For years I have heard about the "us being a screen and life projecting it's movie on us" analogy. I have used it many times. It is so perfect. Really, watch the screen, it is not touched by what is going on in the movie. This screen is the silence on which the colors of life project and make the movie.
Well, over a bit more than a month there has been a shift. I did not have words to explain what this shift felt like, but it came to me this morning.
So far when I give the movie screen analogy, I am looking at a movie screen and how the movie with all its drama is passing over it without touching it. Well, the shift that has happened is that now, I am the movie screen and the drama of life is passing over this screen.
Read the next few lines from the perspective of "I am a screen" and not "what the screen out there is experiencing". Like when in school, they made us write autobiography of inanimate objects, like a book... you become the book and say what the book is experiencing... like that read the rest of the lines in this post as tho it is the screen talking and not me talking for the screen.
When I say I am the screen, I am not talking about this body mind, I am talking about something that cannot be expressed in words, not a witness, not something separate from me... more like a solid (and yet made of air, completely transparent and hollow) wall of silence (the canvas of silence on which things are happening.
The body mind reacts to things going on around me... there is laughing and crying and happiness and anger and singing and loving and hugging and being silly.
The difference, when I am the screen, I don't experience the movie... so the body mind which seems like a part of the movie right now... reacts to external stimuli, however being the screen I don't get to partake in any of it since it is all being projected on me. Like, unless you stand in front of a mirror you cannot see yourself, so if people have painted your face and put some silly clothes on you and put signs all over you, you would have no clue what was happening and you can happily go about your day without knowing what has happened to you... unless you look in a mirror you don't see things on you. Like that the screen has no idea what is going on on it.
When the scene being projected changes, the previous scene is gone without leavening a mark and the next scene is enjoyed. There is no evaluation of what is happening and hence there is no attachment or aversion to the previous moment or current or future.
Since the projection is happening on me, I don't see the reds and blues and yellows and greens... since I don't see them I don't label them red, blue, yellow and green, there is no evaluation, the reds and blues and greens and yellows all become a part of the same picture and blend in perfect harmony.
Then there is no wishing for anything different since every scene, every color has a part in the movie, no part is more or less intense to the movie screen.
Well, over a bit more than a month there has been a shift. I did not have words to explain what this shift felt like, but it came to me this morning.
So far when I give the movie screen analogy, I am looking at a movie screen and how the movie with all its drama is passing over it without touching it. Well, the shift that has happened is that now, I am the movie screen and the drama of life is passing over this screen.
Read the next few lines from the perspective of "I am a screen" and not "what the screen out there is experiencing". Like when in school, they made us write autobiography of inanimate objects, like a book... you become the book and say what the book is experiencing... like that read the rest of the lines in this post as tho it is the screen talking and not me talking for the screen.
When I say I am the screen, I am not talking about this body mind, I am talking about something that cannot be expressed in words, not a witness, not something separate from me... more like a solid (and yet made of air, completely transparent and hollow) wall of silence (the canvas of silence on which things are happening.
The body mind reacts to things going on around me... there is laughing and crying and happiness and anger and singing and loving and hugging and being silly.
The difference, when I am the screen, I don't experience the movie... so the body mind which seems like a part of the movie right now... reacts to external stimuli, however being the screen I don't get to partake in any of it since it is all being projected on me. Like, unless you stand in front of a mirror you cannot see yourself, so if people have painted your face and put some silly clothes on you and put signs all over you, you would have no clue what was happening and you can happily go about your day without knowing what has happened to you... unless you look in a mirror you don't see things on you. Like that the screen has no idea what is going on on it.
When the scene being projected changes, the previous scene is gone without leavening a mark and the next scene is enjoyed. There is no evaluation of what is happening and hence there is no attachment or aversion to the previous moment or current or future.
Since the projection is happening on me, I don't see the reds and blues and yellows and greens... since I don't see them I don't label them red, blue, yellow and green, there is no evaluation, the reds and blues and greens and yellows all become a part of the same picture and blend in perfect harmony.
Then there is no wishing for anything different since every scene, every color has a part in the movie, no part is more or less intense to the movie screen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Blues and Reds and Yellows and Blacks and Whites all merge to make a beautiful painting.~Shweta
You may love the color red
but dislike the color blue.
And yet
When they are together in a painting,
You see the beauty in the harmony of all the colors
not individual ones.
Life is like that.
There is laughing and crying and joy and sorrow...
There is praising and scolding and accepting and blaming...
There is loving and rejecting and hugging and brushing aside.
But together they make a beautiful painting on the canvas of silence.
If you just look at only the red color in the painting because you are attracted to it
and ignore the blue...
You don't see the harmony of the painting
If you look for only the good in life and ignore the bad
you miss the beauty of the painting of life.
All of it is present in perfect harmony,
Unless we decide we prefer one color over the other.
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This screen analogy, along with your Harmony poem, provide two very powerful analogies concerning what the experiencing of true nature is actually like.
ReplyDeleteBeing the screen, I have nothing to do with specific display being displayed on "me" (awareness/consciousness ... the screen I AM).
I experience the complete work of art, every moment ... instead of mistakenly identifying with a tiny slice of the painting that felt like "me" (even though the painting/display is actually different, every moment, anyway ..... no wonder the "dream of me" is perpetually confused!!)
It’s not that we’re not the paint or the colors (the display on the screen) … if the raw materials of the colors and display weren’t part of consciousness, there would be “screen only” … and no perceiving of anything at all.
I (the screen) experience the painting (the moment) as a whole, rather than feeling attached to a specific, minor aspect (the minor aspect I used to think of as “me”), along with its distorted evaluation of the ever-shifting “other colors” (not noticing that it is part of this living palette-painting … ever-shifting, itself).
Those emotions and experiences that the ego tries to avoid and/or minimize) are no longer remembered or regretted or whatever; they’re literally gone …. just as the entire ocean never “waves” the exact same way, twice.
Consciously being the screen, I (all of us, each of us) can experience that the only pertinent display, in any way, is moment … but it too is utterly gone in just a moment … the palette of colors is ever-freshly liberated to display as the specific blend of this moment, now … and now.
And there could never be a more beautiful piece of art than this moment, living unbound.
One of the biggest challenges in this sharing the simple freedom and enjoyment of "enScreenenment"(aka enlightenment)... is in simply and clearly communicating what it's like, and what the difference is, from other expansions of consciousness, along the yogic path.
These two illustrations (the "I am the screen" analogy, and your wonderful Harmony poem) .... help to easily clarify what's going on, what's possible, and why the experience of living changes (upon experiencing self as the screen, and not as any part of the display, specifically) in the exact ways that it does, upon realizing we actually are the screen, all along .... more simply and clearly than any I've ever seen before.
Thank You.