January 11, 2016

I went to a weekly Vipassana group meditation but this week instead of meditating we watched a movie, Dhamma Brothers, about a meditation program in a prison. I’d seen it already and wanted to meditate and did so during the movie. I was keeping my mind quiet and at one point something happened.. I shifted my body slightly in my chair and shifted my mental focus at the same time and I noticed that there was something in the background that DIDN”T shift and my attention went there. It was like if you were walking and your shoe fell off and you stepped back get it. Suddenly the thing that didn’t shift was no longer in the background but right up front and I was aware that what had shifted was “the whole universe”! The universe included everything I thought of as me, and everything in existence, and everything that could ever exist, and it was all like a tiny speck, a drop of rain in an ocean of aware presence. I knew this included everything that could possibly exist because I saw the nature of “things” in general, “things” being anything you could be aware of.  Curiously neither the presence nor the universe it contained were  “me”, which was a bit confusing but not a problem. There just wasn’t any “me”, unless I say that the whole thing was me, but the idea of a “me” seemed unimportant since there obviously wasn’t any need for it.

Two things stood out the most. The first was my sense of “everything” – it was like the whole universe was swallowed up and included things I wasn’t even aware of as being part of my universe because they were so familiar and even subliminal, which is hard to explain. Foundational elements like my body, sense of self,  and the world, as well as space itself, were no longer foundational or even necessary. So that was surprising. The other thing is that I immediately saw that nothing any teacher had ever said about enlightenment described “this”. My response was like “what!!??” It was totally wonderful and exciting but just unexpected and as if I was seeing something no one ever had seen before. But I wasn’t actually seeing it – the seeing I’m talking about was more like an image created by my mind in response to a shift in understanding – I understood for a moment, that the whole universe including “me” was just a speck in a vast self-aware empty presence, which was like a sort of “magic space” because it included a sense of aliveness, power, and infinite possibility. At the same time it rendered everything I thought of as real, inconsequential. There seemed to be no relationship between the presence and the universe  – that is, the presence contained the universe but had no impact on it.

I will write more about this later from the rest below, which  is just some stream of consciousness from my audio recording of this experience the next day:

Consequences on me – excited, freer, but not enlightenment – it stayed with me – how so?
changed my meditation – explain – meditation means no meditator … and my … a shift … subtle – something I sensed but can’t hold on to. Like ebbing and flowing of a source – the interesting thing is that nothing anyone has ever said can touch it – like 3d to 2d  – nothing applies – while I can see where the words come from to describe it but they can’t touch it – all I can say – the 1st notice was when I shifted my state of mind or physically moved and in that moment I realized there was something that had not moved – something had disconnected from some kind of  foundation  – say you’re walking and the sole of your shoe fell off and stayed behind – everything that changed and moved in the universe while the space it was in did not move so there was a disconnection of form and the not-form and the whole universe became everything that could ever be … was a speck in the presence I noticed. and it wasn’t wimpy, it was immutably strong, untouchable, like steel, diamond, not like air or space but in a powerful way – none of this describes it – so something shifted and like my brain had broken loose from inside my skull and was floating around. Like all of reality had broken loose and was floating around now so that I could see for the first time the thing it had broken loose from – but it was invisible yet I sensed it – like I knew it was there – it wasn’t a sense of oneness I was just dipping my toe – a clearer feeling of the I AM, of the eternal now presence – a clearer sense of it – that everything that is going on .. I really felt I was the screen – no, it didn’t feel like me but the container of me – but the character now was secondary to this other force that  – very strange, like this animated character [myself, Pip] can think about this force and say the force isn’t me but here it is, but what is experiencing the character me [Pip]? – the character [Pip] thinks it’s experiencing this presence – what is experiencing the character me?  When I sense the presence (word unintelligible) it’s very similar like the flea market experience but clearer and more subtle yet more in focus – made me want to laugh, don’t know why – when I was sensing it, it was so simple like – when someone like Ananda Mayi Ma says “I am reposing within myself” – everything is wrapped up like – everything you can say about it, glimpse of one facet of it ie the total containment of the universe in a vast, not emptiness but dynamic, empty still untouchable unmovable powerful – and it made everything else irrelevant  – sensed!! Nothing that mattered had any effect on it and I experienced that at the shift – everything could go on & it had no bearing on this sense – it was so impersonal that the personal character seemed like a dancing puppet, like an intrusion, an anomaly or – I just have to keep going – it’s what I was doing that brought this on, looking for the essence of awareness – meditation is unnecessary and has nothing to do with this but it is a process that may help you see it, but anything you do falls inside it, like meditating in a dream – no matter what I do there is this “something else” so focus on that – now I am more aware of this!!  Just notice that –  then I don’t have to do anything else – this is going to expand – toe in water and wave hooks my toe and pulls me in – stop thinking and just be.

September 22, 2014

Last week I had an hour session with Karen Richards via Skype to help me “wake up”.  She’s in England so there’s an eight hour time difference.  Many powerful moments in our talk keep coming to mind.  It wasn’t what she said but the effect it had on me. I sensed a strong intention from her to point me in the right direction which seemed to intensify any time I opened up to it, and on several occasions this stopped me in my tracks and I was speechless. She was able to sense where I was at and I felt in some way completely transparent and exposed. I had some powerful insights but I see more than ever before how such insights are deeply personal and talking about it just won’t have the same impact or make sense to someone else. Like a joke that falls flat because “you had to be there”.

