What the Holy Books Never Tell You

… people are not so interested in seeing themselves as they really are…they would rather pine for what they think they should be.
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.

Stuck in the Witness

Red Cube
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Bit by bit, if we are sincere, we begin to see each time we fixate. Somewhere, somehow, at some point in time, something in us realizes that our awakening is not complete.

...At first it [witnessing] was wonderful and amazing and transformative and profound. But over time, I started to have this intuition, this little voice that said, “This isn’t the whole thing. This isn’t oneness; this isn’t unity.” The witness was perceived as being totally free of the human being that I imagined myself to be. But the illusion that the witness was different from what was being witnessed remained. For me, as for many people, the next phase of the journey of awakening was the collapse of the witnessing position.

It starts to collapse when we see that if witnessing is different from the witness, then there is an inherent division. Letting yourself see this division is the beginning of the collapse of the external witness.

With that collapse, you can start to see the elements of ego that are using the witnessing position as a way to hide, to not be touched by life, to not feel certain feelings, to not encounter our lives directly and intimately in a gritty, human way.
Adyashanti, The End of Your World

At the retreat last month I asked Adya about being stuck in witnessing.
I have no idea how to implement his “answer” and in fact he said, “I can’t tell you how to do this.”
I have to discover the next step for myself.
So, I am reviewing just a bit some teachings on witnessing.

The more we realize that who we are is totally outside of time, outside of the world, and outside of everything that happens, the more we realize that this same presence is the world----all that is happening and all that exists. It is like two sides of a coin. This experiential awakening is not rare, and no one teaches it to you.**

It seems a part of this process is to simply stop.
No more thoughts, the analysis. No more me-ing. Stop.
And, there is a strong pull to do just that.
But there is also a reactive struggle to pull myself out of that stillness:
To think, just a bit more. To dance and thus avoid the Void, just a moment longer.
So, I read on…

When we are no longer functioning through our conditioning, the sense of “me” is no longer there. What really runs and operates this life is love. ... one will find that “I” am the silence between two thoughts. You are nobody. You are this openness, this presence. You are not a creation of thought, belief or faith. It is free of all identity. It is the uncreated.

And right there it seems is where the getting stuck occurs.
I perceive the openness and presence and yet do not identify it as “me.”
I have been assuming that some thought will arise that recognizes the Vastness as “me.”
But, that may not be true.
Maybe that belief needs to be dropped.
But meanwhile, old habits die hard and I have to ask:

Where am I? What can I identify as “me”?

It seems I do not know. Awareness comes through my eyes. It seems to flow from an unboundedness inside and it looks out through the eyes to see another unboundedness: The World.

I feel like merely a point. Sometimes, I am the toggle point between the two infinites. Sometimes, I occupy an area no bigger than a thumb print rattling around in the vastness. I’ve become no thicker, no more substantial, than the thin inky outline a thumb print leaves upon a blank white page. But, I remain substantial enough to be uncomfortable in the expansiveness. Substantial enough to want to reach out and touch someone, or something, just to kind of steady myself and my individuality for a moment.
And, I am substantial enough to desire to be done with all this. Enough!

Trying to hold on to one’s identities, even if it is the holiest of identities, is like shoving a camel through the eye of a needle. However... Not a shred of self-centred identity can go through, only nothingness can.

A friend told me that this is about unconditional love. Yes!
Adya said I had to learn how to witness from the heart.
I replied my heart would break.
“Yes.”
The separation of the witness is intolerable to the heart.

Well, enough said for now.
I’d like to offer another link to Buddha at the Gas Pump and an interview with Takuin Minamoto regarding his spontaneous awakening. His description of a Vastness that has somehow scattered the components of memory and self-identity into such a great space as to render them no longer relevant feels very familiar to me. It is exactly this blowing to the winds that my little mind(?) or ego(?) is attempting to avoid by its refusal to stop. I can feel the larger amount of energy such a “holding things together” requires.
But, what a disaster for an ego – to be simply blown away! So, for now it holds on
… even as the heart is breaking to go Home.


** While I originally thought these and the remaining quotes below were Adya’s words, I think these are actually the words of an essay by Dr Tan Kheng Khoo describing Adya’s teachings. But they are so close, it is hard for me to tell.

Redemption Song

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time…
Won't you help to sing
This songs of freedom-
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs
Bob Marley

From this morning’s drive time we have the song of the day. I hope you are going slowly enough to enjoy it.



I’d also like to pass along this link to Buddha at the Gas Pump, a wonderful compendium of interviews about ordinary people waking up. I have been enjoying these stories and finding in them an aid for dropping the beliefs I hold regarding what is and isn’t possible, about what is true and not true.

Reporting In

Sunken Spoon
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

You took the part that once was my heart
So why not take all of me
…Willie Nelson sings it fine

September 10 - 17th I went up to the Omega Institute for a 7 day silent retreat with Adyashanti.
This is something of a report back.

Last night a friend asked if there was anything I needed to talk about regarding the retreat. No, not really. I didn’t have any particular tale to tell. Except, we were having dinner and conversation is nice. So we talked and maybe it’d be nice to share some of that discussion (or a completely different one) here.

The retreat did cause some shifts in perspective. It’s made me pull out my old copy of Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne Segal, a TM-teacher and contemporary, who had an abrupt shift to no-self and struggled mightily for the next 12 years. I’m concluding, now, that Maharishi prepared us for enlightenment with teachings that haven’t serve our minds that well. And criticism here is not directed at MMY so much as one’s mind and just what minds do. Minds form preconceptions and misconceptions and sometimes perform out right deceptions.

To be specific: Maharishi taught that Cosmic Consciousness was the first stage of enlightenment. Here, the Self is realized as infinite and separate from activity – and Suzanne and I both expected that to mean we would be filled with joy. I had to dig deeply in my notes to find Maharishi actually said, this wasn’t the end of an ego. He did say a mind that doesn’t understand can rob you of living the full benefit of the enlightened state.

I expected that in Cosmic Consciousness I’d be a “better person”…if not incredible.
Now, I am sure it doesn’t play out that way. Seems like, waking up is where the real work starts.
To another friend, wanting to know about Retreat, I was trying to explain that now it seems to me that “teachings” provide a treasure map with the landmarks of awakening all drawn out. What the teachers don’t explain is that these guideposts can appear in any order along the path and with differing degrees of intensity so that some aren’t even recognized for what they are.
“Oh! I would have described it this way…”
Segal was terrified that no-self meant insanity.

Retreat has got me thinking that what I thought of as “really intense witnessing” actually is my version of “no-self.”
It took really hearing Adya say “no-self means Life no longer has a center” for it to click inside my brain. Oh, God, that’s what happened that time at work! The boss wanted to discuss experiments at the white board and I was in shear panic inside, the mind screaming, “How can we do that?”
Memory holds the starkness of the vision of the room and now I notice it looked that way because the distance between witness and world had expanded to such a degree that the witness had finally snapped off.
“I” was missing. So who was going to talk genetics with George?

