Red: Transcendental Divine Identity
There are many words used to point to the essence of the Red node, but depending on the tradition, those words sometime sound like opposites. In Buddhism alone, there is “Big Mind,” “Nature of Mind,” and “No Mind.” Language is not quite up to the task in this node — it can direct us to look, but can’t quite grasp it and can even mislead us.
The Red node is about Awareness or Consciousness, but not consciousness in the way we use that word in everyday language. Here, Consciousness is Consciousness in Itself. It is the Awareness of experience, in which even our experience of being a human being is an object of that Awareness or Consciousness. It is the Subject of all our experience. Every sense field, every sensation, every feeling, every thought, is an object to that Subject. That Subject is you. But not the “you” that you have always taken yourself to be; rather, it is the “you” that is the Awareness of every sense you have of yourself. Our thoughts change, and our bodies change, but Consciousness Itself is unchanging and simply registers everything.
Just thinking about this doesn’t change your life. For this to actually affect your life, it has to be seen directly. Self-inquiry is the practice of really looking for the Subject and examining for oneself what the nature of the Subject is. It is only in this way that we can go beyond a mere intellectual understanding. It is then the allowing of our attention to come to rest in the “position” of Consciousness Itself, that changes everything about the way we experience our world and ourselves. And that continues to be true whenever attention rests there.
Here the metaphor of a mirror and its reflections may be helpful. Just as a mirror allows every kind of appearance to arise in it; as Consciousness everything appears in us. The mirror is unaffected by all that arises, but the mirror never distances itself, removes itself, or turns away from what arises. There is nothing more intimate than a mirror and its reflections: they are one. Yet, even as they are one, the distinction remains; but as two sides of one coin, non-dual.
The most continuous, consistent and foundational aspect of what we are is not anything that we usually take ourselves to be. When we see for ourselves the absurdity of how we’ve been trained to live, we can’t avoid coming to terms with it.
We’ve been fearfully protecting what we cannot keep, while ignoring what we can never lose. It is tragic and funny at the same time.
The Transcendental Divine Identity is always already the case, without journey or horizon.
Here you are freedom itself. It is the baseline or the ground of everything. In itself, it does not have any content, yet it is full with a potency of manifestation that comes forward and continually becomes the life lived. In itself, it is the formless Ground of Unconditioned Awareness, untouched and unaffected by any and all experiences or transient phenomena of any kind.
(From The Tapestry of Being, Chapter 2 : You Are Freedom Itself)