My friend hadn’t a long attention span and listening was a chore. I told her about a speaking engagement where I had shared some of my experiences. She asked me what experiences and I explained in a few lines about my I Am experience of seeing and being the universe manifesting within nothingness. She wanted to know what it had given me, because that is how we have been trained to think about everything. What can god-realization do for me? It doesn’t sound silly when it’s asked reflexively, because reaction is so very unconscious.
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Having more and more spiritual experiences gives you sensations and knowledge, but does it transform you? Perhaps we need to differentiate between getting right with ourselves in this world, getting to a point of health in this world, and transcending and including this world. This world we’re speaking of is the world of thought. The world of thought that we are and are embedded in. What we want is to add onto thought. We want these experiences, these heightened sensations, and the so-called power of knowledge. But what if we need to let go of thought?
Can we let go of thought if we are thought? Of course not. What happens when we let conscious thought go is that we observe unconscious thought, which means there’s still duality: the observer and observed. The observer unaware that s/he is the observed. We see deeper and collective versions of more of the same: thought. Some call this observer “the witness” as if it is not you doing the witnessing—or perhaps is a more authentic you than the conscious self. But the witness is still you. You pretending not to be in action by holding still.
Whether in heart, in brain, in witness mode, or whatever other “you” you want to identify as, if that sense of being in the world feels separate and apart from thoughts and feelings and, sometimes, actions, even if you feel that you are one with the external world, the you is a thought construct. When the you is Truth, however, all of “these” are one movement. There is no internal/external divide, even. There is one flow.
Some people are fearful of that. They don’t like hearing about all this oneness business because it clashes with what they believe diversity and equality are about. Other people embrace it, but they don’t live it. They, too, are fearful. So we see that there are two movements in duality: Truth and thought. And the dividing line that separates them is fear projected by thought.
Of course I didn’t tell my friend any of this. Instead, I laughed and said, “That’s a really good question! I’m not sure I got anything out of it except that I know some things that other people believe in or lie about. I think it only has value if we live it.” That answer seemed to quell her appetite for knowledge.
We moved on to the next topic, whatever she had in mind.