Hi Rupert, I'm Dominic hello Dominic my first retreat with you
I I wonder if you would indulge me to go back for a moment to your creation myth
um I have been thinking a lot about life and death this week
um
one of my my closest friend for the last 50 years passed away on Monday
um
and so I'm thinking about the idea of of dreaming and and the separate self that that we are
the dreams and creates as it were another separate self and another separate world
and I once had the experience of what what's called lucid dreaming
which is to be within the dream but to recognize that you're dreaming
and um so when I realized that was happening it also dawned on
me that well if if I'm a dream person in a dream the laws of physics should not apply
and therefore I should be able to walk through walls and fly which I did so that was very cool
but if then on waking this localized Consciousness that is this body mind
is just one step removed meaning that is also a dream in the mind of infinite consciousness
am I confused in my thinking by saying that well the equivalent to lucid dreaming in a dream
in our waking state is what we call enlightenment Lucid waking Lucid waking that's what we're aiming
at here use that weekend okay that was my question is that it seems like that's what we what we're
after here what's really meant by Enlightenment is the recognition of the nature of our being
the recognition of the nature of ourself like so many words in the spiritual tradition the
word Enlightenment is is a it's a mistranslation and it's misleading
it leads gives rise to the expectation that something is going to happen in the future
that something is going to be enlightened no awareness cannot be enlightened it is
the the sun the sun isn't turned on every morning it's always Shining brilliantly
that there is just the bright light of awareness which is temporarily and darkened by experience
or when that in darkening thins out the bright light of being shines it doesn't become
enlightened it is always shining brightly being is always shining brightly in us as us in the
midst of all experience but it is in most cases in darkened and therefore obscured by the content of
experience Enlightenment is simply the removal of that in darkening and the revelation of the bright
light of being and so is it is it reasonable then to imagine when this body mind dies
that is a form of Awakening into our true nature
because we because the the separate self dissolves possibly but we can't be sure
that the separate self completely dissolves as as Consciousness localizes itself in the form
of a separate subject of experience that's each of us and that localization of Consciousness appears
from a second person perspective as a body so what appears to be the death of the physical body from
a second person point of view is the unraveling of this localization of Consciousness the unwinding
the the relaxation of this contraction of Consciousness so what appears to be
the death of the body from an internal from a first person perspective is the decontraction
the expansion the relaxation of this localization but there's nothing to suggest that that
expansion of this localization takes place completely there's nothing to suggest
that it dissolves completely it could simply expand decontract but not go all the way back
and it's even possible that that that it could expand and coalesce again
Downstream and form another localization so we can't be sure that death is synonymous
with the recognition of the nature of our being it may be particular for one who has
spent their life and not even their whole life but just
a portion of their latter years deeply exploring these matters it could be that
in that case this final recognition does take place at death that's very possible
but it I think it's going too far to say that it's necessarily the case
that's very helpful thank you