Wednesday, December 23, 2009

It's all B.S.

Yesterday I met with Bhagwan Kevananda for our weekly lunch conversation. Over the last several months, Kev and I have been meeting for a few hours for what would be called Jñana Yoga, basically using dialog to burn out the thinking process. My personal meetings with Kev and Jim allow the time to be spent very tactically deconstructing my thoughts and beliefs with the ultimate objective of not thinking or believing anything at all. While the Sunday Sangha satsang is still my favorite public event that I regularly attend, these guys have been gracious in taking the time to help me surgically remove the remaining concepts that are rather subtle and elusive.

Yesterday was a big step for me. I know that the flame of truth has been raging for quite some time now. Kitty and I saw it catch with Rich and Buck back in April, and somewhere around late May, Andre’s second visit, the flame jumped to us and we rapidly began to disown the more gross concepts. Quickly concepts like karma, reincarnation, and souls went up in flames. Long standing beliefs were like dry kindling, disappearing as quickly as the trivial ideas, sometimes surprisingly so. Kitty’s thoughts of past lives, angels, and guides went up in smoke, too.

Just as a fire will quickly sweep through a dry forest and then lose momentum as the foliage is consumed, the intensity of the flame decreased as there became less fuel for it to burn. It’s easy to have a bonfire in your brain when you believe that there may actually be meaning to life or when you’ve heard from all the spiritual namby-pamby tree huggers that “God is Love.” “God is Love” has gotta go. God is Love and Hate and Fear and Bunny Rabbits and Jeffrey Dhamer. Even that concept has to go, too.

At the beginning, it is easy to explore your mind, find a belief, and then set fire to it. But eventually you start to have trouble finding the beliefs to burn. You have to start sifting through the ash to find the remainders of your belief system, and this is where the ego starts to make it hard on you. It sure as hell doesn’t want to make it easy for you to burn the whole house of cards down so it finds tricky ways to hide the beliefs that remain. They become subtle or hide out in lofty places, disguising as the Truth. Somewhere along the line you have to realize that there IS NO TRUTH, because anything you can think, any concept that you can speak or envision, is all a product of your mind. Even that sentence is a load of crap because it is a thought, an idea, a concept, and it is part of duality and therefore a lie.

So I know that the flame of truth has been burning in me and in Kitty for quite some time. I have sensed that this is a key phase as we work towards Liberation. (B.S.) I have been sourcing multiple mirrors that have supported this. (B.S.) As I recently worked a trip to Frankfurt, I had lots of travel time, and that’s where I get most of my reading and listening to audio files done. In Adya’s “From Awakening to Liberation” recording, he provides one possible outline of a generic path towards Liberation. It’s closely related to the Buddhist concept “Mountains, No Mountains, Mountains.” (B.S.) That’s where you start off where there are mountains and rivers before you, as you believe that there is actually such a thing as a mountain or river. Then you get to the point where there are no longer mountains and rivers before you because you come to know that there is no such thing as a mountain or river, or anything else for that matter, including yourself. Eventually you get back to where you see the mountains and rivers again as you learn to bring together the Relative world (this world of duality, the world of mountains and rivers) and the Absolute (the non-dual perspective where no thought or concept exists). (B.S.) Tim Freke would describe this last phase as Both/And instead of Either/Or. (B.S.)

In Adya’s description, during the first phase of mountains, you have mountains (thoughts, concepts, beliefs) to burn. At the beginning of this phase the Spark of Truth catches on the dry kindling and spreads via the Flame of Truth. Burn mother fucker, burn, as you watch idea after idea go up in flames. As I still see mountains but they are becoming obscured by the thick smoke. I sense that I’m running out of fuel for the flame, but I know there is more to burn. I am just having trouble finding what’s left to bring to the bonfire. (B.S.)

And this brings me to my interaction with Kevin yesterday. Over some yummy Chicken Panang and Moo Goo Gai Pan (B.S., but it was yummy!) Kev hit home that EVERYTHING is a bunch of B.S. Conceptually I knew that “this is all an illusion” and that “everything is a projection of my own mind,” but I wasn’t incorporating EVERYTHING. I was leaving room for some things that seemed closer to the truth. Like non-dualism. That’s a biggie for me. What do you mean that I have to give up the idea of non-dualism? But it does not matter how directly the finger is pointing at the moon, it is still the God-damn finger and NOT the moon, so it’s gotta go. So do things like the concept of the ego and the idea that I can do anything, anything at all, in the world of duality, that is not coming from the ego. The idea of Oneness, that you are God, that you are the Creator… it’s all gotta go. But the biggie, the end game that any authentic Seeker is ultimately trying to let go of, is the idea that you, your self and your Self, are anything but part of the illusion. That there even could be a You has got to go, and the idea that the You has got to go has also gotta go.

Where our conversation really started to help was when I realized the correlation between my shower meditations, my trips to the desert, and my waking life. Back in July 2009 I started to have these awesome meditations in the shower. A big part of these meditations was getting to the core of Self-inquiry. At least that was my experience at the time.

Self-inquiry sounds like an interrogation, where you’re asking questions like “Who or what am I?,” you get an answer, and that allows you to move on to the next question so you can seek out the next answer. It doesn’t work that way. Self-inquiry is looking within. It has to do with getting away from words and turning to experience to reveal the answer.

So in July, I found myself looking within. As I stood in a meditative trance, perfectly balanced in the stream of water, internally I was diving, falling into the center of my being. As I dove, scenes flashed before me. As I recall them now, they were very bright scenes, a lot of white light with a little dark black background. The visual image was very often two-dimensional, as if it were appearing on a large TV screen. Sure, there were times where it was 3D, but for the most part and in contrast to my my trips to the desert months later, there was much less depth to them. As I plummeted endlessly towards my core, these scenes would appear and my fall would cease as I stopped to evaluate them.

Early on I realized that these scenes were diversions, figments of my imagination thrown up by my ego to distract my inner journey. While some of the scenes were revelatory, most of them were trivial. Some were awesome sexual visions and I could take them off on wild rides as long as I wanted. Fortunately my sex life is already rather incredible so while these diversions could really be tempting to take way down the rabbit hole, I didn’t feel too pulled in by them and I was able to let them go.

Other scenes were of other worlds similar to Salvialand. Sometimes people unknown to me would act out meaningless vignettes and it was easy to let go of them. But when you’re inundated by scene after senseless scene, it can get kind of boring. This, too, was an ego tactic, trying to fool me into thinking that I really wasn’t onto something. The fucking ego is a crafty bastard and it will run through every program it can to distract your quest to discover who or what you really are.

Fortunately I had been drowning myself in this stuff for several months by this time. Since January, when I met Kitty and started attending the Sunday Sangha satsangs, I had been living, breathing, talking, and dreaming about this material. I had plenty of opportunities to employ the concepts (B.S.) like “nothing outside of self exists” and “why am I manifesting this?” So when it came to these scenes in the shower meditation, I was able to deflect them rather handily.

