Life Cannot Stay The Same


The saying that "direct experience is beyond words" has practically become a cliché in spiritual circles. Many people who follow a spiritual path would acknowledge the truth of that statement. Yet how many are willing to actually live it? How many are willing to abandon traditions and lineages, to stop clinging to what past teachers have said, to stop trying to fit present experience into past explanations or accepted practice? That kind of abandonment can be a frightening place for the conditioned mind, yet it is the only place where direct experience, undistorted by the past, can occur. Ishvara speaks of this in words I have transcribed and edited from a talk he gave on November 11, 2004. - TG.

Ishvara:

The core of this awareness is beyond intellectual understanding. Some people can only approach this awareness from an intellectual or scholarly point of view, but ultimately they will have to drop such an approach in order to have a direct experience. The moment you try to intellectualize The Consciousness, it becomes something else. It becomes a pattern, a system or a structure. I experience day-by-day that This Consciousness refuses to fall into a structure, refuses to fall into a pattern, and is always breaking free of expectations.

To really "get" this, you have to have a direct experience, and to have a direct experience you need to drop your intellectual belief and your expectations about it, because those things will mar or distort the experience, or even abort it.

If everyone were having direct experience, without trying to place it into a reference point of past writing, past philosophy, past traditions or past teachers, there would be a great acceleration of humanity. There is a saying that you can't put new wine into old wineskins, yet that is essentially what people try to do with this awareness. This is new; it is a new level of Consciousness being presented in this moment. It is the new mind of Life, and it cannot go into the old containers, because it will burst them. If one attempts to place this into the old systems, it won't work; it will keep bursting out. It defies the human explanation, the belief and concept. It defies how it is "supposed to be." If it was how it was "supposed to be," Life would remain in the same trap, not going anywhere.

Life is a progressive process; it can't stay the same. Each experience must lead to a more expanded experience, and how are you going to label or box that? You can't. It can't be boxed. People seem to latch onto a certain pattern of spirituality and expect everything to fall into that category, to fit into that pattern, but The Consciousness never fits. It never fits nicely into anything, because it is always expansive, always increasing. It is never what it was; it is always becoming what it is, and that is difficult for the intellect to accept, because the intellect looks for data which can be analyzed, divided and dissected, and then put back together. But by the time you do that, Life has moved on; it is no longer what is was when you started; it is very progressive.

Life is always in a process of expansion. It can do it quite harmoniously, or it can do it chaotically; it makes no difference. As you become comfortable with this continuous expansion, it can be less chaotic.

Life doesn't fit the criteria you expect. In order to benefit from this expansion, in order to experience it, you have to let go of your idea of what it is supposed to be, let go of your need to fit it into a package or bring it into alignment with something else, because it is truly the nature of Life always to move beyond the past container. Life won't be contained; it won't be held back, and as humans begin to realize that, there can be an active participation, an active alignment with this process that transcends any kind of structure or the need to make a structure.

The Consciousness manifests the physical body; the body IS The Consciousness, is not separate from it, but is certainly not limited by that experience. Most people look at the physical experience as a limitation, but it is simply The Consciousness experiencing this possibility. As humans get used to that, they can begin to expand, they can begin to realize that this is not a limitation; this is a possibility happening moment by moment, and ultimately it is a possibility that is restricted only by human belief.

A scholar may say, "Well, let's analyze this and see what it is." Yet The Consciousness is elusive in that process. No matter how hard you try to trap it, you can't; it is always going to break out, it will always be an enigma of some sort. To me, that is exciting. It is exciting to know that there is no limit, no ceiling, no stopping place. It is always refreshing to realize that no one can box it or own it or contain it. If it could be contained, we would die, because our very existence depends on the ability to expand, to continue to move beyond what was.

I realize this is difficult for human beings, because most programming has to do with structuring, limiting, "This is how it is; this is what it means." Yet Life creates its own meaning through direct experience, so at some point you have to get out of the knowledge banks and begin to allow the information to flow into existence, and see what it does. It is difficult for people to understand this awareness, because you have to experience it directly; you can't talk about it, you can't categorize it, you can't label it. It is very difficult to say what it is. It is a direct experience, it is ongoing, and it is expansive. What it was yesterday is not what it is now.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

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