by Marc Leavitt
But it is in this groundless ground that we will find our true Home. Here in this foundationless space, we discover our true nature and the true nature of Reality itself. When you truly surrender your life to God, Reality etc. you will discover a faith in even the most puzzling aspects of life, since even these mysteries are understood to be God. When we surrender ourselves, the insight we are rewarded with invariably results in an even deeper trust, which enables an even deeper surrender, which leads to a deeper insight … and so it goes.
I realize how abstract all this may seem. This principle applies to every aspect of our lives so I have laid it all out very generally. But to make it even more easily understood, I will give an example of how this might look in your everyday life.
Deciding on your agenda would most likely include a lot of serious inward reflection about what you really want out of life. Perhaps Enlightenment is not something you are passionate about. After considerable reflection, you may decide that you are more passionate about your career, or saving the earth, or making music, etc. But if you do decide that the pursuit of Enlightenment is indeed your main agenda, then I suggest you be very clear about this from the beginning … resolute in your pursuit. When you meet with conflict in your daily life, instead of desperately defending yourself, you will remember your main agenda of peace. Consequently, the wisdom in not struggling with whatever Reality presents.
This brings us to the first step which is ‘trust.’ Trusting could refer to summoning up the courage to face the Void when sitting in silent meditation. Also, trusting could refer to having faith that Reality is ultimately perfect despite the horrible atrocities that we all know take place on a daily basis. The most direct teachings on Enlightenment are based on a trust that, right here and right now, we are actually in Heaven and that if we just investigate this aware space deeply enough then we will inevitably see this Truth for ourselves.
This trusting enables us to practice the second step which is ‘surrender.’ Surrender can refer to the practice of allowing yourself to disappear during particularly intense meditation sessions. Or, surrender can refer to the everyday experiences we have when we meet with conflict. The reason that we deepen our sense of trust in Reality is that when we are confronted with the struggles of everyday life, we will have the courage to surrender to our experience instead of struggling with it.
If we are vigilant in our commitment to stick to our main agenda of remaining struggle-free, then we will respond accordingly when we are faced with conflict. We can experience conflict with someone we know, or we might experience conflict when we simply hear about something we disagree with in the daily news. It is at this moment that we can either choose to “build ourselves up” by defending ourselves and our beliefs, or we can remind ourselves about our true agenda and simply let the whole thing go. The truth is that we have no control over the choices and values of others, and the sooner that we realize this, the sooner we can give up our struggle against Reality.
When we do surrender to this struggle, whether it is a fear of annihilation during silent meditation or a conflict in our everyday life, we are rewarded with insight. The insight may be as simple as realizing that it is easier and more peaceful to let your anger go, or, the insight may be drastic, with life changing implications. Whether the insight is simple, profound or anywhere in between, it will invariably lead to even more trust in Reality. And so the cycle continues. Trusting leads to an ability to surrender which leads to an insight which leads to even more trust, etc.
So, my best advice would be to continue this cycle of trust, surrender and insight until you bottom out on the groundless ground of Being. How do you know when you bottom out, otherwise known as ‘Enlightenment?’ When you actually do bottom out, you won’t have to ask whether you have hit bottom. You will recognize the ground of being as your rightful home. It will be more familiar than the sun and the sky.
You will effortlessly remember the ground of being just as you automatically remember the everyday world when you awaken from a dream. However, in the same way that you sometimes think that you have awakened from a dream, only to find yourself still inside of a dream moments later, you can also mistake a single moment of awakening to be true Enlightenment. That is probably why it is customary in some traditions to wait ten years after the experience of Enlightenment before proceeding to teaching it. Because, if you woke up from the dream ten years ago, it is safe to assume that you actually did wake up from the dream.
On another level, it can also be said that even true Enlightenment is still part of a bigger dream. That is to say that any experience is always and necessarily a form of imagination or a function of Awareness. Enlightenment means only that you recognize that your true nature and the true nature of Reality is this formless, timeless, Aware Space that you are experiencing right now.
I realize that this answer may be too abstract to satisfy you that it answers the question of how you will know when you are Enlightened. So, if you are looking for specific changes in your behavior that might occur because of Enlightenment, I would say that there definitely will be certain changes that you notice. One thing you might notice is that you don’t find yourself complaining about anything anymore. I don’t mean anything superficial like complaining about the fly in your soup or that your sports team lost the game. I mean that you don’t have any true complaints about your everyday life or Reality at large.
It’s unlikely you will be caught up in a belief that something is wrong with people, society, or the government etc. On the contrary, you will probably have a keen sense that even the worst things that you are aware of are somehow necessary in the overall scheme of things. Just like water finding its own level, everything seems to balance out. That is why I have said that Enlightenment is an actual shift in perspective. It is like widening your perspective enough to recognize the harmony that couldn’t be seen when your vantage point was too narrow.
But the most obvious change I noticed was the complete about-face in terms of seeking. In one moment, all seeking dropped away and has never returned. From that moment on, I not only lost interest in reading, but in meditation as well. I would sometimes try and read just because I saw a good book lying around, but it was as if nothing could gain any traction and keep my interest. I only remember trying to meditate once, and it was weird because I was accustomed to a contrast in experience when I meditated. However, this time, I immediately noticed that when I sat down to meditate, nothing changed. There is only the mind, and it is the same mind whether we are meditating or chopping wood.