Inside of two weeks I had hit what I then thought was the core of myself. This came about as I became more and more adept at brushing the scenes aside. As quickly as they could appear, I was able to release them, discarding them as a distraction thrown at me by my ego. But as quickly as I could brush one aside, the next would appear. This became quite an interesting challenge and I had to adapt by stopping from discerning what the scene was before letting it go. This realization, that ANYTHING that the ego would throw at me was an illusion, a distraction, an untruth, allowed me to switch from using a sword to cut away a scene before me to just disbelieving EVERYTHING as it came. I became so effective at this that I could let go of the scene BEFORE the ego could throw it up. (B.S.) The ego tried to keep up, but the scenes truly became a blur. My visual image became so filled with white light as the residual image of several previous scenes piled up on each other. I was no longer distracted by any images, I was just aware of a white light that was imposed over a pure black background. (B.S.) The ego saw what was happening and not long after it realized this wasn’t going to work so it gave up. (B.S.) And that is when I came to some of my most profound revelations of that period. I came to the center of my being, which was a deep, dark, single pixel of pure blackness. (B.S.) I came to know that I was truly NOTHING. (B.S.) I tried to fling myself into this Nothingness, what I came to call at the time The Void. (B.S.) At first I was unsuccessful, it seemed impossible to do so, and I was flung out to the far edge of existence. (B.S.) I was able to have an awareness of still being right up on the Void while also being on the edge of the Universe looking across it to its center where I, the Void, was. (B.S.) Eventually I was able to insert myself into the Void, a paradox I know, but this journey is filled with paradox so why not? (B.S.) I was able to be no-dimensional as I was the pure Nothingness which meant that I was also the Everything of the Universe. (B.S.) I was even able to be the membrane, the screen, between the Everything (the manifest) and Nothing (the unmanifested potential). (B.S.) I experienced what it was to be God. I experienced Creation, not as a mastermind genius scientist who created objects, but as the actual Source of creation and I could actually FEEL the Universe and everything that was being created as it came from me and projected into the world. (B.S.) I realized that I was being projected, as if on a multi-dimensional screen, and I was able to determine where the scene was being projected from, to look back down that projection through the column of light back into the projector and see that I was the projector itself. (B.S.)

Now, over the weeks that this was happening, I was blown away by the revelations. I was able to support my conclusions by seeking out writings by many authors, some famous and highly regarded, others that were lesser known but had resonated with me. (B.S.) I had finally found the Fountain of Knowledge and my understanding of this world and how it works was expanding rapidly. For an intellectual guy like me, I had hit the jackpot. (B.S.)

Or so I thought at the time. Around October, well into my shower meditations, I started doing two things that would take me to the next phase of my growth. (B.S.) The first was meditating in the savasana pose, also called the corpse pose. It’s really quite simple, you just lay there on your back, hands by your side, and meditate like you would in a seated position. But for some reason this pose resulted in some very deep meditations. The other thing that dramatically changed the game was I prepared for and went on two Vision Quests out in the desert. (B.S.) During these sessions, I had revelations that were mind blowing. While the revelations in the shower appeared to be very real, it seemed that they were lacking a dimension when compared to the intensity, complexity, and beauty to these new realizations. (B.S.)

During my normal daily life I was aware that I had gone from having a mystical or deeply spiritual experience once every month or so during 2008 to several per week, often several per day. There was a sense of expansion, or of consumption, or of progress, or whatever it is that enabled me to contrast what I thought last month or at the beginning of the year and then note the understanding and lack of belief in my current understanding. (B.S.)

But in the last two to three weeks I realized that something was amiss. I was looking for things in me to burn up and I was having trouble finding them. I started to sense that on one hand I needed to burn up all of my beliefs but on the other it would be impossible to search and destroy each belief, one by one. A feeling crept in that I was going to need to transcend this method of changing struggling within the level of illusion to something that was from a higher level, a greater magnitude. (B.S.) Where I was using a sniper rifle, I needed an H-bomb. But where was I going to find that H-bomb? They don’t just sell them down at Wal-Mart, or Soul Depot for that matter. (B.S.)

Finally, in my discussion with Kevin yesterday, I was presented with my H-bomb. (B.S.) I suppose if you listened to our conversations in reverse order you might be able to find a thread and could find a way to describe it as linear. But we don’t go into it that way, and we have no planned topic or any intention of issues to resolve. We just sit down, get our food, and Kev starts to download a program streamed just for me. As the conversation meandered we started discussing the Maya, a rather typical discussion in most spiritual circles. Why this time it struck home with me when I have participated in this conversation countless time, I cannot explain. But several things clicked and I started to realize that all of those apparent revelations in the shower and desert meditations were really just distractions keeping me from getting to the heart of the matter. (B.S.) It’s not that the revelations aren’t meaningful in the world of Maya (B.S.), it’s just that my ego had found my weakness for knowledge. Forget the awesome sexual visions that some guys would get hung up on. And it long discovered that I was truly fearless and that visions of devils and serpents and gruesome corpses was lost on me. (B.S.) It even had to give up on threatening me with thoughts about my son, Tristan, as I, along with assistance directly from Tristan himself, was able to break the very strong parental protective shell that I had long held for him. (B.S.) (It’s incredible having a conversation with an eleven year old who is not afraid of death but is so attached to his iPhone and Xbox!) (B.S.) Screw all that, I had told the ego, and so it quit trying to ply me with those visions. But that crafty mother fucker finally found the one place that I didn’t even think to look as a distraction, and that was revelation and knowledge of the “Truth.” (B.S.)

Somehow in our conversation yesterday I was able to see that all of those grand visions were just distractions keeping me from going even deeper. Many Buddhist and Hindu tales talk about diamond dust, gold dust, rubies and gems galore, blinding seekers, dazzling them while the elusive Truth lay just beyond. “These eyes are blinded by sadhus (Seekers) and siddhis (powers that come with spiritual growth) and this third eye is blinded by diamond dust” Jim once said. And while not directed at me at the time, it is certainly appropriate for me now. (B.S.) The diamond dust are the revelations and visions that I had been having. They were keeping me from the First Bardo state described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the state where, if you can just keep brushing aside the fantasies and fearful visions, Grace just might step in and tap you on the back of the head. (B.S.)

After my two Vision Quests, I knew where I had “gone wrong.” (B.S.) Out in the desert, especially when I was alone, I was “blessed” with many visions that most people never, ever get to experience. In deep meditation, rather than going back to the First Bardo, I allowed the temptation of obtaining vast knowledge to surpass my desire to become truly Self-less, and I spent that precious time soaking in the revelations. (B.S.) To be fair, it does not seem that I did not consciously make the decision to revel in the visions in lieu of returning to the First Bardo state. (B.S.) When I contemplate with deep integrity on how things went down, it seems that it was a lack of experience that allowed me to become so distracted by these great visions. (B.S.) And so my practice of late has been focusing on becoming mindless in my meditation, retraining myself to forego the wonderful revelations that come so that I can have as pure of a clear mind as possible. (B.S.)

During our conversation yesterday I started to recognize a pattern to the distractions, from the two dimensional child’s play of the early shower meditations to the deeper, more realistic and convincing visions in savasana and during the desert Vision Quests. But all of these distractions were coming when I was in deep meditation. The big ah-ha of the conversation was that THIS was the ultimate distraction. This “reality,” where my body supposedly is made of matter and I am supposedly an individual, this is the craftiest illusion that my ego has come up with, and it probably is the best it will come up with. (B.S.)

Think about how friggin’ detailed this illusion is. The tattered Windows OEM sticker on the bottom of my six year old Dell. The ground in my coffee that slipped through the filter and into my mouth to annoy me. Blech! The tattered, yellow registration sticker on the license plate of the dirty car in front of me. The tiny shred of skin on the top of the roof of my mouth from the insanely hot nacho cheese that scalded me… it won’t go come off no matter how much I toy with it with my tongue. The stack of bills on the kitchen counter waiting for me to address, enabling me to maintain mild level of anxiety about finances. (B.S.)

This is a very short list of the infinite details that make me think that this place MUST be real. (B.S.) And it’s not only the mundane things help solidify this reality. (B.S.) The super lows easily drag us into thinking this place is real. For me, when I get angry I start to lose the observer. It has been a while since I totally lost the observer, but it is definitely the easiest way for me to get lost in the Maya. And the super highs are the diamond dust that I just talked about. Basically, it’s EVERYHING that we can think about that anchors us into thinking this is reality. (B.S.)

