Dear Rupert,
Today some thoughts came: ‘You are not living a life’ and then ‘Why would I want to step back into the unreal when I can stay here in peace?’ Then the peace got so deep and black and lovely. For the first time it felt like the boundaries between mentally knowing and understanding the truth, and actually being that truth, were melted. I am that peace that all things arise from.
Rather than just going with that, I shared this with a friend, who told me it was just another experience. So now confusion and doubt are arising. Does true awakening leave no doubts? How can anything change that could never be put down to yet another experience or a function of mind? Thank you so much.
Love,
Claudia
Dear Claudia,
The experiential understanding that I am that peace that all things arise from is not ‘yet another experience’.
If all things arise from peace, then peace itself cannot be a thing, that is, it cannot be an objective experience. Nevertheless, it is an experience. This peace is the knowing or being element that runs throughout all experience, and because it is by definition knowing, it knows itself.
You say, ‘How can anything change that could never be put down to yet another experience or a function of mind?’ You are right that everything within the mind (taking mind to include all thinking, imagining, sensing and perceiving) changes. That is our experience. However, we have no evidence that that which knows the mind, consciousness, changes.
When this consciousness recognises itself, so to speak, one of the ways that the mind (which is not present during this recognition) formulates this non-objective experience is by calling it ‘peace’. The reason for this, which you know from your own experience, is that this consciousness or knowing presence cannot be harmed by any appearance of the mind.
This timeless, non-objective experience of the knowing of our own being pervades the mind and the body when they reappear. This effect at the level of the mind and body is sometimes blissful, but it should not be confused with the non-objective experience of knowing our own being.
The blissful effects at the level of the mind and body will certainly fade, and in that sense they are ‘yet another experience’, but the presence in which they appear and out of which they are made does not fade.
Yes, true awakening leaves no doubts, but that doesn’t mean that you will straightaway be able to articulate your new experience, and for that reason it is sometimes best to let it mature, as it were, to stand the test of time, before talking too much about it. There may well also be a period of back-and-forth.
Having said that, the only certainty we come to is the certainty of knowing and being, the certainty that they are one. As a result of this, we cease to superimpose beliefs and feelings upon it and we allow it to reveal itself moment by moment as a living experience in our lives.
It is also very likely that old habits of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate entity will reappear after this recognition, and there may well be further questions as to the realignment of the mind and the body with this new understanding. This process of realignment is that through which we become established in peace at the level of the mind and the body.
With love,
Rupert
