistance itself. Sometimes on the path
we get the idea that we shouldn't

experience this or that emotion. We might
feel that we're regressing if we feel hate

or anger. The experience of the full range
of human emotions is necessary.

The paradox is that when we accept each
emotion fully, dropping the resistance

to it, it transmutes from emotion, which
is full of beliefs, judgments, and

and preferences, to pure feeling;
to pure aliveness,

which is beyond the evaluating mind.

There's a famous story in Zen that 
illustrates this point. Once a student

asked Tenzin, a Zen master known for his
wisdom and tranquility, "Master when your

wife passed away did you feel sadness?"
Tenzin replied "Of course I felt sadness,

how could I not?" The student was puzzled
and then asked, "But I thought you were a

Zen master. Shouldn't you be beyond such
emotions?" Tenzin smiled gently and

responded, "Ah, you misunderstand.
When I felt sadness I allowed myself to

feel it fully, and to experience it deeply.
And in doing so I honored the truth of

that moment. Then like clouds passing
through the sky the sadness came and went.

But the sky, the vastness of my being,
remained unchanged.

My awakening began really when I was in 
graduate school, when a series of personal

experiences really challenged me To begin 
to question the purpose of life, of my

life in particular, and the meaning.
I began questioning, what's the point of

all that I was doing. The experience was
one of just being aware without being

anything in particular. It was very
liberating. There was a great sense of

release, like something that had been
under great pressure releasing, and there

was relaxation and exhilaration, and all
I remember was just being.

That's all I want to be... just be. Nothin
in particular. I call it the big shift

for me. It really changed... almost like
I want to say "inside out" but the way

I saw things and the way I experienced
things, the way I saw people, interacted

with people.. and the flip is in the sense
that all that I was experiencing,

no matter what I was doing or saying,
is simply awareness being expressed.

The awareness that I am being expressed,
so in that moment, in any moment,

whatever I was saying or doing, that's 
all that was happening is being aware,

and that has stayed. But it has continued
to reveal its nature. It was like I could

see thoughts flowing by, and whatever
action needed to happen,

the action just came up and then the body
was just basically acting out the action.

It was no longer like before, whereas
before I would think something,

"I think I need to do this " and the "I"
this person would be doing it.

No. What's happening, what started to
happen was, I'm just being. Being aware

and actions just were arising and then the
body was the tool and I was watching it in

real time. The body is simply implementing
any action arising in awareness

and I happen to be a participant and an
observer. I think that's the best part.

Awareness is choiceless. The true Self is
beyond choosing. Upon hearing that,

one might say "okay I'm going to give up
everything. I'm just not going to choose

anything. I'll just sit in a cave.
And many people have done that.

But the problem is, that would still be a
choice. I'm just choosing to suppress my

choices and desires. It's the conditioned
mind choosing to not choose.

Both choosing and non-choosing are all at
the level of the conditioned mind.

But who or what is aware of that mind?

After awakening you will find the
conditioned self may still choose its

favorite tea. It will still eat the diet
that is best for the body. It's not that

choosing isn't happening anymore. Many
choices are still happening,

arising all the time. But the difference
is the sense of "I" is not entangled

with any of that. The "I" thought has
dropped away.

"I" am not choosing,
nor am I suppressing choice.

So waking up is like demolishing the
invisible walls of the ego, this armor,

and recognizing our Oneness with it all.
And the result is outstanding because

we discovered that we were not suffering
anger, pain, sadness... we were suffering

our refusal of life, and we can learn to
be so open that we are

consciously one with life as it is.

We'd rather feel good than suffer.. that's
just normal, something in the human

being, the ordinary species of homo
sapiens, would rather feel good

than feel bad. And I think that in the
times when we become aware that

it actually feels good to be conscious,
something in us registers in the ordinary

human brain, "Oh, I like this. This is
possible." And it reinforces itself.

Awakening can happen in stages gradually,
or it can happen all at once in a

radical flip, where we suddenly know who
we are, as if waking from a dream.

As if we've been asleep all our lives in
our dream character. To stay awake

there is an ongoing purification of the
self structure required.

Even if we have a full awakening it is
important to be vigilant, to not believe

the next thought, to remain equanimous
with what is when unconscious thoughts

surface. Otherwise the unconscious
patterns of the mind may obscure the truth

The unconscious must become a transparent
unconscious. If we do not face what is in

the unconscious we'll fall into what has
been called spiritual bypassing.

Spiritual bypassing refers to the tendency
of some individuals to insist that they

are already awake in order to avoid
dealing with difficult emotions, unresolved

psychological issues, or real life
challenges. The egoic mind can appropriate

a glimpse of awakening and keep one
from living from that place of truth.

