Reality

Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

As one progresses on the path, it becomes apparent the illusory nature of various aspects of our life. For example, for a while we may believe that we are our emotion. We say, “I’m angry.” The linguistic representation of our experience indicates that there is an identification with the emotion of anger (one believes that one is that anger). The next step is to be able to see that I am not that anger but that I am having anger. The anger seems to belong to me but it is no longer “me.” If we take it one step further, we can see that there is in fact no “me” involved in the anger at all. It’s as if the anger is arising and falling away of its own accord. I now identify as the witness/observer who is separate from the anger–and there is no illusion of the anger being “mine,” nor are there any personal pronouns involved. The disidentification with the illusion of the identification tends to dissipate the energy of the thing–in this case, the anger loses its power over you and “you” become a “what”–i.e., the impersonal field of an aspect of consciousness called the witness/observer.

One then begins a dance between the thing itself (a feeling/emotion, such as anger), the sense of me/mine/ownership, and the slightly more subtle perception of one’s truer self as the witness/observer void of any “me-ness.” As one allows the thing itself (feeling) to just be there without trying to change it, and instead accepts and shifts into the field itself (witness/observer), the energy of the things themselves goes on dissipating until a kind of “emptiness” remains. The external triggers are no longer triggers. They are merely objective events that no longer activate anger or anything else within you, since the illusory nature of the anger has been fully realized.