It’s terrifying. And Suzanne describes it well. Her descriptions coupled to the echo of what Adya said, “Life no longer has a center,” seems to let understanding in more deeply.
(And, for the record, the science went just fine. I even presented good ideas.)


But, such witnessing is an extreme event.
So, I finally asked Adya the question that’s been bothering me for years.
It went something like this:
“I am afraid I have become stuck in witnessing. I look out through my eyes and nothing appears really Real. There is always separation.”
I know – this is not a question. It is a complaint and plea.
Adya said he couldn’t tell me how to do it. I’d have to intuit it for myself. But, I needed to witness from my heart. Not my head.

Ah, the heart… I knew that. Maharishi had explained that.
But, I’ve no idea how it is my head witnesses. It just does. So, how to do this from the heart is beyond my comprehension.
I know my heart needs to open, to be totally unguarded.
It was breaking as I spoke of the constant separation.
Adya spoke of those statues where Jesus exposes this flaming heart…

And I have to smile. I have a friend who’ll bring me one from Mexico where they make them beautifully from tin.
I think of Dorothy and her Tin Man… whose heart was fine all along.

Suzanne Segal’s story beautifully illustrates how the conditioned mind can throw a fit, kicking up so much dust you miss what you’ve been blessed with. I have had so many doubts.
But, mind can only protest as Life Unfolds in its own way.
Segal was plunged rawly into no-self. I am slipping slowly.
I am left Witnessing - dancing on the Void – my little self having received the news of its non-existence refuses to accept the denouement.

OK. Whatever. Go ahead and dance.
Which is where Willie Nelson came in this morning singing:
All of me, why not take all of me…
And I danced for Bennie, all around the kitchen, singing to myself softly…
Why not take all of me…

Sailing Off The Edge

Bath Tub Truth
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

There’s a phenomenon happening in the world today.
More and more people are waking up – having real, authentic glimpses of reality.
By this I mean that people seem to be having moments where they awaken out of their familiar senses of self, and out of their familiar senses of what the world is, into a much greater reality…
Adyashanti, The End of Your World

They (the doctors) will tell you, they will practically shout: “There is a cure. Do this!”
But, if I read the data carefully I cannot find this “fact.”

Instead, I find right in black and white and I am practically quoting here:
Doctors treating Hodgkins make assumptions the greatest being that chemo followed by stem cell transplant is better than chemo alone.
Read on down and they also put it bluntly: there is no modern study that proves this.
And then, they try to explain why overall survival is not improved… 40-50% of transplants relapse; regular chemo can produce multiple remissions, but they do not hold.
The statistics become a mess. The news is not that good.

But, Eve has to make a choice and so we continue reading.
I am used to reading “the literature.”
I am used to the tedious flipping back and forth between the first page and the fourth or third and double checking references.
Science literature is not read in a relaxing armchair. It is attacked at your desk with a pen and calipers and an intellect that would vivisect a kitten.
But, I am totally surprised that in cancer new articles appear daily.

So now, I can get pissed when a doctor says he’ll give oral busulfan when intravenous is proven better.
All the facts keep changing, ever changing.

I am not used to knowing the latest before the doctors can switch their routines – not when a loved one’s life may depend upon what’s new.
At times it feels like we’ve sailed off the edge of the world
Into this Void of No One Knows.

If you read back through this blog you’ll find a trail of rants as to “reality” and “knowing” or “not knowing.”
But, these past few weeks Eve and her Hodgkins seem to have transposed that spiritual lesson into such a nitty-gritty reality that previous struggles seem like pie in the sky indulgence.

Or, maybe they were just a prelude.

We (the world) know so much.
The world is truly linking up to form a new collective consciousness that can tackle problems. No one person can think it through. Not with cancer.
The factoids float. They swarm. They flood and overwhelm.

All these facts somehow have to come together or at least get waded through.
How do we part the waters?

We (the world) know so much…and I am only led to realize: No one knows!
Not really.
All we can do is slip a foot forward through the muddy waters and test to see if slippery rocks beneath feel steady enough to bear our weight.
One step forward, does it feel all right?

It has to be a feeling, not a certainty or fact.
Cause no one really knows.

Get used to it.
Get used to it and where that leaves you.

We have sailed off the edge.
The bottom has dropped out.
And where are we now?

Sit quietly (I know that is not easy)
But, sit quietly.

Sail off the edge…
into the lap of God.

…what is experienced, if it is a true awakening, is the same: all is one; we are not a particular thing or a particular someone that can be located in a particular space;
what we are is both nothing and everything, simultaneously.
Adyashanti, The End of Your World

No One Particular

This muggy summer morning on my back deck I wrote more contributions to the apparently on-going series “Bad Poetry.”
If you’d prefer a real poem, I invite you to go here: Sondra Gash’s Rugelah, 5 a. m.
or, stay here and proceed forewarned.

No One Particular
You needn’t be anyone particular
to hear cicadas in the summer, that buzz
upon the air crescendo diminution
here, there, and once again
you needn’t be anyone.

Cicadas sing not to “his wife” nor “her mother”
but to you the you before all That
to This.
transparency to transparency
without particulars
you can become the details

Well, that didn’t really do it for me, so I sat there a while longer and came up with this.

The Fool
The knot upon my wrist says “arthritis.”
I say, Oh no! When did that happen?
When did I grow old? And will it hurt? And
what will I do now
now that I am old and no longer young and
able. Able to be foolish and so full of life –
Was I ever that? That full, I mean.
Certainly I was foolish.
Hell, I still am and shall always be.
Oh! To capture youth in foolishness.
Surely we can all do this.
Surely we shall remain capable and able
and perhaps more perfect in our foolishness
as we grow old.


No more denial. Self aware: The Fool.
Now isn’t that an archetype – the old, old
fool you meet upon the road and only
later wonder, “Who was that masked man?”
A fool certainly; a sage, a saint perhaps?


I hear laughter coming from the woods, somewhere
deep inside the woods, somewhere I
cannot yet venture.
I must grow older before I’ve strength to go there.

With thanks to HystericalBoredom for the video.
She understands.

Waiting

Baker & Rosemary
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I had walked the halls and returned to my desk still ill at ease and at a loss for what to do.
(Sometimes in the lab, there are these waiting days.) And I Googled around a bit to no avail still left which such unease. Until I realized, “I am waiting.”
We all are waiting. That’s all there is to do for now and then finally, next week Eve will have the scan and biopsy and then we’ll know.
Then there will be things to do and we will feel better, or we will feel worse.
But at least we won’t be waiting.

So, I decide to Google “waiting poem” and got a surprising number of hits.
I started checking links and the poems just didn’t seem to do it until I got to this one:

In the Waiting Room
by Elizabeth Bishop

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.


I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.


Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?


The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.


Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

I just blatantly share the whole poem here. I hope Ms Bishop doesn’t mind. She died in 1979.

