Becoming Aware of Non-Awareness

My dear friends...

As you know, we have been discussing here the moments in life that I have called The Holy Experience. And in last week’s installment I said that there are ten instruments by which any person may have such an experience. I said that the Ten Instruments are divided into two types: Physical Tools (described fully in the preceding chapter) and Spiritual Tools (which I will describe here). I have alternately called these two types The Five Tools of Awareness, and The Five Tools of Non-Awareness of the World.

You will also remember that I said, “Complete Awareness-plus- Complete Non-Awareness equals Realization.” When you are Aware and Non-Aware at the same time, you are Fully Realized. This is what is known as the Holy Experience.

Before we explore this second set of five tools, we need to look at this business of Non-Awareness that I keep talking about.

Both the state of Awareness and the state of Non-Awareness are needed, I have found, in order to live a rich, expansive, and spiritually fulfilling life.

First, we must be Aware of so many things in and about the physical environment in which we find ourselves. We can’t be meandering about our world bumping into things, as it were; breaking lots of glass and stepping on the shards. We have to know what’s out there, and where and how we fit in.

We also have to be Aware of the largest question, and its answer: WHY?

Why are we here? Who are we, really? What are we “up to” here? Is there a purpose to our existence? We have to be Aware of the Reason for All of Life, how the process called Life functions, and what we are trying to achieve within this framework.

This is where the first five Instruments of the Holy Experience come in handy. To review...to generate a Holy Experience in your life you must be (1) Yearning, (2) Willing, (3) Exploring, (4) Embracing, and (5) Explaining.

Yearning arouses our curiosity about these things, awakening us from our sleep. Willing provides us with the power we need to push past daily appearances and concerns and to begin, at last, our focus on larger things. Exploring moves us into a daring reaching out into the new world that the Soul invites us to know. Embracing gives us a tool with which to hold onto what we have discovered in our exploring. And Explaining allows us to share what we have discovered with others, which is one of the deepest and sweetest ways to experience it fully.

Yet, with all of that having been said, this is all still about “data.” It is about thoughts. Not exclusively, perhaps, but mainly. Data gathering and data use is the activity of the physical. Wisdom gathering, on the other hand, and wisdom use is the activity of the spiritual. For this we have to become Non-Aware of that of which we have become Aware. That is, we have to know it, but we have to have none of it matter—except when it does.

Non-Awareness allows us to use the data that we have gathered about Life and Self and God, without having the data use us.

Let me give you an example of what I mean here.

A person who grows up inside of a particular culture and has learned all about it, is married to a particular tradition, and is immersed in a particular religion, could live an entire life being used by that data. What this person has come to understand about the world in which he or she lives has become the framework within which life itself is experienced. Nothing (or very little) outside of that framework is considered, tried, or allowed.

The only way that such a person could step into an experience not covered by the data of their culture, tradition, religion, environment, etc., (we all know life-long Republicans or Democrats, Conservatives or Liberals, who belong to that persuasion because their families did!) would be for that person to be Nonaware of the dogma or doctrine emerging from the data. Or at least Non-Aware that it meant anything. This “Non-Awareness” would or could give them the “permission” they cannot give themselves to experience something not covered by the original information they have been given about Life and how it is.

(You’ve heard the statement Ignorance is bliss?)

Now the connection with Life’s True Joy, Real Purpose, and Ultimate Reality is what we have been calling here The Holy Experience. This is an experience not covered by the prior data of most human cultures, traditions, and religions. And we will continue our exploration of all of this here next week. I hope you will continue to return here if you are earnestly seeking to have The Holy Experience, because I believe this is one pathway on which you can find it!

Hugs & 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