When we recognize that we are Total Being, what we usually sense is freedom. We are free because we don’t have to be anything. We can be anything, but we don’t have to be anything. Since we can be anything without having to be anything in particular, there is no limitation and no judgment and no comparison. And we also don’t need to hold on to anything as the source of freedom. We all want to be free and want to experience that freedom in many ways. Freedom is subtle and elusive, even more elusive than happiness, which is itself quite rare. So we practice because we value the freedom that is possible in total practice. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 8
When we are being completely depressed or being completely enlightened, what is common to both states is that we believe we have to be that way; we believe there is no way out. That is the lack of freedom. Freedom means that we are free to be anything at any moment, and we are also free from having to be it. So there is no holding on to anything; there is a total embrace of whatever arises, whatever happens, whatever reality appears to be. However reality appears is Total Being—that is its liberating power. Fully experiencing and totally realizing any experience whatsoever—of any form, shape, or kind —is how we begin to understand Total Being. Whether we’re experiencing true nature or an egoic manifestation, if we fully embrace it and are totally immersed in it, if we understand it and inquire into it, we will recognize the perspective of Total Being. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch.8
The perspective of Total Being will disrupt our orderly understanding. This might be disorienting but, at the same time, when we get the thrust of it, it is completely liberating. We don’t need to be anything or to abide anywhere to be free. When I say that we don’t need to be anything, I mean we don’t need to be anything in particular. We can be the body, but we don’t have to feel that we are the body. We can be pure awareness, but we don’t have to be pure awareness. We can be nondual presence, but we don’t have to be nondual presence. We can be pure experiencing, but we don’t have to be pure experiencing. If we have to be something in particular to be enlightened, then we lose the freedom of Total Being. Enlightenment too is only one of the ways that Total Being expresses itself. It also expresses itself by being completely depressed, by being a depressed individual that is Total Being. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 8
Each reality, each way we experience reality, is an experience of the manifestation of Total Being. We can say that Total Being is like a quantum wave. A quantum wave has infinite quantum states, and whatever we experience becomes reality because that is when the quantum curve collapses and becomes what we call reality. When we make an observation, it fixes what reality is. Before this, we don’t know what reality is. This is how quantum theory in physics views reality. When we understand Total Being, we arrive at something like the quantum view of realization, in terms of what we experience as reality. So whatever we perceive, and the view through which we perceive it, becomes what we call reality.
This means that reality, including spiritual or mystical truth, is not as set or determined as most of us would like, nor as fixed as most teachings theorize. Truth can lead us to freedom, which is altogether different from anything that we can call absolute or ultimate reality. Understanding Total Being, and the quantum character of its revelations, means freedom loses all bounds and is not dependent on or associated with any one particular realization or ultimate truth. The freedom of Total Being means that we can experience all available realities, can travel through all possible realizations, and not be constrained by any view. – The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 14