For some time now I have been attempting to localise perception. What I mean by this is to locate where in apparent perceptual reality the differing perceptions lie. This can only make sense to those few attempting something similar.

Visual perception ‘seems’ to be immediately ‘in front’. The sensations of the body are down a bit and perhaps slightly to the right. Hearing is sensed behind the plane of the visual perceptions, it is ‘closer’. Taste is roughly aligned with most other body sensation. The guts are slightly to the left. Clearly I have no idea whether this is universal or unique — there’s few to compare notes with.

What is both universal and unique is the realisation that every bit of anger, violence, cruelty and exploitation I ever apparently perceive in the outer universe is not there at all. Its source is within me. It is actually projected into my (as I now, today, know) very intimate plane of perception through me. I am the source, I am the gate through which all that comes. All awfulness comes through me. All beauty, joy, kindness and love comes the same way.

I am the way. As a Man once said.

What comes along my way?

As another Man said, ‘Surrender’.

And what does Woman say? Men always pretend that it is woman who never stops talking, but paradoxically, as far as I can tell, Speech is not necessarily her Way. Her Way is Love, and that means Action, not Words.

WOMAN

Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress,
The Creator’s Self, as it were, not a mere creature!

Rumi

Today, with the arrival of the 25^th of March 2018 and the coming of BST, I have awoken to the departure (or better, dethronement) of another old ‘friend’, the resurgent and insistent ‘thinker’.

For many years ‘I’¹ have attempted to first, gain awareness of, and then, break the continuity of the self-referential internal dialogue. It’s the internal voice of self-commentary. It’s secondary, and it’s false in its claims to be primary. I had used to call it, after the practice of many others, ‘the thinker’, but have stopped doing that… more on that elsewhere.

With the loss of, or self-destruction of, or implosion of, the central ‘I-self’², that continuous narrative that there is a self; it was seen that a lot of freedom from the impositions of ‘the thinker’ arrived at the same time. It was easy– well, easier– to throw off ‘the thinker’.

As described previously, it has been much easier to shift attention from thought to the now-continuously-available sensation of the sensory body. Still, however, when at rest, the thinker would often start up.

Just to describe this, the thinker is triggered mostly by images, often by reference to memories of emotional events that relate to images, and sometimes by similarities in circumstances.

But today, there’s a wonderfully echoing silence here. The same silence that was first encountered, briefly but life-changing-ly, over 30 years ago.

‘The thinker’ is not gone. But it’s stopped yacking, for now at least.

Oh, ‘I’ have a vacation! I’m vacant!

It is noticed, realised, that there is now an almost unbroken timeless experience of continuous presence.

What’s that?

Well, it is the continuous location of the senses — presence — within the sensory universe that starts with the body. It’s a continuous ‘in-the-body-experience’.

This is not the opposite of an ‘out-of-body-experience’. It is rather its obverse, perception within its locus of origin.

At all times the body-as-sensation is readily available as a sensational reality, just by attending on it.

Previously it had been necessary to wrench attention away from whatever its object was, and drag it towards the sensations of the body – where it would then, reluctantly, rest for a while.

Now it is a simple act of focus. The senses have returned to their home.

What’s the difference? When one is lightened? What happens in the very ordinary day-to-day? That is, today? What goes on, what’s evolving? Is anything evolving? Or just revolving?

Is ‘enlightenment’ an end — or a beginning?

Well — let’s try to document some of that.

Stream of consciousness? Nah. ‘Consciousness’ is actually self-aware, as perhaps may become clear.

Let’s just look at ‘aware’ without any self in it… I can’t promise any of it will immediately ‘make sense’ for you though… you have to make your own senses. Best bet to check — does anything ring a bell? Have the sound of the truth?

Whatever enlightenment is, it’s not over until it’s over, after all…