The Promised Land
The promised land is pure consciousness,
our original reality.
It’s not a place to fight over.
Why would it be a geographical location?
Stories lead us up the garden path of deception, creating ideas in the mind for generations.
A pilgrimage is to a foreign land – so foreign that we don’t notice it is now-here = nowhere. Enlightenment, the promised land, is always present beyond mind and matter.
All the troubles in the world are because of a belief in stories, without appreciating the hidden meaning in allegory or metaphor.
Deliverance from our enemies is liberation from mind’s bondage.
Why is this so important to understand? The ancient evil in the world knows this truth, but only intellectually and not experientially, keeping humanity subdued. If this is understood experientially, empathetic compassion is automatic, and we can do no harm. Ancient evil has no empathy – it regards itself as superior, and this may answer questions we have about the state of the world today.
The hallmark of absolute truth:
Intellectuality convolutes truth, making it difficult to follow, and thus creating belief.
Experience explains truth simply: we are already what we seek.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 
And, the Buddha died from eating poorly cooked pork. How enlightened was that? It suggests to me that we cannot live well being purely conscious all of the time. We have to attend the basics. It is a marriage of heaven and hell, as William Blake noted. Walking two paths at the same time. Left Brain and Right Brain. In this together all the way. Could the Dali Lama make it without his handlers? Getting through airports. Driving through New York traffic. Etc.
Hello Jim,
The Buddha died from eating pork?
That’s new to me. But as you say, we need the unity of both halves of the brain to survive in the physical world.
Pure consciousness is clarity of mind, that should keep us in good order. 🙂
Tony
With me it works by avoiding extreme noise and living out of the emptiness/stillness/silence–which is more difficult than it needs to be, but in moments of balance and harmony, all is very well indeed. It is a moving scale, not a steady state of being, pure consciousness, for me…
Help Jim,
The middle way is not too tight and not too loose.
It is pure consciousness (our true being) that is already present to acknowledge harmony and disharmony.
It’s like a straight line or foundation that we work from; we can wobble either side, but the line helps us maintain our centre, our balance.
Everything that happens to us actually helps us remember that our foundation is pure consciousness.
If something works for you, why change? Our path is an individual process.
Tony