What if you were only an Idea?

What is the great freedom promised by Robert Adams and other Sages?

The knowledge that you are both Consciousness itself as manifest Self, and the unmanifest witness of the manifest Self, which is apart and untouched by the manifest.

But what is Consciousness and the objects contained therein?

Is Consciousness of things in the world, or of light and energies?

Depending on your level of freedom, it can be either or both at once.

But in a larger sense, the manifest world, Consciousness, is just a knowing, it is knowledge of objects, of sights and sounds, time and space, giving way in the gross world to Subtle Body energies, healing, internal energy flows, the inner emptiness or Void within, giving way to awareness without anything to be aware of, and finally to the deepest level in us of love/bliss, or Satchitananda, the underlying permeating characteristic of knowing you exist in bliss or happiness.

In other words you are knowledge and knowing of that knowledge. That is all you are: information or data, sensual and otherwise, and the cognizer that knows that knowledge and makes sense of it.

In the greatest sense you are not your body or even you mind, nor your emotions, nor emptiness.  All these are merely data.  You as the manifest do not exist except as knowledge of that manifest.  Just data.

This is true of all sentient beings, from human to krill and maggot.

But beyond this you are the knower of the world, of data, of light, bliss, energies, birth and death, and must precede the body because it is the knower of the body.  As such it is beyond the touch of death, for it death is only another concept, another datum.

With this knowing, with this realization, you know that the world is naught but thought forms, stories, and even abiding in the Void is still identifying with aspects of creation that you are entirely beyond.

Knowing this you are filled with bliss, ecstasy, and the exploding energies of life.  For knowledge thus perceived is love and bliss.  A shock of truth shoots through the body bring ecstasy, humility, and complete surrender. Knowledge and Love are at last One. Now you are able to see around the limits we impose on ourselves and the world as constraints on knowledge.

What does this mean practically?

It means we can watch our life unfold and see "truths" about ourselves from a place of pure knowingness which can dissolve previous stories.  Attachments can dissolve because we see our stuckness or obsessions, and realize these are only ideas--which can be changed.

We can see patterns in terms of repetitive mistakes we make in terms of relationships, jobs, work, relationships, or things we fail to perceive that others see readily, and from that position, see the negative consequences of such repetitive choices, and by that seeing alone, resolve to change it, or the change comes automatically.

You see, after Self-Realization, recognizes ourselves as sentience itself rather than as body or mind, we have stepped back to a more powerful level within ourselves that rips the habit from us rather easily compared to life prior to Self-Realization where even the smallest change required great effort.