The Awakening Guide: A Companion for the Inward Journey (Companions for the Inward Journey Book 2)

by Bonnie Greenwell

  Trust and A Clear View

  Spiritual practices and spiritual communities are most valuable when they offer a sound way to live, and a compassionate perspective about the human condition, along with companions who support the intention to be awake. They provide a place to develop trust in the possibility of direct spiritual realization, even while living in a culture that does not recognize or support it.

  A good friend of mine lived in Russia the first 35 years of her life, and developed a profound spiritual orientation and awakening while active in a spiritual underground that existed for many years, below the surface of Communism. There she studied many of the great religions, and consistently followed many spiritual practices including meditation, yoga, visualization and energy practices. It gave me great hope for the world when I heard her story, for it is clear that this drive in humans is far more persistent than any of the political ideologies we have attempted.

  Besides offering community, when an awakened teacher is at the heart of the group there is a transmission that can deeply activate the potential for your own awakening. The teacher’s guidance can clear away conceptual cobwebs, and activate realization when the moment is right. Spiritual practices can make the body and spirit more open, quiet and receptive. But more important than physical training is the development of a flexible mind, not so set in its ways, and willing to surrender itself into the unknown. We must trust emptiness when we encounter it.

  People speak of this as a loss of ego and make a great deal out of the difficulty of giving up ego. But no one has ever seen or touched an ego. It is only a movement, the aspect of mind that wants to protect us and keep us in a particular self-image and holds together the varied impressions of how we ought to behave. A spiritual ego is as burdensome as any other kind of ego, locking us into a spiritualized behavior that we identify with and protect. When we are willing to let go of our point of view, and our attachment to what we “know”, we are at a portal that can open into direct understanding. We have to stand naked before it or we cannot go through the door.

  The Willingness Not to Know

  To ask a question, and acknowledge you do not know the answer, in some mysterious way opens you to the very corner of your being that does know, but probably cannot put it into words. A great portal to awakening is to give up the struggle to figure it out and feel the frustration, and the acceptance, that you do not know the truth of who you are. Ramana Maharshi taught his followers to ask, ”Who Am I?” or “What am I?” and to bring this question to the heart, rather than the mind. It is a useful koan, or puzzle. What is actually there when we have no answer? What is that?

  Adyashanti has told students that his first awakening only happened when he felt himself to be a complete failure at his Zen practice, which he had committed himself to many hours a day for years. In utter desperation he gave up, and a portal opened that carried him into realization. Accompanied by an overwhelming rush of energy, his consciousness released into a vast cosmic space.

  For me it happened during a long retreat, when I suddenly felt consciousness dropping through the spiritual heart, (a point of focus Ramana Maharshi describes as being on the right side of the chest, 3 finger widths from the sternum), and falling into a spaciousness in which everything dissolved. For a moment I feared I would lose all the learning I’d ever accumulated, and then I knew I didn’t care. I had no desire for anything other than a moment of Truth even it cost me everything. I fell into an interior endless ocean of radiance and love, shimmering like ether, and a beauty beyond imagining. I knew in every cell I was that. Once awareness knows itself it can never again be tricked into thinking it is less, no matter how stubbornly the mind tries to reinvent separateness.

  No one can fake this awakening and make it work. A person needs to be completely engaged exactly where he or she is, whether it be an intense practice or longing, or a letting go, or terror about the whole thing. It is done by consciousness itself -– it erupts and throws its energy down (or up or out) into a greater expanse. Our willingness to give up knowing, or to release attachments to how we ought to be, or how our lives ought to be, helps us to be vulnerable to this eruption.

  Seeing Through Conditioned Mind

  I once heard a non-dual teacher say he sometimes puts on his mask of amusement and laughs at himself. This is a sign of someone who has seen through his mind and behaviors, recognizing the presence and the irrelevance of conditioning. To the extent we can see through our thoughts and concepts as if they were clouds simply obscuring a small portion of awareness, we become available for awakening. All thoughts are related to past and future, and keep us occupied by stirring up emotions and reactions, giving us positions to hold, as if they could protect us from our fates. But when we begin to consider, “I am not these. I am that which notices all that arises,” we begin to free ourselves from their compulsive hold on us.

  When I first read the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, I was very disturbed at the idea he proposed that there is no personal self, no “me”. I sat with this in meditation for days. I could feel the emotional pull to be someone separate, who might even endure beyond this meager lifetime, although I could not find any substantial argument to convince me she would. I could see the extent to which thoughts created “me”, having stored and organized all my life experiences for this purpose. But who was here before they began, such as in early infancy? Was it possible I was something that existed before this particular life story was collected, and would exist when all of it fell away? If so, was this that I am essentially separate from this same “am-ness” in all other humans? And what about the possibility that all forms are just molecular energy? How substantial could we be?

