May 26, 2014

I heard Adyashanti talking about how awakening is about fully grasping the present moment – that it can only happen NOW –  and I had a deeper understanding of this than before. I realized that in meditation I have been somewhat distant from NOW – wow.  But of course that’s so, because I’m asleep! So we are either awake or asleep and I don’t mean awake in this moment or asleep in this moment – forget this moment. NOW isn’t actually this moment. I say that because we normally think of NOW as a moment in time. But NOW is beyond time altogether, and “awake” is eternal. But in the realm of thinking and doing we say “be awake NOW, be fully present NOW”. Then we shed the skin of “time”. Time functions as a confusion factor, obfuscating the truth until it’s seen through. I’ve heard it said many times that spiritual practice is not so you can wake up at some other time. It’s where you have your face pressed against the window of reality to see what’s there NOW. You’re not waiting for a future event. THIS moment is the moment of liberation. There isn’t any other. Everything serves to hide NOW from us, like a movie hides the movie screen. When you can ignore the movie and see the screen, that’s NOW.

May 24, 2014

All the teachers I read and listen to are feeling like the same teacher now, which is the truth itself in different forms hitting me from different angles. These teachings aren’t things to believe, just different questions and perspectives.

I was listening to a Mooji video and he said he was no longer excited hearing about people’s “glimpses” of the truth. “How can there be a glimpse of awareness? They happen IN awareness!” to paraphrase. I saw his point and realized my glimpses were both wonderful and pitiful. Like I knocked on the right door, but the door didn’t let me in.  I’m hearing all the teachings in a new way all the time, and it’s like subtle layers of smog are dissipating. Feels like someone is washing a big window and I am a tiny spot on the window and soon they will wash me off!   “Oh nooooo!”    to quote Mr. Bill.

May 22, 2014

Every experience is floating in space and there is no self present so I might say that I am the space.  Kind of spooky.  I get this sense occasionally now but it fades out.  I realized this would be the end of suffering.  Shortly after that I started experiencing lots of back pain. Like the universe hitting me with a Zen stick.  But it IS encouraging me to meditate more and better.  Something’s fogging up the window.  Frustrating.  I try to surrender.  Feels like death.  Only recently have I really gotten a sense of the essence of awareness, the emptiness.  I feel like I have to fold inside out, or like that will happen when I finally let go.

March 30, 2014

I went to see Adyashanti speak in Sacramento today. I sat in the front row almost right in front of him and as he talked I was trying to sense something from him but didn’t get much so I just listened and contemplated reality. I entered the “world being” perspective and suddenly felt a sense of extreme ultimate aloneness which had a crushing feeling about it tinged with loneliness. The aloneness was just seeing the reality that there was nothing there but the totality – no people, no Pip. The loneliness was some unconscious reaction to that, probably linking to all my times of being very alone, and was the only thing that made the aloneness uncomfortable. But I could see how this aloneness rendered everything – all thought, all knowledge, everything – moot; especially thoughts and thinking which depend on relationships for meaning. When there’s only “one”, there are no relationships. I felt like I was looking in a mirror and the mirror was about to crack and when it shatters I don’t know what will happen – that’s where surrender comes in. So I just sat there in surrender. Just let it go, let it happen, let that be. That’s when I felt like something was going to happen and I remembered the dream from a few nights ago. But everything didn’t explode into white light, as far as I recall.  :  )  Since I’m so familiar with Adya’s ideas I don’t remember much of what he said as nothing stood out as new; except that I did get a sense of some power in his delivery which I can’t put my finger on but which I never picked up watching his videos. Like there was a steel blade behind his words. Then during the Q and A the first question was about aloneness and surrender. Interesting. I didn’t have any questions.

Most of the other questions were really just expressions of gratitude. Later outside I was walking away but had the urge to go back and sit in front of the building for a bit where there was seating around the trees, so I did. I noticed a lady sitting to my right and our eyes met and there seemed to be a connection. Then I realized she was one of the people who had talked with Adya during the Q&A period, and had talked about her spiritual transformation. So I debated for a moment and went over and introduced myself and asked if I could talk with her. There was a moment where I seemed to know that I had to sit on the other side of her so I did (some intuition there). We shared our stories briefly. She had experienced an awakening some time back which she referred to by saying “I died”. Which I took to mean her ego died. I tried to see what I could sense from her while she told me her fascinating story. She was very expressive facially and had some lively energy but I sensed no games even though there was a bunch of programming rolling around in her. This energy seemed to not be controlling her or bothering her, which was interesting and mysterious. I don’t know if she was enlightened but it seemed like her consciousness was not being influenced by her personality much. Kind of magical.

Here’s her story: She was depressed and in some existential crisis a few years earlier and listening to Adyashanti, doing meditation, and trying to wake up. She didn’t seem to be getting anywhere and was feeling desperate, so when she heard of a guy who claimed to help people awaken using LSD she was interested. After some communication with the guy she decided to employ his services and met him one weekend at some forest location. She said the drug experience was like being in Hell – a totally living nightmare. She did not awaken and was very angry at the guy afterward . She did not ever want to experience that again. But then something changed – it was like something had gotten released or healed during that experience and she felt the urge to try it again. The second time was completely different and she said she had a real spiritual awakening. She then saw the guy a third time and she said the LSD had no meaningful affect at all, and she knew she was done. I’ve never taken LSD and to do so feels like cheating to me for some reason. But I have used marijuana and found it to be very helpful and insightful in a lot of ways.

March 27, 2014

I did some meditation right before sleep. After several dreams I dreamt I was talking to someone in a satsang or something, perhaps Adyashanti, and I was meditating.  Then I said to the guy “wait a minute; something’s happening and I was in a suspenseful state.  He just looked at me in curiosity.  But I couldn’t tell what it was.  It was almost like nothing was happening.  Then it was like I was seeing complete, total emptiness as a very bright white light.  As I was seeing this everything started to disappear and I became the white light. As I became the white light I can’t say there was pleasure or bliss or anything – or any pain or problem either.  All I can say is that the vibrations of being out of my body started and became very intense, but I didn’t try to go anywhere or control anything.  I just let it happen, and it seemed to go on and on.  It was probably only for a few seconds but it seemed a lot longer. There was some confusion and then I came out of it and was in bed awake.

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.