You are the Source of your obstacles, the fact that you cling to them and aren't willing to let it go.
Do you talk about Silence or LIVE AS Silence ?
What is the use of rambling on and on and throwing out quotes that are at most just seen as possibilities?
Be Still and let the rambling fall away into Reality.
Guru Swami G
What happens when I let the impulse to chatter, explain, and label drop?
What happens when I no longer go in search of spiritual descriptions of my experience?
I find I don’t know what to do with my time. I sit quietly – kind of freaking, “There’s nothing to do!”
I’ve lost my hobby.
Or perhaps, I’ve located my obsession.
What happens when I drop that thought too, that freaking?
My body relaxes and begins to breathe.
Of course, I am still doing the same thing: chattering, labeling, observing, only it is quieter.
I can’t stand the thought of simply sitting and doing nothing when it’s not time to sit, do nothing and meditate.
Atlanta was iced in for four days and people screamed with cabin fever. See, it’s not just me.
The mind is going to react like a wild stallion. It's not going to still over night. No way.
So again one has to be in it for the long haul. You haven't been two days on earth and one has to have patience with the unruly mind.
Eventually it will get tired of its game and burn itself out or slow down until it loses steam and ends.
Guru SwamiG
… It’s been a hard month here in Lake Wobegon. Seems to be a lot of burning out.
My body has not cooperated in the least, throwing up continued fits of migraine and vertigo.
Atlanta was snowed in, as my plumbing broke, and the computer got screwed up.
I’ve missed at least a week of work.
Finally, yesterday my mind had had. It and pitched a classic fit.
I worked myself up into a full blown bout of suffering right up until the moment I decided, “Let it go. None of it is true.”
I’ve gotten much better at letting go since last fall’s retreat with Adya.
On retreat I saw so clearly that the mind is totally separate from “me.”
There was deep Silence (me) and then a space and then this mind spewing out these ideas which torqued a physical reaction from my body and led the mind to other thoughts.
During retreat, since the mind was kind of hanging out there separate from “me” – I found I could just let them go. Thinking no longer seemed obsessive or compulsive. I didn’t even need to stop them from arising. A simple recognition of just how tenuously they actually connected to “me” was enough to break their hold.
Guru SwamiG is the teacher of Sarojini, a woman who appears to have had a significant awakening through kundalini. However, recently Sarojini fell into an even deeper realization.
It is from Guru SwamiG that she and I picked up the phrase, “the mind needs to still.”
I’ve been looking at those words the past few days.
“The mind needs to still.” Is this the essence of embodying an awakening?
If the mind is truly still, the ego has no way to cause trouble.
I also find it interesting that Sarojini went deeper when something broke open in her heart.
Then the teaching became “continue to let the mind still.”
Actually, January also had a “high.” (Actually, I thought of it more as an opening. But to keep with the theme of highs and lows I use the former word.)
There was a huge opening of the head. It seemed as if my physical head was replaced by a vortex of energy and light that opened to the universe.
Energy poured into my body. When Eve and Mary and I met for our weekly meditation, I asked if I could just let that energy flow into them. I felt like I was about to burst and a good siphoning off would be a great relief.
They loved it. They felt great peace and comfort. And I was rather struck by how they enjoyed something that was making me a bit uncomfortable.
It reminded me of Retreat when Adya told me my head had awakened and was “shoowsh” “huge” and that now I needed to bring that down into the heart.
(Thus, my ears perked up with Sarojini’s heart experience.)
Then the vertigo and migraines hit. A system overload? Maybe.
Perhaps whatever comes up must also come down.
But these words seem more to the point.
What is truly interesting is that the human condition contains within it an unconscious need to struggle. Why? Because by remaining in a state of constant struggle we maintain the boundaries that create the sense of a separate self… And even more shocking is the discovery that not only do we need to struggle in order to remain separate, but we want to remain separate – even though it causes so much suffering, fear and confusion… by remaining separate we maintain the sense of being someone different, special, and unique.
Again, the reason that you struggle is in order to maintain a sense of a separate self, a self which is ultimately nothing more than a defense mechanism against the revelation that no separate self actually exists… With nothing to oppose, the false sense of self evaporates into nothingness, into the Unknown, and you suddenly feel very lost with no familiar ground to stand on. Your identity is cut loose from all that is familiar and known, and you find yourself floating in a vast expanse with nothing to grab hold of. This groundless expanse is a foretaste of liberation, but few choose to remain in this unknown territory…
Faced with a freedom that is absolute, a freedom that leaves no room for separation from the whole, most people will compulsively contract back into a condition of struggle where they can maintain a familiar sense of self.
