Inspirational Perspectives, Part 1

Fundamentally, all spiritual paths are created for the purpose of helping the “spiritual seeker” find the Ultimate Truth, The Source, The Absolute, God, whatever you may choose to call it. Actually, what you call it is not really important, because all such words refer to something that is beyond words. All spiritual paths acknowledge this. Still, as long as we communicate using language, we need words and names for everything that we want to refer to. So, we give a name even to the un-nameable – contradictory as that actually is. Here I will just call it Ultimate Truth.

Since Ultimate Truth is beyond words, it cannot be reached with words. It is beyond all description, beyond all concepts. In a sense, even saying that Ultimate Truth is beyond words/descriptions/concepts is misleading. A more accurate wording would be; Ultimate Truth is prior to words/descriptions/concepts, because Ultimate Truth is direct, immediate, more intimate than any words/descriptions/concepts can ever be. It is your very nature. It is the essence of what you are.

And nevertheless, you may have somehow lost your awareness of this, and find yourself on a journey where you are searching for Ultimate Truth. Along this journey you may come across many descriptions of Ultimate Truth – none of which are true, for the reasons stated above. However, a description can still be of use, if we consider it as simply being a pointer toward Ultimate Truth, a perspective on Ultimate Truth.

A perspective is simply a point of view, an angle of approach. It is an abstraction, which has no reality in itself. Yet, if a perspective is closely aligned with where you are at, on your journey, at that particular time, you may find that it offers you the inspiration and the awareness that you need, to continue onto the next step of your journey.

What is presented here, then, is a selection of inspirational perspectives. It is an offering of viewpoints that may inspire you to go into deeper contemplation, to go deeper inward, deeper into your mind, into investigating awareness itself.

Some of the perspectives may appear paradoxical and contradicting one another, but that is simply because they have been formulated as pointers for different questioners, being on different points of their journeys. Does Rome lie to the West or to the East? That depends on where you stand, when you ask for directions.

Hence, depending on where you are on your journey at the time of reading, each perspective has the potential to offer different degrees of usefulness and inspiration. If one perspective doesn’t inspire you, then find another one that does. Either way, that you will reach Ultimate Truth is assured, since the journey to Ultimate Truth leads nowhere other than where you are, have always been and will forever be.

May some of these perspectives inspire you to once more recognise that THIS is Ultimate Truth.

To be, to exist as a conscious being – there is no greater miracle than this! It is an impossibility against infinite odds. And yet you are.

This is the mystery of mysteries, the Great Mystery that surpasses all understanding – that you are, that you exist. That you exist as a being of awareness, immersed in a perpetual stream of impressions flowing through the infinite ocean of consciousness, creating everything that you experience as your reality.

The Source of your beingness lies beyond your experiential reality, beyond the infinity of contents in consciousness, in which all your experiences occur. It is unfathomable, unimaginable and indescribable. We may call it Absolute Reality.

Absolute Reality is the essence of what you truly are. It is your true self, the Self, which can only be known through being; aware being.

If you really want to know the answer to the question “What is awareness?”, then you will have to find out for yourself. You don’t need to go and ask someone, and no one would be able to tell you anyway.

Awareness is available to you all the time. It is where you are, always. It is what you are.

But don’t settle for believing that statement, or any other statement about awareness, for that matter. Find out for yourself. Investigate. Perhaps, start with asking yourself “In this moment, is there awareness?” And, since you will surely answer that question with “Yes!”, you may follow on with asking yourself “How do I know this?” And let that contemplation take you where it takes you.

Be aware that you ARE, for being aware that you are is what you are.

Being you IS: consciousness perceiving reality from the particular perspective that constitutes “you” – consciousness experiencing itself from that one point which consists of all the flows and influences inherent in consciousness as they manifest and interrelate in that particular point.

All that you experience are reflections in that which you are, and as such are also part of what you are. It just does not appear like that to you, because you identify (mistakenly) as/with one part of what you experience only – the body-mind system – and so end up believing that you are an individual, separate from the other parts of what you experience.

To release this misidentification, you need to de-identify, i.e. re-identify as/with that which is not part of experience.

The ‘path’ to that goes via its primary phenomenon – awareness.

You ARE, for the joy of being.

When you seek happiness in anything else than simply being, fears and desires will toss you around and make your life miserable.

When you seek your joy in being, all is well.

There is no need to seek the Absolute. You ARE the Absolute experiencing being. For the joy of being.

So, enjoy. Enjoy being!

The idea, the concept, that you have of yourself is what creates you as who you think you are, the “you”.

Any concept you have of yourself creates a “you”. Even the concept “I am consciousness”, somehow creates a “you”. The personal, limited being, the idea of existing as “you”, comes from having some concept of yourself, a concept of what you are.

Even though “I am awareness, I am consciousness” may very well “be true”, it still applies a concept, an idea, to something which doesn’t exist until it is conceptualised or described in one way or the other.

Your sense of existing as “you” comes entirely from the description of yourself, the concepts that you have about yourself.

When there are no concepts about yourself, Ultimate Truth is present, to itself.

Science studies the objects of matter. Meditation studies the matter of the subject.

When you completely and totally ARE the subject, you transcend the subject-object dualism.

With objects of matter, when you delve deeper and deeper into a particle, you eventually reach the level beyond individual particles, where there is only a sea of swirling energy.

Similarly, with the matter of the subject, when you delve deeper and deeper into the “I” particle, you eventually reach the level beyond individual particles, where there is only a sea of swirling consciousness.

True joy is always present in the greatest mystery of all; that you ARE, that you at all exist and are aware. In being aware of this mystery lies the source of joy.

When you lose your sense of joy and appreciation of life, simply return to being aware of the mystery of being aware, and find joy waiting there for you already always.

Only because you ARE, do you get to experience all this – life.

Not because you are the person who you are – the person who you are is simply part of what you get to experience.

Not because you are a human being – being a human being is simply part of what you get to experience.

Not because you are this or that – being this or that is simply part of what you get to experience.

But because you are that which experiences, that to which and in which all this occurs – consciousness, awareness.

There is the experience of being, but there is no one having the experience of being. There is only the experience in and of itself. If there was anyone having the experience, they would have to be separate from the experience – and then they would not be.

The life experience is a symphony, played on the instrument of consciousness. The idea of “meaning” is irrelevant. Just enjoy the music!

When you were told that what you are seeking resides within awareness, and it was suggested that you be aware of being aware, you didn’t recognise the profundity of this. You recognised that you are aware, but it just seemed so ordinary. So, you kept searching for ‘more’, for the extraordinary that all spiritual texts seem to refer to.

The extraordinary is “hidden” in the ordinariness of awareness. Remain aware of being aware, and all else will follow – even where “you” cannot.

Continue on to Inspirational Perspectives, part 2

If you are interested in deepening your spiritual awareness, you may want to consider participating in the Integrating Awareness Meditation course…