Understanding

[Adrian colby]

Understanding

I wanted to have a go at defining “understanding” and to see how it would contrast with Leo’s perspective when he makes his video/episode about it.

Since the ground-shaking awakening I had, where even the God realisation collapsed back into the undivided ‘One’; I do my contemplations from the direction of creation as opposed to deconstruction.

So starting with the One:
A singularity, infinite, indivisible, ineffable, undefinable,  a mystery of which nothing can be said because it is ‘no thing’. I call this ‘being’ or absolute awareness.
This awareness is inert. it’s not aware of anything, dim in content but blissful in nature. Simply being, still and unmoving.

It is ‘no thing’ but not nothing. There’s nothing it lacks, for it is complete. There is no such thing as “nothing”; it is not void or empty. 

 

Infinity is full and endless, pregnant with potential.

There is an inevitability baked into that boundlessness itself. It is so endlessly full that it overflows. Like a cup infinitely full of water, nothing forces it to spill, but its very fullness ensures that it does.

Being infinite and boundless, it cannot find an edge so the only option is to turn inward and self-reflect, because it is the only thing that exists. Being that it is the only existence, it can only be aware of itself.

 but as it is ’no thing’, there is nothing there to grasp. Like a hand trying to grab itself, or asking the question “What am I?” when it’s invisible and cannot see its own face.

 

Imagine a mirror with nothing before it to reflect. There is no image, no object yet the mirror is still the capacity to reflect. Eventually, in the absence of an “other,” the mirror turns inward and in doing so, it reflects itself. 

But with no surface to grasp, the reflection becomes an imagined one ( the first form arising in formlessness.)

This turning back on itself creates a toroidal field. this ‘field’ has been called the Light, or the ocean of consciousness.

 

The word consciousness means ‘with knowing’. It is the process through which awareness attempts to know itself. Being boundless, awareness can only encounter itself but to do so, it must create an imagined boundary: 

a knower and a known. 

 

The ocean of consciousness, the field of light, the Godhead — it imagines itself into being, becoming the first ‘thing’ awareness can explore and contrast against.

God is not what the one is but what the one does. it’s first and principal attribute.

Absolutely everything occurs within this imagined ocean of consciousness. All ideas and forms arise from it and return to it and are one in the same as it. not the one itself, but a oneness, a likeness or analogy of it.

 

 A thought ripples the still ocean, creating a wave of energy in motion (inert energy until provoked). This energy in motion is emotion, and emotion provokes action or manifestation. The whole, though we speak of it in imagery, is an infinite Mind (a mental mechanism or process.)

All the ‘objects’ and ‘phenomena’ we perceive are symbolic representations of these mental mechanisms, though the mechanisms themselves are intangible. Everything we see in this universe is an analogy. a likeness of the one. a oneness but not the one itself. an imagined concept that points to the one in contrast.

 

This movement folds back into itself, forming a feedback loop — a toroidal field of self-knowing. In this division is born the first distinction, the first contrast.

The ocean of consciousness is an infinite oneness — not the One itself, but a likeness, an imagined reflection. It is an infinite mind with the capacity to imagine anything, to make distinctions, to divide and define. It can zoom endlessly into sub-divisions, proliferating like fractals, becoming more varied, more individual, further from oneness. A mind that can explore through infinite expression — or get lost in it.

Everything that arises from the ocean of consciousness is a holographic fractal of this mechanism. The development of understanding mirrors this same process.

 

The First Flicker of Understanding

The concept appears the moment there is a perceived distinction between observer and observed. This is the “self-reflection” stage of awareness — just as the mirror imagines an image to reflect, the mind imagines something “out there” externally to be understood.

The simplest definition:
Understanding = the relationship between awareness and a perceived form.

From here, awareness embarks on its long journey through the ocean of consciousness ( creating contrasts, opposites, distinctions. It “understands” by comparison: hot from cold, light from dark, love from fear.)

 But all such understanding is relational; it exists between awareness and form.

Relational understanding is partial. It can describe, explain, compare but never be what it points to. Eventually, awareness realises the exploration is endless. you can go into greater complexity to infinity and beyond and so it stops. Distinctions dissolve. Understanding collapses.

In the end, final understanding is not a definition, but a recognition: awareness knows itself not through contrast, but by simply returning to being itself. It could not know this without the detour of exploring through consciousness without experiencing all of what it is not.

 

so just to recap

understanding is the relationship between the one and its exploration of every infinite possibility that the one is not, which is the imagined or the godhead. It fully recognises and understands itself when it stops all imagining and returns to just being.

 

its like a black hole. we know nothing of it until it comes into contact or ‘relates’ to  or affects the objects around it. before that it remains hidden, invisible and unknowable.

 

Human Understanding

If the Source contemplates through fullness, God and people contemplate through fragments.

we divide and dissect to see how something works — zooming in, seeing how smaller parts interact.

At the surface, “understanding” means: I get it. I can explain it back to you. This is the colloquial layer. it’s useful but vague.

if we go Deeper, cognitive understanding involves:

Comprehension: which means grasping meaning or implications.

Integration: connecting the new with prior knowledge or experience.

Application: using it in context to create or act.

Without integration, it’s just memorisation; without application, it’s just inert knowledge.

 

If we go deeper still we have epistemic depth: this refers to how well a belief or piece of knowledge is supported, integrated, and able to survive a challenge. At this level, philosophers speak of explanatory depth — placing understanding into a coherent framework that resists collapse whenever it’s questioned.

But a warning:
A belief can be logically airtight within its own worldview and still be self-deception — its protected by a persons bias, selective reasoning, or emotional investment. Without direct experience, such “understanding” is false and mistaken for reality this is where we use the saying, the map is not the territory.

and so…

 

Direct Experience

Direct experience is lived, accepted, acknowledged ( without the need for defence). A person living from direct experience doesn’t need to justify it; they have already met reality face-to-face.

From here, understanding becomes a felt clarity ( the aha moment) where the unknown reorganises into a lived pattern. You create a relationship with it. Deeper still, you become it. You can replicate it because you understand its mechanism and it is integrated into your being. It becomes something you do because it is a part of you. Like driving a car. you struggle with the reality of a car when you first come into contact with it but over time you begin to see the relation between when you turn the wheel this way, the car directs itself this way. you integrate your understanding of the mechanism into you being and driving becomes something that you, do.

At the far end, understanding dissolves entirely. This is non-conceptual knowing, where knower and known merge. The word itself becomes only a placeholder for unity. you’re not just driving the car, you’re the entire experience and the witness. everything is an extension of you.

 

If you notice, this essay has two distinct sections: one expressive and poetic, the other analytical and dissecting. The first is from the perspective of Source (expressive before it becomes entangled in the self-deceived Godhead.)
The second is the Godhead (exploring the infinite fractal iterations of its distinctions. You can explore and express through infinite worlds… or you can get lost in them.  it must believe everything is real for it to hold it in its consciousness as a form but sometimes this deception becomes delusional)

 

In the end, all paths of understanding,  poetic or analytical, expressive or dissecting, point to the same ’no thing’. The seeker in the Godhead roams infinite landscapes, searching for what it already is. The Source simply rests, needing no search, no defence.

True understanding is the collapse of understanding into being the silent knowing of the One recognising itself as infinity having explored an infinity of things.
And you can only understand that if you have been there.

How do you get there?
Become still, and let go of all knowing.

and simply be aware of what is.

simply be awareness

simply be.