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This blog is in many ways a reflection of my process. A write up but also a journal of a journey. Because it is written, it is more the conceptual journey that follows the experiential, when the mind catches up. (laughs) To make it an experiential blog would render it, I think, useless. Individual experiences are not commonality and can be widely misunderstood as they can only be appreciated from the perspective you have. Placed in context, they have a great deal more value in sharing.

It’s also a conversation of Self with Itself in a number of ways. I often have posts come out that I didn’t understand or know before I wrote them. But they’re still limited by what I can comprehend, so they mirror my process and limitations.

Every so often, something new comes along that pushes the boundaries quite a bit. That takes a grander vision to write. That stitches together apparently unrelated things. A couple of days ago on the bus, such a post started. Unusually, it’s needed a rewrite. It took a little digesting to get, to move past existing concepts.

Essentially, the model opens up the lower 2 chakras to divinity, includes them in the opening journey. Under the core identity. I’ve touched on this before, but not from completeness.

Originally, I realized there was not one illusion to wake up from, but 2. Then 3. These reflected the 3 stage nature of the awakening process – head, heart and gut. Realization of Self, God, and Unity. The 3 Am-egos. This next stuff continues the process but is more subtle as it has no thought forms or other things for the mind to latch on to. But it is the reason there is grasping, resistance.

It doesn’t seem that it voids the previous ideas. Teachers I know who describe post-Unity, no longer do so in terms of “states” of consciousness. One has become all things. One is consciousness Itself, no longer a state of. But there is still further deepening or stages of Unity. This is more a refinement, a more inclusive vision.

Part of the completion of that process is clearing the final resistances. This allows the further opening and refinement.
Coming soon…
Davidya

Love is pain

For many people, love is pain. Conscious or not, they carry a story of disappointment and heartbreak. We see this backstory throughout our culture, with dysfunctional relationships portrayed as the norm. In the “new thought” church I go to, a significant percent of the congregation is single middle-aged women. And while they hear and follow a message of peace, they continue to hold a story of pain. Men fair worse. They’re often not even working on it. We’re trained to “be a man” and stuff our emotions away in a box. It’s no wonder many men are angry and suffer from heart disease.

For myself, when I was able to cry again, I saw that as progress. When I could cry freely, I was surprised what a release it was. What freedom.

The heart is a precious gift. When we think of ourselves as separate, the belief arises that we must protect ourselves. That we must guard our feelings. When it becomes about a me and an other, other is unsafe, not to be trusted. When it’s about me, we take everything personally. Other causes us pain, confirming the first belief. And therein lies the root of suffering – resisting our experiences and taking them personally. This is the end of innocence.

Thus, we have two things to change.

We want to see our life clearly enough to experience that stuff happens. It has nothing to do with a “me”. Then we will stop taking what happens and what people do personally. Even deeper, when there is no person, taking it personally is meaningless.

At the same time, we come to see what happens happens. That our experience is not about what happens, it’s about how we perceive it, how we respond. In India they have an ancient story. You enter a darkened room and see a snake on the floor. Your adrenaline rises. You cry out, ready to run. Then you turn on the light and see that it’s just a piece of old rope. The difference is perception. What is did not change.

Perception is everything. And perception is determined by our consciousness, the degree of awareness or light we reflect.

This also illustrates how simple the solution is. Raise your alertness or light and the shadow stories fall away. Indeed, it is the solution to all problems.

Problems can never be solved on the level of the problem – remember thats what caused the problem in the first place. It is the perception itself that sees it as a problem rather than something to be taken care of.

And that points to one of the more curious aspects of the journey. That when we rise above a problem it sometimes doesn’t even need a solution. It never existed in the first place, except in perception. It was a monster under the bed, a bogeyman.

Most startling of all, some of the things that do a vanishing act include much of what we once may have described as the “human experience”, like suffering and pain. Failure. Loss. Death. Even you. Yup – all ideas of a “me” are a ghost. A fake. An illusion. Made up only because of loss of perception.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m not here either. (laughs)

What is here, under all the stories of pain and loss and fear, is who you really are. You are never lost nor die. The real you is never lost to pain. The real you is love, a limitless, unending ocean of love.

Love is all inclusive, so it includes pain. But that is such a small aspect of it. Where can we see pain when the light is on? When love is limitless, spilling out even through our pain. Dissolving all resistance in it’s path.

