THE DAWN OF AWAKENING

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Pravin Kumar
Posts: 7094
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:08 pm
Location: bombay

THE DAWN OF AWAKENING

Post by Pravin Kumar » Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:59 am

Here is the prologue, and cover, of my upcoming book 'The Dawn Of Awakening'.

The Dawn Of Awakening

As any of my Facebook friends will know I am continually posting photos from the stunning environment where I live high in the McPherson range overlooking the Tweed Valley and the Pacific Ocean. For five months of year we get to see wonderful sunrises from where I sit reading every morning on our verandah and posts of these are particularly appreciated. I also use my photos as covers of my books and after the one used here was posted a friend suggested that I use it for my next book. This photo also suggested the title of the book in which the moon can be seen to represent the ego, the night samsara, the sun the radiance of Pure Awareness and the coming day nirvana when one is Awake. Samsara indicates living in delusion, full of anxiety and mental suffering, and nirvana indicates freedom from these.

So taking the moon to represent the ego, when it is full is when identification with it, and thus delusion, is at its strongest. In the photo it is waning which occurs either through spiritual practices which loosen the hold of the ego or through the mental suffering that it produces which can ‘turn one off it’. The night is also fading, heralding the rising of the sun and the coming day. For when the sun rises the moon and night vanish, overcome by the glory of its radiance, and the day begins. Similarly once one sees that one is Pure Awareness, see appendix, identification with the ego wanes and finally disappears as ‘seeing’ grows stronger and nirvana commences. This identification with, and as, Pure Awareness (Consciousness at rest) is Awakening in which existential anxiety and suffering cease. For one sees that one is an expression and instrument of That and thus never separate from That.

Also the turning of the earth, which causes the sun to appear to rise, is a simile for the ‘turning in the seat of consciousness’ which is how some Buddhists denote the beginning of Awakening. For as the earth turns the night transmutes to day and the sunlight obscures the moon. In the same way as we ‘turn’ our attention to ‘see’ our true nature - Pure Awareness - we turn it away from delusion and the ego whose ‘power’ is overcome as we no longer identify with it.

So when it finally dawns upon one that one is Pure Awareness the ‘radiance’ of this seeing and of Pure Awareness Itself completely blots out the faint light of the ego, which was always but a dim reflection of this radiance, in the same way that moonlight is just a reflection of sunlight. At this dawning one Awakens and the sleep of delusion vanishes; although be warned that you will tend to fall back asleep, due to past misidentification, requiring a new ‘dawning’ to Awaken. The symptom of this is the return of samsara , so any anxiety or mental suffering should be seen as a trigger that you have nodded off and need to herald a new day by re-identifying with Pure Awareness, thus reawakening. This is easy to do by seeing that one is aware of the suffering and one is that Awareness, or by reinvestigating this moment, see appendix, and I recommend that this full investigation should be carried out at least three times a day until one is fully established in, and as, Pure Awareness.

Appendix

Below follows a simple method to investigate the nature of reality starting with one’s day-to-day experience. Each step should be considered until one experiences, or ‘sees’, its validity before moving on to the following step. If you reach a step where you do not find this possible, continue on regardless in the same way, and hopefully the flow of the investigation will make this step clear. By all means examine each step critically but with an open mind, for if you only look for ‘holes’ that’s all you will find!

1. Consider the following statement: ‘Life, for each of us, is just a series of moment-to-moment experiences’. These experiences start when we are born and continue until we die, rushing headlong after each other, so that they seem to merge into a whole that we call ‘my life’. However, if we stop to look we can readily see that, for each of us, every moment is just an experience.

2. Any moment of experience has only three elements: thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything sensed by the body and its sense organs) and Awareness of these thoughts and sensations. Emotions and feelings are a combination of thought and sensation.

3. Thoughts and sensations are ephemeral, that is they come and go, and are objects, i.e. ‘things’ that are perceived.

4. Awareness is the constant subject, the ‘perceiver’ of thoughts and sensations and that which is always present. Even during sleep there is Awareness of dreams and of the quality of that sleep; and there is also Awareness of sensations; if a sensation becomes strong enough, such as a sound or uncomfortable sensation, one will wake up.

5. All thoughts and sensations appear in Awareness, exist in Awareness, and subside back into Awareness. Before any particular thought or sensation there is effortless Awareness of ‘what is’: the sum of all thoughts and sensations occurring at any given instant. During the thought or sensation in question there is effortless Awareness of it within ‘what is’. Then when it has gone there is still effortless Awareness of ‘what is’.

6. So the body/mind is experienced as a flow of ephemeral objects appearing in this Awareness, the ever present subject. For each of us any external object or thing is experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on. The point is that for us to be aware of anything, real or imaginary, requires thought about and/or sensation of that thing and it is Awareness of these thoughts and sensations that constitutes our experience.

7. Therefore this Awareness is the constant substratum in which all things appear to arise, exist and subside. In addition, all living things rely on Awareness of their environment to exist and their behaviour is directly affected by this. At the level of living cells and above this is self-evident, but it has been shown that even electrons change their behaviour when (aware of) being observed! Thus this Awareness exists at a deeper level than body/mind (and matter/energy ) and we are this Awareness!

8. This does not mean that at a surface level we are not the mind and body, for they arise in, are perceived by and subside back into Awareness, which is the deepest and most fundamental level of our being. However, if we choose to identify with this deepest level – Awareness - (the perceiver) rather than the surface level, mind/body (the perceived), then thoughts and sensations are seen for what they truly are, just ephemeral objects which come and go, leaving Awareness itself totally unaffected.

Colin Drake.
For detailed palm reading and spiritual guidance Consult at: pravinjsoni97@hotmail.com

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