These are the basic points of Living Realization. The chapters following these basic points discuss each point in more detail.
The central invitation in Living Realization is to recognize present awareness and, without moving to manipulate any appearance, see that the appearance is not separate from awareness.
Awareness is our real identity. Awareness is not an appearance. It is the unmoving, unchanging cognizing space through which all appearances come and go. Recognizing present awareness means to recognize this unmoving, unchanging aspect of the present moment.
An appearance is anything that moves or changes or comes and goes within awareness. All appearances are temporary. Appearances include thoughts, emotions, states, sensations, and experiences.
To “not move to manipulate an appearance” means to not make effort to analyze, neutralize, overcome, figure out, get rid of, understand, or do anything with anything that appears within awareness. Stated another way, it means to notice that awareness naturally allows each appearance to be exactly as it is. It is only the personal will that moves to manipulate appearances. In Living Realization, we call the personal will the “simulated self.”
To say that appearances are not separate from awareness or are inseparable from awareness is to say that they never appear outside awareness. Thoughts, emotions, states, sensations, and experience are movements of awareness, not things that exist independently of awareness.
The “simulated self” is the dream-like separate self sense. Because it is not your real identity, we call it a simulation. This simulated self appears within what you really are — present awareness. The simulated self is more than just the “I” thought alone. It is more than just thought and emotion. It is an entire physical and emotional contraction supporting a time-bound, thought-based story.
Living Realization uses the term, “the triangle of the simulated self,” to describe the three bundles of thought: past, present, and future. These three bundles of thought exist along a continuum of time and create the false sense that you are a thought-based, time-bound story, rather than the awareness that sees that story.
A “core story” is the central content of your story. It is highly personalized. Each person has a different core story. E.g., “victim,” “seeker,” “know-it-all.”
The mirror of relationship is a term explaining that no thing exists in and of itself. Things exist only in relation to other things. They exist in relationship. E.g., there is only a self if there is an other; there is only right if there is wrong. This is important because it reveals that our personal identities are dualistic stories that only have meaning in relation to other stories. Our real identity is the awareness that sees all these dualistic stories.
A shadow is a dualistic aspect of the separate self story that gets repressed and then projected outward as an “other.” The repression and projection happens because the particular aspect is either too ugly or too beautiful. By boxing and hugging shadows, we stay locked in the separate self sense and conflict with others.