Saturday, August 10, 2024
When I was teaching, my classes paid attention, mostly; but if there was the slightest distraction, like someone entering the room or a noise, all eyes were directed to the new stimulus. I went from being the foreground to the background, instantly. Human consciousness is like a selection system. It filters out background from foreground, and turns it into “unimportant.” Unbeknownst to most humans, the background is rich, and I wish I could convince you to look into it.
Foreground seems to be all there is. Most people, if they’re not on their phone or engaged in some immersive activity, are drawn in by thoughts. Thoughts are the foreground activity of the mind, and it never shuts up. Occasionally it does, but no one notices.
Getting into the intervals in between thoughts is where enlightenment begins. Exploring the background of existence decreases fear, and you sense the backdrop out of which all things arise. You sense the depth from which words come, actions come, desires come, and from which all things originate.
The average person ignores background, never considering the field of potential, the space of unknowing within and without. Someone ought to look into this space. Your average person never considers “going” there. It seems unimportant, but it’s one of the few frontiers humans have yet to probe – the depths of inner silence. I know it seems like “nothing,” but no one has ever suggested that we do nothing. We’re frantically running around wondering “what are we going to do?” And we are trying everything under the sun except stillness and silence – nothing. Perhaps if we did a background check or checked the background, we’d see that the depths of silence are not empty after all, and that what appears as nothing is actually something of great significance – the source of wisdom, abundance, peace, and unconditional love.