The substance of everything is the divine. This is not something you believe, it is something you realize.
– Adyashanti
We are used to thinking of the world as being made up of different things: Rocks, minerals, wood, plants, cells, molecules and atoms, and so on.
That’s not wrong. And in our first-person experience, something else may be more fundamental.
EXPLORED LOGICALLY
We can explore this logically and within the realm of stories.
Consciousness is required for any experience.
And to me, what I experience happens within and as consciousness.
It cannot be any other way. I can only experience what happens within consciousness. What happens within consciousness is consciousness taking the form of that particular experience. And to me, there is nothing else.
Even any ideas about who and what I am happen within and as consciousness. What I am to myself, and what the world is to me, is all happening within and as consciousness. It’s consciousness taking all these forms to and within itself.
The fabric of all I am and what the world is to me is consciousness.
Adya uses the big interpretation of awakening here and calls it the divine. And yet, to us, it’s simpler. It’s what we are and what everything, to us, is.
It’s what a thought can call consciousness, and that word and any associations we have about it also happen within and as what we are.
WHAT’S ALIVE HERE AND NOW
We can also explore this through what’s alive here and now, in immediate noticing.
Again, it’s not wrong that I am a human self in the world.
And in my first-person experience, I find something else is more true.
Here, I find that my experiences – of the wider world, of this human self, and anything else – all happen within my sense fields. It happens within sight, sound, taste, smell, sensations, thoughts, and so on. Any “outside” or “inside” are labels put on this sense field. In itself, it’s a seamless whole.
The sense fields happen within and as what I am.
When I look closely, I see that my experience of matter is created within these sense fields. Specifically, any sense of solidity is created by certain sensations (contractions) in my body combining with certain mental representations. The sensations lend a sense of solidity and reality to the thoughts, and the thoughts give the sensations a sense of meaning.
I find I am capacity for all of it, and what it all happens within and as.
A thought may label this awake space, consciousness, or even the divine. And those thoughts and what they point to happen within and as what I am.
The fabric of it all – of all of existence as it appears to me – is what a thought may label awake space, consciousness, or the divine.
BIG AND SMALL INTERPRETATIONS OF AWAKENING
This is where the big and small interpretations of awakening comes in.
When I explore this for myself, I find that – to me – existence has this nature. It’s inevitable since, to me, it appears within and as what I am. Acknowleding that, and that I cannot say anything for certain about all of existence, is the small interpretation of awakening.
The big interpretation of awakening takes the next step and assumes that the nature of all of existence is the same as this nature I find here. There are many hints that this is accurate.
Adya uses the big interpretation of awakening when he says the fabric of everything is the divine.
INITIAL DRAFT FRAGMENTS
We are used to thinking of the world as being made up of different things: Rocks, minerals, wood, plants, cells, molecules and atoms, and so on. That’s not wrong, but to us – in our first-person experience – something else may be more fundamental.
I may not know what all of existence is made up of. That’s a question for science.
But I can know what I am, and what my experiences are, in my own first-person experience.
…
This is my nature.
….
In a sense, I am this human self in the world.
When I look more closely, I find that all my experiences of the world happen within my sense fields – sight, sound, taste, smell, sensations, thoughts, and so on. To me, all my experiences happen within and as what I am. It all happens within and as what a thought may label consciousness.
To me, the world – this human self, the wider world, anything at all – happens within and as consciousness. Within and as this awake space. (Awake in an ordinary sense, the awakeness inherent in being conscious of anything.)
What I am takes the form of all these experiences. The fabric of all these experiences
….
I see that anything I experience happens within consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no experience. To me, any object happens within consciousness, including anything in the world and anything I may take myself to be.
More than that, any experience happens not only within consciousness but as consciousness.
Consciousness takes the form of any and all of our experiences.
….
When I explore this for myself, I find that – to me – existence has this nature. It’s inevitable since, to me, it appears within and as what I am.
Adya is using the big interpretation of awakening when he calls it the divine.
….
TRANSFORMATION
Knowing about this, within the realm of stories, can be a good first step.
And the real transformation comes from exploring this through direct noticing, keeping exploring it here and now, and also explore how to live from it.
…..
INITIAL DRAFT
We are used to thinking of the world as being made up of different things: Rocks, minerals, wood, plants, cells, molecules and atoms, and so on.
That’s not wrong, but to us – in our first-person experience – something else may be more fundamental.
EXPLORED LOGICALLY
We can explore this logically and within the realm of stories.
When I experience something, what I experience is an object within consciousness.
Without consciousness, there is no experience.
To me, any experience happens within and as consciousness.
And that goes even for anything I take myself to be.
All my experiences are made up of consciousness. The fabric of all my experiences is consciousness.
We can characterize consciousness in a few different ways, for instance as awake and empty of substance. In the quote, Adya calls it the divine.
Exploring this logically can be interesting, and a first step to a more thorough exploration. And it’s not, in itself, very transforming.
IMMEDIATE NOTICING
We can also explore this through immediate noticing.
In a sense, I am this human self in the world.
When I look more closely, I find that all my experiences of the world happen within my sense fields – sight, sound, taste, smell, sensations, thoughts, and so on. To me, all my experiences happen within and as what I am. It all happens within and as what a thought may label consciousness.
To me, the world – this human self, the wider world, anything at all – happens within and as consciousness. Within and as this awake space. (Awake in an ordinary sense, the awakeness inherent in being conscious of anything.)
What I am takes the form of all these experiences. The nature of all of my experiences, of anything at all, is the same. It all has the same substance – which we can call awake, insubstantial, and so on.
And to keep noticing this, and exploring living from it, can be profoundly transforming.
WHAT THE WORLD IS TO ME
I may not know what all of existence is made up of. That’s a question for science.
But I can notice the nature of what I am, and the nature of what all of existence is to me.