Reader Question:

Dear Ariel,

Ultimately, are we all “one” or are we separated individual consciousnesses?  Will we still be feeling the difference and separation between “me” and “you” ?

Thanks,

TSS

Ariel’s Response:

Great question, no?

When we begin looking into the nature of awareness, it seems like there’s “my awareness” and “your awareness.” There’s that which is looking “through my eyes” and that which is looking “through your eyes.” They have access to different perspectives, different thoughts, and different experiences. We often experience them as tied to the unique attributes of each person (my awareness is over here looking at you over there, where your awareness is over there looking at me over here).

Yet are they really one? If they are, why don’t we experience a unity between the infinite individual awarenesses? This idea of one universal awareness isn’t what is experienced from behind the veil. Separation is the norm, but what’s really going on on “the other side of the veil?”

Self-inquiry

Well, let’s start with a quick exercise…

Point to yourself.. Go ahead and do it.

Where did you point?

Many people point to their heart/chest and others may point to their head/mind.

Where did you point? Take note.

Is there a little “someone” in there that you’re pointing to? When you say “My name is so-and-so,” to what is that name pointing to? A little “me” inside your chest or head, perhaps? If you feel in, where does it feel like you are located? Centered?

In the world of separation we experience a world of “me” and others, me and you, me and God, me and earth, me and heaven. I want to get into heaven. I want to be at one with God. I want to be close to you or far away from you.

Where is this “me” that lives in relationship to everything else?

When we look within, we can find a body, thoughts, a history, a sense of awareness, feelings, brains and bones… but where is the “me” within all of this?

It turns out that the felt sense “me” is nothing more than a feeling created from a thought believed. As we do the inquiry, we keep failing at our attempts to find out who is here, who is doing any of this. Who is in control? Who does my name point to? Who has free will? Who is inquiring? Who is aware of inquiry happening?

As we continue inquiring, more and more of the places for “me” to hide is brought into awareness, such as in thought, in emotion, in feeling, in time and space, in accomplishments, in identities, in the identification process, as that which experiences, controls, or decides, etc. until there is basically nowhere else to rest. It is then discovered there is no me and there never was. Just a feeling of me, a thought of me, a sense of me.

Who you are is not who you think you are. Who you think you are is not what wakes up and becomes enlightened. In awakening, who you are wakes up from who you think you are.

Life Without the Sense of Separate Self

Somehow, without a me, there also is no you. Not really. There is no world. There is no God. There is no other. There is nothing. Nothing at all. It was all just mental concepts, ideas, beliefs, and notions. Total collapse of everything because we see through the “me.” There is just what is, without a name. Pure being, pure existence, pure life.

As there is a settling into “no-me’ness” and nothingness, eventually for whatever reason, there may be a sort of cosmic explosion where the entire world is seen to be simply continuous arisings of consciousness within consciousness. Consciousness is all, but “I” am nowhere to be found. Everywhere the world is, there I am. I am nothing and I am everything, and there is no one to claim ownership for this sense of existence/life/being. Just pure aliveness being alive.

Jeff Foster published a book with a hilariously accurate title, An Extraordinary Absence: Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life. A very ordinary life, and yet the me I thought I was is nowhere to be found!

In this space, nothing is personal, yet everything is incredibly intimate for there is no separation happening, no distance between things, even though the eyes may still register things going from here to there.

There is still the ability to see chair and floor and cloud and Ariel’s body and Billy Bob’s hat, sure, but this is all seen secondarily. What stands at the forefront is the ineffable, the unspeakable, the singular ONE beyond name and form. We still use words like you and me because they are quite useful in practical conversation and day-to-day life, but we use those words very lightly, with a sort of laughing wink, knowing that we are just playing with form, like a child sculpting a sand castle. It’s made up, it’s play, it’s a game that lives in our imaginations.

We can still individuate, but we don’t separate.

