March 12, 2014

Got this today from my brother, Black Buffalo Man:

Something stirred me awake the other night about 2:30 in the morning and urged me to write this down.

Live the Question

Give yourself completely to the mystery – I really don’t know what anything is!
Surrender all knowing and concepts… all holding on to identity…there is no I…
Being the moment… direct experiencing… (But we do need a body to participate)…
The Miracle is not just Wow! Life is so amazing, there is a never ending astonishment of things to know — (learning can be fun and functional!) But the miracle is Wow! I am the mystery that can never be known!

Give yourself to that deep deep sense of wonder… No gravity, letting go into that space with faith…Love.

The effort required is the mindfulness to see ego-ing, conditioning in action and releasing, relaxing, its constant grasping at ambushing every moment, to recreate, re-identify itself as the subject, body-mind, the doer, the knower.

Stay as the question, the curiosity, the mystery of “Just Awareness”… Experience happening… Being…Consciousness…Bliss.       Sat…Chit…Ananda

March 11, 2014

I had this enlightenment dream sometime in 2011.  I may be able to describe this better when I find the recording I did right afterward, but I’ll relate it now.

I was about to wake up from sleep one morning and I was doing meditation in the dream state. I wasn’t dreaming that I was meditating but actually doing it, and I experienced a moment of oneness and entered some blissful state.  I was immediately enveloped in a golden light and while in that light I felt the deepest feeling of connection and safety I have ever experienced.  I can’t actually recall the feeling itself anymore but I remember it was indescribable.  I was in a place where I had everything I could ever want and I felt complete and safe and totally accepted beyond any doubt. It felt like my true home. And the presence that enveloped me was so strong and so perfect in its wholeness and acceptance and welcoming of me that I could no longer distinguish myself from it. The only word I could find to express this experience afterward was “love” –  and it was absolute and unconditional.  But it was way beyond my previous experience of or imaginings of love, so that at first I truly had no words for it. It was something I had never known before.  This love was forever in the sense that it was not bound by or limited by time.  This was the first time I had an experience of  love in any form arise in meditation or inquiry in my entire life.  I now feel a better word for it might be “home”.

Update: I later found the original transcription of the vision from October 2011 and posted it below. When I record these things I often just give a skeletal description so I can remember the rest later. Hence I left out that this was a lucid dream, and in the dream I was lying in bed meditating. After I opened my physical eyes the feeling stayed with me for several minutes, then faded.

“As I was waking up from sleep (becoming lucid) I seemed to be meditating and there was some feeling of oneness. I started to think about it and then I just let myself merge with the feeling. Suddenly I was enveloped in a deep and powerful feeling. This is hard to find words for as these weren’t thoughts but a knowing-feeling. I felt totally protected, totally accepted, and totally safe even in my vulnerability as a mortal being and with all my flaws, all of which were like a stick I was holding on to. It was such a wonder-full feeling the only word I can give to it is love. Everything around me and in me was love. It wasn’t about being loved but about being home. To be loved means you can also not be loved. Being home was assurance that there is only love. I felt like a tiny child in all of this because the feeling was so vast. There was also the sense that “home” was always here, standing right behind me.”

March 8, 2014

I was in a group doing Zen meditation and decided to focus on Silence and Stillness, and soon I was just resting as awareness.  Then I had a glimpse of the World-Being (March 4) and there was a moment when I saw this realm of being where everything was just being what it was, without anyone experiencing it.  It was like noticing consciousness itself, that is,  the presence in which everything is existing.  But the presence is not me, nor is it other than me. Everything just IS.  I could say “I am that” but those would just be words and equally not perceived by anyone.  When they talk about no-self they really mean no-self!  There’s not even a self to REALIZE no-self. I didn’t go very deep into it but it was startling; or I saw that it WOULD be startling if i really got it.  The question then was: how is this possible?!  It’s inexplicable.  Not to itself, just to the mind.  I glimpsed the inexplicable realm – a shadow of it – for a nanosecond.

