Understanding Sets You Free
The teacher of Advaita Vedanta, Francis Lucille, once asked a questioner who was describing the beautiful mind-body effects of glimpsing her true nature and feeling at one with all things, “Yes, but what did you understand from this?”
Understanding sets us free, not beautiful mind-body effects, which are just an effect of understanding.
A number of years ago, a beautiful glimpse occurred.
Here is what I understood so far from the experience, with no superimposition of belief.
If you have had a similar experience, please feel free to add what you understood in the comments—it all helps.
Whatever I am, it is what is aware of the thoughts and perceptions of my mind and body.
All objects I perceive are interpretations by my mind of what is sensed of an underlying reality.
I know I am real and exist because I am aware of this aware reality I am.
I have no way of knowing that this aware reality I am is dependent on my mind and body. Whilst I experience my mind and body as a set of limited experiences, I cannot find any such limitation to this aware reality I am. My experience of it is that it is a dimensionless reality beyond thoughts and perceptions that is always present and never changing.
What I am aware of as thoughts and perceptions seem to arise from the same source reality I am. When I look in detail, I can see that it was only my interpretation of my senses that made me believe there was a separate reality. I actually experience myself as being this indivisible reality that is everything and entirely complete as it is. I don't know what I am, only that I am, and I have no evidence that I am a limited object, and I don't know I am not the source of everything.
Being this, my mind and body felt whole and safe. I understood that the only reason they didn’t was that I was experiencing myself as if I were the thoughts and feelings of my body.
The only reason I thought and felt as if I was a separate mind and body was a hidden conditioned belief that had now been exposed. This belief, like all beliefs, affected how my mind interpreted what was real, and I no longer needed to follow it as I can see that my mind does not know what I am.
It is clear that this belief of being a separate object, though it has lost its grip, is still present in the mind and body. But as I rest in the reality I now recognise I am, I remember that my mind does not know what I am, and any thoughts to the contrary dissipate. I can disentangle my identity from bodily sensations I thought I was also.
All that appears is part of a spontaneous flow of what I am, and the entire universe is the material body of what I am, and I can experiment with living on this basis.
Everything is love.
Love
Freyja
