 Tim Freke is a bestselling author, scholar and ‘stand-up philosopher’. He has written more than thirty books, including The Jesus Mysteries, which was an international bestseller and a 'Book of the Year' in The Daily Telegraph. His other books include Jesus and the Goddess, which was cited by Dan Brown as an inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. Tim is regularly featured in the media as an ‘Ambassador for Oneness’. He runs inspirational seminars on waking up to oneness and big love in the UK, America, Europe and South Africa.
For more details see www.timothyfreke.com
Dear Friends,
At the heart of all the great spiritual traditions of the world is a perennial philosophy, which points to the experience of waking up to the reality that all is one. The perennial philosophy teaches that life is like a dream. We appear to be separate individuals within the life-dream. But when we become conscious of our deeper nature, we realise there is one awareness, dreaming itself to be everyone and everything. This realisation is an experience of unconditional compassion that I call ‘big love', because when we see we are one with all, we find ourselves in love with all.
In my latest books Lucid Living and The Laughing Jesus I compare this awakened state to lucid dreaming. When we dream lucidly we continue to experience the dream, but we are conscious that the person we appear to be is only our dream-persona. Our deeper nature is the dreamer. In the same way we can live lucidly by becoming conscious that there are two aspects to our identity right now. We appear to be separate personas in the life dream, but essentially we are the oneness of awareness within which everything is arising.
I am delighted that the teachings of oneness are becoming increasingly popular. But as I travel around performing my ‘stand-up philosophy' shows, I encounter some profound misunderstandings. I often hear people say that life is some sort of inconsequential illusion, that the personal is the problem and the ego is the enemy, that there is nothing to be done, because nothing really matters. I want to suggest that to become conscious of oneness we don't need to reject separateness, but to celebrate our individuality.
The essential message of the perennial philosophy is polarity. A polarity consists of opposites which can only exist together. Hot and cold are opposites, for example, but you can't have ‘hot’ without ‘cold’ and vice versa. Reality is predicated on polarity. Our identity is polar. We are both the oneness of awareness and separate individuals within the life-dream. Lucid living is becoming conscious we are both one and separate. It is not either/or. It is both/and.
Waking up is not a state of disembodied ‘enlightenment'. It is an ecstatic state of individual ‘enlivenment'! It is living as the one appearing to be someone. Our individual identities are to be celebrated, because it is only by appearing to be separate that the one can become conscious of itself. Our personal relationships, attachments, and aspirations are not impediments to awakening. They are the glorious colours of existence, through which we come to the light from which all colours arise. Life is not an inconsequential illusion. Life is magic. Life is a marvel to be enjoyed in this present moment.
When we reject the personal and see life as an illusion we may hope to experience oneness, but actually we get caught in a more subtle form of separateness. And what is missing from this state is big love. Big love arises when we are conscious of both poles of our identity. Big love is knowing we are both separate and not-separate, and communing through our uniqueness. Waking up doesn't lead to indifference and inaction. It leads to a paradoxical state in which we both appreciate the perfection of the moment and we are moved by compassion to make things better, by relieving suffering and increase joy.
At the seminars I run to help people experience the state of lucid living for themselves, I spend much of the time helping participants transcend separateness and taste the reality of oneness. But my deepest hope is that they will leave as enlivened individuals, empowered by the knowledge that they are essentially the great imagination which is the source of all. I don't want us to reject this magnificent dream of life. I want us to wake up to oneness and compassionately engage with life, so that we can transform it into the joyous celebration of existence we all want it to be.
Big love
Tim Freke
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 17-Oct-2006
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