Adyashanti, The Impact of Awakening
I think the operative word here is “compulsively contract back.”
You contract without even thinking. Or rather, the mind goes wild and smothers you with stories to be believed and clutched and suffered over. Or, you run from the house with “cabin fever.”
Ha! I also seem to recall some words about emptiness and awfulness in my last blog…
Maybe I was just itching for a way to crawl back into the struggle.
And that’s the news from here in Lake Wobegon: where all of the seekers are slow and conditioned, and aren’t really all that good looking, and all of the children seem to have runny noses.
Showing posts with label Sarojini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarojini. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Whatever Happened to Witnessing
With the egoic sense of self, the more we know, the less innocent we feel.
But, to our true nature, the more we know, the more innocent we feel.
I call this feeling innocence… because it has a sense of being very unguarded…
In innocence, there is no idea about what’s going on…When I say it doesn’t know what’s going on, I mean it’s not relating to experience through thought… it may seem a nice place to visit, but it’s a terrifying place to hang out because it takes all the tools of the egoic state of consciousness and renders them useless… the mind is actually not very comfortable staying there because it is non-operational while it’s there.
We see that we are not who we thought we were, and the world is not what we thought it was. Everything is new and open… For example, if you are sitting in your chair and you have a certain sensation arise in your body that your mind would immediately label fear, the innocence wouldn’t know that…
Innocence just looks with curiosity and asks, “What is it?” And it draws the sensation very close. It discovers what that sensation is through the experience rather than through the idea.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
I found these words this morning, after the fact, after deciding that I wanted to give an update on my complaint to Adya, last fall, that I felt as if I had become stuck as the witness.
So, here’s an update and how it relates to the fear and intense emotions I mentioned in my last blog.
The other day, I was at work when I abruptly stopped because I felt very strange and wondered what was happening. I just stood in the middle of the lab kind of looking this way and that totally perplexed and very ill at ease.
After a bit, I realized that in the past when I complained of witnessing, it was because my eyes looking out at the world saw (felt) that nothing was “Real.”
I didn’t (don’t) particularly enjoy this sense of unreality, of watching, of witnessing from some distant, privileged state of REALness.
The strangeness that now stopped me in my tracks was the noticing that my body and all its contents, that sense of center, were no more real than that “unreal” world I had experienced during witnessing.
I looked down at my torso. I looked out into the room. The two now seemed a seamless continuity of the Unreal.
I looked back at my torso and probed inside for my thoughts and feeling; again, there was seamless continuity - no difference between the inside and the outside of my body.
Suddenly, there was nothing of true substance, truly real.
This was not good news!
In fact, my discomfort seemed the central perception. I was Very uncomfortable, bubblings and turmoil in the body, something intensely physical was happening, but what?
Mind did not want to look too closely.
It felt as if I moved a muscle of mentality, of individual will, intention, or analysis the total strangeness of the situation would explode into total Chaos.
A thought came, “Do not do a thing.”
So, I allowed mind, emotions to simply hang there. My body I directed back to the small work-tasks at hand.
Eventually, another thought arose, “Jesus, the witness just collapsed!”
I let that thought go also.
Oddly, I discovered foretastes of this discomfort and process while viewing some “post literate asemic art.”
Now, the art seems the perfect illustration and I have to wonder about their power as mandalas.
I hope you take a click. The glyphs and dreamwork by John Ryan and Tony Burhouse and earlier December posts seemed to explode within my body. I had to leave immediately.
About a month ago, “The Systematic-Reductive-Dismantling” of Peter Ciccariello felt marvelously compelling: That’s it and I wanted to share.
Which brings me back around to the intensity of feelings I’ve been experiencing and Sarojini’s comment about barriers and collapse of a separate self, or witness:
…without any barriers in place (namely, the sense of a separate self) …these [emotional] energies are free to go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds.
Before that experience of the collapse of the witness, I decided that my emotional situation of late is more like a baby’s. Babies are happy until the instant they are not happy. Then they cry – 100%, all out. And then, it passes and it’s gone. There’s a clean slate. This is the innocence of babies’ emotions – no barriers. At first, I labeled this as learning “impulse control.” We call it “maturing” or “growing up.” That’s when I also realized you could also call it conditioning and that it coincides with acquiring a sense of self.
There is no need for an emotional barrier or the feeling of separation… The only reason you ever thought that you needed protection was because of a very innocent misunderstanding… when you were given a concept of yourself in very early childhood, you also received a kit with which to build walls that would protect this concept…This is very innocent. It happens without your knowing that it’s happening. It continues until you realize that inherent in this holding of “me” as a self-image in the mind and body is the belief that you need protection… When you drop your protection, the truth comes in and takes away the self-image.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
And you can also freakout a bit.