This was the main revelation that I had in the conversation with Kevin. Intellectually, I understand that “this is all an illusion.” (B.S.) When we say this, we mean that everything that we think is real is just a dream in the mind of God. (B.S.) The key word there is “everything.” Once you’ve been at this game for a short while, it easy to look at this text in front of you, be it on a screen or on a piece of paper, and acknowledge that it is unreal. (B.S.) You can easily adapt to accepting that from the Absolute perspective all of the material things in front of you are part of a dream, is one big video game or holodeck, is projected from an intricate holographic projector. (B.S.) You can learn to gradually train yourself that the hard, manifested objects are part of a grand illusion, but at some point you have to disbelieve everything including abstract concepts such as suffering, the Tao, high spiritual experiences, your intuition, and ultimately, your sense of self. (B .S.)

I guess the major leap I took in this conversation was the understanding of the totality of the concept. (B.S.) Whereas before I would say “everything is Maya” but not fully grasp what EVERYTHING was, I now genuinely understand the depth of what this meant. (B.S.) Kevin recognized this major step and we spent some time hitting home that not only were these high spiritual revelations just as unreal as the rest of the Maya and were just diamond dust, but the mundane “real world” and my own sense of self were illusion, too. He suggested that with every single thought that I remind myself that this is all just a bunch of bullshit, and that is why you’re seeing (B.S.) throughout this writing. (B.S.) Every time that I complete a thought I try to remember that this is all bullshit. (B.S.) As I am going throughout my day, I am silently saying “B.S.” to myself as often as I can. (B.S.) And you’re seeing how often I am doing this in this writing. (B.S.) It’s my own personal mantra, and the theory is that after reminding myself that this is all B.S., all an illusion, all untrue from the Absolute perspective, my Relative perspective should start to lose value.(B.S.) The idea is that by devaluing this Relative perspective enough I can slip into accepting the Absolute perspective as the default view. (B.S.) That’s the “No Mountains” phase in the Buddhist “Mountains, No Mountains, Mountains” saying. (B.S.)

Don’t get too wrapped up in the idea that this Relative perspective has no value. (B.S.) Once you get back to the second “Mountains” phase the Relative world has meaning once again. (B.S.) But we’ve been conditioned our entire lives to believe that this Relative perspective is the ONLY reality, and this process requires that one entirely gives up that attachment, however so briefly, to perfectly own the Absolute perspective. (B.S.) After that we can take Buddha’s Middle Path and accept all perspective, the Absolute and the myriad Relative ones, as the total truth. (B.S.)

And so now my practice is to acknowledge that every thought, every concept, every material object, and ultimately my sense of self is all a bunch of bullshit, pardon my language. (B.S.) And that includes everything in this writing. (B.S.)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Living Authentically

I recently began to listen to Aydashanti’s retreat, “From Awakening to Liberation.” It’s a great selection that I highly recommend listening to, and I’m only about 15% through it. The first hour was a discourse on Awakening, the first of three phases to Liberation. The retreats are done satsang style, and after the first discourse, attendees are able to ask Adya questions regarding the discourse. The first question was decent, but the following questions resulted in some really great insight. A woman asked about Choice and Free Will vs. Fate and Destiny. Adya’s answer, that all answers depend on where you are coming from, was clear and concise and it really allowed the concept to gel. (Which is funny as we’re trying to get away from concepts!) He said that if you are coming from a relative perspective (the ego), then you probably feel like there is such a thing as choice. If you are coming from the absolute perspective, then there really doesn’t seem to be free will at all. But you can come from both at the same time, and while that might result in a paradoxical answer, the paradox does not make the answer wrong.

That flowed into a question about living authentically. A woman said that she had been living a spiritual life for a decade and was feeling drawn to move on. But when she envisioned moving on, she felt guilty about not living up to her highest potential. She would no longer be feeding the poor children or helping others expand. She asked Adya what she should do and he threw it back at her with “What do you FEEL you should do?” Because WHATEVER she felt she should do, THAT is what she should do. The key is to be authentic with your feelings. She might be feeling to move on and someone else in her exact situation (which is impossible for anyone to be in the EXACT situation) might feel that they should remain, and both would be exactly right in going with their feeling. He said that someone could be living in a cave and another could be feeding 1,000 children and both could be living authentically.

This inspired me to take it one more step. They had been talking about living authentically in making decisions to move forward, but it did not address living authentically in the past and in the present moment. As I mulled this over, it struck me that THERE IS NO WAY TO NOT LIVE AUTHENTICALLY. The fact that you have done something indicates that it WAS authentic. The fact that you are in a current situation, by default, means you are in authenticity. Because we do what we really want, from our true Self. Our egos may tell us that we are in agreement with what is unfolding or not, but if we have done something, that is exactly what we ultimately wanted to happen.

For example, let’s say that Kitty is facing a decision about whether she should move for employment. She may have job offers in Boston, Montreal, San Francisco, and she might have the option to remain in a Las Vegas position with minimal job security. At the present moment, she may FEEL that she should either stay in Las Vegas or move to San Francisco, but that she should not take the positions in Boston or Montreal. And if she chooses to remain in Las Vegas in accordance with her intuition, then she is living authentically in the moment.

But let’s say that a month from now something disastrous happens with her job in Las Vegas and she ends up moving to Boston in three months, a place that she didn’t feel right about moving to. Was she out of alignment? No. What mattered was that she was in integrity at the time that she made the decision to stay in Las Vegas. Who knows what lessons she experienced or what she avoided by not moving to Boston immediately. (From the absolute perspective, she missed nothing because she was always going to delay three months moving from Vegas to Boston. From that perspective there wasn’t any choice; the choice was only from the relative perspective.) But working within the context of living authentically, AT THE MOMENT SHE MADE THE DECISION, SHE WAS IN INTEGRITY. The very next moment was a completely new situation. Things in the world changed. And as time went on (which is a valid concept from the relative perspective), many factors surrounding the situation changed. If she had been tuned into her intuition about this throughout the whole period, she would have noticed a shift in her feeling about it. At some point, if she had checked back in, she may have even noticed that her feeling had changed and that she it was now authentic to move to Boston, in spite of her genuinely authentic feeling about staying in Las Vegas before.

The key is to become aware of our feelings about our present situation and then go with our intuition. That is how we start to live authentically IN THE MOMENT. And by living authentically in the moment, our paths unfold the way our true Selves genuinely want them to unfold.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Spiritual Partners

The significance of living with someone who is as focused on Self-realization as I am is unquantifiable and has been one of the greatest impacts on my personal development. (The fact that I hang out with a few Enlightened beings a few times a week is the other massive factor in the rate in which I am feeling the change.) From the outside, I sense that even our closest friends wonder how two people can live and breathe almost every moment discussing, contemplating, and introspecting this Self-realization game. And yet that is what Kitty and I have done for each other for the last nine months together, and even for a good part of the first two months before we became a couple.

Prior to connecting with Kitty, I was in a three and a half year relationship with someone I loved very much. I still do love her as she is an awesome, beautiful person. But as much as I truly loved her, we were miles apart, spiritually. This was our second time around as she and I were high-school sweet hearts and lived basically next door to each other when we were growing up. After 16+ years of marriage to two other people we reconnected during our 20th high school reunion. Fairy tale, right? And it was. But two years into our relationship I had a radical awakening that turned my world upside down.

For two months in November of 2007 I became disoriented, thought I was going insane, and spent most of that time disassociated from my body. When I came out the other side in January 2008 I had no clue what I had just gone through and had no support system to explain any of it to me. Fortunately for the internet and my penchant for used books I eventually came to The Celestine Prophecy and then the big breakthrough with Eckhart Tolle and I had discovered that what had happened to me was consciousness oriented. And so began my interminable march that ultimately led me to the path of Self-realization. That was also the beginning of the end of my idyllic relationship with my then-current lover.

