Yesterday’s tip pointed this out:
The wish to be something leads to identification with a specific body-mind-personality as ‘me,’ which leads to a distorted way of seeing—seeing form as primary and life as secondary. When the wish to be something dissolves, the distorted way of seeing dissolves too, and then we see life as primary and form as secondary. With this shift in the way we see, everything changes.
NTI John opens with a focus on light as primary. “Light” is the symbol for eternal, non-changing life, the essence. “Darkness” is the symbol of the ego’s distorted way of seeing form as primary.
The light is truth, so the light is always present. If we see with darkness instead of light, it is because we think we are something. Of course, that is how most humans see. One might wonder why any human ever awakens to the light. Why does anyone desire to know the light when the perspective of darkness is accepted as truth in the world?
The best answer to that question is simply that light is our truth—eternal life is what we are—and a belief that we are something cannot fully block truth. At some point, the truth begins to tug at our heart. If we follow its promptings, that tug grows stronger until we find ourselves driven to rediscover truth. That search is never futile, because everything is that which we seek, and it responds to our desire to see it (and ourselves) as it is.
It is as Michael Langford wrote in The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss:
- When your desire for freedom becomes very intense, your desire for freedom demands that you take no detours.
- When the desire for freedom becomes even stronger, the desire for freedom itself will bring you everything you need to succeed in your quest for liberation including the answer to all your questions, finding the Direct Path teachings, the solution to all obstacles, etc.
- The extremely intense desire for the Direct Experience of the absolute Truth will guide you to your inner Teacher.
- The extremely intense desire for Truth will guide you to the practice that gives the Direct Experience of eternal life.
In other words, the way to truth realization is to follow our desire for truth realization. If we follow our desire, and keep it foremost in our minds, everything else will happen naturally to bring us to awakening.