Source Text
There is nothing but the limitless One, in which all phenomena manifest, and all phenomena are nothing but the One, without division or distinction.
People call it enlightenment, gnosis, liberation, Self-realization, God-realization, or simply awakening. I won’t dispute the vocabulary. It’s the one we have. There are many other names for it and many words associated with it, coming from a wide variety of cultures and traditions, but the truth they speak of is beyond all names and words.
Like a lot of people though, I felt like there was something absent in my life, a kind of hole that desperately needed to be filled, a missing thing that I could not place, no matter where I looked. Over time, this developed into deep dissatisfaction, chronic frustration, and eventually depression. And this thing, whatever it was, always seemed just beyond my grasp. It was the only thing that could satisfy me, and it always slipped away, no matter how hard I tried to reach it. And I tried, a thousand different ways I tried — sometimes knowingly, many times unknowingly — to find this missing thing.
A breeze blew, and something moved amidst the swaying of the high branches. I sensed something … something so beautiful … so overwhelming that I almost fell down. Tears streamed down my face. It was just … unbearable bliss and beauty. It was beyond bliss, beyond indescribable, beyond beyond. And that, whatever you care to call it, is ever-present, here and now.
I literally felt I was in heaven. We’ve been here all along, I thought. Heaven is here and now. We just never noticed.
This being the case, perception and thoughts are limited accordingly. People are, in essence, perceiving not an objective reality, but rather a symbolic world, manipulated with symbolic thoughts and communicated through symbolic language.
The great myths speak of this. We are cast out of paradise, cut off from God. We are reborn into samsara, this world of birth and death, and find ourselves lost in our thoughts and delusions. In extraordinary moments, sometimes we may glimpse this ultimate reality, but do not realize it. And few recognize they are it, manifested briefly in this life, like a fleeting thought, barely grasped, like a flash of lightning or a shooting star. We build a wall of thought between ourselves and the reality of being. We separate ourselves with the idea of an inside and outside, of a self and other, of a mind and body. And this separation, this ignorance of our true nature, is the source of all our frustration and suffering, for we grasp at shadows and wisps of smoke, trying desperately to hold on to them.
The path itself is an illusion. There is no method, no technique, no way to get there. Each life is a puzzle, a labyrinth, a Gordian knot, that must be undone before awakening. But in the end, the puzzle itself will be smashed. The labyrinth will collapse. The Gordian knot will be cut clean through with the sword of truth.
We are not our minds, or our bodies, or anything we can possibly think of. Our true nature is beyond all that. But at some point, we hid this from ourselves with thoughts. We identified with our minds, thoughts and memories, and with our bodies, actions and sensations. We created for ourselves a little island, an identity separate from everything else. Then it seemed we were like visitors to this world from somewhere else, but we couldn’t imagine where. And this separation, between self and other, was the beginning of all the trouble and drama. We hid our true nature in a web of illusions, and began to live through symbols and concepts. This process was so subtle, and yet so thorough, that we didn’t even see it happening. And we kept this secret in the cleverest place imaginable: in the idea of a self. We tricked ourselves completely. We cannot know this secret without destroying the idea of ourselves. But who will destroy it? And who will know the secret when it is destroyed? And so we are trapped in a double bind. It is like we have hypnotized ourselves. It is like we are dreaming.
If you can look at the whole process and really see that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, you have already let go. But you have to really see it, not just understand it intellectually. You must feel it to be so, and know directly, in the very core of being. There is no way to improve yourself. There is nothing to know. Nowhere to go. Nothing to achieve. Nothing to do. When everything has been surrendered, the person you thought you were dies away. You step out of time, and suddenly realize there is nothing to escape from. The secret is revealed. It’s all you, and there is nowhere but here and now. Enlightenment is real. You’ve been there all along. God is real, but beyond all imagination.
AI Summary
That Which Is Before You by Matthew Lowes presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.