by Jerome

My original intent was to present some musings on the reality of form, but to the amusement of my larger consciousness, I was give a different and deeper title to this thread. Nevertheless, I shall begin where the reflections started.

Recently, while driving on a highway, I was confronted by the ‘reality’ that it was frigid outside of my car, that there were cars zipping past me inhabited by people with their own agendas and thoughts and feelings that were driving them. Then there was the snow covering the ground, the stark life of forests without leaves and the abundant life forms that were there but not immediately visible to me as I careened past. Their tracks were visible in the snow, like past experiences that are imprinted on my mind.

On and on my observations persisted and I was simultaneously struck by the often phrased truth that all of this is an illusion.

And yet, it is not an illusion that the coldness of the snow is felt by my hands should I put my bare hands into it. I would feel the wetness of it as it melted, the discomfort of my hands as they became painfully colder and comfort left me. Even the time that I spend in the car, driving to my home three hours away and the discomfort that creeps into parts of my body as I sit, was inevitable even though I thought nothing of it as I moved steadily forward on my journey.

Then I noted that there are laws to this reality of form. Form exists as it is, and I inhabit this realm of form, and as Eckhart says consciousness comes into and through my being in form. What and perhaps more importantly, where does that leave me, as I regard the world of form. When I am conscious of being a consciousness experiencing form, then the reality of the form and it’s immutable laws, allow me to be free in form and accept it’s chaos, accept that I can even name the experiences, the forms that I see, the feelings that come into this reality. If I am able to leave behind the sense of it being in anyway important to the reality of the form based world that I inhabit, then I can reside in it, play with it, manipulate it as best I can, while at the same time accept that its laws are not of the reality of the consciousness that inhabits this form.

And yet, there is an equal truth, that I must respect the laws of this reality in order to continue to allow my consciousness to flow into it and to explore the minutiae of what are my peculiar and particular misunderstandings. To these realities, I attach the analogy of ‘specks on the mirror’. Some illusions are smudges, some are dust particles, but it helps me to imagine the mirror of my consciousness as having some bothersome, pesky distortions to the clear view that at times I imagine I am perceiving.

Is my vantage and view coming from the mirror itself, looking out into the world of form and wanting to clean the distortions from my glass, or is it the reflection of my image in the mirror and my awareness that it is full of dust, or there is a smudge that needs to be cleaned? Either way the clear vision, whether of my self as pure consciousness or of my self as aware consciousness seeing the form’s reflection, is being viewed imperfectly.

Even in the moments of being in the Now, or in Anthony Demello’s words in awareness, my sight is not fully clear. In form, I could have cancer growing inside of my body and be unaware of it’s existence until it has reached a critical hold on the form and the awareness of its presence forces conscious action and decisions. Did it not exist until I had become aware of its presence? Or was it a speck of dust / a smudge in perception that was ignored and ignored again and again until the laws of form ordained that consciousness needed to pay attention. The roots of effect find their cause in immutable laws, whether we choose to give recognition to them or not.

There is a connection between the specks on the mirror that my consciousness chose to experience in this world of form and the natures of those to whom I connect, and all of the experiences that evolve out of this Now. Some of them have yet to be revealed, while others have been cleaned away. At least, as far as I can discern at this moment in Now.

Consciousness chooses this form of Now, as it chooses the forms of the specks on its mirror to be perceived and cleared. Is it an error in this experience to reveal to others that those specks exist, so that they can notice the reality of them? What would be the point of all of these senses, experiences, forms, consciousnesses, if it were not also a reality that we are all here to assist each other in the journey. Eckhart is a prime example of a seeker who helps, pointing, cajoling, poking laughingly at the machinations of the unconscious behavior that we refer to as the ego.

When we can laugh at those flailings and flounderings, we may just have realized that the world of form is the finger pointing to the moon.