It’s been a little while I know….but I have been trying to strike a balance between a) the OC desire to seek ways of settling into comfort amidst the current bedlam of changes, and b) cultivating the art of mere and utter acceptance of what is happening right now without any embellishments (which seems to involve a lot of involutary twitching.) By the way, OC = obsessive compulsive, not Orange County or any text abbreviation you might think of.
I have been listening to the non dualists speak about their experiences of awakening from the dream. It’s very unworldly listening to these people speak about not existing but still being there as the background of what is happening, because it has a rather unhinging effect on the ‘I’, causing it to slip in and out of perception when you're not looking. Yes, it is terribly confusing for the OC mind that needs a rational explanation for everything. The nature of the egoic mind is to label, refer, understand and own. If it cannot do this, it becomes very agitated; note the increasing agitation of the ‘world’ as we desperately try to ‘make sense’ of the worrying events that seem to be occurring at great speed - although this is ultimately an agitation occurring in your own perception, it does not make it any easier to bear.
But the fact that these ideas about ‘reality’ are appearing in my life leads me to question why now and how do they fit into the frameless picture of everything? When I first started this so called path, I was told by certain teachers that this dawning of the new age that is being spoken of would be a recycling of a Golden Age, which has occurred many times before and continues to recur over and over again. This pure age will herald a time where people would drink nectar out of flowers and walk in the elysian fields of bliss. In accordance with this belief, many groups are attempting to bring about the manifestation of such an age by putting out the thought processes that will draw like energies and therefore create a manifestation. http://thesatyug.blogspot.com/ (paste link)
Concurrently, there is also an undeniable attraction that has recently overwhelmed my being and draws towards Adviata Vedanta or the non-dualists. By contrast to those who are focusing on repeating the cycle and bringing about the repetition of the Golden Age, Advaita is completely naked, with no frills, no references to any future or past and fully experiential right now. The experience of non duality is final with no returns and brings about a permanent end of dreaming.
The question is; will this new Golden Age that is supposedly so close on the horizon, just be a continuation of the dream, albeit a pleasant one? Or will we be functioning in an apparent world, fully awake and aware of the boundless unconditional love that animates all of existence.
And if it is a question of just repeating the cycle until we again degrade our purity and once again move into another Iron Age or age of pollution on all levels, then what would be the point of that? Would it not just be another illusion that we are buying into?
Every spiritual order has their view on how the world will end/change/evolve but it is also equally possible, if not probable, that no-one knows for sure and we may all be in for an impressive surprise. Even though some may vehemently assert that they have received their messages from the mouth of God itself, there is still no guarantee that what they have received is absolute. One has to consider that thoughts are the culprit here and since it is impossible to know the truth through your intellect – no matter how pure, perhaps the real purpose of all these stories, predictions and ideas, is to eliminate the mind by driving it hysterically insane, so that it might involuntary step to one side and allow the real obvious secret to be seen. And that is, that none of this really matters because perfection and unconditional love are not really concerned with an outcome that will give assurance to the human mind and it’s longing to be pleasantly satisfied at all costs.
That said, all of this could be a preparation for each apparent ‘one’ of us to break out of our mental prisons and witness the grand dissolution of all things from a place where there is no individual concern – or even where there is no individual present; i.e., no sense of ‘I’.
I have written of how we are possibly the manifestors of all that appears to be, and on some level, that is true. It may be that an apparent global event will spontaneously, simultaneously and synchronistically occur that will remove all blinkers at once and in so doing, bring about the sudden witnessing of all objects as they really are and not as we would like them to be. This would be an actual demonstration that nothing ‘out there’ has any inherent existence of its own and is a full projection of the collection of our owned thoughts and beliefs. This is the marvel of the dream; its complexity and its hypnotic glamour. Such potent seeing would of course instantly end all things that are based on inaccurate or invalid perception and perhaps THIS is what is meant by the end of the world because it would indeed terminate the ideas and illusions we hold about a thing called ‘the world’.
How Will the World End? According to 'A Course in Miracles':
“Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone.”
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles/Manual_for_Teachers/How_Will_the_World_End%3F
If you find this too wordy and evasive to grasp, consider the words of Richard Bach:
“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
So I'll leave you with this parting thought: If there is no ‘you’, can there really be a ‘world’? When a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, the caterpillar is no more, and neither is the world of its perception.
Until next time...
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