2.2 What does it mean for one to be set face to face with reality?

From the point of view of ordinary daily consciousness, one experiences reality through the limitations and constructs of the personality. Within the framework of the personality, one enacts the experiences of one’s life and death. Through the development of the personality, one moves from the naive idealism of youth to the mature awareness of life’s harsh realities.

Inevitably, in the course of one’s life, one experiences sorrow, pain, misery, grief and despair. This is a natural consequence of experiencing reality through the limitations of the personality. Reality devours the personality.

The inevitable suffering of one’s life is a consequence of not being set face to face with reality. Only by experiencing reality directly, face to face, can one escape the cycle of suffering and fear of death. The simple meditation taught in this chapter is an Implicate Technology product structured to enable ordinary intelligent people to face reality directly.

For one whose focus of awareness is centred on the personality, suffering is inevitable. Release from this suffering can only be found through a natural shift of one’s focus of awareness to the transpersonal self. Daily practice of this meditation, coupled with committed efforts to integrate its results into one’s ordinary life, leads to the first, or psychological, stage of enlightenment.

Through the use of this implicate technology product, one learns how to focus the thoughts simply and clearly on one thing at a time. This is the essential skill one must develop to enable one to be set face to face with reality. Although the practice is simplicity itself, the difficulty of achieving success is not to be underestimated.

Implicate technology applied consistently over sustained periods of time and understood within a practical context transforms one’s awareness of reality. The simple meditation technique taught in this chapter develops the single most important feature of any meditative system. This is the ability to focus the thoughts consistently and continuously on one object, aim, thought or experience at a time.