Why do we choose pain? Only that we have lost touch with who we are. That is the solution, whatever the question. What is remains. But how it is seen changes completely.
Davidya

Neti Neti

Neti Neti is an old Vedantic phrase meaning ‘Not this, not this’. Nothing of the phenomenal world or of experience. One describes That by what it is not.

This is a useful starting place to review a few terms sometimes used in spiritual discussion that I don’t use much here. Simply because my own journey has not found them as useful.

The Void
In a meditation practice, when we first transcend the world of experience, it can be like a blank spot or void. As that gets clearer, people use many such terms to describe it. The void. Emptiness. Space. Nothingness.

I don’t use such terms much as for me it is more fullness. Some of it is pre-space, so such ideas as space simply don’t fit. Wholeness and totality do. But that is simply this perspective. There is no right or wrong answer here.

What is difficult for the mind to accept is that both fullness and emptiness describe the same thing. Totality of nothingness. Void of wholeness. (laughs)  That’s not empty of wholeness but a void that is wholeness. Remember that oneness is inclusive and without polarity.

No-self
Recently, the term no-self has come up in talks and discussions. I don’t use the term simply as it’s not the way I experienced the process. But I have heard of people describe the falling away of the person or ego-self and finding a bit of a blank spot, before a sense of Self kicked in. Before a sense of the One Being was present.

Given the experience of void or emptiness, that would tie in with the idea of no-self. It implies without Person or ego-self. Stepping out of person and into emptiness. It may even be that “Self” is meaningless and a sense of ‘not’ remains. All ways of experiencing the One are possible.

No Mind
Several of my awake friends have recently described having no mind. I have heard the idea before but I did not understand this at first as they still had thoughts. Turns out, what they experienced was that the individual mind lost it’s boundary. There was no longer anything there, any limitation to call “mind”. Thoughts and feelings simply arise.

In many ways, this is the pure form of it. Simple falling away of boundaries. All dissolving into Oneness, Being.

But on my own journey, it is not so simple. Because of my history, there already was a larger mind. Actually a couple of layers of that. What I call the 3 illusions are contained by them. When the individual falls away, the universal mind remains. When we transcend the shared illusion, God’s dream remains. When we transcend that, you come to the place of Being alone, as above. A kind of no-mind.

But as Oneness integrates, it comes to include the dreams again, but now within Itself, not separate. Now a part of rather than other. A real dream, if we could say.

Many ways on the path and many viewpoints. All in and of the same place. Every painter adds to the portrait in the empty frame.
Davidya

Falling Away

“When you can see that all experiences are equal expressions of the One… and that feeling bound is just as much the One as feeling free…only then does the inner division, better known as ego, fall away.“
– Adyashanti, opening to the video Falling Away

Notably, this also covers why perfection is not necessary to wake up. The One is all inclusive.

In the video, he goes on to say “there’s one definition of ego…there’s something wrong.“
“It was quite a surprise… that there’s nothing wrong.“

“Seeing the very structure of ego…[often we hear a teaching] that there is a problem and it’s name is you.”

“The only thing that considers that ego needs to be gotten rid of is ego because the only thing that believes in ego is ego… There is not an ego. You are either divided, in conflict with yourself, which gives rise to egoic thoughts and actions or there isn’t division, but there isn’t an ego. There isn’t an entity to get rid off.”

[this is why the ego seems to die - when it is seen through, it ceases]

“Anything that’s fully fully transcended is fully accepted.”

“Remember, your ego won’t accept anything because it’s non acceptance.”

“It associated being with inaction…[but] seeing that One is everything is energizing.”

“If you’ve seen through it with yourself, you’ve seen through it with everything.”

“You’re awakening from your awakening.”

Falling away is available for download from Adya’s web site.

It IS Bliss

Back on Jed or Jedi, I touched on Tom Stine’s recent posts on the books of Jed McKenna. In a further post by Tom, a readers email suggested Jed makes enlightenment sound empty and boring. Tom responds that he finds the writing attractive as it verifies his experience and that he desires truth above all else.

I fully agree that ideas of enlightenment are always wrong as it has nothing to do with the person or ideas. It is the Self awakening to Itself through the point that appears to be a person. Awakening happens when the person is out of the way, at least the idea of it.

