Imagine yourself standing in the room looking at all that the room contains – from your point of view. Then imagine yourself as a hundred selves, standing in the same room with each Self seeing the room from its point of view. Being in the room with a view of the room through a hundred pairs of eyes represents a more complete view of the room than being in the room with a view from just two eyes, and one point of view. A lot can be seen with two eyes, but there is more to see than two eyes can see … there is reality. Reality is an event – a state – an intermixing bundle of known and unknown systems, laws and processes within which collective and individual human realities exist. While we have yet to learn what the present is, beyond it residing somewhere between the past and the future, life can only take place in the present. Whether we notice it or not, our attention is focussed on the imagery and chatter from the past experience and future imagining coursing through our minds. Taken together, past and future chatter and imagery, arising from sense experience, merge into and define self-image, what we call ‘i’. And with this i, this self-image, we gaze upon reality as one would through a veil – a veil of past and future overlays onto a present we’re not fully awake in while attention is focussed on the past and future. We are in a room, a room that contains the length of our life. In that room we see with two eyes and one point of view while it’s possible, through enlightenment, to see with many eyes … and no eyes at all. Achieving enlightenment is both easy and the most difficult good we can strive for. It’s easy because enlightenment inhabits the present. And all we have to do to wake up is divert our attention from focussing on the past and future, to being self-aware in the present. Being here is easy. Staying here, that’s the hard part. And our primary hindrance to achieving enlightenment is identity attachment to ‘i’ and all the ego identifications we’ve come to believe define who we are. Enlightenment is the ego’s opposite. What ego attempts to hold, enlightenment releases. At every moment we add more eyes to the room. Thomas Easley