I think her poem got to me because she tumbles through time and self so.
I have been reviewing old family photos and diaries this past week; discovering my own history and have found it quite disorienting…

Waiting… for greater transparency of self.

What to Say?

black stone
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I’ve been focused on the “Direct Path” for some time now, but with Eve’s getting sick I have been brought round again to my Taoist practices.
What Eve needs right now is to be able to center emotionally and to move the energy that clogs her meridians.
Qigong and acupuncture were discovered by the Taoist.
So, I have returned to those practices of my Teacher, Wong Loh Sin See, which
can look at times surprisingly shamanic.

Last week, I was shown how to “channel my higher self.”
I didn’t really know what to expect.
And from a Direct Path/Non-dual perspective it doesn’t even make all that much sense since I think of higher self as “Nothing” .
But, I was curious to give it a shot.

What emerged was this rather gnarled old persona, missing a few teeth, and somewhat the trickster. I watched from somewhere “in the back” as this fellow spoke with other people in our group. He shed tears easily and rolled with laughter even more readily. He also offered a healing touch.
When he wanted to refer to me, I was, “What’s Her Name.”
It felt good to let him just roll on.
I felt connected to love and softness, silliness and wisdom.
But, it’s raised a number of questions and emotions.

Anyway, I haven’t posted anything in awhile and have no idea of what to say.
So, I thought I’d give “What’s His Name” a chance.
I got a notebook & pen, sat out on my back deck this morning – and let him roll.
I enjoyed the process. Here he refers to me as “She”.
I have absolutely no idea if any of this is of any use and find it somewhat embarrassing.
But, what the heck?
I’ll put it in bold, cause it was written from a different place than usual (maybe).

Why don’t you have faith and relax?
All the sages through the ages (you like that phrase?)
All the sages through the ages have told you one thing: There is a God.


All right, two things: It will be alright.


And your little heads have got it all knotted up!
“I!” it screams.
“Aye, aye, aye it won’t be! Something might happen.”


Well, of course something’s gonna happen. How else can the world turn, the galaxies spin on their axes, a caterpillar spin its cocoon?
You want to miss all that? I don’t think so.


Oh, you see? I used that word “I.” Don’t be afraid of it!
Right now, just now you have a body. Enjoy it.
You are an “I” for all intents and purposes under the sun.
Isn’t there a song like that? (Well, there should be.)
You are an “I.”
Oh yeah,
“I am the eye in the sky…” there’s the song!


You are the eye in the sky – that means you are body and also infinite.
Be with that.
And don’t worry, fuss, and fight.


How? How? Always with the how! (my Jewish persona comes through, see?)
How to be both you and the infinite?
Ha! I’ve debated the answers, but will go with this: You got to cry your eyes out.
I like that.
Cry your “I’s” out.


First I was going to say, “Cry your heart out,” but I changed that to “eyes” and then that made a good pun.
I like that! Puns are stupid. Her father used to say, “Puns are the lowest form of humor.”
But you know, they capture a flip-flop. They tell you, “This is also That.”
So, they are these little spiritual lessons slipped to us so we don’t even notice.


I like that. You see, the Universe is whispering and leading you every little moment, all along, so that you don’t even notice.
And now, I am crying, softly.
It’s all so beautiful and gentle, and you never even notice.


So, what to do?
After you’ve cried your eyes out, open them!
Ha, ha! I think that is either quite poetic or quite ghastly!
I see eyes in the palm of your hand and you saying, “Open, open.”


You see? I am not a very good teacher.
(She can’t seem to find any either though she combs the internet.)


Why don’t you be your own teacher?
It’s all inside you. Just face the right direction. Turn, turn. That’s your responsibility: to be open.
And don’t lose faith. All is well.
You needn’t change a thing. It will change all by itself. Just notice what your heart compels – Do That.


Yes, I’m talking to you!

Talking to you and me both.
Is that another pun, or paradox, or truth?
I think so.

Song of the Day, Today

This is the movement of the seeker, but it’s also the movement of the me because the me is always interested in opposite and equal reactions, trying to sustain one experience and avoid other experiences.
That’s what the me does.
It chases after the good and avoids the bad.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

Well actually, it was just the song on the radio this morning singing about Sugar.



…Which made me want to look up once again Adya’s comments on spiritual addiction:

A spiritual person can become addicted to spiritual highs and miss the experience of Truth…
There is no drug more potent than spiritual experience. The intellectual component of this addiction is the belief that if you just had enough of these experiences, you would feel great all the time….
Spiritual experiences often become like this, and the mind puts them into its familiar pattern, thinking, “If I had this experience all the time, that would be freedom.”…
That’s the mindset of an addict: “I got it and I lost it. I need it. I don’t have it.”
Once these high and low experiences have played themselves out for a long enough period of time, it starts to dawn on you that maybe the high spiritual experience is just a pendulum swing followed by a low experience. At some point, you may have an ordinary moment and get on to the fact that these pendulum swings are equal and opposite reactions. You realize it’s impossible to sustain one part of the pendulum swing because its nature is to move back and forth.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

…Which made me think of how Life has recently pushed my nose flat into reality.
“This is It.” Are you going to accept and embrace it?
Can you?
Should you?

Long story short - a friend commented yesterday (in an email from her work) that she wished she could go back on vacation. And I jokingly replied, “Vacation is now.”

I wish I could recall where I read that the great thing about travel and going to new places is that they wake you up. Your vision hasn’t gone to sleep.
You appreciate everything around you.

And on the radio today when Norah Jones started her song I flashed back to a quiet, sun-filled coffee house on an island off the coast of Maine. My companion and I were the only people there, save the owner who had spread her maritime navigation books upon the table and was deep in thought. The place seemed magical to us.  The moment is frozen in time.
And what about this morning's drive to work?
Can it be seen as any less vibrant (or mundane) than that coffee shop?

I may have posted this recently (if so, sorry), or it may have never escaped from the draft I put it in… and so, I’ll share these words:

Zen teachers don’t explain anything in an abstract way, which is both the beauty and the terror of it. My teacher’s way of explaining this would be to hold up his staff and say, “This is Buddha.” Then he would bang it on the ground, and everyone would think, “Wow! That’s really wild Zen stuff. I wish I knew what he was talking about.”
Then he would go—bang, bang, bang, bang—and he would say, “This is Zen. This is it!”
And everybody would react, “Oh wow!”
People would wonder, “What? Where?”
But nobody would say, “It couldn’t be that because that’s just beating a stick on the ground.”
Since it’s not all One to the mind, the mind keeps looking for it, “Where is it? What state is it?” Because the “me” references everything to its own emotional state, that’s what it uses to decide what is true.
It thinks that what is true is always a spiritually high emotional state, but this stick pounding is not a very spiritually high emotional state.
Then, to make it worse, to make it more horrifying, he would say, “This is a concrete description of the truth. This is Buddha.”

And this is what I’m beginning to get… as my nose is pushed down to the ground.

When N = 1

blue egg & wisteria
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy.
It’s a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire.”