In that sense it’s also very true that it doesn’t happen until there is no choice. That the person becomes willing to put even themselves aside to realize who they are.

But then Tom goes into something I disagree with. He says “Enlightenment has nothing to do with bliss and joy and eternal happiness.“

To explain, awakening is a process. While there is a switch where the separate self falls away, it usually takes some time to fully make the change. Adyashanti talks about an initial honeymoon followed by a period where the mind often makes an attempt to come back. In any case, there is what I refer to as “ego shrapnel” – left over concepts and habits of mind that have to be seen through to clear the deck. And there can be a kind of dry spell where the old has fallen away but the new has not yet kicked in.

In his book Onions to Pearls, Satyam Nadeen (his web site is down) talks in a similar way to Tom, of the growing inner peace and above all the freedom that comes with the liberation of self realization.

But this is NOT the complete picture. If it is without joy, it is NOT Nirvana.

Nirvana is the end of suffering but it is also the dawning of inner joy.  Not simple freedom, but everlasting happiness, unmoved by the vagaries of life. This is why the Buddha always sat with a smile.

The reason is very simple. Life is bliss. Literally, the flow of life is the liveliness of being. When we know ourselves clearly enough, we are not only silent freedom, but the surface of that, bliss. A happiness that overshadows everything else.

This is not “some blissed-out state like an infinite orgasm.” It is better than that. Believe me, I’ve been a bliss cadet. This is solid and real, like your skin. It is so ‘thick’ you can touch it. And there are layers. Just when we think we have reached the highest possible rapture, another value unfolds. But that’s not the end of it either.

As we live in that flow of bliss, everything is refined. Our perception of the world, our understanding of what is, and who is the doer. Everything is made of and arises in that bliss.

As the divine begins to flower in our perception, a new tone is set. An even deeper and greater field opens to us, that of what some call divine Love. An infinite love that is fully inclusive of all beings. It overtakes even the greatest of raptures. And that lays the groundwork for the next realization. The end of identity and the union of Oneness.

And here’s the trick – Nirvana is not the final truth, if that is your highest goal. While the Self has woken from the illusion of the person, it is still caught in the illusion of the world, God’s dream.  As Genpo Roshi observes, you have to let go of even the rich transcendent truth you have gained to achieve the highest truth. That’s a real bite when you’ve worked so hard to understand the structure of creation. (laughs)

But what follows is even better. And the truth, so profoundly simple. And the experience – how can one even describe being both the source and recipient of infinite love? Evidently, that’s not the end either.

Don’t stop with freedom. It is only the beginning.
Davidya

Fixing how we Look and See

On this blog, I talk about how it’s not about what happens, it’s how we respond that matters. In a similar way, it’s not about the organizational or political system that’s in place, it’s what the people in that system bring to it. Who we are is all that matters. It is the only thing that determines truth.

Communism, for example, is a political model high on ideals. But in practice it has frequently devolved into a top down hierarchy, squelching creativity and innovation. In the west, it is widely despised, yet socialist principles are commonly practiced in fields such as education and medicine to great success.

Capitalism elicits equal extremes. It is often held in high regard or deemed evil. In it’s common form, the pursuit of profits as a sole purpose, a monster is created that damages the very point of it’s existence. Yet that same monster has elevated the prosperity and longevity of the average person like no other in recent history. It has allowed pluralism, free speech, international travel, global communication, choice, and comfort that would shock our ancestors.

Clearly, capitalism encourages innovation and growth. What it’s missing is a purpose larger than itself. Thus, the issue lies not with the system but with the consciousness of the group.

The current financial crisis tends to highlight the faults with the system. In pursuit of blame, the smaller awareness seeks to throw it away or add more rules and conditions. What is really needed is a new paradigm. A paradigm that arises from a fresh perspective in consciousness.

What Capitalism or any other system needs is to understand it’s mission and purpose. And not those dry corporate slogans that came out back in the ’90′s. But a deep understanding of the meaning and purpose that define it’s existence.

Is it here to profit from movies, for example, or to bring enjoyment to people? If it’s not for people, it has no real purpose.

