If you have given notice to a mind that is ignorant and the next moment the arising of wisdom on a same issue, you would have realize that it is a thin line between conscious and unconscious; yet upon stepping into wisdom, the difference is, surprisingly, vast. Take an example of perception. Not recognizing the function of perception at work but to indulge in it, as in perceiving an object with meanings around it is ignorance at work. To use a simple experience to define that – imagine looking at a cup in front of you. In reality, the “cup” is not really a physical object in front of you except meaning given by perception over it. There has never been a cup outside of you except an idea of cup in the thought of that moment. Not to realize that this is happening at that moment is ignorance at work. To realize that, is wisdom. The difference is only awakening to what is truly happening at that moment, that is, perception functioning, instead of knowing what is in front of you, the so-called cup.
The difference of both is simply a fine tweak of looking at things correctly, of changing perception. Yet that change of perception changes the way you feel about things and thus the experience of both can be life startling. Imagine in life scenario where one holds an image of betrayal of past experience, condemning the perpetrator for life and thus causing himself misery instead of the person he is targeting. One day when he wakes up to the nature of the mind and realize all was actually the work of perception, simply replaying memories, he will be awakened to the fact that he was only conjuring his own suffering finally realizing it was his own doing all these while. That moment of realization can be life changing, though it is just a fine tweaking of looking at the same issue differently – one with ignorance, the other wisdom.
Thus it is about parallel realities coming into space instead of changing or trying to make a difference in what is already ongoing in our experience. Many a times there is this addictive fervent wish of wanting and not wanting what is being presented, hoping that things can be otherwise other than what is being experienced. And that can be terribly stressful to the beholder of this thought. Aren’t we in that state most of the time – not even noticing that stress is an ongoing process, an ongoing experience in the Now. There is no way of trying to change it from the same level of what the mind is. Yes, there are times it seems to work by fixing what is here, yet it only seemingly worked because as one introduces another idea to that moment, what is here seems to disappear, yet only to arise again when conditions come to be. Perpetually it is an incessant pattern of defeat as to suppress it, it has to arise again, and again, until one looks at it directly.
To notice it exactly as it is, as an experience that has no self entity in it, except a rerun of past programming is indeed, liberating. To see each arising as enough, as not to further feed the force, is a sure way of freeing oneself from the tyranny of this mind which has been with one as experience since god-knows-when.
