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

by Bonnie Greenwell

  Enlightenment is not an escape to another world with a more rarified atmosphere – it is the moment here and now inclusive of all space right here in you. It is a direct perception that there is nowhere to go, and no one to go there. It is an interior experience that is recognized as always present, even when it doesn’t seem to be, because it is clouded momentarily with mental activity. One lives in the timeless present. The mental patterns that are continually relating to the past and the future are no longer framing the personality, so it is freed into spontaneous action.

  When you are committed to knowing the Truth at all costs, and seeking this Truth in your own being, beyond your thoughts and conceptual world, you are very likely to wake up and discover who you are. Sometimes waking up is blissful and joyous, with overwhelmingly ecstatic moments; at other times it is a more quiet and simple realization. Some people have mystical experiences before and after awakening; some tend more toward quiet wisdom, gratitude and a great joy in the simple beauty of life. Most people, either before or after awakening, move through deconstruction, as described in the previous chapters.

  A few people have described their realization as sudden and complete, happening all at once so that the old self was completely annihilated. Even then, there is an adjustment period, usually lasting years, until one learns how to live as a no-body and to move from an impulse deep within rather than a thought or reaction of mind. Most people experience these changes more gradually, feeling as if they have their feet in two worlds for a long time, or that they are moving in and out of their awareness of Truth. During the deconstruction period:

  The belief systems shift and fall apart, along with the sense of direction and mission in life in those who felt driven to achieve something.

  If you have spent 30 years as a seeker you have probably abandoned other interests, so there is an adjustment to the fact that when not spiritual seeking, there isn’t much to do.

  In some cases the exterior life collapses. Whatever patterns were not authentic for you will disappear. To the extent you try to hold on to them you will suffer.

  Old emotional patterns arise, sometimes repressed from childhood, or even from past lives, and you may feel out of control as they roar through you.

  Often there are radical energy shifts in the body as the consciousness of the subtle field reorganizes itself. This is called purification in some traditions. We mistakenly tend to think purification is something we have to do. In fact, it is a spontaneous process that will happen with or without our intention.

  You may often feel lost in the unknown, uncertain what to do. You thought that enlightenment would mean you knew everything – but you do not even know what to do about your own life as it falls apart, so you might start doubting the authenticity of your experience.

  How to Become Free

  You are becoming free of yourself. Paradoxically, you can’t do this by abandoning yourself. Ultimately you learn to accept without reservation every aspect of your own and everyone else’s existence. You fall into the wholeness of the cosmos, which cannot happen if you exclude anything.

  Perhaps each person finds his or her own way into this acceptance. It is possible to hold both love and conflict in the same breath, allowing one to diffuse the pain of the other. By opening to spaciousness inside of yourself and holding both in the same space, the love from the one flows through the resistance in the other. There is such a profound love at our true center. It cannot turn its back on anything. As long as you rely on the mind, with its dualistic tendency to divide, label, and react to the events and experiences of life, you will suffer and you will stay in the world of time – the past and the future – and you will not be living in your true nature, which is always right here now, resting as stillness, openness and love. Go deeper than mind, below the neck and into the heart, to find Truth.

  Awakening does not cause anyone to become cold and heartless about the suffering in the world. If that happens you are stuck in a mental form of emptiness – untouched and distant. This is why compassion has been such an important component of the Buddhist and Christian teachings, devotion is emphasized in Hinduism, and the heart is emphasized on so many other spiritual paths. There lies within the source a powerful loving compassion for the struggles of humans, along with a sense of its place within the vast picture of all eternity.

  How Do We Endure this Process?

  We get through this by continuing to sit in stillness and peace, reconfirming our commitment to knowing the Truth, whatever the cost. We learn to stand comfortably in the unknown, relaxed, to allow everything to be as it is. We begin to look with curiosity and wonder at the mental constructions that built our sense of personal self, and the many diverse forms that life has produced all around us. If we are fortunate we find a teacher or community or at least a few friends who support our process. Trust that once you have had a direct recognition of who you are, that consciousness itself will arise to complete the process of self-realization in a way that is perfect for you, if you just get out of the way.

  This is the way of the journey to Self, to Truth and to a deep understanding of the nature of existence. The length of the journey and the unique characteristics of it vary from one person to another. It is as if the source has wanted to be found in eight billion different ways, from every angle possible. If you have a deep longing for Truth do not ever be discouraged. You once had a deep longing for life, and here you are, having gotten through it despite all the obstacles and cul-de-sacs. This inward journey is a mirror of our outer journey, returning us home. Learn to love and laugh and accept the unique expression you are along the way.

