* Absolute Truth * in Just Stuff

The following exercise, if practiced assiduously, will yield absolute truth. This is NOT an exaggeration. Yes, ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

Practicing this exercise cultures into your personality ALL knowledge about consciousness. It will not only transform your life; it will transform your very definition of life.

Deeper than your marrow, even your individual molecules will be found attuning with the axiomatic arrows with which life itself is targeting the meaning of existence.

The four steps of the exercise are:

1. Whenever possible arrange to wake up in the morning naturally without an alarm, and take cautions that other persons or environmental stimuli do not artificially awaken you. Your aim is to wake up AS SLOWLY as possible.

   Before you go to bed, spend at least a few minutes to go over in your mind your intent to wake up slowly. Talk to yourself about wanting to be aware of your first moments of consciousness, to not make any major bodily motions, to stay at ease and merely "watch" as the activities of your nervous system begin to function fully. Reading this exercise just before closing your eyes will be an aid too. Also, regulate your intake of liquids in the hours before bedtime to lessen "morning bladder urgency" which tends to hasten the awakening process.

   With such preparation, you increase your chances of having appropriate thoughts which will support implementation of the exercise at the earliest moments of awakening.

2. When you find yourself in the awakening process, watch it. This means, that you DO NOT DO ANYTHING TO WAKE UP. You want to just see this process in slow motion. It is possible, and the more you practice this, the greater will you become aware of the mechanics of the process. Over time, you will become familiar with very subtle aspects of it, and this familiarity is a foundation that supports even deeper clarity about the process. This takes many sessions, but again, it yields the most profound of truths.

3. On average, waking up can take less then a few minutes, but it is not unlikely that it will take over an hour if you find yourself "porpoising"--that is, diving back into a dream and up again to the surface of wakefulness. Your only intent here is to become comfortable with the beginnings of awareness of yourself as an awakening person. If you find yourself slipping back and forth between dreams and wakefulness, count yourself as lucky to get repeated opportunities to observe the process.

4. Immediately after you feel that you have awakened, but before you open your eyes, ask yourself the follow-up questions. This questioning about your experiences is the heart of this exercise. Merely observing the process does not have nearly the impact that intellectually understanding it and coming to conclusions about it does. The answers, after many sessions, will form into certainties that will transform the very basis of your personality. This takes time. Merely agreeing with a concept about "all this" is NOT the goal of this exercise. Absorbing the concept and allowing it to saturate all your "personality producing patterns" is the deepest intent of the exercise. There are quite a few questions to ask below, and it would be rare that they all "get remembered" during any particular session, but, over time, all of them will get asked again and again, and that is what is going to support the saturation process.

   And now the good news: this is so much fun that you're going to cheat and take afternoon naps to "double up."

   Ask yourself:

AM I fully awake, or will opening my eyes make me even more awake?

How can it be that "I" awoke when I was clearly there to appreciate even my first thoughts, such as, "hey, I'm waking up," or "my awareness is starting to increase," or "I'm having fuzzy, dreamy kind of thoughts," or "I was dreaming just a second ago?"

Who, WHO was it that was there "waiting" for the awakening process to start? Was THAT me?

Is this "pre-awakening me" different from the "me" that was having my dreams happening to "it?"

Is the "me" that observes my dreams also the me that observes my "awakening process" and my "experiences while awake?"

When I was not dreaming, and also not experiencing "the awakened state" what was the nature of the "me" that was there "just in case" an experience DID come up? Even though my "dream life personality(s)" and my "awake personality(s)" are so different from each other, am I the receiver, observer, watcher, and witness of both these kinds of experiences? In fact, am I the one common thread--a single, unifying awareness--that runs throughout the entire spectrum of a vast assortment of experiences in differing states of alertness?

How is waking up like taking a drug? How is waking up like the onset of a change in blood chemistry? How is waking up like taking a stimulant?

How is waking up like falling asleep? Are both of these processes, well, processes that I observe rather than AM?

Am I self-administering a consciousness altering drug every day?

Am I addicted to consciousness? Am I addicted to dreams? Am I a "being something" addict? Am I "high" right now? Could I give all this "experiencing" up?

Should I?

Do I need a twelve step program to "just be me" without any chemical augmentations?

What am I that is beyond being an experiencer experiencing experiences? If I witness qualities and am therefore something OTHER than those qualities, what is the difference between me and NOTHING?

Regards, Rick