Realms of Being

On my home page this week I have posted the following quote from Jack Kornfield. It has given rise to some comments on LinkedIn and I am following this up on this blog.
Your comments can be added at the end of the blog should you wish to participate. I welcome contributions!

Quote of the week - Jack Kornfield
For most people, meditation practice doesn't "do it all." At best, it's one important piece of a complex path of opening and awakening. I used to believe that meditation led to higher, more universal truths, and that psychology, personality, and our own "little dramas" were a separate, lower realm. I wish it worked that way, but experience and the nondual nature of reality don't bear it out. If we are to end suffering and find freedom, we can't keep these two levels of our lives separate.

I have added the following as a personal commentary -
Jack's approach here seems to be based in the Buddhist teachings of different levels of consciousness/awareness. He seems to be saying that when we are caught up in our mundane everyday events and buy into the drama going on around us we get locked into emotional responses which are often painful. This is known as the astral realm. He says that meditating teaches us that we can rise above the mundane but he has not found that to be the case. The mundane and the higher states of being are all one interconnected form of existence and cannot be separated on any level - when we realise that existence is nondual in its purest form. Here on earth however we experience duality i.e night/day, good/bad, male/female etc.

I believe there are different 'levels' or aspects of consciousness as experienced in human form. When we can learn to be an observer in our lives - accepting that emotions are energies flowing through us - we can step aside from much of the 'suffering' or upset we may feel. However, that does not mean that we do not feel as that is integral to the human experience. This is the only planet where we can really experience emotional involvement on a deep and profound level. It is why we are here. Getting stuck or held by a particular emotion can however limit our growth and experience.
Accepting all levels of being (whether emotional, mental, physical, spiritual) enables us to integrate them and be more comfortable - or perhaps find 'freedom' from the 'illusion' that we call 'reality', allowing us to exist in a more convenient truth?