The mind is the tool that distinguishes one thing from another and gives it names. It is the border-creator, which takes the singularity of Awareness and calls something on this side ME, and something on that side 'Not-Me'. It says the things coming in from the 'vision' is sight and what comes in through the ears as sound. Add to that sense, taste and smell, and all these things are coming in simultaneously, but in order to make sense of them, they're all divided up.
Interestingly, in Ayurvedic science, it compares the attention on the senses to a needle passing through layers of lotus petals. You can only really be aware of one thing at a time, so as the needle passes through, your attention is hearing, then seeing, the hearing, the smelling, then feeling, etc etc etc endlessly! Try focusing on hearing and seeing at the same time. Or any two senses. (Actually, it can be done. In fact, my friend Denny created a program out of simultaneously doing auditory, visual and kinesthetic practices simultaneously, which he claims is a doorway to another dimension. For instance, whenever he would hear a bird, he would visualize touching the bird with his heart. The result, which happened spontaneously after about 6 months of this, was that he suddenly, one day at sunrise, and all the birds began to sing, found himself looking out from the heart of every bird at the same time! )
Anyway, this breaking up of things, by the mind, makes it easier to think we're functioning in the world, but it also tends to keep us from a deeper truth, of the singularity of what IS. I've often given the example of a prism. We have a whole bunch of cut glass pendants in our kitchen window, where when the sun hits just right, the room is filled with little rainbows spots. Quite pretty and also instructive. This prismic nature of the pendants takes the singularity of sunlight and divides it into the whole spectrum of colors No longer is there a single white light coming in, which we're basically unable to distinguish but 7 colors mergeing one into another. Our mind does the same thing, in taking the singularity of Awareness and breaking it down into this and that and you and me and left and right, and good and bad, or as the Tao Te Ching describes - 10,000 things which were originally the Tao!
In India, the science of deciphering everything is called Sankhya, one of the sat darshanas, or six philosophies, Sankhya being developed by Kapila Muni long long ago! :-) It actually starts by dividing things into a duality of Purusha and Prakriti or loosely, spirit and matter. The living entity (I am) is the purusha or conscious presence, and everything else is the prakriti or nature. Prakriti is divided into 10,000 things, describing the senses, gunas (or qualities), and so much more. A real 'Mind' blower! :-D
But we want to talk about the nature of things BEFORE breaking everything up, which is a completely different direction and kind of a non left brain science.
When we inquire into who/what we are, what we discover is that we are Awareness. We are not a body or a mind, or a brain, or ideas, or moods or thoughts or genders or jobs or any of that. We are Aware OF all of those things. They are objects of our awareness. Even saying 'our awareness' is wrong because we have to ask, 'Whose awareness?' And the answer would be 'my awareness.' But we don't HAVE Awareness, we ARE Awareness, as we can't discover a separate thing called 'me' which possesses a separate thing called Awareness. See the slippery slope it all creates?
But it gets worse. You see, EVERYTHING that Awareness is aware OF is also Awareness! Awareness is aware of itself, which is the Field of Awareness! Everything that you 'see', 'hear', 'smell', 'taste', or 'touch' is Awareness being Aware of the names and forms (nama-rupa) of the 10,000 things, broken up by borders, like the 7 colors produced by the prism - but still all just sunlight!
Let's take another angle on this. Say that you are sleeping and having a dream. It's a fantastic dream of a beautiful countryside and people and animals or maybe even monsters. You are aware OF this dream. But WHERE is this dream happening? The dream is nothing but dream world. You, as awareness, are aware of the field of dream awareness. There is no countryside, or people or animals or monsters. Just YOU! But when you wake up, suddenly the things 'out there' are now real? Why? Because the mind created a border between real world and dream world?
Wait! How do you KNOW that you're not sleeping this very moment? And this is simply you dreaming that you are reading this? In the Srimad Bhagavatam, the 'material world' is described as the "Dream of God"! And my spiritual master used to say that we have two dreams - one for 8 hours at night and another for 16 hours during the day! It's all a dream. And YOU are simply a pattern! A pattern of "You-ness" in that great ocean of Awareness, much like a little whirlpool that forms in the river. And it's all happening in the Great Singularity of HERE and NOW! You are the Pattern of Presence. So BE the Presence!
Deep Love
Aja
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