1:1  If you’ve never attended a contemplation intensive, try to imagine spending days on end among a few dozen people  engaged in earnest contemplation as you all strive to become conscious of your true nature. The low voices of participants doing dyad work creates a rolling hum in the meditation hall, and their energy seems to ebb and flow  with the sound, often trailing  off to a solemn silence. In such  a setting, imagine how  startling it is when a participant bursts out laughing with joy. I’ve seen a workshop’s focused nature suddenly up-ended when peals of genuine heartfelt laughter erupt from someone who’s had a breakthrough. You can tell just by looking at the person, whose face and demeanor clearly show an incredible lightness and open bliss. At such times, there’s no doubt they just had an enlightenment experience.

1:2 But why should something so profound as an awakening consciousness elicit laughter? We imagine that an effort as serious as trying to become conscious of the very nature of our existence would result in a serious outcome, but it’s often the opposite. When we leap out of the world that we normally experience, we’re instantly provided with an unprecedented view of that world: it’s the same, but with one exception that changes everything: we’re free of it, and suddenly our fabricated and unnecessary self-myopic experience falls away. As one student shared after his first enlightenment: ‘In an instant I got free. Positive and negative experiences were things I was doing, and not something inflicted on me. I became conscious of my absolute nature, and I thought: I’ve finally come home.’ Such freedom often elicits a state of euphoria that’s difficult to understand within our self-experience, because here we’re completely ignorant.

1:3  With or without any enlightenment experience, humans have long noticed that every aspect of the universe appears to be brilliantly designed, from the macrocosmic to the intricate details of our own bodies and minds. From time to time we might pause to marvel at some of the profound beauty of our world, but rather than grasping the sheer ingenious effectiveness of our ability to live and perceive, we are instead far more inclined to take our perceptions entirely at face value. We don’t stop to notice that our experience of all of it is entirely secondhand.

1:4 The seamless nature of our perceived experience is so astonishingly effective that even when we attempt a direct encounter, we can find no apparent opening through which to approach the matter. We might acknowledge a buried sense of inauthenticity and even suspect that there is much beyond the tightly constricted world as we perceive it, but, prior to an unprecedented breakthrough in consciousness, we can’t even begin to guess in which direction to move. Whatever is ultimately true about the world we live in, it seems to be beyond our grasp.

1:5  Bridging the gap between our experience and its origins is best done by directly grasping the real nature of existence – also known as enlightenment. Prior to such an event, however, most people mistakenly believe that this understanding is somehow going to be commensurate
with their intellectual powers, or even that it’s predicated on some kind of ‘spiritual’ strength or virtue. What actually prevents our understanding isn’t some missing ingredient in our ‘being’ or even the vast complexity of the matter itself. The reason we cannot discern the true nature of reality is that the purpose for our experience keeps us constantly focused elsewhere. The dynamics that allow us to manage life so well also serve another function: they obscure any consciousness of what’s ultimately true.

1:6  How is it possible to become conscious of something that’s present but of which we’re unaware, and if it is true and present, why aren’t we aware of it? We live our lives within two domains of existence that are occurring simultaneously. The first domain is what actually exists or occurs as reality. This world is the one we attempt to address through science,  contemplation, philosophy, and so on. The second domain is our experience, which is the ‘personal reality’ that each of us occupies and which holds our attention daily and most of the time. These two domains are very different because one is what’s existentially true, the other is only occurring ‘as if’ it’s true.

1:7 Genius of Being refers to the first domain, since in this case, ‘being’ denotes ‘existing”what is and what is actually occurring and how it is occurring. The use of the word ‘genius’ is a rather poetic emphasis pointing to the mind-boggling complexity, intricacy, and interrelated effectiveness of every aspect of existence. When we embrace this domain in any way, awe is often the first response. And then there’s grasping that the very nature and source of Being ‘of Existence and  Consciousness’ is absolute, and its manifestation into life and reality is without break or hole; it is complete, and everything works. It’s perfect. It’s brilliant. There is no mistake. It is exactly as it is. When we grasp the nature of it all at once, joyous laughter is an appropriate response.