About a year into my intense exploration of consciousness I met Kitty. We first met on January 6th, 2009 when I attended a MetaMystics meeting about shamanism and she was the speaker. But we had heard about each other a few weeks earlier through a mutual friend named Julija. Kitty had already joined the Meetup group that I had started a few months ago and was receiving the myriad emails that I was sending out to the group. And Julija emphatically encouraged me to read Kitty's blog (www.PoetKitty.com) and so I did... and was blown away by her candor and incredible writing style. And while the attraction was certainly there when we first met, it wasn't until we had got to know each other while attending the many various gatherings that we realized how we were not only on the same sheet of music, but we were on the exact same 16th note.

We found ourselves faced with a rather precarious situation. I was engaged to my current partner and while the wedding date was a year and a half away (to coincide with our 25th high school reunion), our love was very deep. And in 2008 Kitty had reconnected with a long-term former boyfriend herself, someone who loved her very much as well. As synchronicity would have it, both of our relationships were with people who did not live in Las Vegas. Why would we have both put ourselves in the exact same situation is only evidence of the perfection of how we manifest things.

So there we were, both in love with people who loved us, and yet there was something that each of us recognized in the other that was so compelling that five weeks after meeting each other, Kitty had left her boyfriend. To top it off, I had not left my girlfriend and when she left her boyfriend she did so in blind faith. She had no commitment from me that I was going to leave my current relationship. She was like a trapeze artist who had let go of her bar, flying through the air, trusting... trusting that whatever was supposed to happen would be there when it was supposed to be. So two weeks later I went to my partner, the woman that I loved, and I told her that I had to leave because my path was calling me to do so.

She must have thought I was nuts. While I did tell her that the stress of the long distance relationship was becoming rather challenging from an integrity perspective, which it was, I made it very clear that it was, as I naively called it at the time, my path towards "Enlightenment" that was the primary driving factor in my leaving her. She was graceful during the breakup and it was one of the most mature and natural separations that you could imagine. I know that there was a ton of pain on her end as there was great anguish for me in my leaving her, but the pull drawing me towards Self-realization was infinitely compelling.

Almost immediately Kitty and I committed to a path together. From the outset we made it clear that our individual spiritual paths would take precedence over our relationship. It was to be a great lesson in detachment, one that many believed was doomed to fail as "they had heard that one before." But here we are, almost a year later, and many have witnessed how true to that consecration we have remained. Our detachment from the relationship itself has made our bond stronger than almost any couple I have ever met. It is not a bond of codependency. It is a bond of kindred spirits honoring each others expansion. It gives true meaning to the cliche, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours; if it doesn't, it never was." What is funny is that it is never mine and it is never hers, and paradoxically, because it isn't either of ours, it just is. And that is perfection.

But it is easy to talk about the lovey-dovey part. Yeah, we're very attracted to each other. And yes, we have many important compatible likes and dislikes. Our musical taste is remarkably similar. And we're not just talking about liking to listen to the same radio station. We love some very niche genres like Psytrance and Psybient that most people have never even heard of. All of that makes it easy to be around each other all of the time.

The significance of having a partner that is right there with you, spiritually, is discovered in the hard spots. It's not found in the awesome rapture of tantric embrace, it is found when face-to-face when one or the others' ego is large and in charge, or more challenging yet, both egos are out to play. To the unawakened individual, these rough spots are looked to as "the bad times." But to those who have discovered the keys to personal growth, those situations, the times when tension is high and tears and anger come forth, are the greatest opportunities to uncover and resolve issues that we have traditionally learned to repress and avoid.

One of the most important part of being a spiritual partner is to hold the space for one another so that the egos can expose themselves fully. In doing so, both of the partners are able to observe the flaring ego and, with practice, can track back to the origin of the issue. At first the tracking back can be done after things have cooled off, but with practice it can be done even while the ego is in the middle of its expression. Not only is this more effective, but it allows the person who is operating in egoic mode to learn to be both the ego and the observer. The one holding space can remind their partner to connect with the observer, not so that the observer takes charge or dampens the ego's response, but just so that the person gets used to having a dual awareness where one is fully feeling the egoic response and the other is the unobtrusive observer holding space for one's own ego.

Kitty and I stumbled into all of this. We made it up as we went. Our commitment to integrity, even when in the most egoic state, allowed us to not take things personally. That was a key element in the evolution of our conflict resolution process. Our conflct resolution process shifted from trying to figure out how to resolve the issue into trying to just hold the space, observe what was going on, and trying to find the lesson that we had gifted ourselves with.

Another key to this was our ownership in a concept that Kitty has often called "nothing outside of self exists." That means that we accept the perfection of exactly how everything is, and that we manifest EVERYTHING that we bring into our lives. In doing so, we were able to look at each of these conflicts as true lessons that we had orchestrated, sometimes entirely subconsciously, so that we could have this opportunity to observe and track back to release. We humans are ingenious, as the system worked so that if we were observant enough we could begin to see these things when they were small. But if we weren't willing or able enough to utilize the subtle manifestations, our incredibly perfect system would gradually amplify the next manifestation until we WERE able to recognize it. If we still chose to consciously avoid releasing the issue we might be able to side-step it this time, but the next time it was going to be bigger, bolder, and more in our face until we did release it.

It is only as I type this that I realize that the act of holding space for your partner is exactly the same process of learning to hold space for yourself. All those times that Kitty held the space for me she was learning how to hold space for herself. For every egoic break that I was able to observe and be there for Kitty and her ego, Kat, I was learning how to hold space for my own ego.

It was this morning at 4 am and I found myself lying in bed pondering our conversation from the night before. We were discussing the two concepts of Personal Mastery and Abiding Non-Dual Awareness when Kitty and I did something we almost never do. We allowed ourself to discuss how we felt each other's observer awareness compared to the other. I have felt that for several months, probably since my September 9th breakthrough, that I have been in observer mode for many days in a row, and Kitty agreed. Kitty stated that she felt that she was very close to that, but that there were many times where her ego had risen up and expressed itself. It was in this moment that we realized that we had gotten into the habit of gauging ourselves in how often the egoic programming was affecting our behavior. Kitty said that almost all of the time that her ego was expressing itself that the observer was there, but that it was just a shred of her total awareness. And that is when we both realized the crux of everything that we had been discussing, in satsang and with each other, for an entire year. Our goal is to have the observer there 100% of the time, but it is only so the observer is AWARE, it is not for the observer to manipulate or affect the situation at all. So while we first were thinking that I might be more "in control" than she was, we realized that both of us have the observer going on at all times, she's just allowing her ego to express itself fully and unmolested more often than I have been.

As I type this, I realize that there is great benefit from allowing the ego to fully express itself without the "higher Self" manipulating the experience. And that is great during the bulk of the day. But there seems to be a great benefit in allowing the Self to consciously direct the egoic programming to be more in flow, to learn Personal Mastery.

If you have gotten to the point where you are the observer 24/7 and you are in the mode of allowing things to be unmanipulated, where does the ego's personal preferences end and the manipulation begin? In other words, if I am laying on the bed and the cat's licking sounds are driving my ego nuts, is it manipulation of the scenario to pull a pillow over my head or to nudge the cat off the bed, or is that just letting the ego do what it wants? It seems to me that "manipulation" comes in when there is a "should" or a "judgment" about the action. The organic response of being annoyed by the licking sound seems to be "what is." That by avoiding my initial, thoughtless response is the manipulation. The avoidance is a result of my judging that it is "wrong" to not like the noise. I don't judge the noise, it is what it is, and my ego doesn't like it. That's FINE. It is when I step in and "should on myself" that I am manipulating the experience from what it is.

