Since the open mind has always existed behind the façade of the separate self, occasional breakthroughs have occurred in human progress in those moments when someone has found something entirely new to express. Great spiritual teachers, scientists, and creative geniuses have occasionally brought into life a new energy that in time becomes woven into the collective fabric of thought, and impacts a large number of the population. Sometimes it is a myth or story that has ignited a potential for change, or a new cultural theory, and sometimes it is the action of a single person, looking at something in an entirely unique way.
When the mind opens the world is perceived in a new and fresh way, moment after moment, often bringing surprise at what is found to be arising next. Instead of a locked-up mind that is dominating the psyche in an effort to forcefully create a new conceptual world, there seems to be a simple intuitive flow from the heart or the belly bringing in possibilities that can lighten and expand compassion and wisdom in the collective mind.
Wisdom and Compassion
If you follow creation back to its most imaginable beginning, whether through science or religion, you are forced to see the beginning as nothing – no-thing, a vastness beyond where mind can go. To speak of this beginning the mind has to make up stories and all of these, whether focused on the big bang, the movements of wave and particle, the Great Mother, or the existence of a paternal God, begin with a subtle sound or movement in this nothingness. All creation myths begin here. Intuitively we know the Truth, that life has arisen from a vast and indescribable emptiness.
Those who are religious visualize a God who is the source and awakener of all that is. Those without this orientation may see a mathematical order, a flow of sound or energy, or an ecstatic consciousness as the first movement into form. All of these are thought-forms trying to describe an intuitive knowing that can never be put into language, because words are part of the relative world, and this Truth is before and beyond the limitations of the relative. That is why religions must rely upon faith. That is why some choose to have no image or no words for God, and others say there are thousands of names of God, since all that exists can only be a manifestation of this indescribable source.
Living by faith can be very comforting for some people, as any deeply felt belief will feel true and become a mental pattern that impacts how one lives. Many who have a sincere faith fall into a profound and genuine experience of connection with the whole, and the ecstasy or the visions that come with this experience serve to anchor them in their faith. But it can also happen that a deeply spiritual person has an experience that awakens into a dimension beyond the comfort of their conceptual understanding of God. When this happens, to the extent they can release the pull of the conditioned mind, and simply explore what is there, their life can be transformed.
Outside of faith, other people also come into this territory; they slip in through spiritual or energy practices, devotion or openness to a divinity or teacher, by studying scripture until their minds give up, and even by fate or accident. Since the spacious mind is underneath and all around any activity, one may reach it by giving up all activity; or paradoxically, by going completely through any activity to the core underneath.
Some spiritual practices are tantric, in that an emotion or experience is held on to until one goes through or past its limit and breaks out of it. Pushing the mind this way is like pushing a long knitting needle through an egg. Eventually it gets to the other side, and once it is out, it is cleanly in space. If the egg breaks, then the mind is open here and now, and like the fairy-tale of Humpty Dumpty, will never be the same again. It is free of its conditioned limitations.
No matter how one awakens from the confines of a limiting mental form, and discovers the other side of so-called reality, the moment of wisdom is at hand. When consciousness becomes its natural spaciousness it begins to unfold itself, and it is possible to receive an influx of energies formerly suppressed in the interest of staying separate. The most powerful of these are wisdom and compassion. Both are the consequence of seeing what is, and recognizing the paradox of the co-existing miraculous nature and pitiable state of the human condition. They recognize that suffering occurs primarily because it is taught, and humans do not realize who they are, and therefore what they are in common with everyone else.
How one moves in response to this understanding depends on what wisdom arises, the energies released, and how the vastness will use the vehicle once it is awake. Some people find themselves in roles they could not have imagined, and others lead quiet and inconspicuous lives. The sense of the “I” who must do something fades away, along with the self-image, to be replaced by an inner movement or inclination that cannot be ignored, even if it seems irrational to the mind. Here are a few examples:
Amanda was an artist, and after awakening she felt compelled to visit third world countries and leave behind an inspiring and natural expression of wholeness. In a synchronistic way she met someone who offered funding for her travels, and she went alone to 30 countries over 10 years, where she left behind images of Buddha in caves, a goddess statue in the forest, a town hall building in a village, a beautiful water pump in another, a sculpture in the desert and other creations that had meaning and usefulness to the people she met.
Steven was a quiet and introverted young man in California who had struggled in school with dyslexia, who loved to ride off alone on his bike. After seeing the word enlightenment in a book, he spent 15 years as a dedicated and disciplined meditator. After awakening, at his teacher’s suggestion he began to speak of his experiences to a small group, and within 8 years had audiences of many hundreds in cities around the country. He never had an image of being a spiritual teacher but it became the obvious thing for him to do.
