Mind experiences are liken to dream state, replaying itself of what have occurred, albeit differently. Conditioned by numerous past factors, each moment of experience are byproducts of what has been gathered by the mind, through its veil of views, perceptions, feelings and consciousness. Even in the now, the way I type out this entry and the way you read it now, are all conditioned by the past and yet also conditioning the way I view, perceive and feel in the future – for my present state determines what comes up next.
In short, the past becomes what I am now and what I am now becomes the future. The now encapsulates the past and future. In linear dimension, we would have gathered and understood the statement as the past and future is actually in the now but what is more true is that each now churns out the history of past and future. Yes, even future is a history as it is already determined by the now. The now itself is a molten pot of past and future.
Thus in reality, to say the now is entirely new is incorrect as what is here are merely permutations of the past brought a fresh again, metaphoring the statement same stuff in different packaging. Bad as the news can be, there is nothing new at all in the entire universe, which is the mind. The simile that came to me is the alphabets of A to Z which in different ways of arrangement spell new words and meanings, millions of them, and yet they are merely 26 characters.
Similarly all meanings and experiences of life boils down to the mind aggregates of consciousness, feelings, perception and mental activities and the form is the product of it. So is there any difference in terms of happiness, sadness, jealousy, upset, grief and many more emotions and mental states – all the variation of experiences that has never left you and will never leave you, albeit in a different storyline?
Is that the game I wish to play? Or do I really have a choice? Hence, so long as I am not awakened to this dream of replay, I will still be in the dream, not realizing it is a dream. There is nothing wrong in playing the dream – what will be wrong is that I don’t see it as a play and took seriousness in it, entrenching myself deeper into the abyss of the game, which by then I will no longer see it as a game but a reality – a fictitious reality. What a nightmare that can be!
Enlightenment, to my understanding, equates to awakening to the dream found within the mind. And that can only be made possible when one is out of the mind. Out of the mind differs from out of mind where the latter is still in the mind except not knowing himself. Out of the mind is a clear realization of release, of disengagement of mind, of something that the mind can’t imagine. It cannot be expressed or explained except in the experience. Yet it is not experience per se, as experience can only be from the mind. How deep down the rabbit hole do you wish to go?
Resolve the mind, not what is within the mind.