Since the beginning of the year Kitty and I have had numerous breakthroughs and ah-ha moments. Some of these come while alone in meditation or in the shower. Others come while spending time with some of my favorite sounding boards like Steve Mikrut, Rich Belsky, or Jennifer Korsten-Mills. And others come during my weekly events with my Enlightened teachers. But I have to say that most of the big breakthroughs come while discussing all of the above with Kitty, my incredible spiritual partner. Perhaps our story sounds a bit extreme. Leaving your current partner, someone whom you love dearly, to blindly leap into a relationship that is going to take a back seat to your own personal path is not for everyone. But I can't convey to you the impact that having such a partner has been.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

My Awakening

This week Kitty and I went through a major transformation. In a cosmically beautiful orchestration, we experienced Self-realization and a level of abiding nondual awareness that is resulting in radically changing how each of us perceives who and what we are. Just as beautiful was the stark contrast in the way that each of us has woken up and how each of us is processing it differently and yet ultimately the same.

Below is what I wrote the morning that I had the realization. I am sure that as time (within this dualistic existence) marches on, our perceptions of how things went down and what they mean will change. I just wanted to share my attempt at describing what happened to me this past week. Again, this is my description of what I went through during those three days. It does not reflect what Kitty went through nor her revelations as I wrote this before we fully realized what was happening to her. Her story will be just as dazzling, I can assure you that.

Sean


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September 9, 2009
Las Vegas, NV


This morning I had a realization that resulted in the connection of several other big realizations. Self-realization, to be precise. Self-realization plus the knowing that the key is to be Self-aware at all times while allowing the human experience to take place and occupy a portion of your awareness.

This realization came as a culmination of two months of shower meditations that resulted in cosmic or mystical experiences. These meditations imparted insights, or lessons, experientially upon my awareness until the final three days whereupon a fusion reaction connected the insights into a major revelation.

It was in my shower meditations that I was able to move my inquiry from a verbal dialog into a true inner dive. I was able to seek to the core of myself until I truly came to the realization that there is a beautiful nothing deep down in there, and that nothingness was me. I was able to have the awareness of the Void itself. I was able to project from the Void all that is created, and therefore know that I, the Void, am the Creator.

During some meditations, I practiced creating. I would create anything I could imagine and it would be. Whether or not this was creating a true manifestation as I meditated is not of much importance. The fact was that I was able to practice creation and learn how to relax into it.

Many times I would seek the Void and attempt to go as deep as possible into it. Many times I continued to effortlessly fall head first into the dive. Other times, there were many distractions from all of the levels of the default world. This made it necessary to develop and strengthen an ability to wake back up and return some level of the awareness back to the Void. This is where a sound meditation practice became a factor, as I was able to deflect the distractions as I had been deflecting the thoughts before.

On Monday, September 7th, Kitty and I were discussing our long weekend with Adyashanti and a friend who channels to a small, private group. I was describing where I was in my shower meditations and we got to discussing falling forever into the Void. She asked why did I ever stop falling in? I said I didn’t know. Something always came up or the hot water would start to run out and I’d just stop going in. She mentioned a mantra that Jim MacKenna recently gave her: “I am following God, I am following God, I am never coming back.” She also mentioned that for what is often referred to as ego death to occur you must be unconditionally willing to lay down this world and not expect to ever come back.

At this point I felt that I needed to jump into the shower to see if I could fall endlessly into the Void. I began in my usual manner and quickly, almost immediately I was able to perceive the Void. I began to fall into it, consciously releasing into it, almost surrendering into it. As I attempted to completely surrender into it I became aware that I needed to relax my entire body. As I was standing, this led to a problem of not being able to completely relax. I briefly attempted to reposition in several seated, kneeling, and lying down positions but none of them provided even a remotely similar water pattern as I was now much closer to the ground.

Once I resumed my standing position I was able to get back into falling into the Void. I then was struck with the idea that I did not need the water to be aware of the Void so I stood out of the stream and expected and experienced the Void. After a few minutes I realized that I could also do this with my eyes open. At this point I was out of the water flow, open eyed, and completely conscious of the default consciousness and I was still experiencing the Void before me. I called for Kitty and left the shower for the bed.

I told Kitty that I had been falling into the Void but that I was encountering distractions that were becoming stumbling blocks. I told her that I wanted to lie next to her to see if she could experience it via transmission. I asked her to be prepared to help in case I got stuck, distracted by another egoic program. I hoped she might be able to recognize and point out my sticking point so that I could release further into the Void. Interestingly I was able to release into it completely on my own and suddenly I came to the realization that the Void that I saw before me was a big part of the puzzle that I was trying to piece together. I finally realized that seeing the Void and knowing and accepting what it was was the moment of awakening, it caused me to laugh out loud (which Kitty and I actually recorded.)

While the awakening occurred at this moment, it was not until approximately 36 hours later when I finally understood the concept of abiding nondual awareness. I had been aware of the Void and was pretty much able to “see it” at almost any given moment. At approximately 10 am I was intending to go over to meet Rich Hughes and Buck Precht at the 15th St house, so I jumped into the shower. Once I got into the shower I decided to make it a shower meditation and when I did, things started happening quickly. Almost immediately it came to me that the key to remaining awake was to keep some level of the awareness of the Void in my consciousness at all times. Once that was clear, I got out of the shower, sat on the couch and let the realization sink in that what I was doing was committing myself to, forever more, hold the awareness of the Void over that of the awareness of the default world. It is at that point, where I surrendered the focus of the awareness of that which I call “myself” from the default world to the awareness of the Void, that I would refer to the moment of accepting abiding nondual awareness. Abiding: persistent, eternal, never ending. Nondual awareness: the awareness from the perspective of the Void as Creator. Together this means that at any given moment I am able to perceive existence from the perspective of the Void itself and to feel the creation as it is going on.

I realized that once I had awakened, the abiding part would probably be something that needed to be worked on. Once the realization had been owned you could always go back to it. I even said it was like a bookmark and that I could put it down and pick it back up and be right where I left off. But I knew that the trick was to become so comfortable with the awareness of the Void being ever-present in my consciousness. I practiced in relaxing into the default world while still maintaining the awareness of the Void. I would let myself slip slowly back into the default awareness while maintaining my awareness of the Void. I would allow the bulk of my awareness to focus on the default world so that the awareness of the Void was just a sliver, but it was still there. This is what I have come to call one-mindedness, or the ability to have the experience of the Oneness, the perspective of that of the Void itself. My current primary objective is to maintain that perspective above any other.

As I became comfortable with this I started to play with how deeply I could slip into the default world and still maintain a sliver of awareness of the Void. I questioned whether the task was to maintain awareness of the Void at all times with no exception. It seemed rational that I could want the experience of allowing the awareness of the Void to be completely forgotten and then to be able to come right back to the awareness of the Void. (This reminded me of an experiment I did with Tamara Bostrom in 2007 where I would intentionally try to forget something that I clearly knew but then I could have a trigger that would allow me to remember it. Basically, I wanted to be able to forget something completely but still have the ability to recall it indirectly, and it worked very well.) Interestingly, during bedtime discussion with my son, Tristan, we actually got into a discussion about this and he felt very strongly that one must always possess at least a sliver of the Void Awareness.

At this point, it seems that the human existence is to allow for the potential of the Void to manifest. Without the ability to manifest, the Void would just be potential and that is it. The act of manifestation is what enables the potential to actually come to fruition.

Upon awakening, it seems one of the first tasks is to stretch and strengthen one’s ability to dive into the default world but to be able to come back to the awareness of the Void at any given moment. The more solid the abiding awareness of the Source-as-Self, the more one can allow the human experience to become part of one’s awareness. The trick is to allow as much of the human experience to fill your awareness while always maintaining a sliver of the Source-as-Self awareness. Experience allows one to play that line of how much opacity the human experience has before it obscures the connection with the Ultimate Source (Void, Creator, Ultimate Awareness).

