Living Realization by Scott Kiloby

Author:Scott Kiloby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2014-10-27T13:10:44+00:00

CHAPTER SIX:

States

THE MAIN INVITATION is to:

Recognize awareness

Let all appearances be as they are

See that appearances are inseparable.

All sorts of states are experienced in awareness, from boredom, frustration, and doubt, to bliss, joy, and silence. It is easy to get hooked into believing that a particular state is awareness. This is not the case. States are appearances. All appearances are temporary, and come and go to awareness. Any state that is experienced, no matter how blissful or awful, is an appearance to awareness.

States include waking, dreaming, deep sleep, drug-induced or altered states, egoic states, witnessing, conflict, confusion, doubt, uncertainty, certainty, relaxation, nervousness, peace, frustration, freedom, bondage, depression, excessive thinking, illness, boredom, and any other temporary mode or condition of being. The point is to recognize awareness as that to which all states come and go. It is not to seek after or try to maintain some temporary state; all states are temporary.

When we seek to identify with or emphasize certain states, and avoid, dismiss, or attempt to escape from other states, we suffer. We get caught up in a time-bound cycle of dualistic seeking. In this cycle, our happiness seems so elusive. We always want to feel different, better, freer, or more at peace. We don’t see that it is the very seeking after a future state that makes it feel as though the present moment is lacking.

Seeking can be very simply defined as wanting something to happen other than what is happening now. The search can also be described as the constant movement of looking to the future for a sense of completion. Virtually everyone in the world is on a search of some kind. Whether we have been seeking spiritual awakening for years, or have been seeking happiness in possessions, career, attention, fame, relationships, food, sex, or drugs, one basic fact remains: to chase after any state other than the one that is appearing now is to continue seeking within the story of the time-bound, thought-based self center.

It is easy to believe that seeking enlightenment is better than seeking material success or some other worldly achievement. When the impulse to seek enlightenment arises, it is an opportunity to relax into present experiencing, just as it is. When we set enlightenment as a future goal, it becomes part of the story of the self center, a way to imagine a future state in which we are free of suffering. Chasing after enlightenment in the future is often an attempt to escape uncomfortable feelings and sensations that are arising now. Each time you notice yourself imagining a future state of enlightenment, notice that thought and let it come to rest on its own. Rest in thought-free awareness and let all present emotions and sensations be as they are, without labels. This relaxing into present experiencing is the doorway into enlightenment. This doorway does not lead to the future. It reveals that present experience is complete and whole as it is. This relaxation is the end of seeking.

As with all appearances, there is nothing to manipulate, get rid of, maintain, seek, recreate, or do with any state that appears.

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