Gentle Healing 2 ~ Day 265 – NTI 1 John 5

On Day 261, I shared a story about the joy I felt when I recognized a fly on a toilet seat at a truck stop in New Mexico. I say “recognized,” because the joy didn’t come from what the eyes saw or what the mind defined those images as. Joy came from natural recognition—life-awareness recognizing life-awareness. It wasn’t one recognizing another. It was one recognition—Self-recognition.

Today’s reading refers to “the seeing that recognizes the Christ.” That seeing is the recognition I’m referring to. It doesn’t come from thinking metaphysical thoughts. It comes from a natural light in the mind that shines forth and sees only itself—only light…only life….only Self—and there is no thought in it.

I remember a conversation I had with some spiritual students around a dinner table one evening several years ago. Some felt that when we become enlightened, we suddenly know everything that can be intellectually known. They said the enlightened are Einstein-like in their knowledge, and they can tell the future, etcetera. It was a very grandiose idea of enlightenment.

Today’s reading says:

We know only that the truth is true, but in knowing this is all Knowledge given, for there is nothing else to know.

In other words, the knowing that caused my heart to leap with joy when I saw the fly on the toilet seat is  true knowledge. That recognition is the only knowledge that has any real value at all. That’s why Ramana Maharshi used to ask people who had incredible book knowledge, “But do you know the Self?”

Today’s reading also says:

Seek only the truth and the truth will find you.

That means that whenever you notice attention is not with truth, shift attention to truth. By keeping attention with reality—with life-awareness—you come to recognize life-awareness in all.