"The doors of perception"

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
William Blake

Have you ever disappeared effortlessly, with the same kind of effortlessness with which we slip off the cliff-edge of waking consciousness into sleep each night? This miraculous disappearance of ourselves in which everything gleams with infinite newness happens when we're not trying to make it happen.

Tony Parsons says that what we long for above all else and what we fear above all else is the same thing: the disappearance of ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not, on some level we long for freedom from the confinement of a narrow and ultimately illusory sense of self, and at the same time we cling ferociously to this sense of self. Now that is the pungent spice of life: our greatest desire and our greatest terror are one and the same! This ambivalence causes inner friction. Seeing that we fear and desire the same thing evokes within me a sense of compassion for our crazy spinning minds on this crazy spinning planet.

When we disappear the doors of perception are cleansed and the awareness "behind the eyes" recognizes its continuity with the infinite being it gazes upon.

Nothing really disappears, there is just a break in the fixation of attention on the self-image. There is just a gap between thoughts.

The moment attention drops the self-image, there is no self-image. That is the disappearance of the illusory sense of self, and that is all there is to freedom.

The doors of perception are cleansed of anyone looking through them. As no one or pure presence or Self looks through the doors of perception there is only infinity seeing infinity. The weightlessness of awareness is inherently blissful and it is our essence.