Note how thoughout history, many awakened people have referred to various things like God and humans, the Father who art in Heaven, Shiva and Shakti, the mother who rears the ten thousand creatures, various planes of consciousness or dimensions of reality, and yet they never claim that anything is separate or apart from its source. Oneness and individuation are both still apparent, but individuation is a lighthearted secondary to Oneness.

Ultimately there is just awareness, without a “me” or a “you” apart from the thoughts of me and you arising within awareness. Although it may look like my awareness or your awareness on the surface, it is clearly seen that there is ONLY awareness, one without a second. Everything is seen to somehow be a manifestation of awareness. There is no one to claim ownership of awareness since the thought, feeling, and subsequent feeling of ownership are simply optional experiences of awareness itself within awareness, not something other than awareness or separate from awareness.

There is still the recognition that in the same way that awareness experiences itself bit by bit (yet also paradoxically all at once since there is no time), there is also the recognition that awareness itself has an infinite number of perspectives, an infinite number of ways of experiencing itself, and this infinity can be experienced without going into the world of separation.

Separation and infinity, it turns out, are not the same thing, and need not be always experienced simultaneously. The Infinite/One are always present, HereNow, but separation is just an optional experience. All waves exist, but none are separate from the ocean. They ARE a surface-level temporary appearance of the ocean itself.

A Dialogue on this Topic

Here’s a wonderful clip from a talk about the Journey After Awakening with Adyashanti and Loch Kelly. In this clip, they talk about some of the post-awakening experiences, transformations, and unfoldings:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dthmW6ffxAI

But don’t try to make the experiences and realizations out to be the point. Those come on their own as the underlying illusions are cleared out. To clear out the illusions, focus on finding the self. Does it feel like there is a self present? If so, where? To whom? Who is experiencing it? And who is experiencing that? What is the “I” we refer to when we talk about ourselves? Find that out and all the enlightenment stuff seems to take care of itself on its own accord.

If you want to find God, then as the saying goes, know thyself.

So how old are you?

Does your physical age define or limit you? Is there something more?

All my life people have told me stuff like “You’re so lucky to be getting this stuff so early in life.” or “You’re only XYZ years old? How do you know all this so young?”

To be honest, the age of this physical body has little do with the age that I feel I am, and this is probably true for many of us, isn’t it? Yet it’s what people see nonetheless.

How old are we? Let’s take a look at that question by diving deeper into both the seen and the unseen.

It seems that by starting with the physical age and exploring beyond, there’s many different ways we could look at age:

Physical Age

The first age is the most obvious and so we’ll start with it. It’s what people tend to think of when we talk about how old we are. It basically has to do with how many laps we’ve done around the sun. Physical age. We (our bodies) may be 10 years old, 20, 50, 100, whatever.

Yet is that a good determination of how old you feel?

“I feel like a kid again!” Have you ever said that when letting go and playing around, acting silly without a care in the world?

There’s older people who act like little kids and there’s younger people who look and act like older people. How old you feel seems to be more “in your head” than where your body is, so let’s look at that one next.

Mental/Emotional Age

Maturity-wise, how old do you feel? If you were to ask me, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to myself that I feel like an older guy experiencing the body of a younger guy. Have you seen the movie 17 Again where the middle-aged guy gets warped back into the body he had back in high school and gets to sort of relive that time period in his life? It’s kinda like that.. sorta.

I’m currently 25, but in many ways I feel like I’m somewhere in my upper 30′s or 40′s. That’s the age range I find myself socializing with. That’s the age of people I often hike with, do spiritual group things with, and even the age of the women I’ve find myself attracting and being drawn to the past year or two. (This last one has been taking some getting used to and came with a lot of head scratching, without a doubt, but there’s been some really amazing lessons and experiences that have come from this.)

Anyways, in many ways (though of course there are several big exceptions exceptions to this), I feel like I’m older than my body is and I currently resonate most strongly energetically with people around 5-15 years older than me, for whatever reason.

So physically our body may be in one place, but mentally and emotionally we may be experiencing something else entirely, and this experience can often feel more real than wherever our body happens to apparently be.

