Beautiful stuff, Glass Joe. (I think you do come across as knowing what you're talking about, whether you really do or not
)
Just wanted to add my thoughts:
- they say that when you're enlightened, you perceive the Truth at all times, so that the right actions are almost intuitively shown to you and there is no "you" doing anything, the actions do themselves. I recently was at a satsang with Adyashanti and he said that "the right thing to do is obvious, all the time." I think that's what they mean by Divine Will, or non-action of action, or spontaneous action. Maharaj also talks about how "the conscious mind merges with the unconscious mind so that they are one."
- the notion of control, of free will, and of volition is a conditioned response. We never questioned it so it seems like it's there. But is there really a chooser, a thinker, a doer? Can we control the mind and make it think what we want? Seems like the complete opposite, at times! At best, we set an intention, and related thoughts pop out of nowhere, as Dr. Hawkins describes, like "flying fish out of the sea." Have we ever asked how it really works, or where it really comes from? If thoughts spontaneously occur, then actions/choices resulting from those thoughts must also be spontaneously occurring as a natural consequence. Thus, through correct understanding and perception we can remove these layers of conditioning and get to the underlying truth.
- Same with the notion of a subject-ego "I" as a conditioned concept -- it was the necessity for animals to have this concept/feeling of "I" in order to survive and get food for itself. The all-pervading Awareness was made to focalize in an individual life form through the conceptual filter of the ego, and that allowed for self-preservation. That was the birth of the ego, the animal instinct. And that is our concern, transcending the ego. But by understanding where and why it came about, it makes it easier to transcend.
- Dr. Hawkins says that "all thoughts, opinions, and positionalities are vanities." You think you know, but you really don't
At best the mind can "know about", but it can never know -- to truly know, is to be. If you carefully scrutinize your thoughts and thinking, it will be readily apparent that most of your thoughts are worthless and not that useful. The ones that seem useful are actually also useless, as they all are based on a conceptual filter on Reality and not Reality itself. That's often the reason why spontaneous action gets you better results than pre-planned and rehearsed action, or why subconsciously guided activity is done so much better than consciously done activity.
Dr. Hawkins suggests in Eye of the I, how to transcend the mind:
1) give up / surrender the desire to think
2) give up / surrender the desire for the pleasure of thinking
3) give up / surrender the comfort of the guarantee of the continuation of one's existence.
It's tough, but even partial completion of it gives you so much more peace of mind. I realized that almost all of my thoughts were based on the ego wanting control, especially over the future -- all the plans, backup plans, emergency plans, last resort plans, plans that I will never use, plans that I fantasize about. The ego even wants control over the next split-second moment of experience, even though it theoretically can't have control of it and can't change anything. None of it really mattered or helped me in any way.
- I wish I could add something useful about "non-subjective reality" as you coined it (haha, don't think that term's gonna be popular on this forum
), but you've already said it all, beautifully.