Try this – Extend your arm to the front and do a thumbs-up at arm’s distance. Now focus on your thumbnail region and remember the area this square inch covers in space. This smidgen of area called the fovea, which is the center part of our vision measuring roughly 5 degrees of our entire visual field, is the only area where we are not legally blind. It means that out of the wide visual field of our eyes from left to right and top to bottom that spans around 180 degrees in total, this is the only space where we can view the world in accurate detail. The rest is considered the peripheral area of vision that is mostly good for jumpscares and ghost sightings.
Your presumptuous self might think you could see what is in your peripheral area of sight ‘just alright’. Maybe you could identify the broad patch of color that is the window curtain or make out random movements out of the corner of your eye. But if I were to stand slightly to the side holding up an 18×24 poster with the winning lottery number in 36pt font and gave you one chance to read it while looking straight ahead, you will quickly agree how utterly useless, inaccurate, and misleading the peripheral vision truly is.
The only job that the peripheral vision is qualified to do is to detect movements in the visual field and alert the central vision to direct its focus on the object, because central vision, that five-degree span out of the 180-degree arc of our visual field, is the only place where trustworthy interpretation of the world happens.
Metaphorically speaking, Awareness is our central vision that can accurately interpret the reality of the world that is coming in through peripheral events like thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Awareness is the bedrock lens that is supposed to correct the blur, skew, and misrepresentation that happens when we interpret reality from the immediacy of our mind and sensations.
And so, the paramount objective for a spiritual seeker who is led astray by the illusions of this material world is to quiet the mind and tap into Awareness where the truth of reality resides. The endpoint in their spiritual pursuit is to learn to rest in Awareness and see the world from its calming viewpoint, for only Awareness can remove the illusions.
Awareness sure can erase the illusions of the mind. But what is going to erase the illusion of Awareness?
The Pseudo Point of View
Imagine that you, who is going on with your business of living as usual, who is confident in the self-secured identity of the “I”, were asked to perform the role of an actor for a stage play. You accept the challenge, don the costume, learn the lines, and get involved with the personality, thoughts, body language, and emotions of the character. You get too engrossed playing the character that for a brief instance you forget your real identity.
Imagine that while you are in the thick of your character, when you are saturated in the colors of the actor that you are playing, someone asked you to drop this sham, assumed identity and revert to your real self.
Now, who exactly should hear this request to realize the truth of the identities – is it the actor who should recognize that he is only an illusion or is it the real person who donned the role who needs to realize that the actor is an illusion?
The actor, who is an imaginary persona cannot understand that he is an illusion. Planting a thought in him that he needs to awaken is like layering an illusion on top of an illusion. It’s the person who is playing the actor the one who needs to step back from the character and recognize that the actor is not real.
We think of ourselves as an independent entity made up of thoughts (illusions), sensations (illusions), and a mind (master illusion). We see ourselves as separate from the authentic consciousness, which is why we seek it so desperately. Then how could we, a living collection of illusions, strive to awaken to our “real self” when we are standing in and as the illusion that we’re attempting to erase?
“Who is this one who wants to keep thoughts at bay? That one is itself a thought, an imagined entity. That imagined one is not controlling the show. It is part of the show.”
Rupert Spira
The illusive “I”, the seeker mind that thinks it should awaken, cannot awaken. The true I, the Aware Self who can see that “I am not the thought, but I am the one that is aware of the thought” is already awakened.
Yet the illusive seeker pursues the spiritual path thinking that there is a switchover point somewhere down the road for her to reach the awakened state, but what lies beyond that point is her own Aware Self that is already awakened.
So in this grand spiritual journey, who really needs to be awakened?
“In order to see that it is just a thought, all that is necessary is to see that you are the awareness in which this thought arises and out of which it is made. See that clearly, take your stand there knowingly and allow the momentum of the ‘I’ thought and ‘I’ feeling to slowly unwind.”
Rupert Spira