This also brings to mind kids with mental retardation whose bodies age but mentally they remain in the mindset of a little kid. Mentally and physically we may be in two different places.

Now beyond your physical age or your mental age, there seems to be another sort of measurement of maturity. We can call it spiritual maturity or the depth/age of your soul.

The Age of Your Soul

You know how people use the terms “young soul” or “old soul?” While technically that may be a bit of a misnomer because souls are ageless, we can still use those terms when we talk about how conscious someone is, how far along the karmic ladder/wheel they are, if they live a superficial life or if something deeper drives them, how far beyond the ego the person is gone, or whatever it is that we use to differentiate between newer souls and older souls. Sometimes it’s just more of an intuitive feeling, isn’t it?

With some people you can just look into their eyes and it feels like there’s an expansive ocean there. So deep and vast. There’s often an element of incredible peacefulness present or a radiant spark of light and joy in their eyes.

This age seems to be less tied to our physical age and more related to our emotional/mental age, but just because you’ve matured as a person and had many years of life experience doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve developed spiritually, so I like to differentiate between spiritual age and emotional age. They seem to be somewhat distinct.

Timeless Eternal Being

This is where things get really interesting. When it is discovered that what wakes up from the experience of personhood is neither male nor female, neither old nor young, then there is the experience of discovering that who you truly are is not a man or a woman, nor are you in any way bound in time. Your age is not found in time for you are ageless, timeless, and eternal, all those mystical esoteric things we hear sages and gurus and scriptures talk about.

That which wakes up from time is not subject to time and does not pass through time. Time is seen to be an appearance that passes through this. It’s like recognizing your essence to be the white movie screen that the movie is projected upon. The screen is not subject to the images that flicker upon its screen. The images are but a fleeting appearance that show up against the backdrop of this expansive, empty, spacious presence.

When this is discovered to be what you are, at the indescribable substanceless core of your being, there isn’t the experience of being young or old, male or female. There is just presence, existence, life, being. At the same time, the body that arises within this may have a certain age and may have a certain balance of masculine and feminine energy. It’s just that none of this is identified with to be what I am.

These days I tend to experience moreso one or the other. Sometimes there is the experience of being someone (Ariel) experiencing time, and other times there is the experience of causeless uncreated emptiness and timelessness. I don’t know what degree this evolves into experiencing both time and timelessness simultaneously and perhaps that is a duality that still needs to be experientially resolved here , but the way it seems to be happening here is sometimes TIME is happening loud and clear and seems so obvious whereas in other times, TIMELESSNESS is right at the forefront, nowhere yet literally right here. There is also a sort of stabilization process that is occurring where the swings from experiential separation to experiential oneness are strangely starting to quiet down and there’s becoming less and less of a distinction between separateness and oneness, ironically enough. The experiences are starting to become secondary to this presence that is present during both separation and oneness.

In any event, when timelessness wakes up, there literally is no experience of time. None. Not at all. Sure the sun still rises and sets yes movement is still seen, but somehow the experience of the passing of time throughout the day is nowhere to be found. There is just movement and silence happening here. Everything is happening and nothing is happening. Not really sure why and I can’t fully explain it. Just reporting on what it’s like.

So when people say something like “How did you get this at such a young age,” It sometimes leaves me scratching my head, to be honest. What wakes up from the physical is the timeless, and that has nothing to do with the age of the body, young or old. Ramana woke up at 16. Adya’s first awakening was at 25. Sure the stereotypical enlightened master is an old dude with a long white beard, but that doesn’t mean that you have to wait ’till you get old to wake up. lol…

So How Old Are You?

In your experience, how old do you feel?

There is no right or wrong answer here.

The question can simply be used as a helpful indicator to recognize what is most apparent within awareness at this moment. The physical? The emotional? The soul? The timeless?

All just different ways of experiencing the same identical ONE.

Many different experiences, some with the experience of an experiencer, others with the experience of no experiencer…

Life is cool.

