3.4 How does one experience the uncertainty of being set face to face with reality?

As you develop in understanding, through the experience of integrating the fruits of meditation into your everyday life, you enter into a period of increasing uncertainty. Your previously held beliefs about what is important and real crumble in the face of direct experience of reality. However disconcerting, unpleasant and miserable you find this experience, remember it is a necessary and healing part of the process of becoming set face to face with reality.

This state of uncertainty is a necessary process of eroding and dismantling, through your reaction to the circumstances of your life, the belief structures underpinning your personality. The structures you have imposed on reality, the way your beliefs have shaped your thoughts and actions, are being dissolved in the face of reality. Reality devours the personality.

This process heals through removal of the illusory limitations of the personality. This natural, painful and difficult experience leads to your awareness stabilising, in time, beyond the personality. It is only when one’s awareness operates outside of emotional and intellectual structures that the true setting face to face with reality can begin.

The feelings of misery and sorrow which occur now are the birth pangs of your new awareness. Like natural childbirth, the experience becomes more fulfilling when one learns to detach oneself from the pain. Gradually, as you endure through time, you will experience a new understanding, a release from pain into clarity, serenity and quiet joyousness.

The uncertainty of this period, as the illusory structures of the personality are swept away, leads to a profound sense of instability. The difficulties and dangers of this stage can be compounded if those with whom one is accustomed to share one’s life are unaware of, or hostile to, the process of inner transformation. The way to emerge from these difficulties in your life is to Live and Act.

If you seek to interfere, in your distress, you will only gain more trouble. Learn to accept without interference the events of your life as they unfold. Above all, learn to develop your sense of empowering your life only by following your intuition.

At this time, your life as you have understood and experienced it will seem to be dissolving in uncertainty. Learn not to seek to impose your own sense of order on reality. Put aside your desire for stability and security in your life.

Through daily practice of the meditation in the context given, you will gradually develop a profound sense of inner stillness and security. Gradually, you will learn to accept the conditions of your life without interfering. Above all, learn to shape your life actively, in accordance with the natural laws governing reality, by becoming centred in the midst of conditions.

Throughout your life, Live and Act. There are no circumstances or conditions, no hazards of life, which cannot be harmoniously negotiated through practice of these skills. Rise above the circumstances of your life through becoming centred in the midst of conditions.