Leap in perception

Aug 29, 2010, 12.00am IST
TONY PARSONS.
When very young I had a sense of being in a magic world, outside of time and the need to have to become or do anything... an unrecognised oneness that enveloped me simply in the wonder of what is. I feel it is the same for most children.

One day all of that changed and I entered the world of separation and need. I found that I had a separate mother and father, a name, and an apparent choice to do this or that. I moved into the world of time and space, boundary and exploration, endeavor, manipulation, and the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.

I came to own these experiences and believed they were my natural way of being.


I was also taught and came to believe that if I work hard, behaved myself and succeeded in my chosen or imposed job, got married, had children and looked after my health, I stood a good chance of being happy. I did all of this quite successfully, and enjoyed myself at times, but I also recognised that something intangible and fundamental seemed to be missing -- a secret of some kind...

I was told that if I worked hard and applied myself to various disciplines, rituals and purifications, I would eventually come to deserve "spiritual fulfillment". Again... I still could not discover the reason for my sense of bereavement.


One day, almost as if by accident, I rediscovered the secret, or perhaps it rediscovered me... The revelation that accompanied this rediscovery was so simple and yet so revolutionary that it swept away in a stroke all that I had been taught or had come to believe.


Part of that realisation was that enlightenment is absolutely beyond my effort to change the way I live, or even of changing life at all. It has to do with a total shift in the realisation of what it is that lives.


I am already that which I seek. Whatever I seek or think I want, however long the shopping list may be, all of my desires are only a reflection of my longing to come home. And home is oneness, my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become.


Since that time I have embraced and lived that revelation – and avoided and rejected it.


It is of course impossible to communicate in words the inexpressible, and so this declaration is my attempt to express my understanding of that revelation. I try to explain the way in which my beliefs about enlightenment, time, purpose and my effort to achieve spiritual fulfillment, can directly interrupt that oneness that is continuously and directly available. How the illusion of separation, fear, guilt and abstraction can distract me from the freedom that includes and transforms these influences.


I also express in the best way I can how effortless and natural it is to let go and be open to that freedom. This declaration speaks about a singular and revolutionary leap in perception about what we really are. It requires no embellishment or lengthy explanation and once realized, leaves nothing more to be said.

For the sake of clarity, the terms enlightenment, liberation, fulfillment, freedom, oneness, and so on, are all seen here as being the same as the absolute realisation by anyone of what they really are.

Excerpt from The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, Yogi Impressions