Saturday, September 02, 2006

The Room

Imagine you are in a room, four walls, ceiling and floor. There are no doors or windows and no adornment. Just four white walls, a white ceiling and a white floor. Imagine now that this is the limit of your reality, these six surfaces. Further imagine that you are floating in the center of this six walled construct as a bodiless consciousness, an energy field perhaps or a fundamental awareness that is not reliant on any form just yet, that will come in a moment.
As you – in your state of bodiless consciousness – gaze about your room - which can be seen as either prison or potential – you can begin to adorn the walls, floor and ceiling, with objects. These objects can be symbolic of opinions you hold, attitudes you adhere to, desires you pursue, or any number of thoughts or emotions that form the matrix of your assumed being – who you think you are. As you place each symbol the confines of your room seem to disappear and a vista of holographic choices appear to open for you. What we might see as your fundamental texture seems to cause the four walls to disappear as you – in the guise of pure consciousness – look out from the loci of your being into your life.
So what you have now are a series of holograms, three dimensional images, some very sharp and clear, some dim and difficult to focus on, still others only vaguely sensed.
Close in is your family, also close in will be the culture you were born into, how you were raised and all of the decisions that you made as your soul adapted to its surroundings. A bit further out in your hologram will be directions you took, moral decisions you made, assumptions you adopted as your body and mind matured. In other words, this is where you make the decisions as to how you will see the world, what your world view is. Notice that this layer of the hologram is just beyond that of family and culture. It is partially formed by these factors but it also relies heavily on your personal take on them. It will seem to be in line with what “should be” according to the close in symbols but will still be modified by your personal choices.
Further out will be the remote aspects of your culture – people you read about or hear about – the myths and icons that support your culture. Here also will be the enemies that support your cultures view of itself, the ones who are blamed for all the flaws your culture feels it self to have. It is the nature of individuals and groups to assign blame for all flaws on some outside agency and your hologram is no different.
Beyond this layer can be any number of symbols depending on what you have accepted as essential reality and the intelligence – divine or accidental – which supports or creates it.
This is the point at which you notice your body. Bodies are interesting things because we identify so fully with them. We really think that the body is more real than anything else. A body is also the major source of our illusion because it supports separation. We tend to think that our consciousness stops at our skin but think what the preceding imagery showed. With our imagination we can certainly think way beyond the body into all sorts of imaginal realms. We identify with our bodies as the center of the universe but, strangely enough, most of us do not really pay that much attention to them. Athletes do of course but even then I wonder how much they really are aware.
One of the keys to deeper spirituality is identified as manifesting in one’s body. It is a strange idea to think that, even though here we are, in this body, we do not really totally believe it. You can check this by thinking about how often you are in the Now, as opposed to projecting into the future or idealizing the past. To be totally in the Now, a person must also be totally in their body, aware of the molecules of air bouncing off the skin, aware of the flow of blood through one’s system, etc., etc. It is a super aware state of total attentiveness that places no reliance on any assumptions, past or future. There is even a Buddhist practice that uses this state of Nowness to take you into a deep meditation. It is called Sattipatana and it involves getting totally aware of all the bodily processes until one merges the body with the greater body of the Universe.
Going back to our original metaphor of the white room, what we then do is revise our holograms to better reflect this deeper awareness. And, the room gets bigger.
One of the signs of deep spiritual awareness is the expansion of your horizon. The world view that you hold recedes and your whole idea about things shifts. It is very easy to have a small truncated view of the world. It is very easy to just go along with everyone around you and accept that the world is thus and such. But, if you truly want to discover the truth of your own being, allowing Nowness to manifest is the essential ingredient.

Many Blessings, Musawwir

1 comment:

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