The moment we define our understanding of our experience our understanding of that experience is limited to our definition of it. Nobody alive can absolutely describe or define their perceived self. If we use our previous experiences to define what we are experiencing now our beliefs about those experiences will only become truth ‘within our mind’. When anything experienced is defined it creates a criterion which the mind uses to recognise and reinforce its own judgement. This criterion exists in the form of personal beliefs.
When we define an experience we programme our perception to recognise qualifying experiences. Our beliefs then vigilantly monitor all future experiences until an experience that conforms to our judgement is encountered. Once we encounter an experience that we have ‘generically pre-defined’ to be fearful we feel ‘fear’. Fear is not inherent in the experience. In truth we do not fear the experience. What we fear is what we felt in the original experience that was judged. We can say that we felt fear because the original experience held a risk that resulted in an accident or injury.
If a passenger looks through the window of a moving train what he sees in that moment exists within his experience. If the passenger uses what is seen from the window of the train in one moment of his journey to define his whole journey he has confused a part of his experience with the whole of his experience. When our judgement of one experience in our life is used to judge all subsequent experiences we live within limitation. Limitation can only exist within a mind that has defined its understanding of particular types of experience based upon one or more events.
Until the journey of our life is over any explanation or definition can only describe the cumulative understanding that exists in the moment that the definition is created. The journey is the experience and until we reach the destination it is not over. Until the journey of life is over we cannot know with certainty what will happen. If we lose our job we are not ‘unemployed’. If we cook food in a restaurant we are not a chef. If we put on the uniform of a police officer we are not a police officer. We are not what we do.
What we do reflects either the limitations or natural expression of an unlimited mind. Poverty or wealth is created by behaviour. Our behaviour is controlled by our beliefs. Our beliefs are what we use to define reality. What we feel in any moment is a reflection of our ‘personal truth’. Our personal truth is what we believe. Whilst what we feel is our truth it is not the truth of the experience. Unless attacked or the victim of an accident what we feel is always a response to our own judgement. If we do not feel good then our experience is incarcerated by and responds to our own judgement.
Our feelings respond to our judgement of our experiences. Our feelings do not respond to the experience. For this complex to be sustained there must be a correlation between what we think and what we feel. What this means is that by changing how we perceive our self and our experiences we can transform our thoughts and feelings. When we stop working we are not retired. The job is not our function. We have no function. We are therefore not pensioners. Once believed the definitions that are used to ‘identify’ our self become constraints ‘within our mind’.
Once we have chosen which beliefs we are going to personally worship as our truth we have established the parameters of individual personal expression. The only way we can transcend the limits of our own judgement is to question it. Those who discover something new will experience a new or unprecedented experience. These people may be defined as ‘pioneers’. When what the pioneer discovers is communicated to others their testimony is limited only by their understanding. The description we use to define experience merely reveals our understanding of it.
The personal testimony of those pioneers creates parameters within the minds of anyone who believes them. Many people who define their experience to be a spiritual experience are simply defining their experience. This is to replace the experience with our definition of it. There is no such thing as spiritual enlightenment. The guru is merely the uniform that replaces the old ‘identity’. When the engineer becomes a guru he may say his ego has died. What has happened is that he has taken off one costume merely to put on another.
When we transcend the limits of beliefs we are not enlightened, we are awake. We are awake when we are no longer ‘entranced’ by our own projections existing in the form of personal beliefs. Spirituality is a just another concept. We are the creator of the concept defined by the word ‘spirituality’ so we cannot be spiritual. To define our self or anything is to look out of the window of a moving train and define the whole journey according to what is seen on one moment of that journey. The journey started at the beginning of creation and any definition that exists now is a limitation.
Spiritual awakening and spiritual enlightenment are definitions that are projected to define certain types of people and experiences. The experience must conform to the criteria that defines spiritual for it to qualify as spiritual. What is defined as a spiritual awakening is simply what we think and feel when we transcend the limits of our own judgement. When our judgement is no longer worshipped as truth we transcend the limitations that our beliefs place upon our thoughts and feelings. When we describe our experience as spiritual we are not conveying truth but merely our understanding of it.
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