1:8  Strangely, our first domain, although held as the ‘real’ reality, is always a stretch to ascertain. We don’t access it directly in our personal perceptive experience, as shown by the fact that we must use science, contemplation, existential thinking, and deep considerations and study simply to approach it. By contrast, our personal experience always sits right in our lap, requiring no stretch at all. What’s overlooked is that this very personal experience was built not given. It seems ironic that the real is so hard to come by while the fabricated is totally accessible and automatic. As I often point out:

Paradox and confusion are the guardians of the Truth.

1:9  Within our highly subjective and insular experience, we are ignorant of any absolute truth; what we’re left with instead are layers of conceptually produced experiences. This human ‘reality’ is created by a myriad of conceptual inventions such as self, culture, language, assumptions, beliefs, and more. Even the power and brilliance of these inventions are overlooked in favor of managing life within them. Our daily experience is completely devoted to supporting our personal survival in both the physical and social worlds that we share. In this realm, being aware of the conceptual nature of our experience serves no useful purpose.  Unfortunately, ignorance here disguises the fact that what we perceive and hold as obviously true is  actually an unnecessarily restrictive creation.

1:10 Of course, give us any line and humans will eventually find a way to cross it. Numerous people over millennia have had enlightenment experiences that, against all logic, seem to support the possibility of direct experience. Prior to such an event, we aren’t incapable of recognizing the insular  self-world that we inhabit, but it’s  assumed to be simply a necessary condition of life. Afterward, although we may have had but a glimpse of the freedom available beyond our familiar world view, it becomes possible to recognize that our perceived experience doesn’t exist in any objective sense. This new understanding of reality as a merely subjective fabrication instantly releases us from its domination.

1:11 When we personally attempt to experience what’s actually true, we’re often too involved in our own concerns to see clearly. Yet, as in science, we can adopt investigative procedures and new ways of thinking that advance us toward an unbiased look at the origins of this very  experience. Through contemplation, we can discover the hidden but central contributions to the human condition, which are what allow us, as well as force us, to experience the world the way we do. Contemplation gives us the space to wholeheartedly inquire about any matter. What is reality? Do we create it, or does it create us? Simply gaining the ability to deeply question our experience assists us in connecting life-as-we-live-it with the absolute truth, which otherwise appears to be always beyond our reach.

A common man marvels at uncommon things;
a wise man marvels at the commonplace.
attributed to Confucius

1:12 Each of us has a perceived reality that makes up the conditions of our existence and determines the effectiveness with which we manage life. We rarely think to wonder about it, perhaps are even fearful of doing so, but it is an  interesting question: Just how accurate are our perceptive faculties? In 15:4 of The Book of Not Knowing, we considered the limited perceptive capacity of an amoeba, which, although it has no ‘idea’ of danger, will move away from a disturbance. It doesn’t matter whether it perceives accurately, only that the stimulus causes a response that increases its chances for survival. We too respond to stimuli with preference and
aversion but, unlike the amoeba, we imagine that our perception of reality  is the same as reality itself. It’s not. Our perceptions may be  astonishingly coherent, efficient, and even  indispensable to our survival, but they do not reveal the ultimate truth.

1:13 Just as with an amoeba, our perceptions need not show us what is inherently true; they only need to be functional in serving our survival. Since all our actions and judgments are dependent on and must relate to our perceptive-experience, it’s important that our  experience of reality is as closely aligned to an  understanding of the truth as we can make it. Even if we can’t represent what’s  absolutely true, it still makes a real difference to be aware of this disconnect and to relate to what’s perceived accordingly. This can’t be done, however, if the conceptually dominated perceptive-experience isn’t known for what it is–a complex of conceptually crafted activities that began to arise the moment we did.

1:14 As I try to explain that our perceptive-experience is inadequate to the task of representing absolute reality, it can sound to some people like I’m disparaging the human faculties of perception when in fact I think they’re awe-inspiring. The event of perception and recognition itself, not to mention the vast array of abilities in thought, emotion, and communication ‘indicates a real genius of being at work. This same level of genius applies to the infinitely complex intelligence in the design of our bodies and the entire universe. The problem is that all of this creativity is taken as reality and as Truth.