July 21, 2014

This is a series of related insights from my audio logs:

2-17-13 Insight of emptiness. It’s like you’re inside of a box with a flashlight and all your many senses, your body, and the world is all just a shell appearing on the walls of the box – yet you’re actually the entire infinite space around the box. So how did you get in the box with a flashlight anyway? And then I got distracted and recorded something about being silent and still and throwing everything out. And that’s why you throw everything out, because you let your attention not just be on what’s on the inside of the box.  But the box is actually transparent so it’s like you’re looking through a glass box where projections appear on the sides of the box so you don’t see the infinite space anymore. It’s right there and you can see right through the glass into infinite space but now it seems to be all covered up with images and things – feelings, and a thousand sensory inputs. This came from doing deep relaxation and focusing on the silence and emptiness and trying to just BE in that, because it’s not really something you can see or feel but you can sense it. So I was sensing that intuitively in some way. But as Adya said, the truth has an intuitive regard for itself. So it’s not a “that” or a thing but it’s definitely an expansion. It takes kind of a mental form, which is just my mind making a form of it but it’s all just being.

11-2-13 I had a momentary insight sometime earlier, maybe last night, of “I am the screen” (referring to the movie screen metaphor where the world and all experience is the movie and consciousness is the screen). In that moment, everything seemed to be transparent. Thoughts, physical things, the world, everything, seemed to be transparent in a way that made everything seem not a problem, like empty; empty of any real substance or concern. It was confusing because I could see that beyond the transparency there was what I considered to be real in normal life and I couldn’t reconcile the fact that it wasn’t actually real, that is was empty and transparent. And I was simultaneously aware that there was this greater presence, which is the screen. So the idea was, well, I am the screen. So I had a moment of “I am the screen, I am the presence.” And it was almost like there was an even bigger presence witnessing “I am the presence”. Like the presence that was seeing through everything was more like a metaphor for the REAL presence in which THAT was happening.

7-8-14 I was thinking about how we are said to be already enlightened but we just don’t know it, so I asked “what is this awareness that is already aware of itself and is already enlightened?” and tried to sense it. That’s when a new shift occurred. My sense of the silent presence increased and for a few moments I felt some kind of blissful euphoria where everything else disappeared. Since then I am more aware of this presence like some kind of space around me. Like I’m a bubble inside a bigger bubble.

7-20-14 I feel like my life is secondary to something bigger – like my life is a minor thing, almost insignificant

July 20, 2014

I listened again to the audio recording I made when I had this experience and decided to re-write this with more of my original words: from November 15, 2013

I was meditating and I had this moment of letting everything go; letting go of all my thoughts and all my perceptions … and it felt like death – like dying and going into the unknown, but as pure awareness.  The awareness didn’t leave but it felt like I was leaving something and that I actually had to let go of it.  So I imagined letting go of my body and my life and my memories and everything I could imagine. There was also just the sense of letting my life BE as opposed to having any kind of attachment to it.  But my thought was that whether my body actually dies (in this moment) or whatever happens, it’s not under my control anyway so just let it be and let it go, with the idea that it might be gone forever.  This life, this body, this mind, just let it all go – and as I continued to do this there was a feeling of traveling into a pure expanse of … nothing … or light.

I have to say it was a good feeling, not so much in the sense of joy but in the sense of setting down a heavy burden.  I recognized also a kind of a trust in letting go, that it will be ok.  You don’t know if you will ever see this life or this body, or even any memories of anything that happened, ever again.  You trust because the trust is of what you DO have which is unshakeable – what you DO have is something you can’t lose.   It’s funny because you have no mental connection to it; you have no thoughts about it , and no memory of it or even any … you’re not trusting it based on any kind of belief or thought.  It’s like you’re letting go of everything that you’re holding on to, but the one thing you’re not holding on to is not something you can even let go of; it’s what you ARE.

The trust in THAT, because you are still in duality, is really like you are trusting something beyond you, like God, that has always got your back.  It’s always with you.  It might be taking you away, like a parent taking a child away from the candy store, but at least you know you are safe; you’re in  in safe hands, and that even though you don’t get to be with the candy, it’s ok.  There might be a little tantrum there but ultimately you know that you are loved, and you know that’s more important.