Appearance

There appear to be two realities or two truths. It seems that reality is not just one thing, but two things. The first is appearance, or what we call conventional truth. The second is fundamental truth. The appearance of reality is what you perceive all the time, what you see and experience. Everything that appears to your senses is the conventional truth. That’s why we call it appearance – it appears to your consciousness. The more basic reason it is called appearance is that in relation to the ultimate or fundamental truth – which is the reality itself – it is clear that conventional truth is only the way things appear. It is not really how things are. We need to understand as deeply as possible that the appearance of things – of everyone and everything, of the whole universe – is not reality. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 169)

Appearance and change

To live in the world and to know yourself, you have to take both worlds into consideration: reality and the appearance of reality. When you believe only in the apparent world, you create all kinds of ideas about how things should happen. Sickness comes and you push it away; health comes and you hold on to it. Misery comes, you try to push it away; happiness comes and you try to hold on to it, and you increase your suffering even more. When you realize how things actually are, you know that things simply change; appearance changes, but it is not actually death, and rebirth, sickness, health. Never has it been different, never since the dawn of consciousness has anything actually changed. We see something coming out of something we call it birth. We see something that used to move, stops moving, we call it death. We have created these words to describe certain changes of appearance. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 182-183)

Reality and appearance

However, when we realize the reality and see that it is actually the ground without which the appearance could not exist, then the world of appearance transforms. It becomes more harmonious. It becomes the world of appearance rather than the world of suffering, success and failure. It becomes a world which is an expression of love and compassion and goodness and value. The appearance then is an expression of the beauty of reality. (Diamond Heart Book 4, p178)

The qualities of Essence are the first words. The aspects are the first concepts; they are universal concepts, the archetypal states of being. They are more connected to the fundamental reality than the world of appearance, but they are part of the world of appearance; Essence appears to us. Or, more accurately, experiences of Essence are glimpses of fundamental reality, viewed from the world of appearance. (Diamond Heart Book 4, p 185)