If you’d like to hear this collapse of self from another perspective, there’s a new interview with Sarojini on Buddha at the Gas Pump. She describes the severing of a cord connecting awareness and the body. (See discussion beginning around minute 17:45.)
Happy New Year! New You. No You.
But, to our true nature, the more we know, the more innocent we feel.
I call this feeling innocence… because it has a sense of being very unguarded…
In innocence, there is no idea about what’s going on…When I say it doesn’t know what’s going on, I mean it’s not relating to experience through thought… it may seem a nice place to visit, but it’s a terrifying place to hang out because it takes all the tools of the egoic state of consciousness and renders them useless… the mind is actually not very comfortable staying there because it is non-operational while it’s there.
We see that we are not who we thought we were, and the world is not what we thought it was. Everything is new and open… For example, if you are sitting in your chair and you have a certain sensation arise in your body that your mind would immediately label fear, the innocence wouldn’t know that…
Innocence just looks with curiosity and asks, “What is it?” And it draws the sensation very close. It discovers what that sensation is through the experience rather than through the idea.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
I found these words this morning, after the fact, after deciding that I wanted to give an update on my complaint to Adya, last fall, that I felt as if I had become stuck as the witness.
So, here’s an update and how it relates to the fear and intense emotions I mentioned in my last blog.
The other day, I was at work when I abruptly stopped because I felt very strange and wondered what was happening. I just stood in the middle of the lab kind of looking this way and that totally perplexed and very ill at ease.
After a bit, I realized that in the past when I complained of witnessing, it was because my eyes looking out at the world saw (felt) that nothing was “Real.”
I didn’t (don’t) particularly enjoy this sense of unreality, of watching, of witnessing from some distant, privileged state of REALness.
The strangeness that now stopped me in my tracks was the noticing that my body and all its contents, that sense of center, were no more real than that “unreal” world I had experienced during witnessing.
I looked down at my torso. I looked out into the room. The two now seemed a seamless continuity of the Unreal.
I looked back at my torso and probed inside for my thoughts and feeling; again, there was seamless continuity - no difference between the inside and the outside of my body.
Suddenly, there was nothing of true substance, truly real.
This was not good news!
In fact, my discomfort seemed the central perception. I was Very uncomfortable, bubblings and turmoil in the body, something intensely physical was happening, but what?
Mind did not want to look too closely.
It felt as if I moved a muscle of mentality, of individual will, intention, or analysis the total strangeness of the situation would explode into total Chaos.
A thought came, “Do not do a thing.”
So, I allowed mind, emotions to simply hang there. My body I directed back to the small work-tasks at hand.
Eventually, another thought arose, “Jesus, the witness just collapsed!”
I let that thought go also.
Oddly, I discovered foretastes of this discomfort and process while viewing some “post literate asemic art.”
Now, the art seems the perfect illustration and I have to wonder about their power as mandalas.
I hope you take a click. The glyphs and dreamwork by John Ryan and Tony Burhouse and earlier December posts seemed to explode within my body. I had to leave immediately.
About a month ago, “The Systematic-Reductive-Dismantling” of Peter Ciccariello felt marvelously compelling: That’s it and I wanted to share.
Which brings me back around to the intensity of feelings I’ve been experiencing and Sarojini’s comment about barriers and collapse of a separate self, or witness:
…without any barriers in place (namely, the sense of a separate self) …these [emotional] energies are free to go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds.
Before that experience of the collapse of the witness, I decided that my emotional situation of late is more like a baby’s. Babies are happy until the instant they are not happy. Then they cry – 100%, all out. And then, it passes and it’s gone. There’s a clean slate. This is the innocence of babies’ emotions – no barriers. At first, I labeled this as learning “impulse control.” We call it “maturing” or “growing up.” That’s when I also realized you could also call it conditioning and that it coincides with acquiring a sense of self.
There is no need for an emotional barrier or the feeling of separation… The only reason you ever thought that you needed protection was because of a very innocent misunderstanding… when you were given a concept of yourself in very early childhood, you also received a kit with which to build walls that would protect this concept…This is very innocent. It happens without your knowing that it’s happening. It continues until you realize that inherent in this holding of “me” as a self-image in the mind and body is the belief that you need protection… When you drop your protection, the truth comes in and takes away the self-image.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
And you can also freakout a bit.