The world is nothing but my perception of it.
I see only through myself.
I hear only through the filter of my story.
Byron Katie.

Katie gives us lessons that we all can use, but today I want to approach them through the lens of cancer… and statistics.

When I revived after surgery, I asked my first question of my doctor and chemotherapist: "What is the best technical literature about mesothelioma?"
She replied, with a touch of diplomacy… that the medical literature contained nothing really worth reading…

The literature couldn't have been more brutally clear: mesothelioma is incurable, with a median mortality of only eight months after discovery.
I sat stunned for about fifteen minutes, then smiled and said to myself: so that's why they didn't give me anything to read.
Then my mind started to work …
Stephen Jay Gould, The Median Isn’t the Message

My niece, Eve, has had a recurrence of her cancer.
Since we got the news several weeks ago, all my spiritual learning seems to arise from that reality.
I have been questioning many of my beliefs with new urgency.

I have been reading the latest literature on Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stem cell transplants, curcumin, inflammation, macrophages, CD68...
I have been pushed to look deeper until there seems no difference between the spiritual and the totally pragmatic, nitty-gritty of “you bet your life.”

So much is shifting, I have been struggling to process all of it into a useful form.
I can only imagine how it’s been for Evie.
It doesn’t feel like I have been all that successful in my efforts to organize my thoughts and now, the easiest way of sharing seems to simply tell a story.

Ah stories, I love them. What else is there?
Byron Katie

So, here is one regarding N = 1:

My internist and I spent at least two years trying different medications for lowering my blood pressure. Then, I happened to get laid up in bed unable to eat. That got me off drinking coffee without even trying.
After that, I noticed that my blood pressure finally normalized.

I took a month’s worth of the numbers to my doctor.
Yes. Caffeine seemed to be the culprit.
We were happy for a moment, and then he said, (I guess because he knows I do research)
“N equals one.” … in short, my experience didn’t prove a thing to him.
It took a few hours before the stupidity of his comment really began to sink in.

Well, Hell!
N did equal 1, but when that One refers to me, that’s all I need to know!

Suddenly, I realized that my doctor and I had different interests, maybe even conflicting interests.
He wants to know what will work in general for the whole panoply of patients that cross his threshold.
Meanwhile, I want to know what will work for me.
And now I see, the same holds true for cancer patients.

What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular?
I suspect that most people…would read such a statement as "I will probably be dead in eight months" - the very conclusion that must be avoided, since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much.
Stephen Jay Gould

In his essay Dr. Gould explains his rationale as a scientist who knows statistics.
And I wish all cancer patients could know his story.
He didn’t swallow the statistics naively.
He interpreted them with an eye to N = 1 and in a scientific manner.
He lived for twenty years after his diagnosis with his mind clear, at least on this point.

He lived to tell his story.

Which kind of brings me back to Byron Katie.
She likes to begin spiritual inquiry with two questions regarding the thoughts we think:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

Ask yourself these questions and you’ll soon discover that usually the answer is either “No” or “I don’t know.”

For instance with Hodgkin’s statistics, by the time my head allows for four different forms of the disease, four stages, two sexes, a bimodal distribution in age, bulky or non-bulky, treated with these drug or those drugs, that number of cycles, radiation or no radiation, I have no idea how many in the study are actually closely matched to Eve.

So, what do these statistics really say to me, the N = 1 that really matters?
I don’t know.
The doctors don’t know.
NO one really knows.

The door to God is the insecurity of Not Knowing anything,
Bear the grace of that insecurity, and all wisdom will be yours…
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

Not knowing isn’t an easy place to be. It can be quite uncomfortable.
But it is an honest place.
And it is as good a place as any to rest and to take the next step forward.

How do you get back to heaven?
To begin with, just notice the thoughts that take you away from it.
You don't have to believe everything your thoughts tell you.
Just become familiar with the particular thoughts you use
to deprive yourself of happiness.
It may seem strange at first to get to know yourself in this way,
but becoming familiar with your stressful thoughts
will show you the way home to everything you need
Byron Katie

Enjoy Gould’s essay and grow strong.

Happy July 4th

Me 1956 b
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Enlightenment happens when it is perceived that the notions of “non-existence” or “void” or “emptiness” are indeed futile and empty.
Such notions are merely the indications or pointers that the end of the intellectual road has been reached.
Appreception happens the moment the seeker turns around and finds that he is already at the destination.
He is home.
Ramesh Balsekar, The Final Truth

I found a copy of The Final Truth yesterday while cleaning out my mother’s house.
This morning as I perused it, I came across these words.
And something began to click.
Perhaps it was because I had just read and was seeing my way through these words:

Whatever is conceived as the “void” or nothingness cannot be an object at all.
It is what the perceiver of it is.
It cannot be seen either to exist or not exist, for it cannot be seen at all!
What really happens is that the perceiver at this junction is trying to look at what he is after having reached a sort of dead-end.

Having been at this dead-end many times it seems quite familiar now, and I do make it into an image… then I had the thought, “my” thought, not Balsekar’s:

There is nothing I can do, because there’s nothing to do.

I was thinking about all the teachings that point out that all the ego’s attempts to transcend itself are logically impossible and thus requirea moment’s Grace to sweep one away.
But, I’d never really seen it being impossible because there is nowhere to go, nothing to do.
You’re there. You’re home, having “turned around” (which is ridiculously easy) …

I read:
What should really happen now is that the perceiver should turn around and wake up to the truth that he is face to face with his own nature.
The void of the dead-end is precisely what the eye sees when it attempts to look at itself.

And I thought about when I was five and wondering, “What was it like before I was born?”
(Never doubting my immortality, the question had arisen because I had suddenly been gripped by a fear that being dead for eternity would be boring.)
Trying to recall my existence before birth, I saw a vast, dark emptiness. Nothing! And too, no boredom!
I stopped worrying and finished my task of returning the milk to the refrigerator.

And I shall probably spend the rest of my life obfuscating the point I saw clearly when five years old.

This may be why the old Zen masters sometimes simply pound the stick upon the ground and shout, “This is It!” ... What's it take to wake you up?

There’s nothing I can do, because there is nothing to do… and still, there is a path we have to walk. Such a delicate, delicate, beautiful, paradox.

Happy Independence Day!

This Morning’s Drive to Work

Scene of the day:
A rather tired looking woman in dark surgical scrubs carries her son across six lanes of traffic – she has to make it before the light changes and so she lumbers on. He, meanwhile, looks out over her shoulder at all the cars whizzing by.
He is waving. Waving and smiling from ear to ear! Hello! Hello! To everyone.
Across to sidewalk she sets him down and pulls his shirt smooth with abrupt jerks that do not register.
Even now, he is looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide and seeking to return.
He still smiles. His hand, down by his side, is still open in the remains of wave.