I was sitting on my bed thinking about the
mammogram I was about to go for the

next day, and it had always been an
extreme anxiety producing experience

which I had once a year, and I was tired
of feeling so scared. Tired of being afraid

of dying and I was sitting on the bed and
out of the blue I had this thought

Couldn't I do this thing tomorrow without
freaking out? And there was a thought

really, just a thought but suddenly I
felt this surge of a realization that

I could indeed. And I didn't know how
I knew that. I didn't know what had just

changed, but something clearly had just
changed. And I was stunned and I suddenly

knew that it was going to be different
from all the terrible anxiety I'd had

all the years prior. And that didn't mean
that the mammogram was going to

turn out fine. It didn't mean
I didn't have breast cancer.

That was really bizarre to me. It was a
stunner and I got up and went in to my

partner who was busy at his computer
and I just stood in the doorway and

he finally looked up he realized I was
there and he said "What?"

And I said, something's just happened.
And I told him in the coming days little

by little I began to realize it wasn't
just that fear didn't seem to animate me

anymore. I felt peaceful, completely
without my ordinary ongoing stress.

My mind was still. My outer life was
basically the same but it was many months

before I understood that this was
awakening that had happened.

It was a long time really. All I knew was
I didn't hurt anymore in the way I had.

And my mind was quiet and it's been like
that ever since.

There can be no memory of awakening itself
There is only memory of experiences and

phenomena. Whenever there is a memory
there's always some resistance trace in

the mind. This resistance
trace is the original repetition...

the beginning of the "I" thought.
Awakening itself does not leave a trace

in the mind. It is not an experience.
Primordial awareness wakes up to itself

in the now, unmediated by memory and the
filtering of the mind. If we are chasing

any state, any experience, and trying to
live there, then we've missed it.

If it comes and goes, if it's not here now
then it's not your true nature.

Let's take a moment to inquire directly 
into our true nature. Directly means

not via the mind. You cannot recognize
that which is beyond the mind by means

of the mind. Shift your attention inward
and be aware of this moment. Become aware

of awareness itself. Notice the thoughts,
sensations and emotions that arise within

this space, but also recognize the
spaciousness within which they arise.

Phenomena may bubble up from the
unconscious. Thoughts, memories,

feelings, emotions, energies; this is a
natural clearing process that unfolds

when we inquire. Just be open to anything
that arises as a result of your inquiry.

Allow yourself to abide
in the natural state of the mind,

free from the limitations of
conceptual elaboration.

So my own awakening occurred in
essentially two fundamentally different

movements. I approached the initial shift
from a place of suffering, profound

suffering, and I had known that it had
something to do with thoughts.

It had something to do with the way I was
thinking, the way I was perceiving the world,

the way I was perceiving myself. And this
led me into a direct investigation

of the nature of thought itself. And most
importantly the nature of the thinker;

the nature of the one who is seemingly
bound by those thoughts.

So with this direct investigation the
sense of being a thinker was dissolved and

with the sense of being a thinker being 
dissolved, then all thought forms sort of

lost meaning to me. What I didn't realize
is when that happens we're left with a sort

of pure or unbound conscious experience.
And to me that was tremendously peaceful,

tremendously relieving of my suffering.
That was the first part of my awakening.

I had no idea even from there with the
clarity that was revealed, with the peace

that was revealed, that it could go deeper
That it could go a lot deeper.

So over a period of a few days the initial
glimpse, the initial very profound, very

releasing, and surprising experience broke 
open into something that goes beyond the

human dimension; goes beyond the
confines of who I take myself to be

in any form at all. And how I take the
world to be in any form at all.

All of that was dismantled.
What was left, what is left it is

extremely difficult to actually formulate 
into words, but through the book,

through direct interactions with people
who are interested in addressing this,

it can be revealed and it can be revealed
to that that person

if they're ready for it and interested
in investigating it themselves.

No one can tell you what the mind is,
what the matrix is, what you are.

To know the immeasurable, the ineffable,
the mind must be extraordinarily quiet

and still without any movement.
In that deep quiet and profound

silence there's a possibility of coming
upon something which is

timeless, eternal and beyond all measure.

Let's say, to make a metaphor that
awakening is when your head,

the head of the ego,
has been chopped by life.