If you’d like to hear this collapse of self from another perspective, there’s a new interview with Sarojini on Buddha at the Gas Pump. She describes the severing of a cord connecting awareness and the body. (See discussion beginning around minute 17:45.)
Happy New Year! New You. No You.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
What the Holy Books Never Tell You
Takuin Minamoto
There seem to be new issues arising each day making each day a somewhat uncomfortable time and leaving last week’s or yesterday’s experience old news.
Meanwhile, I’ve not posted anything. I cringe to do so, but I’ll leave a note, as this is what I wrote last week and it still is getting played out in a variety of ways:
I feel like I am being dragged towards an awful conclusion.
As I keep listening to interviews on Buddha at the Gas Pump, there’s a panic rising in me.
There’s a growing suspicion that what I’m calling “stuck in the witness” is what Maharishi called Cosmic Consciousness, or what others call “awake.”
Now, Adya has said he’s never met anyone who wasn’t totally surprised by what they awaken to. And if you listen to the Buddha interviews, several people say just that. “It’s not what you expect!”
So, perhaps I shouldn’t have been all that surprised this morning when as I listened to Andy Shulman describing his awakening I was hit by the thought, “Shit, this is it?!”
I broke into tears of utter disappointment.
I really thought I’d be a better person.
Despite experiencing what “awakened” individuals describe, I have continued to discount the possibility that I am awake because it is so obvious, “I am still so messed up.”
But something about how Andy spoke made it obvious and I just broke into sobs.
Disappointment broke my heart for about a half minute until I had a second thought, “Oh, this is the wrong response!”
As if to highlight the issue - I can’t even respond to the good news in the correct manner.
Sobbing immediately became belly laughter.
I would love to have a map of the spiritual territory; one that draws the line between the counties of Ignorance and Awakened straight and true and definite.
I’d love to have a pushpin I could slowly, deliberately stick in “Here” – right there one step over the line sweet Jesus.
Yeah, well.
There isn’t such a map, so get on with life.
A few hours later I went online to read what Sarojini might have to say. She has several articles posted and I chose at random.
Imagine my surprise as I discovered these words:
Today I would like to take the time to address some things that you may never have heard about which happens upon or after Awakening / Enlightenment / Liberation. These happenings are usually never mentioned in the holy books, or if they are, they are totally ignored…
1.) Awakening or Enlightenment is the last great disappointment of ego. In that non-instant there is the bewildered declaration of: "Are you kidding me!?" followed by utter perplexity that eventually yields to the deepest laughter ever encountered. Most of the "Awake" (or subsequent books about Awakening) discuss the laughter. However, the laughter doesn't come first; at first you will be baffled and will, more than likely, feel slightly let down for a few short moments. …
2.) No one will notice a thing. Your closest friends and family will, more than likely, not see much of a change. You will not glow. Angels will not surround your home. Buddha will not come knocking at your door to welcome you into "the club". You may actually become more annoying to those closest to you…. your loved ones …could care less about your latest discovery (which, to them, is likely to be just another "aha" among a long journey of "aha's" that you've shared with them umpteen times before)…
3.) You will feel emotion like you have never felt before. There is now a quiet, steady center that is constantly present; however, when an emotion comes along, its energetic depth will surprise you. You will realize that without any barriers in place …that these energies are free to go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds. And they will… Do not be surprised and, by all means, do not attempt to block this from happening…
These points kind of blew me away, they fit so perfectly.
And now, I just want to stop thinking about the details: just drop it, drop it, drop it. STOP.
But, I am out here in the world and it’s uncomfortable.
Tuesday, in my meditation group I was trying to explain how totally empty my life feels. I have no goals, no interests. It’s a bit amazing that I don’t see this as depression. Rather, I’m just empty. My friends just kind of stared and appeared a bit worried. Eve reached out and touched my hand.
I worry that I’m wasting precious life and time, but I can’t think of anything to do…
even as I shoot off emails to family about micro-hydropower plans, pond construction and yurts, and panning for gold in North Georgia.
I’m happy about new family projects, but this occurs in emptiness that is inescapable.
Which brings me to about an hour ago, when I found the perfect summary… of what?
What I now believe to be a good description of the terrain. Bring in the pushpin! Finally a place to set it.
I want to share these words because they fit so well.
I want to share this link because I want people to know about this part of the path – and I cannot bear to say any more about myself.
This is a blog entry from Gina Lake (a new face to me) wife of the teacher, Nirmala, and a student of Adyashanti. It’s entitled: What Happens After Awakening.
It is concise and right to the point.
Maybe now, I can simply stop and just allow the thoughts to drop.
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