The Shadow Maker

 

As I often say, in a not-so-blasphemous way, “I am not God, but I am not not God.”

There is a strange shift when we think with our brains. We can’t help but feel isolated in that setting. Thoughts are in our heads and we are sure these thoughts are local. When some people use the term “awareness”, they are referring to what lies beyond our local thoughts, and yet includes our local thoughts.

When I think, I know I am having a local experience, but I can also sense experiences beyond my local self. I see that there are hills outside this window. I see that there are trees. I can only see them for the moment, but I imagine being able to walk up one of these inclines and touching an actual tree. So there is an awareness of what I cannot sense at this moment. I cannot hear a tree from in this room, but if I were very close to one, I may be able to involve the sense of hearing and observe a leaf as it moves in the wind and touches another leaf. Awareness is acceptance of reality beyond our senses. Awakening implies the Awareness of all of that which is commonly unavailable to any local sensory capacity.

It is not spooky or religious. Awakening is just the ability to accept that there is more than your body and its local experience.

Awakening also informs us that we are within that Holistic Reality in a seamless way, and that we cannot be excluded, even as the local, limited unit we think we are.

Thoughts will continue to ground us right back to our local experience; while Awareness is The Operating System from which thoughts are drawn.

We cannot, with our thoughts, experience Awakening. That Experience is always more than we can think or imagine. This does not mean that we cannot experience Reality; it only means that it transcends the limits of the machine we typically refer to as the self.

Thoughts are shadows which make interesting shapes on the wall of experience we sense with our senses. Knowing there is light behind us, making the shadow of thought available, is awareness. If you could turn and see the light which yields all effects, you would simultaneously lose the effects.

You don’t have to pause your thoughts, abandon your ego or dissolve your experience in order to believe that your experience is the result of More than you can perceive.

Your self stands between awareness and experience and creates what you experience from there. You are The Shadow Maker. You see what You create in the space where you live. Behind you is Illumination; or, The Light. What you perceive is all that you’ve managed to do with that light behind you.

Don’t get in a hurry to see The Light. One day, you’ll see it clearly and you’ll find yourself drawn to it. And one day, beyond that day, you will turn around again, and you’ll make more shadows on the wall, courtesy of The Light. You’ll call the shadows thoughts and perceived things. It is exciting to be an agent, casting shadows on the walls of experience.

I am not Light, but the light surrounds me and shines where my intent ends. I am not Light, but I am not not Light.