You saw clearly that you are not your
bodymind. You're not an entity

inside the bodymind but yes, the
head has been chopped by life

but it's still rolling down the hill,
and as it's rolling down the hill

it carries with it old patterns, old
schemes, old point of views, that are

no more nourished by your attention.
You're resting in the witnessing solidly,

you see these old patterns unfolding,
you're not involved with them,

but they're still happening.
So the head is rolling down the hill

but at a certain point it is going to
stop. No more movement of old karmas

coming into action. No more patterns
emerging that you need to look for and

dissolve. They're gone. And that's Moksha,
that's Liberation. What I've been seeing

is a progressive opening up to seeing life
not as a person inside the body, but as

a peaceful silent witnessing of it in which
there were moments in which there was

just actions, but there was no doer
of those actions.

A dog was barking... it was just a barking
in the silence, or there was somebody

walking, or my body walking, and it was
just the walking. Not somebody walking.

And this was accompanied with the
silencing of the inner dialogue

that was sometimes accompanying my life.
So these moments of stepping out

of this sense of being a person came 
more and more frequently.

And as this was happening
everything that I thought to be,

or to be engaged in life started
to have a different sense.

Instead of seeing like life against me or 
difficult for me, or trying to ask to pray

for a change, I started to become able to
see that all that was aiming towards

something higher, to open my heart more.
To be more available to life.

I started to see that what I called
accidents or mistakes or things

I didn't like, they were not wrong,
and they were not against me.

They were actually showing me a deeper
reality which I was not in contact with.

So all prayers became more like an amen.
Thy will be done. All requests were

more like, help me to see where I'm still
refusing life, where I'm still refusing

something. Where I still am suffering
because I say no to the unfolding

of life itself. So there was an opening
up. And more this opening up to life

happened and more these moments
of conscious witnessing came.

Awakening is just the beginning of this
opening up. And it never ends in a way.

It is a never ending opening. And the more
this happens, more what we still see as

difficult as contraction as fear, you
really see that it's a trampoline towards

a higher love. A dimension of love, of
peace, of compassion, and we are all in it.

Even those we think they're not.
We are all taken in it.

We can know that consciousness exists.
That we can know for certain.

Everything else we can make educated
guesses about. Maybe very good guesses,

but guesses nonetheless.
Consciousness is the only pre theoretical

given fact of nature. Everything else are
theoretical abstractions that arise within

consciousness. Consciousness is the sole
axiom of nature. That it exists is the only

absolutely certain thing in nature. And I
can assure you that based on reasoning

and the empirical evidence coming out from
foundations of physics coming out from the

neuroscience of consciousness, it has
become extraordinarily unlikely that

consciousness is not fundamental.
To think of consciousness as secondary or

epiphenomenal leads to all kinds of 
insoluble problems. So there is excellent

rational and empirical reason to take
consciousness as at least one of if not

the only fundamental building block of
nature. Physics is fundamentally a science

of perception. It's an attempt to account
for the patterns and regularities of the

world we perceive. It does not attempt
to transcend perception.

Even when physicists use instruments like 
telescopes, microscopes, oscilloscope's,

or whatever-a-scopes you want, the output
of these instruments still needs

to be perceived. So everything in physics
gets filtered out through the paradigm

of perception, so to say. Physics is a
science of perception. Therefore it does

not make any attempt to see fundamentally
beyond the physical or fundamentally beyond

matter, because physicality and matter are
just other words for the world we perceive,

for the contents of perception. Life is
the instrument for its own understanding.

To understand life you don't unplug from
life. You don't unplug from that which

you're trying to understand. What you do
is you pay attention to what's happening,

try to capture the nuance. Ask yourself,
"What is this about? Why is this happening?

What does this mean?" Life in the world
is a book to be read and deciphered.

But we may get so caught up in an
understandable need to suffer less,

that we forget to read the book.
We forget to pay attention.

While the book is the key to its own
decipherment. If you decipher the book

of life you will automatically suffer less,
but you can't decipher it if you're not

with your eyes on the ball,
if you're not paying attention.

Life is the tool to its own understanding.

All the great religious and spiritual
traditions were founded on this

understanding. Namely that the there is 
one infinite and indivisible reality which

shines in each of us, as the experience
"I am" and which appears to us as the world.

In other words there is an ocean of being
so to speak, that underlies everyone and

everything from which everyone and
everything derives its existence.

In which everyone and everything
lives, and into which it vanishes

and disappears. And this is really the
founding principle of all the great

religious traditions, this the recognition
of the the unity of Being.

The first Hermetic principle is that
"The all is mind, the universe is mental."

Wherever we look is the one mind. As
Rumi said, "Wherever I look, there is the

face of God." Whether we peer into the
micro world or into the macrocosm of space,

we find the one mind. Here is an image of
human neurons, and this is a simulated

image of Dark Matter distribution
throughout the Universe.