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Mucking through the Maya

A good friend of mine, Rich B., was asking me if I had read anything about Drunvalo Melchizedek, a guy who has written on many topics including numerology. Below is my reply. I felt it seemed topical enough to repost here.


Rich:
Have you had a chance to look at any Melchizedek stuff yet?

Sean:
Yes, but my problem is that I'm having trouble connecting with just about every topic. I'm really in a mode of not really caring about anything going on in the Maya right now. I was standing in my library, packing for my trip, looking for something to take to read. There were only a handful of books that I was even remotely interested in reading, and it took me some time to even select those. Most of them have to do with straight-up, hard core Enlightenment. I thought of bringing a book on Tarot and said now. I thought about Astrology and said no. I didn't even bring an Alan Watts book! Make that !!! So Melchizedek is not on my radar right now. (Shit, I should have brought Shanti's book! Crap, that would have been a good one. Well, next trip!)

Adya has some pretty interesting things to say about the paradox of looking within and finding Nothing AND Everything. Fuck, everything is a fucking paradox... At some point I'm just going to have to stop trying to resolve every damn paradox, which means that I'll have to let things go unresolved, which means that I will no longer have a solid paradigm in place, which means that I may as well stop thinking all together, WHICH I KNOW IS THE ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE OF THE PATH TO AWAKENING BUT IT STILL DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!! ARGH!!!

What really sucks is:

A: Through the process of awakening I'm supposed to get confused at these paradoxes and let my understanding entirely fall apart.

B: I am fully aware of this.

C: By being fully aware of this, any time that I really feel that this is happening, I have to question myself and ask "Is this my spiritual ego that is coming to this conclusion?" Because if it is, then I'm trying to fool myself into thinking I'm somewhere further into the process than I really am.

D: In the past I would work hard to increase my understanding until the paradoxes were resolved. Now when I get to a paradox, I don't know if I'm actually at a real paradox that I cannot possibly resolve or if I'm just being lazy and am letting the paradoxes (paradoxi?) build up.

So now I don't even have the satisfaction of running into a paradox and letting it go because I can't figure out if it's my ego or not. (Hmm, maybe this is where intuition is supposed to come in.)

Whatever.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Synchronicity in a False Universe

It has been a week of incredible synchronicity. There is a nice sangha legend (kind of like an urban legend, but known in the spiritual community, not "on the street") that once you experience Self-realization everything is rosey and things come together perfectly. While they might come together perfectly, I think there is a disconnect about what it is meant by "perfect." From the unawakened perspective that likely is attached to a favorable outcome, one that is desired by the individual. But from the Enlightened perspective, EVERYTHING is perfect, so that something that would have been viewed as a failure or shortcoming from the yet-to-be-Awakened perspective, it would be viewed as EXACTLY the way it is supposed to be and there is no desire to have it any other way.

Well, I've yet to pop so I'm coming from the yet-to-be-Awakened perspective. That means I desire and enjoy when things line up in a manner that would traditionally be viewed as "good." For example, on Friday I was coming on to a six day stretch of being on call for United. There was one person on for 3 days ahead of me on the list and there were at least a half dozen people who were on for 4-5 days that were after me. That meant that any long trip that was coming up, I should have gotten the assignment.

When I looked at the open flying, there were at least four trips open for Saturday and Sunday that were 4-5 days long, which meant that barring a miracle, I was going to have to fly out on Saturday or Sunday for 4-5 days. This was quite a bummer as Kitty had been gone for 10 days on the Richard Moss Radical Aliveness retreat and was set to come home on Sunday. Things were lined up so that I would be leaving on a trip right when she would be returning... hence the bummer.

If we are lined up for flying there is a mechanism that allows us to influence which trip we get assigned to, and I considered looking at the list and figuring out how to get on the trip that would return me as soon as possible. But something in me said "You've been trying to take your hands off the tiller and become a leaf on a stream. Let go now and see what happens." It wasn't the B-movie "voice in the head" thing, it was more of a knowingness that I should just detach from the outcome and let things happen as they will.

I shit you not, about an hour and a half after I did this the Crew Desk called and said that they had an assignment for me. They needed a pilot to go fly as a passenger to Denver on Friday night and show up at the training center to be the second pilot for another pilot who was receiving training. The assignment would officially end around 2 pm on Saturday, and I would fly back, on the clock, Saturday evening. As I need a reasonable amount of time off before a long Pacific trip, that basically guaranteed that I would not be going on a long trip on Sunday and would really be back in the hot seat on Monday.

Here's the amazing part. With me having 6 days (which is the most days you can be on call before you have to schedule a 24 hour period off), there is no way that I should have been assigned a 2 day trip. There were many people behind me on the list where that would have made more sense, and one of our scheduling rules is that they assign the trips to someone who has that many days on or one day more. (In other words, if a 3 day trip comes open, they have to find the first person that has "3 or 4" days on in a row. This saves the people with 6 days on for the longer trips, if there are any. By assigning me the 2 day trip, it essentially shot me for any long trips this time on call. Again, to assign me this trip, there had to be some extrordinary circumstances to assign it to me, a pilot with 6 days of availability.

Here's how incredible this allowed things to play out. By going on this assignment on Friday and getting done rather early on Saturday, I was able to fly out to LAX, rent a car and drive 1.5 hours to Ojai to spend the evening with the Richard Moss group on the last night of the retreat. I was then able to help Kitty drive back from Ojai which was really nice as she was emotionally wrung out (which is exactly what we expected and wanted from the retreat.) I basically had Sunday off so even if I were to get an assignment during this on call period, I was safe until Monday.

Had the assignment come on Saturday, I would have been able to see Kitty Sunday evening but I would have missed the last night of the retreat and she would have had to drive home by herself. If it got done on Friday and not Saturday, I would have been in the hot seat on Sunday and I would have probably had to fly a trip and be gone for 4-5 more days. Had they not given me this assignment at all, I would have definitley flown one of the myriad trips that were already open and, again, I would have been gone for several days.

Why was I assigned that trip? I don't know. I didn't ask. I received it with astonishment and gratitude and did not question why. Many things like this have been happening, and they seem to increase in frequency and impact with the amount of focus I have had on this process. I do realize that I need to look at everything as being synchronistic, not just the things that my persona would find handy, "lucky," or beneficial. I need to look at everything as being perfect and find the perfection in everything. But it is interesting how frequently these "favorable" things have been happening.

Now, how do I reconcile all of this with the fact that nothing is real, this is all a dream? Well, I know that I'm focused on Awakening and so I'm trying to mold my vessel to be as open and conforming to that reality. So I've been fundamentally denying EVERYTHING, labeling it all as untrue, unreal.

I do realize, however, that those that have Self-realized do end up reentering into the dream world and playing the game. Why play the game if it is all just an illusion, a dream of the pure Awareness? Honestly, if put on the spot, I'd have to admit that I don't know why. But I would suspect along with Self-realization comes the realization that pure Awareness is facinated with the dream and it is our purpose to live out the dream. So if we're going to play our part in this charade, we might as well understand the rules of the game.

The game has meaning only because we give it meaning. For the unawakened, we do that by accepting this perspective as "reality." For the Self-realized, I'm guessing they do that by coming back in the game and utlizing their ego-shell to function within the dream. Since we do give the game meaning, its interesting to note how synchronicity works.

So that is how I'm reconciling my interest in figuring it out while still working on integrating the "everyting is false" concept. For now, I feel a need to keep the focus on the "everyting is false" track and once I become that and cease to just intellectualize it, I'll know then whether or not I should spend any time at all on topics like this.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Acknowledging it is ALL A LIE

I'm to the part where I'm actually acknowledging that everything that I can possibly think is untrue, based on a false foundation. When I say that I'm "acknowledging" it, I am transitioning from intellectualizing it as a possibility and I am assimilating it into my personal paradigm. Rather, since this will ultimately destroy my entire personal paradigm, I'm replacing my entire paradigm with this one concept.

