Experience

I used to think that I was David experiencing life. Now I feel that I am Life experiencing David.

The more and more I sit back and witness the unfolding experience of this character named David, the less and less I am identified with his mind. For so long, my experience was the view that David’s mind projected on the day to day. I am starting to realize that this is a very limited way to see the world. Everything that is perceived through the filter of mind is based on past experience, conditioning, etc. and ultimately leads to a very biased and subjective view on the world. The more I am able to watch the mind, emotions, and impulses, the more I realize that David is just one of countless many manifestations, or another character of consciousness in this vast universe. Not too much different than any other living being “out there” except for the fact that my view point has been fixated on this guy.

It’s interesting to actually witness the impulses that are unfolding rather than being them. It can be really funny at times. We do some interesting things when you look at it from a neutral point of view. I’m also noticing that it can be very educational too. It’s been amazing to watch an energy come in, then to see the emotional reaction, and then to watch what the mind does with that. It’s even more interesting to catch it before it causes an emotional reaction and simply feel the actual energy, rather than getting caught up in the drama of it. I’m noticing that when I experience the energy as it is rather than the reactions that my mind creates, I circulate the energy within rather than wasting it by sending it out to get what ever my mind has decided it needs to get (e.g. what it wants or avoiding what it doesn’t want). (How controlling this thing we call mind, eh?). The more this happens, the more the existence of these energies and their movement through the body becomes apparent to me, which ultimately helps me to identify less with my mind again.  It’s a snowball, which, in my opinion, is heading in a very healthy direction.

As Wilber reminds us, anything you can see or experience can’t be the seer or the experiencer. Makes sense to me. The more I step back from mind, the more I realize that it is not me. The same goes for my emotions, my body, my thoughts, my name, etc.. It’s interesting to me that as I write this, I’m using the word my. Who/what is this “my” anyway?  My what? If it’s mine, it can’t be me right? Does this experiencer exist beyond the realm of thought? Is it just pure experience? Raw, unaffected, untouched by subjectivity? What really blows “my mind” is the fact that this pure unaffected experience is here right now, in every moment, just beneath the layer of mind.

 I’m beginning to truly have the sense that we are all in this dream world trying to wake up. Are we characters in the dream of life? Who is the dreamer? Just like a dream that we may have on any given night, the other characters are not actually other characters, they are aspects of the dreamer. The same goes for the dream character. It’s not the “me” that I am in waking life either. We may all just be trying to figure out who the dreamer is. Something tells me the dreamer is this awareness/consciousness that is watching this thinker. It seems to be universal. The separate self sense and all of the concepts that we make up aren’t universal – they are merely a product of the limited and subjective mind.

I feel that it’s necessary to move beyond the mind to realize our true nature. We’ll let the mind do the things that mind does, like help us with the practicalities of life, communication, and even writing things like this (which is ultimately not the experience). This is much more like the commentary of the show. It’s full of intellectualization, perspective, subjectivity, etc.. It’s more like an incomplete view of the actual experience which is ultimately beyond words. In any given situation, different people will have different perspectives, which suggests that all of them must be partial. The actual experience doesn’t change. It’s the subjective experience that does. So where is that original experience? I believe that it lies outside of the mind. I think, says my mind, I’m actually starting to experience that.

Paradoxically, It takes mind for me to communicate these experiences. Mind seems to be a necessary vehicle for self discovery and at the same time, the hindrance of that same realization.

So……. maybe this is actually David’s experience of Life’s experience of David. ☺ Who knows?

But it sure is fun!