January 11, 2016

I went to a weekly Vipassana group meditation but this week instead of meditating we watched a movie, Dhamma Brothers, about a meditation program in a prison. I’d seen it already and wanted to meditate and did so during the movie. I was keeping my mind quiet and at one point something happened.. I shifted my body slightly in my chair and shifted my mental focus at the same time and I noticed that there was something in the background that DIDN”T shift and my attention went there. It was like if you were walking and your shoe fell off and you stepped back get it. Suddenly the thing that didn’t shift was no longer in the background but right up front and I was aware that what had shifted was “the whole universe”! The universe included everything I thought of as me, and everything in existence, and everything that could ever exist, and it was all like a tiny speck, a drop of rain in an ocean of aware presence. I knew this included everything that could possibly exist because I saw the nature of “things” in general, “things” being anything you could be aware of.  Curiously neither the presence nor the universe it contained were  “me”, which was a bit confusing but not a problem. There just wasn’t any “me”, unless I say that the whole thing was me, but the idea of a “me” seemed unimportant since there obviously wasn’t any need for it.

Two things stood out the most. The first was my sense of “everything” – it was like the whole universe was swallowed up and included things I wasn’t even aware of as being part of my universe because they were so familiar and even subliminal, which is hard to explain. Foundational elements like my body, sense of self,  and the world, as well as space itself, were no longer foundational or even necessary. So that was surprising. The other thing is that I immediately saw that nothing any teacher had ever said about enlightenment described “this”. My response was like “what!!??” It was totally wonderful and exciting but just unexpected and as if I was seeing something no one ever had seen before. But I wasn’t actually seeing it – the seeing I’m talking about was more like an image created by my mind in response to a shift in understanding – I understood for a moment, that the whole universe including “me” was just a speck in a vast self-aware empty presence, which was like a sort of “magic space” because it included a sense of aliveness, power, and infinite possibility. At the same time it rendered everything I thought of as real, inconsequential. There seemed to be no relationship between the presence and the universe  – that is, the presence contained the universe but had no impact on it.

I will write more about this later from the rest below, which  is just some stream of consciousness from my audio recording of this experience the next day:

Consequences on me – excited, freer, but not enlightenment – it stayed with me – how so?
changed my meditation – explain – meditation means no meditator … and my … a shift … subtle – something I sensed but can’t hold on to. Like ebbing and flowing of a source – the interesting thing is that nothing anyone has ever said can touch it – like 3d to 2d  – nothing applies – while I can see where the words come from to describe it but they can’t touch it – all I can say – the 1st notice was when I shifted my state of mind or physically moved and in that moment I realized there was something that had not moved – something had disconnected from some kind of  foundation  – say you’re walking and the sole of your shoe fell off and stayed behind – everything that changed and moved in the universe while the space it was in did not move so there was a disconnection of form and the not-form and the whole universe became everything that could ever be … was a speck in the presence I noticed. and it wasn’t wimpy, it was immutably strong, untouchable, like steel, diamond, not like air or space but in a powerful way – none of this describes it – so something shifted and like my brain had broken loose from inside my skull and was floating around. Like all of reality had broken loose and was floating around now so that I could see for the first time the thing it had broken loose from – but it was invisible yet I sensed it – like I knew it was there – it wasn’t a sense of oneness I was just dipping my toe – a clearer feeling of the I AM, of the eternal now presence – a clearer sense of it – that everything that is going on .. I really felt I was the screen – no, it didn’t feel like me but the container of me – but the character now was secondary to this other force that  – very strange, like this animated character [myself, Pip] can think about this force and say the force isn’t me but here it is, but what is experiencing the character me [Pip]? – the character [Pip] thinks it’s experiencing this presence – what is experiencing the character me?  When I sense the presence (word unintelligible) it’s very similar like the flea market experience but clearer and more subtle yet more in focus – made me want to laugh, don’t know why – when I was sensing it, it was so simple like – when someone like Ananda Mayi Ma says “I am reposing within myself” – everything is wrapped up like – everything you can say about it, glimpse of one facet of it ie the total containment of the universe in a vast, not emptiness but dynamic, empty still untouchable unmovable powerful – and it made everything else irrelevant  – sensed!! Nothing that mattered had any effect on it and I experienced that at the shift – everything could go on & it had no bearing on this sense – it was so impersonal that the personal character seemed like a dancing puppet, like an intrusion, an anomaly or – I just have to keep going – it’s what I was doing that brought this on, looking for the essence of awareness – meditation is unnecessary and has nothing to do with this but it is a process that may help you see it, but anything you do falls inside it, like meditating in a dream – no matter what I do there is this “something else” so focus on that – now I am more aware of this!!  Just notice that –  then I don’t have to do anything else – this is going to expand – toe in water and wave hooks my toe and pulls me in – stop thinking and just be.