The Paradox of Transitoriness, Illusoriness, Unreality and the Importance of Feelings

There is a human scale to awakening that does not belie the cosmic. We awaken, or don’t awaken, to our formless nature through this particular body of ours. This body and the life it manifests is the vehicle of awakening, an absolutely unerring access to presence.

Sometimes awakening leads to a delirious yearning to transcend body and the world and leave all that messy illusoriness behind. Sometimes awakening awareness becomes sensualized and slides deeply into embodied awareness. There is no preferred path. There is no right or wrong in consciousness, only in mind.

So for the sake of discussion, imagine a spectrum of consciousness, inclusive from the very small, the subatomic of quantum physics to the very large, the macro of astrophysics and the spaciousness of millions of light years. And somewhere in this spectrum of consciousness, consciousness manifests as ant consciousness, human consciousness, planetary consciousness, lunar consciousness, solar consciousness, cosmic consciousness. So we start where we are.

I personally don’t have electron microscopic vision to see sub-atomic molecules and the emptiness in which electrons and protons spin around each other, or Hubble telescopic vision to see the vastness of outer space and the billions of stars and galaxies therein. When I get out of bed in the morning all I have as my starting point is my human vision, my human consciousness.

As formlessness, spaciousness, emptiness, Consciousness is detached, impersonal, everywhere and nowhere, prior to language, prior to conceptual understanding. IT simply IS.

Consciousness manifesting as human being manifests as individual self, as personal being, with mind and thoughts and feelings and the capacity for conceptual understanding and non-conceptual understanding, mind and body.

We are, to our inescapable confusion, individual being and cosmic being simultaneously. Only in Mind, in Language is there duality, otherwise everything is everything is energy is consciousness is energy is consciousness. And as you may know or come to realize, everything in form is a manifestation of the universe, a manifestation of the divine, a manifestation of absolute reality. As such the blink of our eyes or the act of breathing in and out is as much a cosmic event as a thousand mile solar flare or a meteorite floating in space.

So here we are, temporarily manifesting in form, learning or not learning what it is to be a conscious human being, living an awakened or illusory existence, viewing “self” and “other” through the filter of a mind created sense of self, conditioned with assumptions, social and cultural beliefs, expectations, and knowledge of who we think we are and how it is.

By contrast, everchangingness, impermanence is the keystone of the present moment, where potentiality resides in the unfolding moment itself. And just because actions, emotions and thoughts are transitory, just because physical life is transitory, doesn’t necessarily mean all is illusory. It simply means all is transitory. IT happens, life happens, laughter happens, grief happens, something else happens, then another something else happens and so on and so forth, in constant transition.

As you may have heard or read, there are those who say only That which doesn’t change is real. Therefore the mind created sense of self is not real, the body is not real, emotions are not real, they are all illusory, primarily because they are transitory. The only thing, which is not a thing, and is known by many labels, which lasts forever, is emptiness, spaciousness, stillness, formlessness, consciousness. And that is what we truly are. This of course “thinking mind” has a difficult time getting or accepting. Paradoxically, we don’t come to learn That except through form, which is extremely susceptible to wordplay and mind games.

Thus, “transitory” in many people’s minds equates with illusory, not real, but IT is real, it’s just ephemerally real, ungraspable by hand, unknowable by mind.

What do we consider “illusory” in spiritual seeking? One’s sense of self is an illusion, not real. And thoughts are not real, they are imaginary. And perceptions are illusory because they are interpretations. And physical reality is illusory because it is transitory. And so we are taught to think we exist in an illusory world, thinking illusory thoughts, having illusory perceptions and experiencing illusory emotions - because it is all transitory. Thus, we are to accept we are living in a dream from which we may awaken or not.

And according to Buddha, and now quantum physicists, at the core of life is emptiness, and spaciousness, and formlessness, no-self. And the daily life we live is metaphorically like flickering images projected on a movie screen, illusory in nature. Yet there is an “actuality” that is this planet Earth on which we project our collective and individual stories. And so we are as much “story” as we are “physical” reality.

Still, we are composed of the same energy and consciousness as the universe IS. And what IS, is possibility. What IS, is potentiality. What IS, is the aliveness of aliveness itself, the ever changing possibility that is life itself. That is what IS. And that is what we are. And just because life feels “transitory” doesn’t mean it’s “Illusory.” It’s simply transitory. And just because the moment is transitory doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s just ephemeral.

Because we are in form a manifestation of the universe, we are hard-wired to “feel” the connectedness of everything is everything is everything. We cannot “think” our way to oneness. We either “feel” the “non-separation” or we experience the “separation” created by “thinking mind.” Or, more typically, we experience both, feeling it and not feeling it.

Water droplet in ocean is not different from ocean. Water droplet consciousness and oceanic consciousness are not essentially different. Yet sometimes water droplet can feel isolated and lonely. When water droplet peers at its oceanic surroundings through filters of assumptions, beliefs, experience, hopes, desires and expectations it may not see its connectedness, may not experience non-separation.

In awakening there is an inherent validity to feelings over the glibness of intellectual insights. Thinking mind can reason its way to the “unity of existence manifested as diversity” and still not experience the oneness. Have you noticed that if you don’t feel the non-separation, it really doesn’t matter that thinking mind says we are one, you still feel separate.

It is the “feeling” of non-separation that evokes human compassion, empathy and loving kindness. The willingness to experience feelings, hurtful or pleasurable, not avoid them, is the capacity to awaken human consciousness. Not just the capacity to “imagine” whatever, or to “think” whatever, but the capacity to “feel” whatever. Mind and heart ultimately must come into balance.

We are the same energy and consciousness as the universe. Energy and consciousness vibrating at a certain frequency creates “feelings” of harmony. Energy and consciousness vibrating at another frequency “feels” like dissonance. Again there is no right or wrong here but in the story of Buddha it seems it was “suffering” that was the pebble in his sandal that propelled his inquiry into the truth of suffering, the cessation of suffering, the truth of no-self and the truth of impermanence.

Notwithstanding the four noble truths, the eight fold path, the seven habits of successful people, or the twelve steps of AA, life and living is not to be found in formulas.

The crucial “feeling” is the feeling of aliveness itself, of embodied consciousness. That the body happens to be the resonating instrument to awakening our “feeling consciousness” is just one of those things.

And just because something is transitory doesn’t make it illusory, unreal, or valueless.