Dear Richard
I was sorry to hear that you’ve been in so much distress with the flu and hope that by now, you’re feeling more like your normal healthy self.
Regarding your inquiry: I’m so glad that you were able to be in Presence, however briefly, while in the throes of your illness, as this indicates a certain growth of ‘consciousness’ within you. Anyone can be in Presence with a minimum of intention when not in bodily or mental distress and in pleasant surrounds, but it takes more spiritual ‘maturity’ to be in Presence in adverse conditions and/or circumstances.
First of all, be wary of buying into the ‘it chose me’ concept — this is pure dualism — ie, the ‘it’ and the ‘me.’ In actual fact, there is only the One … and that is what we are. Ultimately, there is never anything outside our true Self doing something to us … it’s all happening within the Self that we are. Or, in other words, whatever happens, it’s the One playing games of limitation with ItSelf … experiencing the opposites of human experience, which sometimes includes health or illness, ability and disability, pleasure and pain etc.
We can never understand this with our finite mind, so don’t try to understand it rationally, it’s just part of the ‘dance’ of Consciousness. Nobody is ever doing anything to anybody else … despite all appearances to the contrary.
As long as you’re being expressed as a human form, you will experience loss (of health) and limitation. This should not surprise us as … all forms are unstable … no ‘thing’ or form lasts forever.
Illness matters, but it does not matter absolutely … only knowing Who or What we truly are, and resting in this sublime recognition, matters absolutely.
Whether enjoying good health or enduring painful illness, we can say to ourselves, ‘this too will pass’, as indeed will the form itself eventually. Nothing in phenomenality lasts.
By now you realise, I trust, that you are in essence Awareness or Consciousness or Spirit etc. etc. You do not have awareness … you ARE the eternal Awareness beyond all time and space.
As Awareness, you can be aware in two directions. You can be aware of the ‘content’ of your awareness such as thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations such as pain or pleasure, and then your sensory perceptions such as sight, sound, taste etc. In this direction, you were accutely aware of the terrible pain and discomfort of your flu symptoms.
The other direction is for Awareness to be aware of ItSelf, ie, not the content of awareness but of the ‘capacity’ that Awareness is. Some other teachers refer to it as the ’spaciousness’ in which all things exist and are comprehended. In fact, without the capacity or spaciousness of Awareness, nothing could be known at all.
When you focused on your breathing for a short time, you went beyond your thoughts (I am a very sick man with the flu) and into Presence, which is beyond the mind into the realm of pure Awareness. Your identification for those few moments was away from the form and with the Formless which is not, and never can be, touched by pain and fever. Your Formless eternal Self, can never suffer loss or injury of any kind … it is always pure, unchanging and inviolable. In other words, As Awareness, you were momentarily aware only of your true Self, rather than your manifest self, as RIchard, who obviously was still sufering from the flu.
Normally, the spiritually mature (or, Self-realised) person is aware of both directions at the same time — the ‘capacity’ and the ‘content’ — not just one or the other.
In reality, there is no difference whatever between Awareness, and what Awareness is aware of … they are all One. The unconscious person (the average person in the world) is only aware of one dimension — his or her humanness, and the world of opposites that goes with it. The conscious (or awakened) person, however, is always aware of two dimensions — that of impersonal eternal Beingness and one’s personal finite humanness. Thus, they are a fully realised ‘human-being.’
As we identify more and more with the Awareness we are, we will still be aware of pleasure an pain — even the pain of a severe flu when it occurs, but when it’s observed or witnessed from the standpoint of Awareness, there will be pain without suffering, there will be a causeless peace underneath the turmoil and distress of ill-health and an inner smile that knows that no matter what happens, nothing truly important can be lost or injured.
As we abide in Present awareness, new energies are released and our immune system is able to function uninhibited by the conditioned mind and renewal and healing are more likely to take place.
