Good morning, dharma-friends!
This morning I want to offer you a technical practice principle that came up the other day in a conversation I had with someone. Here’s what we explored together and came to understand together:
Illusion and reality are not two sides of a duality.
Illusion and reality are two different levels of existence.
The process aspect of our practice would have us see into the nature of the illusion through the power of focused attention, and let the illusion go.
The mystical aspect of our practice would have our assumption of individual, separate existence dissolve in the light of awareness, so that what remains in our perception is the essential oneness of what is.
The same could be said in regards to confusion and enlightenment, ego and authentic nature, presence and entanglement in conditioned mind, and any other manner in which we might express the fundamental movement we’re making through spiritual practice. We are not moving from a negative aspect of reality to a positive aspect; we are not making a movement, in other words, from one place to another on the same level of existence. We are moving from a fiction, a fable, and a mirage, to the direct, subjective experience of the truth, of that aspect of reality which we have the capacity to perceive.
That’s the work! To wake up from the dream of separateness, and actually live here in this world.
In peace,
David