Anyway, something has changed.  This search has become less frustrating and more effortless in that I sense no effort is really necessary – everything just unfolds the way it does and can simply be noticed the way it is, whatever it is. Don’t know if that will make any sense. It’s hard to explain, but it’s significant to me possibly because some imagined limitations have fallen away.

Something told me to call Karen when I first saw her in an interview over a year and a half ago. That has never happened before and my intuition turned out to be right. Now I feel somewhat embarrassed by how I’ve bought into my own illusions and somewhat sad to let them go, actually, but also I feel somewhat amused by the whole thing! Interesting. This has far reaching implications! None of which really matter however, ultimately. We’re already awake. We’re floating in a sea of awakeness, and we ARE that!

Well, that’s my report, and whether or not you found it helpful,  I suggest you visit Karen’s website and watch the videos, and see if something resonates

September 18, 2014

Yesterday I was walking up the stairs and feeling a bit frustrated because it seemed hard to do self-inquiry at that moment because I had to participate in the world of “doing things” like walking up stairs. I felt trapped in being identified as a person in this reality. Then it suddenly occurred to me that nothing was happening – that this reality I was buying into was like a movie on a theater screen and for the screen there is nothing happening. The screen remains completely unaffected by the events in the movie, and is always present. I remembered that I am consciousness and not its content, and this led me back to recognizing that “being” itself is the source and destination of self-inquiry. This recognition is still with me and shows me that my true inquiry or meditation can never be disturbed by whatever is happening, and that in fact, nothing is happening!

I don’t expect anyone to get this but it’s just something I’m sensing now. It relates to time being an illusion and everything being awareness.

This almost woke something up! At the end I was laughing for three minutes for no apparent reason.  It was after he said, regarding all the objects of experience “…I am not made out of them, they are made out of me”. Something in me must have got it.

August 30, 2014

Had a vivid dream where the whole universe was out in front of me and disconnected from me such that I was somehow un-identified with my experience.  I was mostly experiencing my face and so I started making faces, noticing how that felt physically, and finding that the experience of it was not “mine” and had nothing whatsoever to do with me.  Then I got up out of bed and continued making faces while walking but noticed I couldn’t see well. This caused me to immediately realize I was out of my body and I laughed and found myself in bed thinking I was awake but it was a false awakening.  I opened my physical eyes a few seconds later.

While the realization was happening it was very real and natural and I had the thought that it’s always been like this. It was a very “here and now” experience but it faded quickly and has left me feeling somewhat detached from everything, as if I’m in a lucid dream right now. later I watched a Rupert Spira video about identification and it had a strong affect on me.  I’ll post that next.

I like this – makes a lot of good points:

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.

May 31, 2014

Kranti Ananta was talking to someone trying to help him understand meditation and she said “In meditation they tell you to become the witness but you already are the witness. So it’s developing the knack of watching the mind”.  And I got it on another level.  The mind isn’t watching awareness in meditation. You might think in meditation that you are putting your attention on awareness itself and being “the watcher” But the mind is just a cohesive conglomeration of thoughts, stories, and programming that has infiltrated and co-opted awareness creating the illusion, in awareness, that there is a separate self. The mind is not you. The aspect that creates the identification with the mind and body is the ego. The ego is the sense of identifying as a separate self. In this capacity it is like a virus in pure consciousness. The ego even thinks it’s the one on a spiritual path. A path, by the way, that leads to it’s own dissolution. It’s all happening in awareness. A stunning illusion I must say.

So how do we stop the Ego-virus? Well, Captain Kirk said it best in “The Immunity Syndrome”: “An-ti-bod-ies, an-ti-bod-ies!”  So what’s the antidote?  Be the antibody!  Watch the mind. Ignore the mind. Disregard the mind.  Do not let it seduce you and lead you back to sleep.  Stop the mind and be free.

May 26, 2014

I heard Adyashanti talking about how awakening is about fully grasping the present moment – that it can only happen NOW –  and I had a deeper understanding of this than before. I realized that in meditation I have been somewhat distant from NOW – wow.  But of course that’s so, because I’m asleep! So we are either awake or asleep and I don’t mean awake in this moment or asleep in this moment – forget this moment. NOW isn’t actually this moment. I say that because we normally think of NOW as a moment in time. But NOW is beyond time altogether, and “awake” is eternal. But in the realm of thinking and doing we say “be awake NOW, be fully present NOW”. Then we shed the skin of “time”. Time functions as a confusion factor, obfuscating the truth until it’s seen through. I’ve heard it said many times that spiritual practice is not so you can wake up at some other time. It’s where you have your face pressed against the window of reality to see what’s there NOW. You’re not waiting for a future event. THIS moment is the moment of liberation. There isn’t any other. Everything serves to hide NOW from us, like a movie hides the movie screen. When you can ignore the movie and see the screen, that’s NOW.