From Conditioned Self to Mystical Emergence

We live inside a conditioned sense of self and a conditioned experience of reality that keeps us locked within a familiar experience of ourselves and reality. But the way we experience ourselves is not the limit of who we are, and the way we experience reality is not the way reality is.
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The essence of mysticism is the ability to see beyond the familiar so we can discover the wider truth of who we are and enter the vast expanse of reality beyond the ordinary.
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There are spiritual practices that support this profound expansion in consciousness. They help shift our perception into a direct encounter with reality, but be warned that it is not like anything we imagine.
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Even to say that we live in a conditioned sense of self is misleading. Who is it that lives within this conditioned sense of self? If I imagine that it is me, the one typing these words, then that is the conditioned self. When I say we live in a conditioned sense of self, what I really mean is that the awareness that we are is being shaped by a sense of self.
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The foundational realization of the mystical path is that we are pure awareness. We are not a thing that is aware; we are awareness itself. But that awareness is passing through the experience of a sense of self.
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There is no self other than the source of the awareness that we are. Any other sense of self is a conditioned pattern of awareness. I have often used the metaphor of a whirlpool on the surface of a slow-moving river to illustrate this.
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A swirl appears in the flowing current of the river. The swirl looks like something. You can point to it and name it a whirlpool. But if you try to pick it up, it is gone. The swirl does not exist independently of the water of the river. Its existence is a temporary arrangement that appears within the flow of the water.
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In the same way, the self that we appear to be, the one that carries our name and history, does not exist independently of the awareness that sees it. It cannot be separated from awareness because its existence is a temporary arrangement in the flow of awareness itself.
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When we embrace this view, awareness begins to become liberated from the familiar habits of perception that keep us locked in our conditioned sense of self and reality. This embrace feels floaty and free from the human point of view. The hard edges of reality soften, and everything begins to feel like a thin veneer covering an infinite expanse beyond it.
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As our perception continues to relax, it is as if our experience hops out of the invisible tracks it was previously locked into. We are no longer experiencing reality only along well-worn grooves. Awareness starts moving in impossible directions and expands beyond the edges of existence itself.
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We can get used to this loosening of vision. All our previous perceptions of ourselves and the familiar world remain intact. They have not gone anywhere, but now we recognize them as a small part of a much larger reality. We can function perfectly well, even better than before, while also experiencing and responding to aspects of reality that were previously invisible to us.
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We can do this together. We can leave our previous limitations behind. We can step out into a thrilling new ontological terrain. It is not difficult, but it does require perseverance and patience. It necessitates a deep willingness to relax and to give up the sense of security we once found in things remaining fixed and unchanging.
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Change no longer troubles us because we see how things have always been changing, and the security we once felt by clinging to the belief that life was predictable was always an illusion. We discover a new source of security in the truth of who we are as awareness constantly pouring itself into the shape of each unfolding moment. Once we stop fighting the flow of life, we automatically become open to it. In this opening, new and wonderful perceptions arise continuously.