Quote of the dawn:
There are many versions of realized death short of physically dying…there are also the quiet deaths.
How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba?
Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child,
between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust.
Feel your mature fondness for who you once were, and the recurrent need to protect innocence wherever you might find it.
The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is the most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.
… As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live.
Matthew Sanford, The Body’s Grace… which is not so much about dying as it is about living without separation. Which brings me to…

Song of the Day; which came on the radio right after I saw the woman and the boy:


There's a reason why when my son (who's six) is crying, he needs a hug.
It's not just that he needs my love.
He needs boundary around his experience.
He needs to know that the pain is contained and can be housed, and it won't be limiting his whole being… he gets a hug and, mmm, he drops into his body.
And when you drop into your body, paradoxically, typically pain is less.
Matthew Sanford, The Body’s Grace

Anthony de Mello: Three stories

Hotai
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

A friend recently tipped me onto Father Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, born in Mumbai, India.
Yes, he was an Indian Catholic.
While I’ve broken the de Mello’s words into three stories here, they are actually an excerpt from the essay, “Losing Yourself to Find Yourself.”
That some of his writings were banned by Pope Benedict (when he was Cardinal Ratzinger) adds poignancy to the final lines of the last story.

One
Suppose somebody walks into my room one day.
I say, "Come right in. May I know who you are?"
And he says, "I am Napoleon."
And I say, "Not the Napoleon . . ."
And he says, "Precisely. Bonaparte, Emperor of France."
"What do you know!" I say, even while I'm thinking to myself, "I better handle this guy with care."

''Sit down, Your Majesty," I say.
He says, "Well, they tell me you're a pretty good spiritual director. I have a spiritual problem. I'm anxious, I'm finding it hard to trust in God. I have my armies in Russia, see, and I'm spending sleepless nights wondering how it's going to turn out."
So I say, "Well, Your Majesty, I could certainly prescribe something for that. What I suggest is that you read chapter 6 of Matthew: "Consider the lilies of the field . . . they neither toil nor spin."

By this point I'm wondering who is crazier, this guy or me.
But I go along with this lunatic.
That's what the wise guru does with you in the beginning.
He goes along with you; he takes your troubles seriously.
He'll wipe a tear or two from your eye.
You're crazy, but you don't know it yet. The time has to come soon when he'll pull the rug out from under your feet and tell you, "Get off it, you're not Napoleon."
In those famous dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena, God is reported to have said to her, "I am He who is; you are she who is not."

Have you ever experienced your is-not-ness?
In the East we have an image for this. It is the image of the dancer and the dance.
God is viewed as the dancer and creation as God's dance.

It isn't as if God is the big dancer and you are the little dancer.
Oh no. You're not a dancer at all.
You are being danced!

Did you ever experience that?
So when the man comes to his senses and realizes that he is not Napoleon, he does not cease to be.
He continues to be, but he suddenly realizes that he is something other than what he thought he was…


Two
How do you change yourself?
There are many things you must understand here, or rather, just one thing that can be expressed in many ways.
Imagine a patient who goes to a doctor and tells him what he is suffering from.
The doctor says, "Very well, I've understood your symptoms. Do you know what I will do? I will prescribe a medicine for your neighbor!"
The patient replies, "Thank you very much, Doctor, that makes me feel much better."
Isn't that absurd?
But that's what we all do.
The person who is asleep always thinks he'll feel better if somebody else changes.
You're suffering because you are asleep, but you're thinking, "How wonderful life would be if somebody else would change; how wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, my wife changed, my boss changed."


Three
A friend of mine told me that there's an African tribe where capital punishment consists of being ostracized.
If you were kicked out of New York, or wherever you're residing, you wouldn't die.
How is it that the African tribesman died?
Because he partakes of the common stupidity of humanity.
He thinks he will not be able to live if he does not belong.
It's very different from most people, or is it?
He's convinced he needs to belong.
But you don't need to belong to anybody or anything or any group.
You don't even need to be in love. Who told you you do?

What you need is to be free.
What you need is to love.
That's it; that's your nature.

But what you're really telling me is that you want to be desired.
You want to be applauded, to be attractive, to have all the little monkeys running after you.
You're wasting your life.
WAKE UP!
You don't need this. You can be blissfully happy without it.

Your society is not going to be happy to hear this, because you become terrifying when you open your eyes and understand this.
How do you control a person like this?

Why

Blueberry Buddha
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I am not devoted to one master.
Still, when I read this story it brought a new understanding that cut me deeply.

T.K. Sundaresa Iyer (T.K.S) met Sri Ramana in 1908 when T.K.S was only a twelve year old boy. Bhagavan, although a full blown Self-Realized sage, was also quite young… One day T.K.S asked his cousin (Krishnamurthy) where he went every day.
Krishnamurthy told him about Ramana and said, “The Lord of the Hill Himself is sitting in human form, why don’t you come with me.” Both of them then climbed the Hill and went to Virupksha cave to visit the Sage.

Now the story in T.K.S.’s own words:
I too climbed the Hill and found Bhagavan sitting on a stone slab, with about 10 devotees around him. Each would sing a song. Bhagavan turned to me and asked, “Well, won’t you sing a song also.” One of Sundramurthy’s songs came to my mind and I sang it. It’s meaning was, “No other support have I, except thy holy feet. By holding on to them, I shall win your grace. Great men sing your praise Oh, Lord. Grant that my tongue may repeat Thy name even when my mind strays.”

“Yes. That is what must be done,” said Bhagavan, and I took it to be his teaching for me. From that time on, I went to see him regularly for several years without missing a day.

One day I wondered why I was visiting him at all. What was the use? There seemed to be no inner advancement. Going up the hill was meaningless toil. I decided to end my visits on the hill.

For one hundred days exactly I did not see Bhagavan. On the hundred and first day I could suffer no longer and I ran to Skandasramam, above Virupaksha Cave. Bhagavan saw me climbing, got up and came forward to meet me. When I fell at his feet, I could not restrain myself and burst into tears. I clung to them and would not get up.

Bhagavan pulled me up and asked: “It is over three months since I saw you. Where were you?” I told him how I thought that seeing him was of no use. “All right,” he said, “maybe it is of no use, so what? You felt the loss, did you not?”

Then I understood that we did not go to him for profit, but because away from him there was no life for us.

Yes. That’s it: away from That there is no life for me.

Song of the Day

girls 60
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I was telling a friend recently I have kind of got off-line mentally.
This was not my intention. Rather my belly drove me there – too much stirred up energetically and finally the mind just quit.
My friend had warned me: belly trouble means resistance.
So now, the resistance has stopped… no more brain.
The eyes see. The ears hear. The brain does not make so much a story.


Which brings me to “The Song of the Day,” heard on the radio while driving to work.
It had me dancing in my head. It had me humming along.
It had me chuckling.

I often hear “Song of the Day” while coming to work. I always spare you.
Well, not today.
Hear. See. Do. Share.

The song? … you’ll have to hear.
Stupid? Yes. (Eyes closed may help.)
Revealing my age? Sure!
Enjoyable.
Oh, Yes!

