The Sun Never Sets

About twenty years ago I lived in a rural location where at certain times of the year I would climb to the top of a hill from where I could sit and watch the sun set. But of course the sun never did set. I came to clearly experience the 'sunset' as the Earth slowly tipping backwards until it obscured the sun. This is a weird and slightly thrilling feeling.

Now imagine not having prior knowledge about the rotation of the Earth and just spontaneously having that felt-sense insight. Well a kind of parallel to that happened to me about eighteen years ago when I tried meditation as a form of relaxation. I wasn't a seeker (in fact I was a skeptic about anything spiritual.) I had a spontaneous shift in perspective. Everything stayed exactly the same (as with the Earths rotation) but was seen in a new light (so to speak.)

There can be the felt-sense that there is no separate entity moving about in Life… Instead Life, THIS (the whole thing - or the whole no-thing if you prefer) is the movement. It's as if there is a switch from the focus being on this fragment (me) to the sense of the whole event that is. It's not that there is no you or no individuated perspective, it's the seeing that this too is a movement/play of Life.

Of course when anyone asks me about this I say try meditation (simply being open to what is) or spend some time in nature. To me this seems obvious and natural. But I realise that this is my bias - this is part of my interpretation of this core realisation. Someone who has come to this by questioning existence might suggest doing that… and so on. The core realisation is universal but the descriptions, elaborations and stories of shifts and awakenings, pointers and paths are subject to biases and conditioning.