Don’t look down

As you know, we have been discussing here the moments in life that I have called The Holy Experience. The connection with Life’s True Joy, Real Purpose, and Ultimate Reality is what we have been calling that. As I said here last week, this is an experience not covered by the prior data of most human cultures, traditions, and religions. True, many of these cultures, traditions, and religions offer a facsimile of it, but few, if any, have brought us reliable data about Life’s True Joy, Real Purpose, and Ultimate Reality. In fact, they have filled many people (perhaps most people) with exactly the opposite.

Therefore, in order to discover and experience Life’s True Joy, Real Purpose, and Ultimate Reality, we have to become Non-Aware of that of which we have become Aware—using our prior data only when it is useful to us, rather than being used by it.

In short, we have to be in this world, but not of it. We have to be Non- Aware of the prior data, which is not the same as being ignorant of it. To be in Non-Awareness means to know something, but refuse to notice what you know. It means to refuse to acknowledge that the prior data of which you are aware means anything. This is what it means to be Aware and Non-Aware at the same time. We adopt the attitude that “nothing has any meaning save the meaning I give it.”

The embracing of such a point of view takes enormous courage. That is why it is often said with a wry smile: “Transformation ain’t for sissies.”

Non-Awareness is like walking a tightrope. It is good to be Aware that you are on a tightrope. You can keep your balance when you are Aware. You can make it across to the other side. It is also good to be Non-Aware of just how high up you are. Or at that you are high up at all. That is why all tightrope walkers are told, “Don’t look down.” 

Nobody is kidding anybody. The tightrope walker knows exactly what is being walked on. The tightrope walker is totally Aware. Yet the walker knows that looking down will increase Awareness to the point where the data begins to run the person. So tightrope walkers do not make themselves Aware of how high they are. They enter a state of Non-Awareness.

Attaining a state of Non-Awareness is all about the movement from data to wisdom. It is very wise to not look down while on a tightrope. It is very wise to keep looking straight ahead, and ignore the data. The same is true of Life.

Attaining a state of Non-Awareness is about the shift from the Mind to the Soul—which knows all about the Tightrope of Life...as well as what is awaiting us on The Other Side. It knows that we can make it across the span without difficulty if we simply don’t look down. It knows that in God’s Kingdom, “everything is looking up.”

Hugs and love,

Read this week's Letter to Neale here

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Read a message from one of the prisoners impacted by our Prison Outreach HERE