Stage Three: Transparency
Continuing from Dancing with Life, by Phillip Moffitt:
“The third stage of awareness, when your mind becomes transparent to ordinary reality, represents the total realization of cessation. At this stage, you are no longer dancing with life, for you are not organized in the ordinary human realm anymore. You are resting in the absolute and have become a direct part of the mystery that illuminates all of ordinary reality. You have achieved the deathless.
“When your mind has realized cessation and become transparent to ordinary reality, you experience all the moments of your existence as equal and meet them with tranquility and compassion. When a moment is pleasant, tender, or beautiful, you receive it as just that; your mind has no inclination to make it you or yours, and there is no clinging to it….Likewise, when a challenging physical or emotional situation arises, or you are confronted with pain and loss, your mind has no inclination to contract; it remains open, available, and calm…..You don’t object to how it is, and you don’t demand that the pain go away, or for life to be other than it is….You are free; you have experienced the sure heart’s release that the Buddha promised.
“…The full realized of cessation results in a fundamental change in consciousness to pure awareness and the realization of emptiness that transcends the ego personality. This core shift is beyond words because your being is essentially reorganized. You are transparent to the delusion of ordinary reality. You are in nibbana.
“…Although this stage of transparency is beyond your personality, the luminous mind shines forth through your personality. Because your mind has awakened and become transparent to this pure awareness, it is now part of that great impersonal illuminating source of all life.”
Wow.