Preparation For Seeing

Why do so many people say that before you can truly realise one's ever present enlightenment (i.e. rest in this state of awareness), you have to go through various stages of development (e.g. Wilber's psychic, subtle and causal stages)? Do others on this list think this is necessary? E. Japan.

Hi E,
Maybe you have to go through some stages of being fed up with things as they seem to be, fed up with the third person, to be interested in looking. But once you see the empty center, you can see it whenever it occurs to you to look. And it doesn't change from the first time you see it to the last time - right now. It's always the same, full-blown from the beginning. It's infinite and timeless, and you can't get just part of the infinite or a few moments of the timeless. It can't be divided like that. The stages may just be the 'softening' we were talking about earlier this month. J.C. USA.

Instinctively I don't think one has to go through stages anymore than a cat or a baby goes through stages to realize I AM. A baby or a cat just IS - no stages or levels to it. We were babies once, too, and had the same realization, but then forgot about it and learned to identify with our little separate selves. So, it is more a question of relaxed unlearning, than striving to change focus. Remembering who I really AM often seems to occur to me as I drive to work and see my Self still and the road moving through Me. Then when I get to work these email messages arrive daily and serve as a wonderful reminder to remember who I really AM. Most of the day 90% of my attention is focused on exterior happenings and only 10% on who I really AM. So these emails help me maintain that inward attention - as Douglas puts it "two way seeing".

These stages of spiritual learning are concepts and I don't think that you can conceptualize or think your way THERE - just look and SEE. The question is how to remember to look and SEE - and I think, after the initial SEEING, that one returns naturally to drink at this Oasis, because we thirst for it. You go back when you're thirsty. M.C. USA.