Direct Experience (Zenrendipity)

Direct Experience

It has been said that direct experience is something that cannot be described because the actual experience will be contaminated by ego. Said in another way, it is because experience and you are one and the same. So we can only grasp at it with ideas but truly not capture nor contain it in mind. Think of a time when perhaps you may have been driving somewhere, going for a walk and suddenly became totally absent from this idea of you describe as driving or walking. A time when you are not necessarily lost in thought but being in no- thought. There you where, but at the same time you where nowhere at all but totally involved with experience. It is not till ego reeled you back in that you became aware that for awhile ego was totally absent. Think also of the times when you might have looked at particular scenery, some location that pulled you in and the ‘I’ disappeared within its content for a moment. There is this feeling of expansive, a connection to that particular scenery or object. These are glimpses to direct experience, communion between subject and object which collapses the ego. The ego will later build a history around the experience to absorb the vacuum. So you can see that direct experience is always available to us it is there now. It was always there all the time in full view and yet hidden from us. How could we have not seen this all this time? It is because of our conditioning and all our learned behaviors which intervene through error. What has evolved over thousand of years as protective mechanisms necessary to our survival took over more of the role of what we should truly experience. We have become automatons following the line of least resistance in order to be able to react at a moments notice. The validity of direct experience, our greatest gift was misappropriated by thought followed by ego and this became the norm This did not happen to all of us as some managed to remain realised. This became a dilemma for those beings that were realized. How would they convey this message to their brothers and sisters? How did this happen in the first place? That’s easy enough to answer; they were just too busy surviving under the harsh living conditions. It was easy enough for an ego to develop under the strain of living to survive. That’s easily enough verified by taking a look at Abraham Maslow’s table which explains all this. The hierarchy of needs has to be satisfied before one can pursue enlightenment. Returning to the challenge at hand to such realized beings. The message of direct experience had to be transmitted in small packets of information, stories, metaphors, parables where the choice method of transmission. Why do you suppose they chose this? Because the average person had not evolved to that level or as I would prefer to assert that we did not remain at that same (realized level) level because survival became too paramount and devolved. This was the best way to transmit the information without running the risk of ostracism or maybe even crucifixion. So mankind became too busy surviving under our three dimensional experience that he forgot her own divinity. This now that we were suppose to experience became separated. Like the ouroboric snake trying to catch its own tail we got caught in this wheel and did not know how to stop and just be! Instead we took a large chunk of the forbidden apple (knowledge) which was out there and got stuck. So what we have today, perhaps this glimpse of direct experience is divine source sneaking a peek at its own creations under the guise of you. And you in turn are sneaking a peek at direct experience (divine source) during your moments of now. The message being that if you stop for a moment, stop all thought and get off the wheel for awhile and really see, really hear. You might just discover that nothing is hidden and all is revealed.