  Chapter 9

  When the I Steps Aside

  Ramana Maharshi, a revered sage of Advaita Vedanta, realized the truth of who he was when he was only 16, after he laid on a floor in his uncle's home, and asked himself what it would be like to die. Spontaneously he moved into the realization he later called Self. He then sat alone in a cave in Arunachula for many years. When he finally established an ashram and began to teach, he advised students to inquire “Who am I?

  Buddha experienced realization after decades of following various spiritual teachings, when he sat under a Bodhi tree and he determined to stay until he knew the Truth. He called his awakening an experience of No-Self.

  Zen Master Bankei said he discovered the Unborn when he awakened. He told a group of 1,683 Zen priests gathered in 1690, "Not a single one of you people at this meeting is unenlightened. Right now, you're all sitting before me as Buddhas. Each of you received the Buddha-mind from your mothers when you were born and nothing else. This inherited Buddha-mind is beyond any doubt unborn, with a marvelously bright illuminative wisdom." This essential awakeness or Buddha-mind is called Unborn because it existed before any mental sensation, concept or image, and before this physical life, and will continue afterward. (Waddel, N. (transl. & Ed.) (2000) The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei. North Point Press, NY, p.40.)

  Zen Master Hongshi, back in the Song Dynasty in China, spoke of cessation. He told us: "Buddhas and Zen masters do not have different realizations; they all reach the point of cessation, where past, present, and future are cut off and all impulses stop, where there is not the slightest object. Enlightened awareness shines spontaneously, subtly penetrating the root source." (Cleary, T. (transl. & Ed.) (2000) Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom. Shambala, NY, p.63.)

  What is this mysterious event that, while seeming to be nothing, and defined as indescribable, has also been the inspiration and the heart of spiritual searching for centuries? And if it is such an intimate part of our being, why is it so elusive and impossible to grasp? The subject of countless scriptures, lectures and books, the realization of Truth is commonly believed to be so rare that even the few who dare to search for it often doubt their own capacity to attain it. Yet those who are awake claim it is not really an experience, and everyone already has it.

  There is a simple reason for this. The mind is right – it w
ill never get it, no matter how far and how deep it searches. There is only one final doorway into the Truth, and the hints abound in the stories of mystics - death, doing nothing, never being born, living in the unknown, cessation. Ordinary mind, by its very nature, carries the birth and continuance of our identities by storing experiences, running continual checks on the sensate condition and emotional status of the human system, and sending out thousands of thoughts to remind us we are somebody and must do something. It is completely invested in our remaining ignorant of that space within us that is empty, or unborn. It believes it is responsible for our life and all the drama it brings, whether pleasurable or difficult. It wants to give us meaning, opportunity, healing and righteousness, along with whatever other patterns are imbedded within the brain structure.

  The Indian sage Nisardagatta has said: “When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief – not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.” (Nisardagatta Maharaj (1994). I Am That, Acorn Press, Durham, NC p.189)

  Our thoughts, and the emotions generated by them, create our world, and collectively they form the field of the larger culture and universal experience. Through an interweaving of these thoughts and reactions the species gradually winds it way through the evolutionary cycle. It appears to be very real and meaningful, because each person is so completely absorbed in the process, just as in a dream we can feel events as if they are truly happening. The most useful question a spiritual seeker can ask is "Who or what am I without thought?"

  Being at the Threshold of Truth

  Have you ever awakened in the early morning and for a few seconds you were nobody -- just a blank slate? Perhaps someone you loved had recently died, and for a second you did not remember it, and you felt open. And then you could watch your thoughts bring in the memories of what day it was, what you needed to do, inflicting pain mercilessly. Or perhaps it was just a normal day, with thought reminding you of some problem that had troubled you the day before, as if to ask "Are you going to take this up again now?" If you rested in the interval before thought for a few seconds, you were at the threshold of your true nature. If you had fallen backward into the silence instead of forward into the mind, you would have been home.

  If you are a meditator, you may have known a moment of stillness in your practice, a blankness where the mind momentarily lost its foothold on the shore where it had been watching thoughts or images arise. And there was nothing arising. The mind can become quite frightened when this occurs, and jump immediately into a new field of action - a twitch in the leg becomes a call to readjust yourself, a memory becomes something you need to work on, a slight energetic response becomes a sexual impulse that causes you either pleasure or self-judgment. But here, in the nothingness, you were standing again on the threshold, and you didn't recognize the door.