  Some teachers shock us into reconsidering our stance, help us see through the beliefs we have been trained to hold, and help to ripen us for awakening.

  Meeting Truth in the Teacher

  Enlightened teachers are portals in themselves. They are so open to the spaciousness before and beyond mind that when you are in their presence you begin to see yourself in their eyes, not the little self, but the vast and unbounded Self. This can be scary, shocking, ecstatic, astonishing and many other things. You might run off in fear, or fall in love. You are disarmed. Anything can happen.

  There is a quality called transmission that is not about the movement of energy so much as the resonance of pure consciousness, from itself to itself. That is, the consciousness that knows itself in the teacher, also knows itself as the other, you. It makes no distinction. To be seen this way through the body of an apparent “other” puts one at the threshold of realization. You may be ready to go through this portal, to let the energy carry you wherever it will, or you may need time to trust, either the teacher or yourself. It is because of this potential that so many classical spiritual teachings emphasize the value of a teacher on the path. Some people have awakened without teachers, through some amazing grace. I found for myself that it was the essential element I had missed or underestimated, for many years.

  Not any teacher will do. It has to be the one you particularly resonate with. This is another part of the mystery not to be explained, because the mind could only make up stories about why it is this way. But if this is your path, when you find your teacher, you will know it.

  Always Now

  You can only be awake right now.

  You may be distracted right now by thousands of other thoughts and concerns, following random theories of how things could go wrong, or how you are poorly prepared, or what it would be like if you suddenly changed, and your friends did not like you anymore. We have so many ways of avoiding the now, and sidetracking any kind of intimacy with this moment. When someone awakens to their true nature they are fully and completely present in that moment with no thoughts distracting them elsewhere. He or she can sense when mind begins to pull back and re-identify with separateness.

  All the stillness and silence of spiritual practice is aimed at quieting everything so you can be here now. All the talk of le
tting go of ego is simply a way of saying “Stop!” Do not be anyone for a moment and see what happens! Be nothing! Stay there!

  Awakening happens as we are thrust into the moment before thought, into the blankness, wholly and without clinging to a single other thing. We have to stop. As improbable as it may seem, this is where we discover what we are, what life is.

  The reason so many people who have initial awakenings do not seem to sustain them is that it is so challenging to only be present in the now. We have little control over this, except to remember it. Consciousness will follow mind automatically through all the nuances of our past and future. It has no concern about whether or not we think. When the habits of thought, and compulsions that follow our emotions, have run their course, the pure consciousness that is always present becomes more and more dominant in our lives. This portal of now is always here, and most awakened people find themselves whipped in and out of it, without control, for a long time after an initial awakening. Presence is always here. Thought comes afterwards, and is always a great temptation to follow. Thinking never truly ends. As a friend once commented “Thought is a chronic condition.” But it can become quiet, less intrusive, and free of self-limiting references.

  Once presence is firmly established, thought can be engaged deliberately for specific purposes, and functions more like a resting but possibly useful passenger on the train, rather than the driver.

  Bringing Awareness Through the Body/Mind

  If you sit back for a moment and tune in to your body, where do you find your energy most active? Where is awareness concentrated? For most people, most of the time, it is in their head. We use our heads continually during the day to think about things, listen, read, speak, and eat. Some people talk continually, as if they have no body and no other functional possibility. Some people are quiet, but thoughts grind continually inside of them. Some have jobs where they have to be alert and consider many possibilities. Some spiritual practices focus on the third eye, and people concentrate until they have headaches and wonder why they do not feel grounded.

  So the last portal I will point to is below the neck. Find out who you are below your neck. Sit and let your awareness drop down through neck and shoulders, into the chest, into the belly, into the genitals and the legs and the feet. What does your heart have to say about you, and your belly, and your toes? How do your legs feel about the chair they are touching, and the air surrounding them? Internally, can you feel your bones and your blood flowing? Can you feel the space inside?

  Awakening happens to the whole being, to all the cells in the body, not just to the head. You will become more grace-prone if you get in touch with your whole body, and you will deepen and stabilize an awakening by letting it fall into the heart and the belly. When the heart awakens there is an entirely new perspective on life. When the belly awakens, there is the final opportunity to live an awakened life: a life that is solid, grounded and ordinary, even while being without a sense of root or meaning. A sense of stillness, openness or emptiness permeates the cells, and they become one with all. They are awake. Buddhists call this building a mountain of emptiness. You are grounded in open space.

