Honor Your Subjective Experience

We live in a reality that is, above all, a subjective experience. Sure, there may be objective truths which we all agree upon, yet still these objective truths are observed through a conglomeration of subjective points of view. You are you, I am me, and though the awareness which is the essence of your experience and my experience may be the same, the experience itself varies greatly. No matter how often spiritual teachers preach about oneness and unity, there is no escaping the relative truth of this Universe; it is, for all intents and purposes, a subjective experience.

Subjectivity is a beautiful thing. It results in uniqueness, nuance and variation. It gives rise to an infinite expanse of experiences for one to behold. Were there only one point of perspective in this Universe, there really couldn’t be any experience at all. The same way that there is really no time, space, or movement until two points arise, if there were only a single point of focus, nothing could really happen. There would be no experience, no contrast, no varying sensations and perceptions: there would simply be the isness of I, the only I there is. The I must fragment itself into multiplicity for experiences to arise.

The problem with subjectivity begins when you believe that everyone is experiencing what you are experiencing, and that everyone should know how you feel and what you are thinking at all times. It’s almost like a covert narcissism. You, being the center of your own Universe, believe that everyone around you should cater to your experience, that they should hold your subjectivity above all else, and that you should be the center of their Universe. But this is not the case. So when people do things that make you feel bad, instead of establishing healthy boundaries and being honest about the way you feel, you just expect them to know that they are making you feel bad and to stop what they are doing.

The divine source of this narcissistic and self-absorbed tendency arises from the truth that, in essence, we are all one. We all share the same basic nature which is the awareness or consciousness that experiences our own subjective reality. This universal awareness is what unites us beyond our apparent surface level differences. Yet we still must honor the subjective nature of this Universe, though true only relatively, and we must be authentic with our thoughts and feelings and establish healthy boundaries.

Too often we can get caught up in catering to someone else’s agenda because we wish to help and we wish to experience the love and belonging that comes along with helping others. But many times helping doesn’t actually feel good to us. It feels like self-hate. This is why you must honor your own subjectivity, you must hold tightly to your own personal truth, and you must even be willing to risk others not liking or accepting you in order to honor your own personal feelings and desires. Because nothing is more important than how you feel.

Everything we do is either consciously or unconsciously intended to make us feel better, so why not go straight to the better feeling instead of beating around the bush? Why sacrifice the way you feel now for some hypothetical better-feeling future that never comes? You must honor your subjective experience and do what is best for you. No one can and no one will do this for you. You must do this for yourself. Do what you know is right, and as Shakespeare once said, always “ To thine own self be true.”

The End of Suffering

"There is the state of being wrapped up in or identified with something, then there is the state of detached witnessing, and then there is the merging with it and the becoming of it; your presence transmutes it into itself. This point is the end of all suffering."

The unwillingness to experience even the worst hell is literally what creates it, as the resistance we have to suffering is what holds it in place. An open willingness to explore all experiences and sensations that could ever be is the essence of enlightenment.

The original polarity was the split between the essence and the experience, or the observed and the observer. This then fractured infinitely into a fractal of polarized reality, the mind being a by-product of such. We, as the eternal underlying essence, then lost ourselves in this fragmented and fractalized reality experience so that we could recognize ourselves once again to gain a higher level of self-awareness. It is a perfect ever-evolving eternal process of expansion and evolution both within and without. Both on the level of experience and the level of awareness, as both are perfect reflections of eachother.

This polarity is what in fact gives rise to all of creation. Nothing could be without it, there would be no matter, no sensation and no experience. It is the original split or division that occurred within the space of consciousness when it first had the desire to know itself. This polarity exists on an energetic spectrum. Everything in experiential reality is the same substance expressed at different frequencies, or imbued with ever-changing information. Hot and cold are really the same thing, just expressed differently. This difference in expression is what gives rise to the conception of duality.

Polarity is what gives birth to the conception of the "self" and the "other", both being mind-based perceptual delusions. The belief in the "other" gives rise to the feeling of separation and fear. We fear that which we feel is outside of our control, that which we feel is separate from us. But how could anything be separate from you if it all arises within your own consciousness, your own awareness? All that could ever be must be within the space of your consciousness, for nothing could exist without a witness for its existence. Your truest self is the space in which all that is arises, and all that arises is an inseparable part of that. So in reality, there is no other. There is only you.

Reality itself is an ever-flowing expression of life-force energy which perpetually emanates from the one. The movement occurs in a toroidal flow pattern, whereas the center point is the singularity of consciousness or awareness. Creation bursts forth, projects itself as an externalized reality experience, and is then perceived and received as the cycle repeats. This occurs at such a rapid rate that we have no conscious awareness of it. It appears to happen instantaneously.

In the picture above, you could think of one half of the sphere as being positive and the other half as being negative. Reality is the interplay of these two polarized forces, and so long as we believe in it and identify with it as being real or "self", we are stuck in this polarized dance of highs and lows, expansions and contractions, joys and sorrows. When we recognize our true Self as the singularity, we integrate polarity into the wholeness of the Self and transcend it all together.

When you surrender to the entire spectrum of happiness and suffering, of pain and joy, you transcend it by experiencing it all simultaneously. The way in which black is not truly a color, but is the absence of color because it absorbs the entire light spectrum, the state you achieve is not so much a feeling or emotion but rather all feelings and none simultaneously; it is the peace that passes all understanding. That which Jesus described as heaven and the Buddha described as nirvana. In other words, it is the end of suffering and the beginning of your liberation as a self-actualized being free to experience the infinite magnitude of creation in whatever way you choose.