In our hectic lives, when we recognize anything familiar, we quickly name it, subconsciously assume that we know enough about it, and focus on what's next. If we're being honest, we actually know very little about most of the "roses we fail to stop to smell."
Assumptions about "knowledge" are humbling. It's the brightest, most knowledgeable students who tend to suffer from "imposter syndrome" - where they doubt their knowledge and feel like frauds, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, some students who are in obvious danger of failing, are happily confident (Dunning-Kruger effect).
When we come across something radically unusual, instead of investigating it with curiosity & interest, many tend to write it off as an unimportant aberration. This is how scientific materialism deals with anything that can't be measured & quantified. That attitude may be reasonable in the midst of an experiment. But real scientists should be curious about & ideally investigate anything that is clearly outside the scientific materialist paradigm.
Curiosity (http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=curiosity) and Love (http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=love) powerfully balance out our anxious, fearful avoidance of intimately savoring & exploring the miracle of ALL that the present moment holds. http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/03/a-big-old-cuppa.html
“When the vague, implicit meanings are unpacked by an articulate mind attuned to them, and when the abstractions needed to conceptualize reality (left hemisphere) are informed by a wider, overall sense of context (balanced by the right hemisphere), then something that we might call genius, or at least insight, can occur.”
Gary Lachman “Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.” Floris Books, 2017
Peter Brown's concise 108-page 2020 book, “The Yoga of Radiant Presence” ($13) gives an exceptionally clear, useful overview for anyone seriously interested in stepping through the "barrier" or, more accurately, "gateless gate" between our common, default ideas: small separate self & materialist worldview or "consensus reality" and the mystics', saints', and ever-increasing numbers of ordinary folks' direct experience of Ultimate Reality:
“Spirituality is paradox.
Reality, the actual condition, cannot be conceived of, described, written about, or imagined. Nothing is actually as it appears to be, or is held to be. Even to say that this is pure miracle or magic does not begin to capture it.
Nevertheless, this book has been written for anyone who finds themselves driven to confront paradox, to challenge impossibility, and to try to penetrate this deepest Mystery for themselves.
Yoga is an ancient word, that means investigation for discovery of truth, of the actual nature of reality. The Sanskrit root means union or joining, and what is joined or unified is held to be one's separate self with the totality of being. In fact these are already one, and Yoga clearly reveals this to be so.
The Yoga presented here is distinguished by its technique, where the normal experience of the yogi, without any modification of behavior or circumstance, is the method of experiential engagement that leads to realization of the absolute.
This is effective because in fact it happens that your normal experience IS already the complete naked Presence of the absolute. This is ultimately discovered to be the case by directly noticing the inherent properties of your experience. Through Yoga these are discovered to be fundamentally beyond what you are normally used to imagining them to be, and are revealed to be essentially entirely miraculous.
The practice of Yoga is: Investigating the nature of reality by engaging with present experience intimately, sensitively, and intelligently."
The above is a pretty radical departure for most of us, because our "normal" is mostly regretting the past, worrying about the future, and sleep-walking right past "the roses" and all the other "ordinary miracles" of the present moment.
“You have to go beyond all concepts. And you will find it in the stillness of your mind, in the quiet chambers of your mind when you go from the known to the unknown, from the physical to the spiritual …
When you hear beyond the word, an inner light goes on and it brings out inner knowledge and wisdom, spiritual intelligence, before the contamination of human thought.”
Sydney Banks, “Long Beach Lecture Series: The Great Illusion”
For a gentle entry into this, perhaps newish territory I recommend setting aside 30 minutes for uninterrupted attention to Helen Hamilton's video. She leads a gentle, guided "self-inquiry" meditation for 23 minutes. Then for 7 minutes she'll answer the first of several very worthwhile questions. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4bXew7umcc
Next, for additional details on self-inquiry, here are 3 brief, very concise recent videos in which Angelo Dilullo clearly explains what you need to know practicing self-inquiry:
Part 1: 
• Self Inquiry (Part 1: Ramana Maharshi, Adv...
Part 2: • Self Inquiry (Part 2: The Process Itself)
Part 3: • Self Inquiry (Part 3: Where the Real Work ...
 |
| Unreal-Appearing REAL Clouds |
