Intellectual understanding, however diamond-like, will only push "you" shallowly beneath the waves. And that pushing, born of the mind having reached a “conclusion”, will need to be continued; remembering, reminding one's self, and re-concluding, again and again, of the "idea", the concept, that "All there is, is Consciousness." So many have planted a flag here, just beneath the waves, on the far frontiers of Heaven.
There "you" will drift, having seen through, intellectually, the falsity of identification with the wave you had taken yourself to be, identification, still present, now having simply shifted, in intellectual understanding alone, to the Ocean. You will have completed the “physics class” of contemporary nonduality.
You will have thought yourself, reasoned yourself, and come to a conclusion that you are free. You will know that you are not an object-perceiver-experiencer-person, but will continue to feel as if you are, in ways vast, varied, and supremely subtle. Initially the psycho-intellectual shift will give cause for celebration, for it is not inconsequential. But in time... you will wonder why that which you had taken to be Wine, tastes like tepid water. The “thirst” of the mind will have been satisfied, but the Heart’s longing for the Drunkenness of Fullness, Completion, and Bliss will remain unsatisfied.
You will not know the Taste, the Fragrance, the Experience of Absolute Nonduality; the Embrace of The Beloved; the vanishing, in experience, not concept, of space, time, objects, and yourself. Nor will you know, in open-eyed existence in the Dream of space and time, the Experience of Dissolution and Bliss that only comes when not only the mind is Liberated, but the Heart, and the somatic aspect of the manifest Being is Illumined.
The Kingdom of Heaven is Within. And you cannot read, hear, watch, or think your way to the Experience of it. However powerfully evocative, these will only bring you to the frontiers. You cannot come to the Experience by locating it on a map, reading a description, however profound and articulate, or looking at photos, however beautiful.
You must dive deep... behind... before all that appears, including the felt sense of yourself as the investigator, the enquirer, the one seeking to experience Pure Awareness. For Heaven, Pure Awareness, is only experienced when all that appears ceases, including the experiencer-perceiver, leaving only That to which, from which, within which, and most confoundingly as which, all appears.
Back... back...
Before... before...
Before thinking,
And the felt sense of yourself as the thinker.
Before language, words, and mental images,
And the meanings and emotions they carry.
Before perceptions and sensations,
And the felt sense of the their perceiver-experiencer.
Back... back...
Before... before...
The outward wandering Wave of Attention must be fiercely committed to discovering its Source, The Ocean within, from which it arises and to which it returns; Fierce enough not to stop at intellectual understanding; Fierce enough to go beyond, behind, before knowing and understanding; Fierce enough to move in Feeling Enquiry to the point of its own Vanishing in The Great Mystery that lays before, beyond, behind all duality, Absolutely.
The Kingdom of Heaven is Within.
Go there.
And don’t stop at understanding,
Continue on, until Experience alone exists...
Free, at last, of the experiencer.
Dip the salt doll self,
Again and again and again,
Into the Ocean of Pure Awareness,
Until only a handful of saltwater emerges.
Understanding will lead you to the Shore,
Where thinking must give way to Feeling,
Where concept must give way to Experience,
Of Existence as Pure Awareness...
Heaven.