It would be very easy to say that life becomes meditation itself, but that sounds like a terrible cliché. Instead I would say that wherever I go, I notice the Aware Space that everything is happening in. If I am at a football game, I am aware of the Aware Space in which the game is happening. If I am in a shopping mall, I am aware of the Aware Space in which all of stores are appearing. No matter what I am experiencing, I am acutely aware of the only constant in my life and that is the same Aware Space that this experience is happening in right now. That is how I would describe my everyday perspective now.
It would be tempting to say that being aware of the Aware Space that everything is happening in is like always having a companion with you or having a familiar soundtrack playing in the background. Sometimes it even seems that the mind is a wonderful toy … always at your disposal. But the reason that I hesitate to say these things as if they were true is because they all suggest a duality, as if there is an ‘I’ that possesses this mind. The reason that it sounds like there is two — a ‘me’ and a ‘mind’ is because Awareness is experiencing itself. So Awareness is the Subject (I) experiencing itself as an object (mind).
That is why I have been drawn to emphasizing Aware Space rather than Awareness. In all the varying mystical paths, different words are used to describe the Ultimate Reality. Some say that there is only Awareness. Some say that there is only Mind, the Self, God, This, That etc. I happen to resonate with th
e word ‘Awareness’ because that is the word that I thought all those other words were pointing to.
But after an embarrassing amount of time contemplating this, I now see awareness as just a quality of Aware Space. I find it more accurate to say that Aware Space is truly all there is, and it has two primary qualities.
The first quality of Aware Space is the capacity for existence. The second quality of Aware Space is the function of being aware, awake, mindful, alive, etc. Like yin and the yang, Aware Space is an inseparable whole but we mistakenly refer to it as Awareness because the ‘aware’ aspect of Aware Space is active or dominant whereas the ‘space’ aspect of Aware Space is passive or inert and therefore goes unnoticed.
I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the relationship of Aware-Space and the male-female relationship. The feminine aspect of Aware Space would obviously be the ‘Space’ aspect because the reproductive aspect of the female is best represented by the womb … the passive egg. The reproductive aspect of the male would be best represented by the active sperm … the fertilizer which enlivens the egg. It should come as no surprise that our own reproduction system mirrors the same system that produced the world in the first place. It is the inseparable union of Aware Space that results in the production of Life, otherwise known as the Universe. In this Universe, it is also the inseparable union of male and female that results in the continued reproduction of life.
The bottom line and inescapable fact of life is that there is only this Aware Space and the infinite variations of appearances come and go within it. The best way I could think of describing how I experience the Aware Space that we all exist in and as, would be to describe the world as a magical room of sorts or even a crystal ball. I see the world appearing as an endless succession of visions materializing in a crystal ball that I am staring into. Another way to describe it would be to say that I see Aware Space manifesting as some kind of aware room or mental landscape that is the space for everything that has ever existed or can ever exist.
The amazing part about this aware room is that everything that anyone has ever experienced, including everything that you are experiencing right this second is taking place in this magical room. The room itself is changeless but the scenery inside the room shifts and transforms to whatever is being imagined. Even if you die and go to Heaven or Nirvana, that experience will be taking place in the same magic room that you looking into right now. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about Heaven, the astral worlds, the bottom of the ocean or the bathrooms at Grand Central Station. They are all appearances in this ever changing magical room that we have never left.
The reason I point this out is because there is a prevailing notion among us that one day we will go to a different place and that place is our true home. I think that we sense this because it is true in some way, just not in the way we expected. I’m still not sure exactly what it is that we expect. Do we expect to travel billions of miles into deep space, take a quick left past the quasars and then travel through an asteroid belt until we find the golden stairs that lead to this ‘other’ place that we call Heaven?
If Heaven refers to our true home, then Heaven is not a place at all. Our true home is the unchanging magic room itself, the Aware Space that everything exists in. We can’t see the magic room because it is not a thing itself but rather a space for the appearance all things that come and go within it. Sometimes the magic room is flooded with mountainous scenery and sometimes the magic room is flooded with celestial realms, but the only constant is the magic room itself.
In conclusion, Heaven, in the truest sense of the word, is actually right here and right now. We have never left our true home. The Aware Space that we are experiencing right now is both the Supreme Source of Reality and everything that manifests within Reality. Nothing could be truer than knowing that This Is It!
Reality Publishers
Reality Publishers was established in 2012 as a conduit for the formal investigation into the fundamental nature of Reality. The study of Reality is a response to humankind’s deep-seated need to understand the mysterious yet ordered world that we find ourselves inextricably woven into. The study of Reality is not limited to the study of the outward world; it is also the study of the very space or capacity that the entire world exists in. The study of Reality exists to resolve the paradoxical relationship between Mind and matter, God and man, Heaven and earth, or generally speaking; the Absolute and the relative.
The debut of Reality Publishers is the ‘Reality Explained’ Trilogy. Book One of the trilogy, “Enlightenment: Behind the Scenes,” is a personal and detailed account of Reality, revealing its true nature and its process for creating the appearance of a world. Book Two will focus on the day to day details of what it is like to live in the world while knowing that you are not of it. Finally, Book Three will be a thorough and exhaustive examination of the actual architecture or design of Reality.
Book Two, “Being While Knowing That You Are Not,” will be available in 2013 from Reality Publishers.