The old Missourians used to say, “Show me!” – a variation on the theme of, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
My First Degree of Illumination “old Missourian” persona loves that saying, trusts authority, trusts my ego, and distrusts my Third Degree of Illumination questioning self.
Adhering to faith in my senses as though they were authorities that somehow know better… when they don’t (know better)… has on occasion caused me to believe in the impossible!
Allow me to explain –
My senses are part of my Second Degree justification system that seeks to make sense of senselessness. My eyes, for example, don’t see what is there. Rather, they reflect to me what I believe is there. Breaking that down further, I come to realize that I see only what I believe – there is no “there” to be seen – because…
It occurs to me that time is an important aspect of my universe. Everything happens in time – it takes time for events to happen. Without it, everything freezes into nothingness that cannot be experienced because perception requires the passage of time.
First THIS –> then THAT.
There’s a problem with time… It can’t exist!
Certainly not in the way I perceive it. In my lower Degrees of Illumination perception…
The past exists as a conceptual reference – the KNOWN, the certain. The future exists as a conceptual marker as to what MAY be – the UNKNOWN, the uncertain.
Now exists at the intersection between the past and the future, the known and the unknown, the certain and the uncertain. NOW may be the instant of ONENESS – in which everything and nothing, past and future, known and unknown, this and that exist simultaneously.
My perception of time serves as an example of this paradox.
I’m perceiving all that I perceive in an instant of time that cannot exist – the instant I perceive now, it’s already in the past. Perhaps the experience I comprehend as my life is an artifact of my belief in separation rather than evidence of the truth of it. My memories of the past, my learnings, all done in, and justifying my belief in, an instant in time that doesn’t exist.
So, what am I experiencing then? How can it feel so real and yet be so impossible? What IS this that I perceive as my life?
Could my experience of “reality” be the result of my belief in the illusion of separation as an artifact of that belief?
To recap, perhaps I perceive time as a result of my BELIEF in separation – in which my sensual perceptions serve to justify, define, and confirm that belief. Within that BELIEF, I experience every sensual perception, every thought, every memory, every conscious belief – simultaneously in the instant of now that can only exist as I believe it.
I BELIEVE, therefore I AM!
Perhaps I actually exist at the intersection of everything and nothing at all – ONE!