The Millennium run is a simulation done
by the Max Planck Institute using

supercomputers to create a representation
of the distribution and evolution of dark

matter in the universe. Dark Matter forms
a vast Cosmic web of interconnected

filaments and nodes which is visually
almost identical to neurons and the

neuropathways found in a human brain.
And the same pattern is ubiquitous

throughout nature. We can call it the
One Mind, or God or simply "all that is".

And what is referred to as God is not 
some external being beyond and

prior to the world. God is the the being
that shines in each of us as the knowledge

"I am" and appears to us as the world.
So we could say from this point of view

in religious language, the world is the
appearance of the word of God, the Logos,

and that we are localizations
of God's mind within God's mind.

So how does one universal field of
subjectivity, one universal consciousness,

how does it appear to be many?
Because I can't read your thoughts,

presumably you can't read mine.
I don't know what's happening in the

galaxy of Andromeda, not even in China.
We don't have a full experience of the

entirety of nature, so how can this one
mind that nature is have these limitations

and appear to be many?
Well I think we know one natural process

that does exactly that. It's called
dissociation in psychiatry. It's a process

according to which one mind seemingly
fragments into multiple disjointed centers

of awareness. We have definitive empirical
evidence for this in people, in humans,

from neuroimaging and now I think we are
close to beginning to have an explicit

conceptual account of dissociation based
on integrated information theory, which is

the main theory in the neuroscience of
consciousness. When a dissociative boundary

forms you can only see what is across that
dissociative boundary through perception.

And what you then perceive
is matter, physicality. In other words

matter, physicality, is a conscious
appearance of a conscious process

from across a dissociative boundary.

Whether we describe these processes
in terms of modern theories or using

ancient models like the five skandhas,
what matters is that we make these

processes which are usually unconscious,
conscious. When they are made conscious

then resistance within the self structure
can be dropped. The unconscious operation

of "I" can be dropped. The perception that
we are a physical body, the perception

of sensations on the body, the
conceptualization of objects and things,

the identification with preferences towards 
those things, and the sense that there is a

witness watching all of this, all of these 
mind processes are to be realized as empty

of self. In other words we disidentify
from the phenomena while allowing it to be

exactly as it is. This is not a turning
away from life. Quite the contrary this is

a deepening of the intimacy with life.

My understanding that consciousness is 
fundamental and precedes physicality,

over the years has fundamentally changed
my experience of life in the world and

what it means to be a human being alive in
the world. To me it happened slowly.

At first it was a merely conceptual
understanding in my head, and then

it sort of sunk into the body and started
modulating my emotions, my feelings,

and it changes everything. It changes what
you consider to be a well-lived life,

it changes what you consider to be goals
worthy of working towards, it changes

your perception of self, it changes your
relationship to other living creatures,

yeah it does change everything. Personal
goals in terms of status, power, money,

that has gone away. The awareness that my
life is not at all, has never been,

and will never be about me, but it's about
nature, and I'm just one local manifestation

of nature, that understanding leads to a
profound relaxation of that anxiety

that comes with the need to achieve
certain personal goals or with the

disappointment that comes when
you don't reach those personal goals.

All that stuff has gone. I live life now as a
form of service to Nature.

I'm open to doing whatever it is that
nature wants to do through me and

although that may sound like being
bonded to service like a slave it doesn't

feel like that. It feels like I no longer have
the oppressive overwhelming responsibility

to make myself personally happy.
Which is the most oppressive idea

that the human mind can have, which is
that your life is about you and therefore

you have the responsibility to be happy
so when you fail on that it's your failure

and then you start regretting it.
No, that has gone. It has disappeared.

That's one of the things that changed in
my life. A deeper understanding of reality

is directly conducive to empathy, to
mutual respect, to non egoic purposes.

It's conducive to less
addictive patterns of behavior.

So there is absolutely no doubt that if
humanity's understanding were deeper

and more pervasive,
life would definitely be better.

The solution to the world's problems is to
recognize the true source of the problems,

which is the ego that operates only for
its own interest. It doesn't matter what

the ego engages with; politics, religion,
economics, or education. As long as it

operates from the false premise that there
is a separate "I", then we will continue

to perpetuate suffering and separation. 
The only solution for humanity now

is to wake up.

In Buddhism, when there is no longer a
sense of self as a separate thing, and at

the same time, no other than Self, it is
nirvana, the cessation of self-centered

activity, the cessation of delusion,
the cessation of dreaming,

and the waking up from the
character in the dream of life.

The Bible says the Word became flesh
and made His dwelling among us.

The Word is is often translated as Logos,
which is an ancient word with a profound

meaning. The logos is associated with
eternity, Truth and direct revelation.

You could say that it is through the Logos
or through Christ Consciousness,

or Buddha nature that
God's mind is made known.