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).