The Slow Cook

Japanese Feather
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

A complete recognition, maybe the recognition of seeing what’s not true, what’s not you - it can happen in an instant.
[Or] it can be a slow cook.
It happens in different ways, this recognition.
It’s not that the Self or Reality happen - but the recognition of it. The recognition of it can be something of an event, something falls away… a kind of peeling away of like a cataract of illusory identification…

But even if it happens quickly, there’s a slow cook aspect of it that continues.
It seems paradoxical even, but there is a sort of maturity that continues to happen, but against a background of unchanging awareness at the same time… a slow burning away of the noise of identity…

Anyone who are somehow in the taste of this self-experiencing recognize that something is dissolving by itself. And there’s a sense of an eagerness to be out of the way mentally with it.
If you’re hammering at trying to believe something, it doesn’t really work.
It’s a whole move where you find yourself somehow just like if you fall in love.
No one has to remind you to remember your beloved.
I’m comfortable with the word grace in this way. There’s something that you feel compelled to complete… so you go for it.
Mooji, Before I Am, video on Conscious.TV

I transcribed this segment from the video sometime last week, really appreciating the phrase slow cook.
And yes, something is dissolving. That’s another way of describing the flimsy cheesecloth sensation I wrote about.
So, I wanted to hear more.
A slow burning away, doesn’t sound that bad.
But, it doesn’t always feel that good.

Still, I loved the words, There’s something that you feel compelled to complete… so you go for it… just like if you fall in love.

I wouldn't trade this for the world.

Unenlightening Yourself

Claudia's rocks
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

When a person’s awakening vacillates, he or she often asks me, “How do I stay in the awakened state? That is asking the wrong question… Spirit never asks itself, “How do I stay within myself?” That would be ridiculous. It just makes no sense...

What makes more sense is to ask how you unenlighten yourself.
What is still held on to? What is still confusing? What situations in life can get you to believe things that aren’t true and cause you to go into contradiction, suffering, and separation? What is it specifically that has the power to entice consciousness back into the gravitational field of the dream state? ...

How is it specifically that I’m putting myself back in illusion… even though re-identification is totally spontaneous and it’s not happening to anybody and it’s not anybody’s fault – we still need to investigate how it happens.
Adyashanti, The End of Your World.

As I took up my investigation into “witnessing” I saw clearly that my pattern for many years has been to have a period of intense witnessing during which I was sure consciousness had shifted. Then, after some time, I would begin to doubt the authenticity of both my experience and interpretation.

I would decide, “No, this isn’t witnessing,” but merely something totally out of kilter physically. In essence, I would pathologize the situation. And off I’d go, stewing in that direction. How could I mend my body? Then, hopefully, the gap of witnessing would close and the unreality of creation would feel real once more. And I would stop telling myself a pretty spiritual story when in fact I was “sick.”

But, when I decided to accept that witnessing was a foundation I could count on, a fairly permanent, consistent spiritual experience, and investigate into the nature of the witness, I had to drop the habit of pathologizing.

Not that the habit didn’t try to re-establish itself. But, now I see it as that – simply a habit, a pattern of thought. I also see the power this belief has to immediately unenlighten.
So, I let it go. Dropped it. And guess what:

Our ideas about what’s good and bad and what’s happening to us are TOTALLY conditioned. We prefer soft grace over fierce grace. But soft grace is actually no better than fierce grace. It’s all grace…

If you want it to become stable, as I said, don’t worry about trying to get enlightenment back. Look in the moment, this moment, any moment: How am I unenlightening myself?

If you want to become stabilized in It – That’s how to do it.
“Humm, how am I un-realizing myself right now?”
Cause you can always see that.
And when you see that, the realization reveals itself of its own accord.
Adyashanti, Omega Institute, July, 2007.

Adya was right.
I dropped pathologizing and the witness became “the stick that stirs the funeral pyre [and] is itself consumed by the fire.”

But, this still left the doubt of consistency and permanency in the experience of consciousness. There are varying levels of intensity to the witnessing.
And again, doubt would always enter: “Have I lost it?”
I must have been mistaken. I am not enlightened.

Then, I recalled what “coming out” had been like. Discovering the truth in this instance had seemed a life and death decision. And I agonized for years.
Once I finally found the truth (and it wasn’t a decision- it was a seeing), I went through several days of fearing I would lose my realization if it slipped from my awareness.
So, I tried to hold it in my mind, “I’m gay. I’m gay.”

Well, guess what – sexual orientation doesn’t depend at all upon keeping it in your attention day and night. Which is not to say clearly knowing the reality doesn’t make all the difference in the world! It's just that the reality doesn't depend upon always noticing, "I gay."

Couldn’t awakening and enlightenment be similar?
You have to see and know. But, it needn’t be right there in your face every waking and sleeping moment.
Perhaps the Witness could also come and go in intensity without changing the reality of the situation. Because, whenever I chose to look, to pay attention, there it is unchanged.

I suspected that once again, holding an incorrect belief made me doubt my experience, made me unenlighten myself.
A couple days later I came across these words of Douglas Harding:

[Ramana] said when he was asked whether he was brilliantly awake or alert all the time that sometimes it’s like the treble melody in the piece of music which you attend to; if you’re attending to that music then that’s what you attend to, not to the bass accompaniment. But if the bass accompaniment were to stop you would notice it, and sometimes his experience is more in the bass accompaniment, and sometimes in the treble melody, and therefore there are rhythms of attention.

And the way I put it, is this. I think practice is enormously important indispensable to keep coming back to this. Coming back to it until it’s natural to be natural.
…it’s like my love for Catherine, for instance. For hours and hours, it might be the whole day when I didn’t think of Catherine. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love her anymore. There’s a level in my being where I go on loving her whether I’m celebrating it and spelling it out or not.

The love is going on anyway, and it’s similar with who I really, really, really am. I mean this deep, deep conviction of who I really, really, really am is not an idolatrous being hooked on all the time in being absorbed in that Reality… I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be raised to consciousness the whole time. To think that it has to be raised to full consciousness the whole time seems to me a species of idolatry.

So, I was right. And Adya was right.
And, one by one, I have been examining how it is I unenlighten myself.
I am seeing what isn’t true.
Each “seeing” bursts a false belief and soothes my mind, my over active, scientific, skeptical, aggitated mind.

So, for most people some version of this is part of the phase of how awakening happens.
You know, awakening is sudden.
Enlightenment is the total harmonization of the Absolute and Relative so that we not only see and realize that the Absolute and Relative are One, but feel it, act it, and behave it on all levels of being.
Adyashanti, Omega Institute, July, 2007. CD 9 Track 6

Adya told me this three years ago. But, I hadn’t really listened.

Witnessing Part 2 or 3 or some such

Sleeping Buddha
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

One way to see through this apparent watcher is to become absorbed into it, understanding that it will eventually collapse of its own accord. Ramana Maharshi referred to the Witness as "the stick that stirs the fire and is eventually consumed by it." When the Witness dissolves, you will find that you have naturally arrived at …the direct apprehension of buddha nature in your own being.

