Identity

If all things and experiences [& even people] are a form of thought then all concepts can be understood as objects in space. Space, for these purposes, is a facility for form - and time is a conveyance for the awareness of change. From this perspective all experiences can be known as thoughts pushed out from the universal substance - via vortices - into the phenomenal world. Pure awareness, then, is seamlessly 'covered' by the tapestry of thoughts making up our experiences in the phenomenal world.

The good news about mental constructs, especially suffering ones, is that they belong to Consciousness, therefore to all of us. How can this be good news? Because as the conscious creations that we are we give birth to ideas daily, whether they are new for us or not. If they are unhappy versions we know that such considerations can always be replaced with something more blissful.

Why do some thoughts behave like recurring nightmares? For the same reason that a friend who lives by the ocean wakes up everyday and sees sand and infinite water a few feet away from his back porch: He gets out of bed, makes the morning coffee or tea and opens a sliding glass door. This door leads to a deck, which leads to his favorite chair. And there lies the ocean before him. It is not good or bad. It is just there and he happens to find it beautiful. But if he did not find it so, if he did not like this view of the water he might make new decisions. And even if it appeared to require the facility of time, he could take helpful steps and eventually, or perhaps instantly, change the scenery he wakes up to every day.

But what if it appeared that someone else had picked out this home for our friend, that he had no choice but to live there - and that he really did not like it from the start? This would be the result of present-time thoughts masquerading as concepts rooted in the past. This would include all thoughts [pushed out as reality] of evidence & witnesses that give support to these same experiences.

Once we begin to understand more effectively the nature of ideas we can next consider further who and what we really are and what we are not. The same is true of all experiences and material things of the world. Releasing conditions in our lives we deem unfavorable becomes easier once the actual nature of the appearance of the world is revealed. It also becomes easier to glean why everything is possible, even if the face of apparent scarcity or even previously perceived impossibility.

Nisargadatta reminds us in simple yet powerful fashion how and why we are not our thoughts. And most of all, why we are not the mind. His non-dualistic approach to sharing wisdom regarding the concepts of identity and the human being is direct and psychologically economical. It focuses on the cutting away of excessive mental constructs so that any person interested in relief from suffering may realize practical cut-to-the-chase inner tools that can help. Byron Katie offers the same message via a practice called The Work.
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byron, katie, the, work, nisargadatta, non-duality, advaita, vedanta