Looking Things Up

Ann K Gryczan

​Recently, I saw a snippet of video: two groups of 20-somethings on different sides of a contentious issue having a heated but (amazingly!) civil debate about it.

One side said, Why don’t you look up the facts? To which a beautiful young woman from the other side said earnestly: Because feelings are truer than facts!

I thought, Wow. Here is the ego’s basic premise right on the surface: feelings equal reality – but it is usually hidden under thoughts and reasons.

This is why looking things up is a sure-fire way to bring on an existential crisis – and it is also why looking things up is a doorway to enlightenment. 

​Looking Things Up On the Inside

As students of consciousness we practice looking things up on a personal level: we follow various pieces of our minds (thoughts, perceptions and feelings) and trace them all the way to their source. Along the way we find aspects of ourselves hiding from life and requiring our attention to return.

But finally, under all the piles of memories, reasons and stories, we always find the ego/mind:

1. having a feeling
2. believing the feeling is reality
3. equating itself with this “reality”
4. and therefore proving (to itself) that it exists

And that is the doorway. Now we have a choice to go beyond what seems like reality and to step off into what? It seems like nonexistence itself.

This is illusion, but it doesn’t feel like it! We believe it, but the split-second of believing the illusion and going forward anyway is the enlightenment, it is the new brilliant awareness, the doorway to Self, the bigger picture, the truth.

Do you know how to do this? Here, I’ll show you.

We Can do the Same Thing on the Outside

Take something going on in the world, look at the reason, story or feeling supporting the current perception, then look underneath that, and then, underneath that. This means you might have to go outside the normal sources of information – even to the “enemy.”

For example, if you have a quote from someone, especially someone you think is a terrible, awful person, find the quote in context – the meaning could change completely!

The ego/mind will object strenuously to this – it already knows what it knows.

Proceeding anyway, look at facts. Find out where they came from. See if the “other side” has facts and compare them. See how they each were derived.

The ego will go berserk. It will be highly offended at having its “truth” questioned, it will stomp and shout, it will try to run away, have all kinds of emergencies and distractions. It will forget. It will feel angry and scared.

Here’s What Happened for Me

For three years, 2004 – 2007, I looked everything up. I researched everything I could find in collective consciousness that seemed to divide us into opposite camps. It was all the same as now: politics, wars, wealth and poverty, climate change. There seems to be more screaming now, but otherwise, everything was the same.

The first discovery was that we aren’t really on opposite sides – we have different paradigms. A paradigm is like a filter through which we see, understand and experience everything.

Avocados

Avocados, for example. If you grew up with an aversion to avocados and believed they were harmful – besides being squashy and weird-looking – you might have a paradigm that includes hating avocados. Let’s say later as an adult you got up the courage to try one and found out first of all, they’re benign, and, there is pretty much nothing better than a ripe avocado. 
 
See? Bottom-line the ego was using the feeling – aversion – to justify and make the thought (and itself) seem real.

Avocados just are – what we think is “real” about them is in the mind. And no matter what the mind has got in it, there is always a higher truth. This makes everything Out There – not just avocados – a doorway to enlightenment. Isn’t that great?

Everything Was Not as I Thought

So anyway, I looked up everything I could find and everything I looked up was not as I thought. Policies and programs I thought helped people were actually destructive. “Facts” I thought were true, I found had been presented falsely. Groups and organizations I thought were beneficial had motivations different than they presented. Things were not as I thought.

All this time the ego was going berserk – it was righteously angry, scared and trying to run away. It was going berserk because its position, its existence and even reality itself were threatened. Its position not only made the ego real (in its mind), it gave it a place in the tribe – among the good, enlightened and correct-thinking people. If I was not part of the great mass of right-thinking others, if I was not smart, right and good, then what was I? Bad, stupid, wrong – and cast out.

And that was the doorway. Walking through this door meant losing not only existence, but who I thought I was and my place in the world. I said, Okay, and walked through.

That split-second of willingness was the enlightenment, the new brilliant awareness, the doorway to Self.

Instantly I had a bigger picture. I could see the world more as a unity than as separate pieces at odds with each other. I felt like a doctor who, with the best intentions, had been using leeches on the patient to draw out the poison and now realized that healing occurred by supporting the unity of the body’s system – the totality of which was complex and brilliant beyond my comprehension.

The Thing About Illusion is that You Never Know When You’re in it

Illusion is always the same – whether avocados or joining millions of others in a particular worldview – it always seems true until you step out, and then, obviously, it’s not.

Human consciousness is on the path of realizing its source and we are all somewhere in that process, aligning with others at each stage, but always belonging. We are always included, always secure, always part of life.

And the friends, family and world? It turns out love is the connection, not  worldview.

Looking Things Up

From time to time over the years, when my students have brought up the subject of world events or politics, I have suggested they look things up but, as far as I can tell, they never do. And I don’t blame them! Looking things up will present a doorway into a higher paradigm and that is like jumping off the edge of reality.

This Isn’t for the Faint of Heart

Looking things up does tend to bring on an existential crisis – but it is only an existential crisis – never reality.

Even so, working with collective consciousness is not for the faint of heart, but to have gotten this far you do have courage. Right? Take a chance! Look just one thing up. Jump off the edge of the world.

The ego always knows it’s right and it will fight you to the death to prove it. And that is exactly what happens every time we say Okay and step off the ego’s world: a little death – but only for an instant! – then we walk into a new paradigm and a whole new previously unimaginable understanding of the situation, whatever it may be.

And here’s the thing: it is not just our understanding of avocados or the world that is different, we have changed – as if the light of Self has a little more space to shine and the thoughts and feelings of the ego are a little quieter and less dominant.
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There may be a zillion layers of the ego’s illusion to walk through, but the “edge of reality” is always a doorway into the essence of who we are, each time a brilliant awakening, a bigger picture, the next step into the light of being. Enjoy!