Hierarchy of no-thing and things
This is another thing that keeps coming up for me, especially as I am exploring the soul level more actively these days...
- Ultimately, there is void. Emptiness. Nothingness. And awakeness and form all show up from, within, and as this emptiness. For a while, it sounds abstract, but then becomes a living reality (even obvious).
- Then, there is awakeness, as nothing other than emptiness itself. It is awake emptiness. In itself, this awakeness takes the form of pure seeing, pure awareness, pure witness.
- Then, the soul level, alive presence, which can be filtered in innumerable ways... as alive luminosity, alive presence in the heart area (indwelling god), fertile darkness, luminous blackness, and so on. All of these too arise as emptiness, void, as emptiness dancing. The void is right there in it, and they can exist only because of and as this void.
- Finally, the world of form as we typically think of it. All the contents of awareness, from physical objects to energies to sensations to thoughts. These come and go and live their own life, and these too are no other than emptiness. Their ground and essence is the void.
So we have the void, which is the ground of all there is. It is the one thing that does not come and go, because it is no thing. It is just pure emptiness. It is what allows anything else to be, to come and go.
Then, awakeness... timeless, spaceless. This too, a no-thing.
Then, the soul level... also timeless and spaceless... Sometimes as a field without center and any particular location, but also sometimes with a particular location, as the indwelling god. The soul level comes and goes in different ways, and especially in our awareness. We may notice it, or not. It is present, or not, to us. And it seems that it can be present or not, in different ways, beyond that as well.
Finally, the form level... obviously in time and space, and actually that which creates any experience of time and space. Very much coming and going, as a stream of form.
And all of it arises as emptiness, as insubstantial, transparent, as awake emptiness itself.
Identities
Needless to say, what we take ourselves to be within all of this hugely influences our experience.
- If my center of identification is in the world of form, I am at the mercy of the world of form.
- If my center of gravity is in the soul level, I find myself as the fullness here, deeply nurtured, guided, and at home. (Breema)
- If my center of gravity is in the awakeness, I am the witness, the seeing of it all, detached yet also (apparently) free from the comings and goings of everything else. (Sitting practice)
- If the center of gravity is in emptiness, then there is only the Ground allowing all of it to exist and come and go on its own... allowing awakeness, the infinite realms of soul, and the infinite richness of the world of form. (Headless experiments)
As Ground, it is all revealed as, always and already, absent of any separate self. The seeing and the seen has one ground, one nature, they are not two... only a field of seeing-seen.
Labels: awake emptiness, emptiness, form, hierarchy, identification, soul