Often, things like meaning, ethics, and purpose are assumed. They are built into the conceptual awareness of the initiators. They begin a grand vision with great principles. But those unstated assumptions quickly get lost as the vision becomes a structure, then an organization. As work is compartmentalized and delegated. Soon, it can loose it’s soul.

We see this loss of meaning in all kinds of effects – dropping volunteerism, low voter turnout, rising poverty in affluent cities, rising petty crime, drug and alcohol abuse, and so forth.

Science is much the same way. In the pursuit of objectivity, scientists are prone to forget who they are and what they bring to the table. Science becomes dry facts, devoid of meaning and purpose. Humanity becomes a machine, preprogrammed as an accident of nature, at the mercy of it’s biology. It becomes OK to build weapons that could destroy all life when it’s an us vs. them.

In the same way, the corporation becomes a machine, churning out it’s product without consideration of actual value, it’s purpose, or the consequence and role of it’s production. The Story of Stuff certainly illustrates this.

All of this points to our lack of internal connection to the source of meaning. Who we are.

When we see who we are, meaning is restored. We see with meaning. And that brings a broader perspective. A more inclusive perspective. One less either/or and more and. When the participants in the organization wake up to who they are, it will wake up the corporation, both creatively and ethically.

When we find meaning, many of societies ills will fade. When we find peace within, we will see peace without. When we find happiness within, it will spill out through our actions, products, even our very presence in the market. This does not have to be planned & implemented. The effect is automatic.

This is the true corporate leadership dawning. Not leadership in service or marketing but leadership in being.

Nothing is more important at this time. Without a restoration of purpose and meaning, the hollow shell of the economy will be overshadowed by other rising economies. Our standard of living will slide and some of what has been achieved will be lost. But don’t look for meaning out there. Only within, in who you are. That’s why you’re here. If we can learn this one thing, we will surpass our dreams of possibility.
Davidya

Sex and Spirituality

In a discussion on the Self Realization post, one commenter raised the question of celibacy and the spiritual path, suggesting abstinence and many years of continual celibacy were necessary for enlightenment.

Until recent times, there have been fewer awake and much of the old understandings had become lopsided. In many camps, it has been thought that much force of mind and concentration is necessary to control the mind. That we must give up our possessions and become monks if we are to achieve true spiritual progress. And that complete celibacy is necessary to accomplish the spiritual goals.

For example, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mentions brahmachari as one of the Yama’s or restraints to practice. Brahmachari is a name given to many monks as their life is a practice of restraint. But the key to restraint is not the action, it is the approach we bring to it. If, for example, we take the actions of being a monk, yet inwardly the mind is not present, there is no restraint. The key is that they are 8 limbs, not stages. They are performed together. The silence of meditation, asana and pranayama lead to a loosening of attachments and thus easier observation and reduction of desires. Fewer desires means deeper meditation. Each is both a practice and consequence of practice.

Another word for brahmachari might be moderation. The middle way. Buddha’s 8 fold path is similar. Also the teachings of Jesus.

The problem with bringing effort and mind to the tools of spiritual progress is that much of that is born of ego. If we play in the field of ego, we just make it easier for ego to invest. Our spiritual journey just becomes another story. We need to transcend effort, mind and ego and experience who we really are. Then the rest will fall away naturally and in it’s time.

On the subject of sex, it is not sex itself that is the issue. It is how it is used. In moderation and balance, it is a tool for the awakening process, for the expression of love, and for surrendering to oneness. From a place of craving, attachment, self absorption and excess focus, it will pull us away from same. Again, it is not what we do, it is what we bring to what we do. How we respond to circumstances and what we dwell on.

Some suggest that the kundalini energy is limited. If we use it on sex, it’s not available to rise higher and awaken spirit. Hogwash. The energy is not limited and easily moves as we change focus. With the right partner, it is a full expression of sex, love and spirit all at once. Energy is neither created not destroyed, it is merely transformed. But if we play extremes and exhaust the body, then we have wasted resources.

But this is equally true of spirit. If we meditate too much, we become space cadets and don’t integrate it. If we sleep too much or little, we get foggy. If we eat too much or too little, the body reduces quality.

Now, there are still some people well suited to being monks. As one famous sage once said, monks are the pillars of global consciousness. In the back of his book The Science of Being and The Art of Living, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi described 5 paths to realization. The intellectual path is one of close discrimination, seeing through the illusion of the world through understanding. This makes such a person poorly suited to the life of a householder.

