Dipping my Toe into the Water of Apparent Reality

Seems like I’m always playing at something, trying time and again to wrest some satisfaction from this experience or that. You’d think I’d have realised, wouldn’t you - by now, at the age of a few days less than forty - that if any outside experience was going to give me satisfaction it would have given me it by now.

I have realised that, of course, but my memory isn’t what it once was. In fact my memory wasn’t ever what it once was. But it doesn’t matter that it’s full of holes, like a string vest; that it doesn’t exist, like a gnu: because it has served its purpose, which was nothing.

So of course, there’s nothing left but to go within: to sort out the real from the apparently real; the apparently real from the unreal.

This isn’t as complicated or as cosmic as it sounds. 

I am real, because I am the only thing that is unchanging and eternal; the limitless awareness in which everything has its being.

The world and everything in it is apparently real, because it is subject to change and comes and goes within awareness. This includes all objects, both subtle and gross. An object is something that I perceive, something that takes place in awareness, and includes (but is not limited to) my body, mind, ego, senses, thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, mental disorders, haircuts, my house, my street, my country, the world, the universe and the space in which it all exists. Anything that is perceivable relies upon awareness, is subject to change and therefore is apparently real.

The unreal is stuff like the antlers of a goldfish, or anything you read in the Daily Mail.

Lasting happiness cannot be found in the world. The idea that people, places or things can make me happy is an illusion. Nothing external can make me feel whole and complete, because I am already whole and complete.

It is liberation from the illusion of bondage that we are all seeking, be it spiritually or materially.

The thing is: we aren’t in bondage. There is no such thing as bondage, or liberation. It is ignorance of our true nature that makes it seem so. What is our true nature?

It is Awareness. Whole, complete, limitless Awareness. And that is all.