With this in mind, dwelling as the Witness is seen as a transitional step. It could be said to lie halfway … between the object-oriented practices of concentration/insight and the complete surrender to what is, also known as non-duality.
Kenneth Folk

I feel like I have fallen way behind on recording what I intended to here- a journal of sorts on what happened after I decided to stop “unenlightening myself.”
So, in an attempt to catch up, I am cobbling some things together. Let me begin by going “way back” to notes from maybe 10 days ago as I began to investigate “the witness”:

….suddenly we’re not witnessing from the outside anymore. Instead, witnessing is taking place from everywhere simultaneously – inside, outside, around, up, down. Everything everywhere is being witnessed from inside and outside simultaneously, because what is being witnessed is what is witnessing.
Adyashanti

These words of Adya have stuck with me the past couple weeks.
When I first read, “witnessing is taking place from everywhere simultaneously – inside, outside, around, up, down….” I thought, “Oh my.”
I couldn’t conceive of such a witness.
My witnessing has been like that of the movie-goer staring up at the screen:
What is witnessed is seen to be like a dream, like a movie or a novel, unfolding in front of us.

Such witnessing has made it rather easy to realize that the world “out there” is somewhat less than “Real.” And this has been going on for years and years now, fading in and fading out of intensity so that I have finally adopted an attitude that mixes ignoring, frustration, amazement and pathologizing.

But then, my friend asked me, “What if you never decide?” And I realized if I simply accepted the status quo I could very well spend the rest of my life “unenlightening” myself.

So I took up examining the witness and things immediately began to shift.

Just those words from Adya, “witnessing up, down, outside, inside” while beyond my ability to imagine, started a kind of disintegration, a dissolving.
This is the power of words spoken from Truth.
They resonate with the Truth inside. They light the fire.

What I noticed after a few days was the world felt so much softer. Whatever was looking out through my eyes, that center of “me-ness,” no longer peered out across a great gap. The gap (between the movie viewer and the silver screen) was gone. “Out there” now seemed much more like a continuum with myself. Creation and I became a soft and somehow watery continuum.

But while the gap had disappeared, the Unreal nature of Creation was maintained. And, I couldn’t say that witnessing was occurring from everywhere. There was still a duality.

A few days after that, I began to notice that “I” (for lack of a better word) was beginning to disintegrate. I was losing the fabric of my individuality- not by merging into One, but through disappearing entirely.
A photo I’d made of the Buddha covered by cheesecloth came to mind. Yes, it seemed the fabric of “me” was becoming cheesecloth. Something un-namable was breaking through.
It wasn’t too uncomfortable. But, it was strange.
My stomach was having trouble: it began to love, it began to sob. It physically hurt most of the time and I was reacting very intensely to the simplest events.

Then, one day at work, I feel a bit on edge, a bit lost, and wanted very much to call a friend.
Not that I had anything to say. I tried to think of something worth a phone call and came up blank.
I just wanted to have her on the phone, to hear her voice. Finally, I realized that what I really wanted was to touch this most familiar someone whom I knew and loved; because now, the world had taken on that same rather cheesecloth-like flimsiness.
I felt like I no longer held onto anything: I couldn’t hold onto my self identity. I couldn’t hold onto Creation. I stood there in the middle of the lab frozen in place in a Void that still gave rise to appearance.
Then, I realized even a vague discomfort can be clung to and apparently, that’s my belly’s job these days.

After that I went about in a world gone soft and the gap closed. From my shoulders up past my head there seemed to open a vast beam of consciousness. Below my shoulders my belly periodically erupted with various emotions and nausea.
As a practice I just kept falling back into my self. At times I tried inquiry. That’s what Nisargadatta recommends.
Today I found this discussion by Kenneth Folk entitled “The Witness: Turning the Light Around” :

…[So] far… it is as though we have been looking down from on high at this odd creature, saying “Ha ha. See how it does this? See how it does that?”
If we want to go to the next level…. We are going to turn the light of attention back on itself, and we are going to ask this question: “Who am I?” Or “Who is looking?”… There are various ways to get in touch with this. The simplest and most practical and consistently effective way is to ask the question “Who am I?” …
When you do “who am I?” and become absorbed as the Self you eventually transcend the Witness and get to this place where the kundalini energy comes back down from the head: it actually goes out the top of the head—you can actually feel this and see this—and circles back down to the body and comes to rest primarily at the heart center but also at all of the chakras along the way. It forms this kind of circuit, this kind of cocoon of energy… At this point you are no longer dissociated from your experience the way you were when you were dwelling as the Witness.

I found it impossible to do inquiry as it felt like “turning the attention around” and that seemed simply impossible. Perhaps this was because I conceived of inquiry as turning a skinny little beam of attention around to look within, as if the finger that I had been pointing out to Other, now turns to point in my own face.

I found that my awareness, or attention, or I could even call it “the light” (but don’t picture any beam of light) was far too unbounded to turn. I could no more shift the direction of my attention/consciousness around than the universe could turn around so that It might gaze at Its own navel.

I did the only thing it felt possible to do with this field I’d labeled as The Witness – I sank back into it. I allowed the wavelet of me to relax and melt back towards the ocean of Witness.

When the light is turned around, the energies of heaven and earth, yin and yang, all congeal. This is what is called "refined thought," "pure energy," or "pure thought." When you first put this technique into practice, there is seemingly nonbeing within being. Eventually, when the work is accomplished, and there is a body beyond your body, there is seemingly being within nonbeing.
The Secret of the Golden Flower, translated by Thomas Cleary

I'm not so sure what Cleary has translated here. But I hope it will become clear.

Florian Schlosser: The Subtlest Identification

Fall petals
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

In that realization that nothing is real, all reference points disappear.
Yet, the Nothingness itself becomes a new reference point.
And this is the subtle identification.
I see it in other teachers. I see it in people going to satsang… If they speak with you… “It’s not real.”
But this is a concept, a reference point.
Florian Schlosser

Something has been bothering me about some of the teachers in the new crop of non-dual (Neo-Advaita) teachers. Something about their teaching doesn’t always ring quite true…at least not to me.

It got me thinking about a story Maharishi once told us. His point was that there was historical precedence for groups of people to practice together and become enlightened together. He told an ancient story of a group of sages who did many austerities and became so pure they ascended to heaven. There they joined in the banquet that the gods were enjoying, until one god stopped everything cold declaring, “I smell a human.”

The other gods alerted, then sniffed and the three sages were summarily tossed back to earth, betrayed by the stink of the last vestiges of their human impurity. So, they rededicated themselves to purification and in the end once more ascended, this time for good.

So, see, Maharaishi said, we can meditate in groups and together rise to heaven. Well, to me, the story also speaks to this feeling I have of “something fishy” about these newly realized teachers. And I’ve begun to think that perhaps I am simply noticing that last little trace, “a whiff” of ego. When I first realized this, I had to laugh. Of course!
“Takes one to call one,” we used to retort as kids. And wouldn’t that be just the way of egos- to be very sensitive to and ready to bust another ego.