Mari had an awakening shortly after her divorce, while living in California, after reading the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and practicing self inquiry. She felt called to a village in India, where she established a home for pilgrims visiting Arunachula, the mountain site where Ramana had lived. She stayed there for 20 years.
Rebecca spent 25 years with a kundalini master, and a few months after he died she began to channel his voice and teachings. She considered this a personal practice at first, and went on with her life as a psychologist. In time, she felt pulled to move and establish a yoga retreat center, which taught the many practices learned from him, and also provided a site for other spiritually oriented yoga programs to hold retreats.
No one can tell you what might happen after an awakening. Spiritual books have described amazing responses to realization such as Hildegard of Bingen, a 14th century German nun who traveled by oxcart through villages to preach, argued with the pope about who could be buried in the Catholic cemetery, wrote the first book on nature by sitting and observing the mating of frogs, wrote operas, had artists paint her astonishing visions, and all the while managed several monasteries for nuns. She said if she did not stay productive she ended up ill in bed.
And then there was the Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, self-realized at age 16, who sat in a cave not speaking for 15 years, then moved to a mountain hermitage where he spoke a bit, sat in silence, and inspired thousands of spiritual seekers from all over the world who went into samadhi in his presence.
Mahusudandasji, another Indian sage who lived to 112 years old, provided treatments for the blind and supported other medical projects in India, wrote books published around the world, and taught hundreds a classical form of kundalini yoga.
Rumi, born in Afghanistan in 1207, brought unconditional love for the divine, and the ecstatic turning of the Sufis, into his Islamic culture, and later became famous all over the world for his ecstatic poetry, which even today opens many hearts.
One never suspects what awakening has in store for us. But it will move from the wisdom and compassion of the mystery. The spaciousness we feel ourselves to be may seem empty, but its fruits are ever-flowering in the world of form.
Chapter 4
The I and the Self
Waking up begins with being still, becoming the presence that permeates this moment. It is the experience of laying down the burden of being someone, the me who is carrying thoughts, memories, plans, expectations, demands, concerns or intentions about any moment in past or future.
Have you noticed the heavy backpacks many children carry to school these days? Many now pull a piece of wheeled luggage to school filled with heavy books because it is damaging to their backs to haul this weight upright. Our identities are just like that. We carry them around in our heads and feel overwhelmed, depressed, and anxious so that we are sometimes even in physical pain from the stress of it, and function far below our true capacity.
Even worse, the cloudiness produced by the weight of our cultural and personal conditioning keeps us in a narrow lens of perception, preventing us from knowing the true nature that lies beneath and is trying to function through the fog. A spontaneous light and wisdom is just beneath the surface of our minds but until the mind is clear, it is only a dim and occasional beacon that might appear in unguarded moments, perhaps in meditation, or when needed to cope with a traumatic event.
The spiritual practices of all mystical traditions are aimed at clearing this cloud of personal identification so that the awareness beneath can recollect itself. Even a glimpse of our true functioning as this bright awakeness triggers a transformational process in our inner world, and often in the outer life as well. It is the beginning of an interior process that can move us to great heights and great depths, until the pendulum finally stops and one is able to live in the immediacy and presence that is free of self-referenced thought and time.
The Tendency to Entrancement
When consciousness or awareness momentarily stops being entranced by the world of form, it falls back deeply into itself and realizes its unlimited capacity for expansion. This is when people become prone to what has been labeled mystical experiences. These come in many varieties such as seeing apparent other dimensional beings, becoming one with the universe, hearing other-worldly music or voices, and feeling other profound shifts that cause us to identify with mysticism or spiritual ecstasy. Our normal sensing faculties become overwhelmed by anomalous new senses, such as seeing and hearing beyond form and into light and energy fields, sensations of energies shifting internally that were never before noticed, and high sensitivity to the radiance or vibration of others. One woman reported:
I cried a million cries and I laughed a million laughs feeling like I was in this black empty space in the universe. I was so open to all the beauty that was surrounding me. I was crying when I heard music. It was like God was singing in every song assisting me in my transformation. Seeing mothers with their children, nature became so magical. I saw the beauty in every leaf of a flower, smelling and touching a lily as if forever. I felt such a deep love for everyone. But also I saw and felt so much pain on TV and in this world…I felt like I cried for every person on this planet. I started journaling and answers came instantly. I wrote and wrote until late nights having realizations, deepenings, awakenings, weeping.