Initially, once I chose to accept the concept it was quite easy to implement. Reject everything. Anything that anyone could say or that I could read, hear, or think would be false. For the time being, allow the destructive techniques to remain as they allowed me to find concepts that had remained hidden until looked at from another, more oblique angle. But eventually even those tools would have to fall to the prime directive of "Everything is false, nothing is true."

I said initially it was quite easy, and I realized that I'm still very much in the initial phase. But as I dig deeper into the more basic, fundamental concepts, it is harder and harder to reject them.

For example, it was easy for me to give up angels, spirits, and ETs. Not that I don't think there is life on other planets within this construct of reality, it's just that I don't believe that this construct of reality IS real. Therefore, no real universe, no real planets for the ETs to really exist on, poof, they are gone to me. Angels and disassociated spirits have always been external to me and I have not given them much reality in my universe anyhow, so, poof, without much thought, they, too were gone.

Mind you, not that none of this isn't real within the context of this universe and the dimensons that individual choose to perceive beyond this one. They all seem to work fine, all the explanations as to why they must exist are seemingly logical and rational (at least as far along as I'm willing to invest my brainpower to investigate.) I'm not denying that there isn't something like ESP in this world, in this reality. What I am denying is THIS REALITY, and in doing so, the rest of it is null and void as well.

But I was talking with Rich Belsky about the concepts of souls. At least for now, he has an affinity for the concept of a soul, that there is some thread that binds our individual incarnations together from lifetime to lifetime. This concept is what allows us to utilize the concept of karma. After all, if there is no soul connecting our past and future lives together, how would karma from a past life be a player?

As I understand it, when I look inward, I will find a void. A total emptiness of self. As I also currently understand it, according to general and basic non-dualism (which I will also have to drop during this massacre of ideas and thought), EVERYTHING, manifested (in this universe) and unmanifested, is contained in the one Source/God/Whathaveyou. Even when you condense it down into the tiniest speck, like how the scientists paint a picture of the beginning of the Big Bang, there is still something there. Likely not physically, but there is still the Source, the Divine Consciousness, the creator of it all. So if the Divinity is within me, and the Source is at the center of me, and when I look inward to the core I find nothing, and if everything is FALSE, then what of the Source itself. Is it not Consciousness? Is that not something? Is that NOT nothing?

So I find myself stuck at the paradox between the Void that I will find at the center of my Self and the fact that I am Divinity and the Source of EVERYTHING, even if that source is Pure Awareness and nothing else, it is still SOMETHING not NOTHING.

Rich hung in there with all of my rambling and paradoxical pondering. It was beautiful having someone there who had challenging questions that I could not answer, questions that had me questioning the idea that everything is False. I'm still operating under that idea, but Rich was very helpful in uncovering concepts that were not so easily torn apart by the everything is false approach.

When we ended our time together we discussed the idea of attacking the concept "Everything is false, nothing is true" with the "Everything is false" sword. That's a paradox that I'll probably be working with today.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Adyashanti - A VERY Clear Speaker

In my quest for finding material about tearing everything down to the core I discovered Adyashanti. I am easily connected to what he is saying when I watch his videos. He makes them available for free on YouTube or on his own website, Adyashanti.org. I would highly recommend diving into a few of these videos to see if what he's saying resonates with you. It's a rare, clear voice speaking to a small crowd that can presently get what he's saying. You either get it and love it or you don't and you'll quickly drop it.

YouTube Adyashanti Channel

Videos on Adyashanti.org

Audio on Adyashanti.org

Douglas Harding & The Headless Way

I have stumbled into another teacher that espouses methods to tear down the identity of self and even Self to leave only the Truth. Douglas Harding developed The Headless Way. It is an experiential process of seeing Who you really are, a la Ramana Maharshi.

The following is taken from www.TheHeadlessWay.org:


THE HEADLESS WAY

The Headless Way offers you a practical, user-friendly way to see Who you really are. This method was developed by the philosopher Douglas Harding. At the heart of this approach are the Experiments - awareness exercises that guide your attention directly to your deepest identity.


Who Are You?

Religion’s Answer
The world’s great mystics have a common message:

"There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within, where are to be found utmost peace, unfading joy, and eternal life itself." (From Religions of the World by Douglas Harding)

Science’s Answer
What you are depends on the range of the observer. At several metres, more or less, you are human, but at closer ranges you are cells, molecules, atoms, particles… Viewed from further away your body becomes absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Science’s objective view of you – zooming towards and away from you - reveals a hierarchically organized system of layers that is alive at every level, intelligent and beautiful. Thus you have many layers, like an onion. You need every one of these layers to exist. Your human identity, vital and important as it is, is just one of these layers. You are also sub-human and supra-human. (See interactive panel on the left. See also: The Hierarchy of Heaven & Earth.)

What are you at the Centre of your many layers? The scientist cannot say because she can only observe you from a distance. However close she gets to you, she remains outside you. What or Who you really are, the Ground of your Being, remains a mystery.

Other People’s Answer
Other people are like the scientist because they cannot see what you are at Centre either, only what you are peripherally. Reflecting back to you what they make of you, their feedback is about you as a person.

Your Answer
You are not distant from yourself, not outside yourself. You – and you alone - are therefore perfectly placed to see what you are at Centre. All you have to do is look.

How do you look into your Centre?
The Experiments direct your attention inwards to your centre. They reveal the One you really are, the One at the heart of your life. Take some time now to explore them.

When you have carried out the experiments, explore the rest of the website. You will find articles, short films, quotations, comments, interviews and more… You can also listen to the Audio Introduction, subscribe to the e-Course in Seeing, contribute to the Discussion Forum and, if you like, let us know your response to seeing Who you really are.

Quotation
Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of 'seeing into one's Nature' or 'Enlightenment' has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot - to the space I occupy, to what's given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it's like being 1st-person singular, present tense. (From The Headless Way, a leaflet by Douglas Harding.)

Richard Rose & The Albigen System

Several months ago while talking with Rich Hughes and Buck, I heard one or both of them say that they were done with finding new ideas to add on to their personal paradigms and were working on tearing everything down, throwing everything they could not prove as "truth" away to the curb. I recall then that I understood intellectually what they were saying, but it was not a technique or process that I was using at that time.

In the last month several concepts have finally sunk in. These days I'm having trouble identifying anything at all that is "true." The more I read and learn the more I realize how much more there is to read and learn if I want to master the dreamworld. Fortunately, I am simultaneously owning the concept that my main objective is not about mastering the dreamworld but in transcending it all together, so I don't have to worry about reading and learning about all that.

So my quest for the last month or so has been to seek out material that will help me throw out all of the rest of the material in my mind. If it is a system of BUILDING my paradigm, I don't want it. If it is a DECONSTRUCTIVE system, that is what I'm currently interested in.

To that end, my reading and web-surfing has led me to an interesting character named Richard Rose. There's a lot written about this guy, although this is the first time that I've really taken notice of him. (I think I landed on a website referring to him sometime late last year, but it did not ping strong on my radar then.) I'm becoming quite familiar with the mainstream authors and teachers (Tolle, Hawkins, J. Krishnamurti, Richard Moss, Leonard Jacobsen, and the lighter crowd of Dyer/Katie/Williamson etc.) I'm starting to find my way to the anti-teachers. Along with Ramana Maharshi, Richard Rose seems to come with favorable recommendations and he's reasonably well published so it's cheap and easy to acquire his material.

