The Simultaneity of Existence

Life, existence, happens all at once, simultaneously all over the world, and throughout the cosmos, now. This is obvious and apparent. There’s no need to take my word for it. Look for yourself. It’s how we relate to this fact that makes our journey in these bodies of ours so intriguing and fascinating.

I am physical being, emotional being, psychological being, spiritual being, individual being, and cosmic being simultaneously. Mind cannot grasp this. Not really. It tries but the effort is fruitless because its seeing is essentially line of sight, linear. Mind attempts to understand the whole by deconstructing what it thinks it knows into constituent parts.

No wonder confusion occurs when mind attempts to decide “is it this or is it that” or decides “it must be this instead of that.”

Duality / non-duality co-exist simultaneously. Stop thinking it must be one or the other to be true.

My ordinary every-day consciousness and cosmic consciousness are not separate. They co-exist simultaneously.

Even as I am a manifestation of Absolute Reality, “I” don’t understand what that means. Mind wants to understand, feels compelled to understand, but Reality doesn’t require understanding to Be.

So as a result, or as an incidental by-product, I am formless awareness and embodied awareness at the same time. And this human form, this human life, is the vehicle of awakening, if awakening needs to happen.

But until the truth of the simultaneity of existence is heard and felt deeply within the body, Mind experiences confusion, anger, disappointed, frustration, “It doesn’t make sense and I’m afraid I’m going crazy, but I don’t want to go crazy. I really, really don’t want to become no-self, not-knowing mind. I want to be awakened mind, enlightened mind, and why do you insist This is all beyond mind, and what does that mean anyway, conceptual understanding / non-conceptual understanding.” And so on and so forth.

In This I experience stillness and craziness because mind so easily and routinely perverts the “idea” of awakening into a belief of a need for “constant knowing” or some imagined “moment-to-moment abiding in awareness.” This leads in turn to a conscious, subconscious or unconscious “second guessing” of how the “next moment” is suppose to look like and feel like for this awakened being. And of course, the actuality of the moment never coincides with mind’s projection whatsoever.

By and large mind is always in a state of “expectancy” of what will unfold in the moment; not a neutral expectancy akin to alertness but expectancy tinged with superimposed expected outcomes, desired outcomes.

And what I find particularly uncanny about this perceptual expectancy is that it overlays physical, objective reality so seamlessly that no matter where I turn my gaze I actually think I’m seeing, hearing, feeling how it actually is, when in fact all I’m ever seeing, hearing, feeling, is how it seems to me as interpreted by mind.

But I don’t have to know everything all at once to be awakened. As a practical matter, I don’t have to know anything at all in order to be a manifestation of reality, truth or the divine. Everything in form, including you and me, as we are already is part and parcel of IT. There really is no need to try to make IT fit any expectation to be understood or experienced.

My ordinary everyday existence is not separate from cosmic existence. It can’t be. My relative reality is subsumed within Absolute Reality. And this includes mind, conditioned and unconditioned, confused or clear-eyed.

You see, mind can only “imagine” what enlightenment is based on all the stories it’s heard. To the extent you can, put imagining on hold for a moment and be with what is. Conceptual understanding may ensue or it may not. In which case there’s an opportunity for non-conceptual understanding to occur. In either instance, IT is as IT is, you are as you are and I am as I am; simultaneously.

Bliss and unhappiness do not exist at the opposite ends of the world but sleep in the same bed every night.