  Consciousness is already in all of these cells and organs, or you would not be functioning. But it is not conscious of itself until it has awakened. When only the mind is awakened there can be a great realization of Truth, but it will not be lived until it permeates your entire body. You cannot make this happen, but you can invite it by inviting openness, and playing with awareness, moving it through your entire subtle and physical system. People who love music and sound are allowing their chanting, voices or instruments to open and resonate throughout the body, and this is why many devotional spiritual practices include chants, toning or musical celebrations called kirtan. Sacred and ritual dances are another ancient way of moving energy and awareness to open the portals into realization. Yoga and QiGong use movement to encourage the flow of awareness. An aspect of being awake is to be fully alive in motion as well as in stillness.

  Natural Portals

  All of the strong heart-felt emotions can plunge us into eternity, into knowing who we are. Love, or grief, and even extreme rage or physical pain can push us so fully that all else stops, and in some inexplicable way consciousness drops right through it, into empty space. We burst out of the intensity and into a center of calm or perhaps joy, just as if we have slipped out of a hurricane into its eye. These kinds of awakenings often don’t stick with us, because we fail to recognize we have fallen into our true nature, and consider it just a strange event. Many of the tastes of awakening happen spontaneously, and prepare us gradually for the day we can know a sustained realization of who we are.

  I’ve met people who had spontaneous openings when they were children while standing in a schoolyard, and others who were walking down a street on the way to work. I believe many who know they are dying fall in and out of an awakened state for days, as the mind gives up its old identities and attachments fall away. One friend, a psychiatrist with terminal cancer, would sit in presence, and laugh joyfully as she saw beyond the patterns of her ebbing life, and told me “This is so beautiful, and so hilarious”. She appreciated that I would enter these places with her, and said most of her friends were afraid to go there. People who work with hospice often report these transpersonal moments of merging in spaciousness with a client.

  Sudden and Gradual Awakening

  A few people are thrown briefly and unexpectedly through the portal of awakening, feeling blasted into light, or a sensate river of ecstatic energy and clear insight, or an unbounded cosmic consciousness and then brought back and dumped into their ordinary world. This can happen because of a trauma or accident, a life-threatening situation, a drug reaction, and sometimes for no reason that can be discovered. Others have “sudden” awakenings following years of a spiritual practice.

  Awakening is always sudden because one is thrown into radical unfamiliar territory and feels the nature of existence on entirely new terms. It often erupts explosively, the way a water balloon pops when it hits the ground. Suddenly one senses or sees the nature of life before mind or thought began to divide and order things. The mind believes such a world is chaotic, and should be kept below the surface of memory. But when it is touched, felt and known to the Being-ness you are, it puts everything into a new order with a new kind of understanding. Sudden awakening has the capacity to change you immediately.

  But sudden awakenings are only a glimpse into the portal of Truth for the majority of people: only a brief stay is allowed before they must return to their old world. For a few this glimpse is enough to bring harmony, and acceptance of life as it is. The search is over. For some it triggers a long and gradual process of awakening. All that was familiar is seen in a new way, and both the internal psychological system and the external life is reorganized. It is as if everything within must be brought into awakeness, a piece at a time, and when that is done, the exterior world also calls to be awakened. Life is gradually surrendered into the awakened Self. Insights, openings, energies, further glimpses and other phenomena continue to occur, but there seems to be a synthesis developing between ordinary life and the interior life so that the distinctions become unimportant.

  This is a path from knowing oneself as awakeness, into living as awakeness, and just as in the other stages of spiritual process, it can follow many variables, and requires a loyalty and love of the Truth.

  Chapter 6

  The Deconstruction Zone

  If you sit for a time and watch your thoughts popping up you may notice two things. First, you have no control over what arises. Unless you are working to concentrate on one topic, which may hold your focus steady for a few minutes, thoughts seem to be a random downloading of unpredictable data from an indeterminate origin. They are no more manageable than your dreams.

  Secondly, nearly every thought is referenced to an “I”. It may seem you are thinking about your children, but more likely you are wondering “What can I do abo
ut…” or “What did I do wrong…” or, “How do they feel about me…?” It may seem you are thinking about an issue at work but this also leads to “What should I do about…?”, “I wouldn’t like it if this happened…”, “How will this affect me if…?”

  You may believe you are thinking about world events, but even this becomes, “I can’t do anything about it and it makes me unhappy…” Or, “I feel sorry for…”“I need to do this and see if it helps.” Or, even if your life feels perfectly okay in the moment, you might feel “I am depressed because bad things happen to other people.”