States of Being – Sensations, emotions and thoughts
A prevalent state of being for most people is preoccupation with sensations, emotions and thoughts. This preoccupation is a major block to the awareness of the Truth of Self. I have long had an analogy for this tangle of thoughts, sensations and emotions as similar to a cloud between me and the sun. A common objective on a spiritual path is to somehow bypass this cloud. Here is a passage in “A Course In Miracles” which describes how easy it is to get past the cloud just like walking up a mountain in a mist until one reaches the top of the mountain in the sunlight above the mist.
“This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun.”
I had an experience during an Enlightenment Intensive of the tangle of thoughts, sensations and emotions presenting itself in a different way. I experience the tangle of thoughts, emotions and sensations as a sphere in the middle of the ocean, halfway between the ocean floor and the surface. The sphere has buoyancy, and it is connected by a chain to the ocean floor. As the water moves about with the ocean currents, the sphere sways easily in all directions. Instead of a common perspective of identifying myself inside of the sphere and locating myself inside the dense tangle, I observed the sphere from outside, noting how there is nothing fixed or rigid about it except my choice to identify myself with the entrapping emotions, sensations and thoughts. By choosing the outside perspective, I am free to experience the Truth of Self.