Poison to Medicine

There are many descriptions of what happens when we move up the spiritual line...

• Inclusiveness
  There is a gradually more inclusive sense of "us" - those we take into account when we consider the impact of our actions. It moves from family, tribe, community, to nation, to all human beings, to all sentient beings, to all of existence. Eventually, the blind separation between all phenomena drops away and there is no "me" separate from "they" or "it".
  
  
• Complexity to simplicity
  There is a movement from complexity to simplicity in how we experience and relate to the inner/outer world. It all becomes simpler - no extra. And it becomes richer and fuller.
  
  
• Fragmentation to whole
  From a fragmented experience of existence, we move towards a sense and experience of a fluid seamless whole. All inner phenomena, all outer phenomena, inner and outer phenomena, and then inner/outer phenomena unfolding in awareness, is a fluid seamless whole.
  
  
• Identification with phenomena to awareness
  Identification moves from personality to include awareness, and in the process soften until it eventually is dropped. There is only the fluid and seamless whole of awareness within which all inner/outer phenomena unfolds.
  
  
• Small mind to big mind
  There is a move from small mind - awareness closely identified to inner phenomena, to big mind - awareness and phenomena as a fluid and seamless whole.
  
  
• Poison to medicine
  When we operate from small mind, most situations are poison. They trigger and deepen blind habitual patterns of attraction and aversion, and create much suffering. When we operate from big mind, all situations become medicine - deepening compassion, humility and gratitude.
  
  Compassion from seeing in ourselves what we see in others. Recognizing how the patterns of the personality of each one of us is conditioned - by our biology, culture, family and personal experience - and that there is little choice when we operate from small mind.
  
  Humility from seeing how we are an infinitely small part of an infinitely larger whole. Our experience of the world is always biased, incomplete and limited. Existence is always more than and different from our experience of existence, even from a transdual view.
  
  Gratitude - for Existence. For being a small part of such an amazing and beautiful whole. For having moved from the blind suffering in small mind to the spaciousness and different sense of choice of big mind.