Awakening is Mind Blowing

If you’ve been a seeker for a while, then you are probably aware, at least conceptually, of some of the paradoxes of Being. I sometimes like to imagine two of the core paradoxes as a vertical axis intersecting a horizontal one:

— Vertical Paradox: I am both consciousness and matter, both infinite and finite

— Horizontal Paradox: I am both separate and not-separate, both “individual me” as well as you and everything else in the Universe.

Before awakening, you might hold these paradoxes as statements of fact based on the faith you have in your spiritual lineages or teachers. You may also understand these statements intuitively and perhaps even experientially – you may already have a sense or recognition of your conscious nature, just as you may have had glimpses of the unity of life.

My mind got profoundly blown open when I had my whole-being realization and saw that I was living both of these paradoxes. Or more accurately, I saw that the paradoxes were who and what I most essentially and fully was.

When the paradoxes became known/realized, my mind simply “stared” at the incomprehensible lived experience and scrambled to describe what it was like. It still does. It’s like trying to describe a sunset with words, the words can point to feelings and sensations and images and analogies, but not the totality of the experience itself.

The truth of what I am is fundamentally beyond my mind’s ability to grasp and contain it. Luckily, I don’t need to understand with my mind in order to awaken. Luckily, there is some part of me that CAN realize my Totality of Being as the radiant fusion of these two paradoxes, and can see how tiny the mind is in comparison.

The good news is this: after awakening and realizing your are the paradoxes, it is possible to rest and relax in and as them even as the mind is blown. And as we rest in our incomprehensible, paradoxical Totality, the pure nectar of Being begins to soothe and reconfigure our entire organism.

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