| Definitions
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Five closely related ways of saying the same thing from a different perspective:
- A Temporary State: Formlessness Beyond Space/Time. What registers in sensory perception is the absence of all form, including your own, and without even light. You're not asleep and there’s clear awareness of no space/time, self/world, at all. Compared to relative experience (from active to restful), the difference is that conscious awareness is in full contact with complete nothingness. If you experience only light or only gray without form, that’s on the scale toward Absolute Rest but is still considered the restful side of Absolute Activity. The deepest end of the scale is void of even those hints of form in sensory perception. What we call Absolute Rest is the senses reflecting consciousness without form—at the edge of the total disappearance of the self. There is at once a sense of total nothingness and also total potential—Nothingness contains all possibilities, unmanifested. When the self fully disappears from sensory perception there is no self to perceive the disappearance. During the temporary transcendent state of Absolute Rest, this disappearance of form could last a split second or longer. What matters is that whether entering into or coming out of nothingness, the complete disappearance cuts across all experience and clearly registers at the surface of awareness.
- A Temporary State: Formlessness as Form. The formless rest in and beyond transcendent sensory perception and motor expression (i.e., the deep phase spontaneity, expansion/contraction flow, and timelessness of Absolute Now). Absolute Rest is not separate from Absolute Now although the two may seem to alternate. In the hierarchy of UM’s terms for the Absolute, Absolute Rest is the main term. The term Absolute Now is nested under Absolute Rest. The term Absolute Activity is nested under Absolute Now. Deep Spontaneity and Deep Expansion/Contraction Flow are themes in Absolute Now. But, whatever you call it, and from whatever angle you approach it, there is only one Absolute. Absolute Rest is not separate. Absolute Rest can be thought of as the origin of Absolute Now because it points to the highest degree of formlessness. Absolute Rest can be thought of as Absolute Now because there is no spectrum of Absoluteness. It’s all One.
- A Basic Sensory Trait. Sensory Non-separateness, whether you’re aware of it or not. Even if you aren’t experiencing it consciously, sensory non-separateness is the origin of and even the substance (i.e., non-substance) of all sensory experience, whether more ordinary or extraordinary. The discovery of Absolute Rest is part of human potential because it is nothing more than sensory perception and expression experienced with a high degree of CC&E. The nature of sensory perception and expression doesn’t change. Your ability to recognize what has always been changes. So, whether you personally are aware of it or not, the ability to contact Absolute Rest is a sensory possibility for human beings, generally. It’s always there, waiting to be revealed. The ordinary is the Absolute.
- A Deepening Attainment. The nothingness known more consistently through deepening CC&E. Your conscious awareness of and access to Absolute Rest, based on the degree and consistency of your clear experience with Absolute Rest, generally as a result of training. Whether an experienced meditator is intentionally in contact with Absolute Rest or not, Absolute Rest is more consistently and profoundly informing an advanced meditator’s everyday experience. And, due to momentum practice, an advanced meditator is more in contact with Absolute Rest, overall, as compared with someone who does not meditate. So the degree and consistency of Absolute Rest is greater. In other words, there is a deepening spiral of Absolute Rest in conscious awareness sometimes talked about as more zeros or deeper zeros. The deepening and broadening of your access to nothingness means that nothingness is more richly and completely known. Yesterday's nothingness is viewed as today’s deepening experience because today's clear depth of nothingness was not accessible yesterday. Your learning from contact with Absolute Rest never stops and most importantly, it positively affects how you manifest in the world—how fulfilling your life is, how fully you love, and how effectively you act.
- A Focus Range. The Focus Range of Turn Back, for example. Direct Pointing (Point) techniques may take as their Focus Range the origin of and insubstantiality of sensory experience. You can’t purposely hold your attention on Absolute Rest. Absolute Rest holds you—whether as complete formlessness, or as Absolute Now. And the perception, I’m directing my attention toward Nothingness, is itself made of Nothingness. So is the impression of a thing called attention, or skills called CC&E, or the Self who is doing anything, for that matter. But, a technique may still call Absolute Rest the Focus Range of the technique, whether you’re able to clearly access it or not (i.e., whether you clearly know yourself as Nothingness/Non-separateness or not). A technique may still say: Absolute Rest is what you’re meant to find, as the description of the range of what you’re focusing on.
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