March 5, 2014

More and more I find myself being directed to just being still, quiet, and alert.  All efforts are seen as wrong moves with regard to enlightenment. There is nothing my body can do to get it – nowhere it can go – nothing my thoughts can think to get it  – nothing I can believe in enough to get it – nothing I can do – best I can do is do nothing – go with the flow of what already is – presence is doing nothing – anything else is just twisting myself into a pretzel – no amount of  trying to BE or to WAKE UP will do it.  It’s like a clay person morphing into infinite shapes and forms in an effort  to find its “clay-ness” – frustrating and futile.  I can’t even “BE” because “AM” has beat me to it.  Can I recognize it? [re-cognize] This is less a doing than a surrender to “not doing” or to letting things do as they will while being alert and present.  Recognize the self-recognition that is being missed by frenetic attention.  You just have to drop it.  The frenetic part. It’s all distraction.  Let enlightenment be enlightenment while you’re getting on with life, meditation, or whatever.

March 4, 2014

Regarding the earlier December 23 insight, when I see my character in a room full of characters and the room and the world and everything becomes just “what is,” there is a moment when I catch a glimpse of  the World-Being.  The World-Being is the whole of the present experience that knows itself as the present experience. It’s very much like when you look at one of those 3-D pictures where you have to focus past the surface image to see the hidden picture.  It’s startling.  There is no one here but the World-Being!  Not even the characters in the picture are independent. They are all manifestations of the whole.  I am the World-Being.  The glimpse is always fleeting.

March 2, 2014

I was washing dishes and there was a moment of contentment where I noticed how dangerous contentment can be because in that moment I noticed a feeling that said “I don’t need enlightenment right now.”  There was something in me that wished it could stay in that moment where everything was OK so that I didn’t have to venture out into the unknown of trying to wake up. It was like a false sense of safety and it scared me a little.  I realized how alluring a sense of security can be and how any sense of security is a lie since it can only be temporary. So any allure of feeling good and wanting to stay there goes directly into the box.  It reminds me of the Sirens’ song.  First you are enchanted and you forget where you were going.  Then you’re smashed to pieces.  I must remain vigilant!

January 10, 2014

I started a new early morning weekly Zazen routine at a local Monastery.  The interesting thing was that I had a very strong experience of Deja Vu of being in the Zendo and of seeing it exactly as it is.  Don’t know what it means.  Deja Vu for me is usually the experience of something I foresaw in a vision earlier in my life but have forgotten.  I assume it may have some significance.

February 17, 2014

Somewhere in the distant past I  made a journey of ten thousand miles into the misty realm of ego and separation, to experience the tragedy, comedy, and romance of life.  Yet my home has never left me and is not so lost and far away as I dreamed it to be.  The journey itself was imaginary, and so was the time spent absent.

January 22, 2014

The previous “just another character” insight (December 23, 2013) continues to evolve.  In a group meditation where I was maintaining a no-thought condition there was a momentary detachment from identification with my body and mind.  These were there, but AWARENESS was just noticing them.  The separation was very subtle so that I can’t describe it other than to say that something seemed to let go of something.  On deeper analysis later I decided that it was just consciousness relaxing it’s identification with something and/or relaxing its separation from everything else. It was a momentary attenuation of the ego.  Ego is simultaneously an identification with a particular viewpoint and a separation from everything else. I called this attenuation “indescribable un-attachment” when it occurred. There was something very cool about it – comfortable.  But if any insight makes me feel special, I throw it in the box.

December 23, 2013

This insight occurred not long after the “Simple Truth” insight as an expansion of it somehow.  I was with a group of people and I was watching myself and it occurred to me that each person in the room was a character just like my character, and that the only difference was that I was witnessing my character, Pip, from an interior viewpoint.  In other words I was looking through this character’s eyes and seeing the other characters as external while in actuality it was ALL being seen at once. There was the immediate sense that the whole of my present experience, the people, the room, my body, etc,  was like a movie being projected on a screen and I was somehow uninvolved in it.

At the moment I saw this there was a disconnection from my character and I was now looking at a room full of characters, none of which was me and none of whom was more important than any other.  This caused a bit of sadness as I had though this character, Pip, who I took to be myself, was special.  Intellectually I understand the illusion of separation but I am still deeply identified with my character.  And now I saw him as just another character. This was a kind of let-down. Like it ruined the movie and I wanted my money back.  The idea that I am this character and “out there” are other characters, is a judgment but not a reality. From this new perspective life is “just happening.”

This detached perspective continues to arise spontaneously,  as well as whenever I contemplate it. It’s more pronounced, if it occurs to me, when I’m with others. The world appearing as a movie is quite psychedelic when it happens, as if I’m having a lucid dream but not really participating in it. Doesn’t last more than a few seconds.  There is also the vague sense that I am the space in which my experiences are taking place.  While I believe this is the truth, it’s not yet a realization.