A recent participation in a retreat, focused on the nature of awareness, took me out of mind chatter and into a deeper understanding and knowing of the “I” that we are. I floated peacefully through the weeks that followed, in tearful awe at the beauty of what is. And then as is the human thing to do, I began listening to the commentary in my mind, and in particular, to a question that it kept posing. And so as I contemplated finding an answer, I revisited Monkey Mind Land.
My mind was grappling with ‘knowing’ that all objects are perceived in three dimensional space by the mind that arises in one dimensional time, and was left asking the question, “Does that mean that the universe is finite?” It kept coming up with a yes, which was incredibly disappointing since I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t relish looking at a night sky and the experiencing the knowing of endlessness.
And so I posed this question to one of my teachers, Rupert Spira, for clarification and examination, to release me from the resistance I was experiencing around this question. Being led back into my own experience of awareness, he kept asking me questions until that moment that I had my own answer in the experience of knowing it myself. And wow, did the tears flow!
Infinite awareness (that is who we are) is expressed into our ‘reality’ as mind and matter in the four dimensions of time and space. The nature of awareness is unbounded, open, non-resistant, all encompassing, infinite love. We experience awareness in our feelings as peace, love and happiness, in our bodies as sensations, in our minds as perceptions and thoughts. What we are experiencing as the universe (through seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, perceiving, feeling, and thinking) is the expression of infinite awareness into this time/space reality. So anything and everything in our experience is an expression of infinite love. IT is of the “I” that we are and always have been.
So with regard to my question about a finite universe…the universe is a perception of the expression of infinite love. It’s quality and nature is infinite, and it is OF the I that I am. The beauty of this is so exquisite it is beyond the description of words, it is so much more beautiful than simply being matter that goes on indefinitely, and certainly beyond my mind’s ability to know. It is experienced and known in awareness, and its profound beauty has me feel I will simply evaporate out of my body and mind. It is exquisitely intimate and yet completely impersonal. And there is peace in Monkey Mind Land again.
To infinity and beyond….
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