His first book is named after his method: The Albigen System. I found a page that gives you a good idea of what his approach is. Here is an excerpt from the site:

[i]"The Albigen System is a unique path created several decades ago by teacher/author Richard Rose when he first began working with those who wished to find a retreat from error and a vector that would bring them to a full realization of Truth or Enlightenment. Based on his book, The Albigen Papers, along with personal notes and observations he held about the psychology of observation and action, he “prescribed” a ways and means of “Becoming” as he put it – so that one could identify their obstacles and chief feature in order to become the Truth. He would often refer to the phrase, “becoming as a little child,” to bring about the understanding that a person must rid themselves of their “barnacles and bugs” to even begin to develop an intuition and clarity which would eventually bring them to an understanding of their essential nature.

The Albigen System aims directly at Self-Realization or Enlightenment. It is a practical, subtractive system. It is not jaded by political correctness, positive thinking, devotion, dogma or ritual. It is simply based on going beyond illusion, beginning with the self. His system of meditation is likewise simply based on going within and observing your thoughts, humiliations, errors and egos with a detached “massive indifference.” It does not seek for definitions of Truth but instead encourages the individual to develop a vector that leads away from untruth. He referred to this as the Maximum Reversal System. By uncovering and acknowledging the illusions, untruths and inconsistencies in our own lives we stand a chance of stumbling upon our true nature and our very Source."[/i]

CLICK HERE to read more about this process. There's a ton of free resources to be had. Basically, this material is focused on you realizing there is no truth to be understood in this human form, it is to be experienced, and to experience it you need to realize that there is no self and there is no Self... there is absolutely nothing.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Why do we meet and discuss?

I can genuinely accept that I am not going to be able to think my way to Enlightenment. Why then do we meet in sangha and discuss things at all? Why don't we just meet and meditate together? I mean, if my ultimate objective is Self-realization, why talk at all?

Anything that is said is ultimately a bunch of BS. Even that from Jim and Kevin, and I believe they'd heartily agree. Yeah, it points more in the direction of the truth than anything else, but if it isn't true, then it's false, and so we're all sitting around lying to each other whether we mean to or not.

I know I'm setting myself up for a typical koan-ic response, but if nothing that I can say or think is real, and if all I need to do is realize that the self that I've identified with for over forty years is just a dream and my real Self is the source of the ENTIRE dream, then why can't I just get that and stop thinking about every thing else?

I know, I know: well get it then, already, and let's move on to the "Well, how's Enlightenment working for you, Sean?" days. I just haven't FIGURED OUT (yes, I KNOW) how to make the leap from ACCEPTING that to KNOWING that. Which is EXACTLY why I come do the dang Sunday Sanghas. Freaking circular logic.

So I come to the Sunday Sanghas without any expectation of what I'm going to say or hear, only in hopes that one of these days I WILL get it. Until then I will enjoy Jim's haikus and artwork, become befuddled by the the devilish observations made by the Enlightened ones, and listen to me and the rest of the somnambulists as we continue to talk in our sleep. Grrrr.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Dream: I am Tristan's Player

After a very intense and vivid dream I got to a point where there were four of us in a car, two in front, two in back. At first it was John Cooper in back right, me in back left. We pulled over and we stopped and I could see a building about 20 yards off the road that had two open garage doors. As we stopped, however, a red building close to the road was going to block our view of the far off building if we didn't stop RIGHT NOW. We stopped and John and I could stretch back far enough to be able to see the far off building. (During the stopping it seemed like this was a movie and I could tell that it was scripted that we would stop PAST it, but we, the driver, was able to stop it early enough for us to see.) As we looked we saw nothing significant, but behind us appeared a man who had been trying to talk to me on the phone (he seemed unclothed) and a police man (non-angry looking, almost slight of build). We knew we shouldn't have looked and knew we had done something that was not appreciated by "someone" (some entity/organization). The cop was going to do something so the driver took off and accelerated to maybe 60 - 80 mph. As we sped up the cop started running after us (the other entity was doing something significant as well but it wasn't chasing us). The cop ran REALLY fast and we were amazed that it could actually catch us. I could sense that this was "real" and that if I had not seen this cop run this fast after us I wouldn't believe it, but here he was, doing it. As it appeared that he was going to catch us I turned to the passenger in the back right who was now Tristan (at his present age). When the cop finally got his fingers on the trunk we realized that we were going to be caught. There was a realization that the end of something (although not necessarily our lives) was about to happen and there was sadness and some fear about this. Tristan said to me "I hope that I can get you life and make you whole because you are my player." (As in, "This is a big video game and you are my character (like Master Chief) and he wanted to heal me so that I could be whole again and continue to play on and do things.) When I awoke and I realized this and thought about what he had said, it made me cry a considerable amount of tears for what that means to Tristan. It was an incredible honor to hear him say that to me, and I knew that he loved me more deeply than I had ever felt, in ways I never felt.

As the cop was stopping the car by dragging his feet, it seemed that I could see that he was a flash of an alien. The visual was as I was looking at him a Polaroid of him zoomed out from him closer to me than he actually was and I could see his true form, which was alien. The alien looked pale flesh in color. The head was fleshy and fell asymmetrically to the right (its left side of its head), it almost had one squiggle of flesh. There appeared to be an eye or eyes but I did not get enough detail to recall at this moment. It was clear it was alien, however. It also seemed that one or all of us were alien, too, although the feeling I got was that I was different from Tristan, either in race or species or something else. It was almost that he knew more than I what he was, but that his part in this was that we were supposed to be together, but that I was his avatar in a game and that he was supposed to forget that he was something other than my human son so that he could interact with me. (Almost like it was a super advanced way of controlling a character in a video game whereby he would infuse himself into the game as one character but he would really be controlling a complete separate entity, which in this case would be me.) By control, I don't mean by direct control. It's almost like he was nurturing a Sim inside the game and would nudge it with his own presence in the game. Regardless, this did not diminish his attachment to me, his character, his "player" and was somewhat sad that it might be over.

I do not recall who the driver was but it seemed female. It seemed to be a mother-like figure but when I tried to feel if it were his biological mother, Beth, it did not seem that it was. At this juncture I am unable to identify the driver as anything but a female with some maternal connection to Tristan, although it wasn't necessarily the entity that produced the entity of Tristan... more a mother-figure.

I do not know who was riding shotgun. It would seem logical that John Cooper and Tristan just swapped seats after we stopped, but that is not certain, as in no time did I get a sense that either Tristan or John were in the front right seat.

The dream leading up to this was very vivid, very detailed, very complex. There was an element of lucidity but I certainly did not control the environment nor the unfolding of the plot. I was very identified with my role but I'm having a hard time remembering if I intentionally guided my character or if it was just playing out. I definitely felt emotions. I can't recall if I felt tactile senses.

I will place the memorable details below, although they won't be in linear order nor make much sense.

I had some responsibility to complete some actions. I had a hotel room that had a living room and two bedrooms. They always seemed full, although as I was talking on the phone to work out a problem, I found that one of the rooms was temporarily empty so I went in there to not have so much noise as I talked.

I picked up a skateboard and put it in a pile with other skateboard like toys which were near the railing/banister of an exterior wooden deck. (Maybe like at Brigitte's Mt. Charleston deck outside her house.)

I recall a large truck with HUGE 8 foot tires was jacked up in the back a bit and was going to run its tires to spin off some of the treading. I recall that I needed to get past/behind the truck to get into a building and that someone/thing told me to be careful, its not a good idea to walk behind it or the part of the treading could fly off and hit me. I ran behind it into the building anyhow and was not injured but it was not the wisest thing to do.

There were a group of about six people wearing polyester dye sublimated shirts that had Ohio State colors, primarily black with white playing cards and red print. At first I thought they were OSU logo playing cards but when I got closer, it was apparent it was not, but I did not discover what the design was. They were in the main living area of the hotel room, and I left them there to go into the empty hotel room.