Well, Florian Schlosser has made very good sense of all this for me. And then, I realized Adya also has spoken of this trap that awaits many after an awakening.
After realization of Nothingness, the ego then identifies with Nothing.
Florian Schlosser:

That realization is the absence of, the complete vanishing of the sense of me, together with the world. Nothing remains. All that is there is consciousness. Yet, as long as the body is alive unavoidably there remains a last sense of indestructible identification (…that would be the end of the body.)
I still was able when someone called my name to turn around and recognize them. So, that is indestructible. As long as the body survives we are literally bound to a certain limited degree of identification. [Otherwise] we wouldn’t be able to function. I was hardly functioning anymore. Yet, what I saw is that that subtle sense was (and I saw this about half a year later) [it] started to pick up that Nothingness, and the sense of me sneaked in through the backdoor and now identified itself with the Nothingness.

So now, it was, “I am Nothingness.”
It was not Nothingness. It became a subtle identification with the Nothingness…

I’ve written before about my own mini-version of this locking onto a realization and how my Taoist teacher broke me of it. Even a moment’s insight can be grabbed up by the ego. So, I’m very grateful to be clear on the mechanics.
So, let’s go on with Florian:

When the residue of the sense of me identifies with Nothing it experiences everything as Nothing, and it also responds as if it it’d be Nothing.
So, you don’t hear anymore. You don’t listen.
Everything that people say, it’s just nothing, because that’s your nature. You’ve become nothing. And the seeing from Nothing means there’s no way to relate…
it was the ultimate way to protect my heart from meeting other people…
It was bliss inside, but it didn’t have relation to anything because everything was unreal.
So, why should I relate with something? Not even my partner…

And guess what? His partner fell in love with someone else and left him.

It was like someone taking the Zen stick and hitting me. And I fell from that Bliss bubble. It was a dropping from paradise… Even that ultimate realization of Nothingness is another way [of] protecting yourself from being visible, from what you really are…

Florian goes on to speak about embodiment- consciousness coming down into the tissues. He slaps his leg as he says this, but also waves his hands around his belly.
I hope to speak more about the belly… but that will have to be another day.
Meanwhile, I hope you can find the time to listen to all of Florian’s interview. I love what the Iain and Renata McNay are doing with Conscious TV.

Wolter Keers: The Witness

Shhhh
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I continue to try to see more clearly into what I’ve been calling “the witness.”
This morning during breakfast, I promised myself that tonight I will take the time to truly allow myself to settle back into It. I can’t recall how I exactly came to this resolve.
It may well have been after a glimpse at the trees once more produced the sensation of falling back into Nothingness and intuiting how such a falling back would snuff out all of Creation.
This sensation/perception has come up several times of late: while driving the car (not an opportune time to give into the urge), while at work (again, not real good timing). Once it came in the midst of doing the dishes. The form was somewhat different. I had the thought, completely out of the blue, “I must go pray.” I knew I didn’t mean prayer but rather complete transcendence. And I knew I meant “right now.” Even then, I hesitated a couple moments before giving in and drying off my hands. Oddly, I can’t recall just how all that played out.

Meanwhile, there’s one more day of work and a bit more time for perusing the internet for a teaching that speaks to me a bit. I found Wolter Keers:

After the finish of an action or a thought, a feeling or a sensory perception, an 'I' projects itself at the end, as a sort of tail. During listening there was no I. But, at the end of the story an I who heard the story, is manufactured.
How can an I, that isn't there at all, hear a story?
The 'I' is nothing but an invention. There is no such I and you have never done anything in your life. Things do themselves.
You are the witness of the movements of the body, also of the movement of what you call ‘your will' and that possibly precedes an action.
You are, whether you want to or not, and without any effort, the witness of fleeting thoughts and feelings. And you are - and that is the most important thing to see - also always witness of such an I-thought that you tack on like a tail behind a thought, a feeling, a perception or an action.
The I-thought is just a thought, similar to the thought about a nephew or niece, or about the Eiffel tower. It is one pan in the row of pans on a kitchen shelf. You are no more the one 'I-pan' than you are the other big and small pans…
The only thing that needs to be done is to see exactly that…

Oh! So any resistance I have to letting go is also not my doing?
Apparently I’m kidding myself to think I choose not to transcend while driving, or at work, or while sitting in the backyard. The Ocean is simply bidding it times and will take me when it wants…
I think I can feel this, at least partly. I certainly feel that something is pulling me along.
Even when I feel into “my” resistance it seems so rooted in my body that I sense it’s “not my doing.” I cannot choose to simply let go. Or so it seems.
Still, it feels like the situation is most delicate and brings to mind another teaching:

If you believe that there is something lacking, it is not quite so.
But if you think there is nothing to do, nothing needed, that is not quite so.
Elihu Genmyo Smith

It seems to me that there are two sides to the coin of language: one side speaks from the perspective of the One. The other side speaks from the perspective of the individual. As a seeker approaches the precipice it seems like you can get listen to both sides, as if the coin is stood up and balanced on its side. Yes, Grace is carrying me along. And still, it feels that “I”, this little me, has some responsibility. It’s not quite as if there’s nothing to do.

I was watching Wayne Liquorman this morning. He gave the best expression of this position: that even after enlightenment, there will be an expression of “individuality” as it runs about in a singular body. Maybe he is not into as thorough a Unity as other teachers of non-duality. Who knows? But, I liked how he put his teaching and he also wonderfully illustrated how we have to give up even our most cherished beliefs.
And I know I have my beliefs.
So, let’s get back to Wolter Keers:

Question: … I still think it is hard to achieve…. that getting the apparent-I out of the way is difficult to achieve.

W.K.: These sorts of remarks are an escape. Self-realization has nothing to do with easy or difficult. You don't need to do anything to look. Even if you close your eyes images come up. In this room there are at least four people who have completely seen what they are and what they are not.
Why them but not you?
Because they have opened themselves up to anything that wanted to come up for witnessing, sometimes slowly, and in some cases quickly. They never bothered with the question of whether it is easy or difficult. They consciously held their 'eyes' open and looked in clarity, surveyed.
That is the only possibility.
People who find this all too difficult are only lazy, nothing else. They are not destined for self-realization. The only qualification one needs to have is complete seriousness; that one is ready to jump into the abyss. But, whoever continues to listen to their fears, their cozy comfort, their laziness, remains where they are…

Question: Nevertheless it remains difficult to see that it isn't difficult.

W.K.: Whoever is in love, which literally means 'in the state of love', is a good lover, and if the partner is also in love, they are a beautiful couple. But whoever is neurotic thinks that they should love more than they do. In other words, whoever lays the accent more on himself instead of the beloved, and thinks that he, the personality, has to produce love, for him even love is an impossible task.
If you, you, you just don't do anything; if you just allow yourself to dissolve in the love that you are in the deepest part of your being, all other problems are solved.
The Rabbit In the Hat, Wolter Keers