This process also pulls thoughts and emotions into impersonal spaces so that there may be an infusion of wisdom, or a feeling (love, loss, rage) that seems so vast it belongs to the planetary consciousness rather than the individual. Having once been entranced by the world of form, the mind becomes entranced by the wonder of the formless. Having known the world of limitation, the mind is delighted to know there are other frontiers to explore. Ecstasy may move us suddenly from one dimension to another. Here is a description beginning with a kundalini experience from a woman with many years of meditation practice and spiritual experiences in her background.
I woke up this morning with much less pain. I felt a surge of kundalini energy when I got out of bed, very full and joyful. When I did yoga there was a great deal of gleeful kundalini surging through, causing me to laugh for no reason. The laughter seemed on the edge of crying, a bit crazed; there were also funny noises that seemed to rise from the belly, which also made me laugh. None of the emotions felt like they penetrated to my real self, though it was fun. I did my usual asana routine but was often halted mid-posture by a force that led me to turn or hold in a different way to assist what my body really needed for release. At one point, I gave into the energy fully and shook wildly. It was a little outrageous and I wondered how much I should be giving in. After that my mind felt very empty and was confused about who I was. I could tell I was something else entirely than what I usually think I am, even during spiritual experiences, but I concurrently felt that I was the ordinary space of consciousness I’ve come to know as me, no big deal. Everything feels this way these days. There’s a deep and very peaceful detachment, a lightness of attitude, even when I’m caught in ego, which is still quite actively doubting, fantasizing about being enlightened, trying to take over.
When mystical or ecstatic events happen it is natural to believe the phenomena is evidence of achievement or spiritual advancement. With this thought the identity is reformulated and the me returns. This new me tends to feel better than the former me, at least as long as the phenomena continue. The insight and pleasure that comes with mystical experience is a great comfort and it feels as if an important accomplishment has happened. But these new perceptions and beliefs can become another cloud over the true nature if they become concepts about how things ought to be. In time, as the phenomena fade, the mind and emotions can react with a sense of loss, and many old conditioned patterns may return.
In some people, the memory of mystical joy becomes a foundation for making positive life changes. For others, there can be a sense of failure, disillusion, blaming self or others, or condemning the challenges of human existence for the loss of peace and wholeness that was felt. In some cases a darkness will arise that seems to hold all the repressed and painful failings of this and even prior lifetimes. All of these patterns are simply the psyche reasserting itself with personal identifications and the impulse to regain a sense of a separate self. It is a natural process for a human psychological system to attempt to protect against vulnerability.
True awakening requires us to continue moving forward, long after our mystical experiences occur. Or perhaps it is more correct to call it moving backward. In Zen Buddhism it is sometimes called taking the backward step, or “closing the gap”. What is this gap? I see it as the space between being only presence and believing in a separate me, whether an ordinary and boring me, or a mystical and ecstatic me.
When the gap collapses consciousness moves into the place of stillness, awakeness and absolute peace that exists before or behind thought.
We touched this moment of oneness on the way to mystical experience. It lives us and is the presence in our ordinary lives as well as our mystical lives. It is the is-ness, the subtle sense of I, before there is any identification. It is out of the stream of thought and into the moment, where presence always is. It is what we are when we lay our burden down.
The Desire to Stay Awake
People often ask, “How do I keep my awakeness?” It was a pressing question for me for many years. And then I saw that I – the me -- can’t keep anything. Being nothing that is real, but only a thought, the only thing it can do is let go of attachment to itself. This thought that is me tends to accumulate, judge, evaluate, choose, desire and take credit for everything that happens in a life. At the same time something else is simply present before this thought -- seeing, sensing, aware-ing. As astonishing as it seems to the mind, all peace and happiness comes from this prior-to-me presence. When at first we step into it consciously, become consciousness as itself, there might be a moment of panic. The panic is probably in proportion to the depth at which we let go of the personal I, the degree of understanding we have about where we are going, and the trust we have in the unknown. It can be felt physically, like falling or dropping down suddenly in an elevator.
Did you ever spin in circles as a child and become dizzy, and then you could only lay still and wait for
the world to stop spinning? It is like this, you see the mind stop spinning and grabbing for things to think about, and you realize something is here noticing the mind, noticing the space in which you sit or stand, taking the world around you just as it is, and it has no objections or desires to change anything. All of that belonged to the world of thought, which is nothing concrete, nothing real, only a storage tank of energy steaming with all possibilities, and you had collected some of them and thought they were you. But it becomes very, very clear that none of them ever were who you are, including the thought of your birth and death, and especially your separateness.
Hold still in this moment. Resist the impulse to jump back into an identity, and you will see that you and all other beings and forms, are this one source, this one presence, this one process of living that is eternal.
The Awakening Guide: A Companion for the Inward Journey (Companions for the Inward Journey Book 2) Page 5