
What is outside cannot be known, only projected and interpreted. “Be still and know that I am,” is a pointer to what is behind consciousness, the experiencing capacity. Experience is the dream; the dream is experiencing. Identity erroneously comes from experiencing perceptually from the POV of a seer, experiencer. Behind experience is the true identity.
There is an underestimated reason why meditation is helpful. It is a break from perception, from engagement with the world as subject/object. Perception, as it stands, cannot be anything but a separative perspective. In one sense, it is the basis of experience. Which is I guess, why we’re here, why we’re dreaming. On the other hand, it divides what is seen from the seer, necessarily. And therein lies the “problem.”
This is all rather dry and in some ways, the scientific rendition in that it is an attempt to explain, which is useless if not lived. You learn about gravity by learning to walk, not be having it explained or understanding the concept.
What is lived, emerges in childhood, is a sense of guilt, a loss of innocence. Because we are pretending to have separated from our source, and somehow become split off, individuated, and autonomous, like Pinocchio going off on his adventures. But there is a conviction, a knowing deep down, that we have fallen from grace. Yet it’s impossible.
Coming out of innocence, as a child begins the conditioning of separation, we start to think we are inherently bad. I am a bad girl, or a bad boy, is what is internalized. Not intentionally or maliciously, but in the inevitable sense of pretending to be something we are not. We didn’t really pull this separation thing off; we are only pretending. But the pretense has become so real that we are frightened, and feel guilty.
This is not what a child does, it is what Mind does. It goes out to explore and become and experience. That’s all there is. All mind; only mind. Yet somehow it gets lost in this adventure and believes it is truly here as this character, surrounded by other nefarious characters.
“There is something wrong; I need to do something,” is the alert that drives everything we do, in the dream. And it is true in that there definitely is something wrong. I am not this, and not here. I’m only sleeping. The only thing that needs to be done is to see this, and stop pretending, become unmesmerized by the dream. So this feeling of wrongness, of sin, and the hope for redemption looks like crazy cartoon characters, continuously and repetitively, trying to get something, to achieve something, to prove something, in the dream. But like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, it is all in vain. And no one ever really gets hurt, or dies.
If you’d quit trying to fix yourself for one minute, you’d see this as false programming for a false sense of identity. The wrongness is not in you. It is in the game of pretending to be something you are not. Pinnochio is not a real boy, independent of his father’s carving a puppet from a lump of pine. The Coyote does not really want or need, or ever capture, the illusive Road Runner. It is all a fiction that can look pretty crazy and make you laugh when truly seen.
You are neither the Boss of Everything, or the Hapless victim. The world is not as it appears. Nor are you. Wake up!
When I wake up early in the morning
Lift my head, I’m still yawning
When I’m in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream (float up stream)
Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me
Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping
Everybody seems to think I’m lazy
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need)Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away
And after all I’m only sleepingKeeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my timeLying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feelingPlease, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away
And after all I’m only sleeping
Ooh yeah… ~ John Lennon & Paul McCartney