  Realization is not the big and elaborate display that most minds imagine it to be. It is seeing clearly our true nature, that which is the source and natural basic condition underlying awareness or consciousness before thought is born. It is meeting the formless like a yawning abyss at the edge of our psyches and flowing into it until we realize we are it. When we give up the urge to think of it, control it, master it, love it, or take any other kind of action in relationship to it, we are letting go of the manipulations of ego to own the Truth. In this act we become the Truth. In this becoming we recognize we are That, and always have been, and That is consciousness itself, and never dies. In one sweep we have lost everything we thought we were, and discovered we are eternal.

  Such an experience, if one is even able to consider it a possibility, has many implications for the mind and so thoughts are produced to block our access to it, or distract us and hook us back into the ordinary patterns of our life. The difference between awakening and enlightenment is that an awakened being knows the Truth, and the enlightened person has surrendered everything to it and simply lives within it. Actually, it may be more correct to say that the Truth itself has stripped away everything of the life that was identified as "me", so that the enlightened person lives as stillness and presence with little or no mental clutter most or all of the time. The working mind is available for practical tasks but the old patterns of the thinking mind are made irrelevant.

  Although most people are addicted to thought, and believe they would be as helpless as infants without it, what enlightened people demonstrate is a relaxed, spontaneous and smooth responsiveness in life that seems to be very beneficial to those about them. There is no drag from a mind inhibiting them with anxiety, criticism, and divisiveness. They will tell you to give up concepts while they appear to be offering their own, but they are not attached to ideas. There is no need for attachment to concept when you speak from the Truth, because the Truth will spontaneously reassert itself in a myriad of ways all its own, without any effort on your part to remember it. Jesus said, "The Truth will set you free." What is this freedom? It is freedom from your concepts, from your self-imposed identity, belief and attachment and therefore, from suffering.

  Love Versus Attachment

  Once the mind is convinced it might give up thinking for a while, the next objection is usually that you would give up loving. How would you hold your family together if you didn't have attachment anymore? It is an illusion that attachment is the same as love. Attachment feels like love because it tells us a person is very important to us, and we feel touched and linked by a need for one another. This connectedness opens the heart, and human love makes us feel good around this lover or child or family member or friend. But along with this human attached-love arises negative feelings, because all movements of the mind come in dualities. So the negative feelings may be fear of loss, anger at rejection, a need to control, resistances to change, jealousy, longing, clinging and many other emotions that color the relationship. It is obvious that even rage and hatred can arise when an attached love is thwarted.

  When we are able to see through thought, which is like a collection of frames drawn from past experiences and superimposed on the present, we gain more flexibility regarding our behavior. In time an awakened person can discard a thought as easily as an old newspaper, and be present to what is happening without feeling judgment or attachment to how it should turn out. Non-attachment is felt as a pure acceptance, a recognition of the beauty of another person just as they are. It obliterates division. In this environment, the person who is your lover or family member or friend receives the innocent and natural love of the spirit for the spirit. Something in them begins to wake up, whether they know it or not. You are also able to love those with whom there was conflict. If they do not love you, it doesn't matter anymore. You see their pain rather than their rejection.

  People who are awakened sometimes find themselves loving with no logic or reason, because the first movement of awakened consciousness into life is driven by love, not necessity. The awakeness wants to live in form, to stand as trees, flow as rivers, float as clouds, walk and fly as animals and birds, and move and create and dialogue as humans. It wants to be formed into all the myriad of creations, the homes and planes and dinners and dances and celebrations, and even the traumas of existence. The little "me" has many reactions to all of this --- as many as there are humans on the planet. All enjoy parts of it and hate other parts of it. But as the Buddha pointed out, there is only one way out of suffering within this system, and that is to know your true nature. This is freedom. It is quiet and present, relaxed and loving, with no deliberate movement toward acceptance or rejection. It has been called the
peace that passes understanding. No thought. This is the essence of being without thought. It has also been called love.

  Natural Wisdom

  Giving up the addiction to thought does not mean having no wisdom, having nothing to say, or giving up on the experience of living. It is more like becoming a natural part of the environment, open and moving from a deep knowing that everything will be okay, tuning into what is and responding with no resistance. Any scripture or poetry that has touched you to the core was likely written without analytic thought, not from intellect but from Truth itself. Many great insights and inventions have appeared spontaneously this way. Many spiritual revelations of mystics have been put into a system of distorted beliefs by the thoughts of followers, which is why religious leaders can justify violence and war. Brilliant and intuitive insights about the nature of matter can be turned into weapons, even causing direct damage to environments we must have in order to live, because of the distortions of unconscious thought and emotion. Thoughts about our self and others can cripple us in relationships. But thought that comes intuitively in the moment can offer great clarity, once it is free of the distortion of personal bias.