In NTI Romans 2, we learned that a curiosity arose:
What if nothing was as it is?
What if I could make something completely different?
When this original idea was infused with believing-attention, two options arose. The first option was a reminder of truth—the reminder that reality is reality, and it cannot change. The second option was the belief that something different had been made.
“What if nothing was as it is?” is the first sense of ‘I.’ It was the sense of an ‘I’ that can cause an effect. Out of that idea, two thoughts arose. One was a correction to the original thought; it pointed directly to truth. The other option was more thought, which led into a dream.
Today’s reading opens by saying:
The truth is that all thought rises out of the sense of “I” or because of the sense of “I,” as a correction to this thought.
Without the original error of an ‘I’ presence that can cause an effect, thought would not be. That includes right-minded thought, because right-minded thought is a correction to error-thought.
If we consider that our sense of self, our sense of others, our values, our ethics and our world are all thought, we may realize that we do not know who we are or what anything is without thought. Thought is our form of understanding; it is our form of knowing. And yet, if thought blocks reality, our form of knowing is entirely wrong. It is ignorance masquerading as knowing.
Thought is story. It is an ongoing storyline that creates fantasy. When the story comes into our mind as thought, and we believe it, we believe a story, a falsehood. Some things may be true in the storyline, but “true” in a made-up fantasy is not truth. When we search the story for what’s true in the story, we are simply engaging untruth more.
The story is in motion, and the storyline does come into your mind as thought. However, you are not the story character. You are life-awareness. You can abide as life-awareness and see the entire story as nothing but story. You have the ability to be the detached observer, regardless of what occurs in the story.
Detached observation leads to freedom from the story.
As pointed out on Day 314, the body-mind will continue to play its part in the story even when you pull attention out of the story and abide fully in the Heart. Nothing that is to be done by the body-mind will go undone. As Ramana Maharshi said, “A yogi who is in this state is inactive even while engaged in activity.” The script continues, and the body acts according to its vibrational level in the script, but you live beyond the script and have no part in it.
For one who is not completely detached from the script, the best way to “be in the world but not of the world” is to abide in a constant state of devotion. Devotion is living from within, instead of from thought. When you live from within, you return attention within. Through devotion, attention learns to stay at home in the Heart. It learns to abide there, until a natural transition occurs and it no longer goes out. It stays in.
Devotion is retraining attention to stay in.
With that said, please listen to this song very carefully now:
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link