Most of us tend to be on a bit of a blended path. A little heart, a little understanding, a little action and perception. At certain points on the path, the heart may be dominant. At others the intellect. The balance varies widely by person. It’s an organic process.

Above all, the spiritual path is the path of being human. Of being a physical, sexual, emotional, and mental expression to the fullest of our abilities and inclination. Be who you are. That’s all you can be.

If you are deeply enjoying, that’s a good sign it’s right.
Davidya

Together

In a few posts here, I have spoken of the importance of being together in a group for spiritual intent. As there is no “me”, just a we, it is together we become one. It is together the path is laid clear.

Just the group presence is like a powerful form of meditation. I find that with certain individuals, the “resonance” is stronger, amplifying your own state of being. If they are awake, even more so. Self is increased by the coming together of points of infinity. It’s only natural that if those points recognize themselves as infinite, it would create a greater infinity.

So again, “Go together, speak together, know your minds to be functioning together from a common source…United by your purpose, harmonious be your feelings, collected be your mind, in the same way as all the various aspects of the universe exist together in wholeness.” Rig Veda 10.191.2-4

We are one, and no other.
Davidya

Into Balance, into Fullness, into Love

In past posts, I’ve written about how in the fullness of awareness, the moments of surrender merge to become a perpetual surrender. But how is it possible to surrender perpetually if it takes many, many lifetimes to come to a place where we can, just for a moment, surrender fully once? That one moment it takes to first awaken.

Well, for one, there was many lifetimes not because of what you failed to accomplish but because of what Self sought to experience through you. Awakening arrives as a completion of a cycle. It is only about the we, never a me.

The answer is, as with all such questions, completely simple. When love overtakes all relative experience, there can only be surrender, a perpetual falling in love. It is the fundamental nature of all that is. Expanding into greater fullness of love and collapsing into the focus of love. Love is there, right on the surface, seen, felt, perhaps even heard.

What’s most notable for a man is how much better many women flow love than the average guy. Still constrained perhaps, but spilling out, in spite of internal resistance. The advantage for men, as a friend of mine observed, is that harshness can lead to great intellectual clarity. But at some point, we all have to balance the equation and open the heart.

In the fullness of love comes fullness of being.
Davidya

How small the Person

One way of looking at what is – Totality, wholeness, fullness, source is all. To know itself, to experience itself, it “looks”, it intends, it surrenders to itself. In that allowing, fullness collapses into a point. Into a vehicle of expression. Into a person, an increment of the whole.

That person-point then seeks to return to the wholeness, to know itself fully from the point. When the point recognizes itself as the whole, then the whole can flow though the point into itself. Wholeness to a point, point to wholeness, then point within wholeness. Only the point is also found to be infinite wholeness. Point an unbounded, one and the same. Totality flowing into itself.

The point is called a singularity in physics. A point is the first lesson of geometry. While without dimension, it is infinite. It is also a fractal, each part containing the whole. As some physicists are observing, everything contains a singularity, arising from and collapsing into itself in every moment.

Each of us a point, never apart from the one, containing and being the all.

When a child is born, they are one with the mother. As self awareness begins, they pull away from self into a more focused point of self, into a growing sense of person. The ‘terrible twos’ result. In an era of awakeness, the person would grow up to awaken, stabilizing when they mature in their mid-20′s, as some kids are now. But for most of us, we stay trapped in the person.

What is astonishing is that this even happens. That totality can be trapped in so small a thing as a person. All of this suffering and drama in such a tiny box. It’s like being caught up in the experience of a grain of sand when we are the universe. Only more so – the universe is only a small part of the bigger picture, like a pearl on the necklace of Brahma.

Certainly it happens and I talk of the mechanics of the illusion, ego, and identity here in a number of posts. But it remains a curious thing. When you look at a person and see a divine expression of light and love, a focus of wholeness, it’s hard to even notice the tiny shadow of person. A spot of angst in an ocean of love.

Of course, when you’re in the shadow, caught in a box, the drama can seem very real and engaging. But it’s temporary. And even then, the love spills out all over. In the face of the wife and mother. The movements of a child. In inspiration. In joy. In peace. In our very being. We flow with what is in spite of ourselves. Or really, because of who we really are.
Davidya