So I’m taking my walk on the back street—such a beautiful warm day—and when I go towards Church street my shadow walks in from of me. I wave at it. I can feel the warm sun on the back of my head, casting myself in front as an object on the screen of the world. Then I turn and I feel the sun in my face, and my shadow is gone. Then at the end of the road I turn and again my shadow leads the way. And now the metaphor.
When I walk with my back to the Light of Consciousness, I see myself as an object in the world, in time, going someplace is a form among forms, but when I turn I am the Light of consciousness, the indwelling sun and I cast no form upon the world. We, of course, live in a material world that recognizes only our shadow existence of form. Unlike the poets of Persia, we have no map for the Indwelling sun or Light one consciousness (that has no form because it lights up form). And so we read the poets of Persia and wonder and ask where this mysterious light is…and we cannot find it in our shadow existence because if we were to suddenly turn, our shadow would disappear,…and then: Where would I be?
The Sun behind my head that casts a shadow of me upon the world is the Knower. My shadow, the road is the known. We live in a dual world of the Knower and the Known, but in our materialistic culture only the known, or the shadow is possible. The Known does not fit on our map of the known. So we seek it in the world of shadow, and just when the Known bursts into its original light, the shadow of me disappears, and my shadow, afraid, comes rushing back to make the Knower known. Now I remember by true nature, but again I’m looking for it in the world of shadows or form. Just when I think I’ve got the Light, it disappears.
So what can we do? We have to transcend the Logic of Identity, which says I’m either the known or the Knower (or unknown). Using our common logic of choice, I can’t choose one or the other because they are mutually dependent. You can’t have the Known without the Knower, and you can’t have the Knower without the Known. We have the ONE that is two which are separate but can’t be separated.
Awakening dawns when we realize through and through that we are the Knower/Known, and that choice, which is the logic of shadows, cannot solve the dilemma. Realization just happens when we reach the point of maximum frustration trying to choose our way out of this dilemma in time…which is the world of shadows and form.
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