Scientists like to explore the idea of consciousness as if it’s something that a physical being has. You know, people have a consciousness and when hit in the head, can lose consciousness. Rocks don’t have a consciousness. They have a physical existence, but presumably no conscious awareness of their own existence. Pysicality is taken to be primary and consciousness is taken to be some sort of optional secondary manifestation that may or may not arise from physicality. What causes consciousness? Perhaps it’s a chemical reaction in the brain, a product of our biology… it’s somehow a functioning of physicality.

This is further evidenced by the fact that we can seemingly lose consciousness, and we even go unconscious when we sleep at night. Clearly our bodies still exist, and other people can confirm this for us, but we have no sense of self-awareness, and so it seems like physicality comes first, while consciousness comes second. If anything, the body, as temporary as it is, seems more continuous and experientially permanent than consciousness. From this perspective, it’s only natural that we perceive ourselves to be this physicalized being. At the same time, there’s “my” consciousness and “your” consciousness.

I’m sitting here reading through a copy of I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj and he just brought up something (Chapter 18) which shot right through the heart of a deep confusion and misunderstanding within me and triggered a big ‘aha’. In the book a questioner sits down with Nisargadatta and brings up the points and enters into a dialogue about this subject.

Memory and Consciousness

The conversation is lead to an exploration into the idea of memory.

Do we have any memory of what it’s like to be unconscious, such as the time we are in deep dreamless sleep at night? No. That’s not to say that consciousness wasn’t conscious at that time. We simply have no memory of being conscious or unconscious at that time. People can look at our bodies when we sleep and say that it is lying down, still, the eyes are closed, and the body is breathing, but that is only their experience of our body. That is not a pointer to what our conscious awareness itself is experiencing. Is it not totally possible that your experience of yourself can be vastly different from another person’s experience of you?

Yesterday during the day, for example, were you conscious? Were you aware of your own existence throughout the day? Most likely, yes.

However, today, do you remember every moment of being conscious? Probably not.

Now just because you can’t remember every instance of being conscious, does that prove that you weren’t conscious then?

Of course not. You know that you were conscious. You just don’t remember it now. Same thing here in those times when we were seemingly unconscious.

Timeless Consciousness and Time-bound Imagination

Upon this recognition, it suddenly dawned on me that I have no idea whether or not consciousness actually stops being conscious in those times when I am asleep or unconscious. Sure I don’t remember experiencing those periods of time, but I can’t say for sure whether or not consciousness was unconscious.

Seeing this, I paused for a time of quiet meditation, open to exploring the relationship between consciousness and memory. Here is what suddenly came forth from the silence:

Consciousness only has the capacity to be conscious right now. Consciousness is only capable of being conscious of the present moment and the content within it. Consciousness can not extend itself into the past or future, for those do not actually exist and thus consciousness can not go there.

However, within consciousness exists both memory and imagination, and the visual stories that they create. Past and future are like mental visions that always arise only in the present moment. Have you noticed how every time you witness your mind’s memories or visualizations of past and future, consciousness is conscious of those mental movies in the present moment? Consciousness is conscious of that which arises now, including stories of past and future, both of which can only arise in the present moment.

The domain of consciousness is the present moment. The domain of imagination is time and space. “Once upon a time, in a land far far away…”

Consciousness is clearly Here, not in any particular location. Location-wise, it actually exists nowhere and is therefore present everywhere. Within the nowhere’ness of consciousness, an infinitely vast universe springs forth, which actually expands infinitely far out through nowhere, paradoxically enough. It’s like looking at a movie screen. You can travel vast distances when watching the movie, but the screen itself doesn’t go anywhere. You can even wear 3D goggles and watch the movie Avatar, but despite appearances, there’s no animals coming towards you from Pandora and you don’t actually go “in” to the colorful world you see on screen, although it may certainly look and feel that way. Ultimately, you’re not going anywhere and there is no real depth to the visual images. There is only the appearance of depth and 3 dimensions upon a flat 2 dimensional screen.

Memory

So coming back to the idea of memory, memory is something that is written to or not. Many things have happened to us that we don’t remember, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen. When we look to past or future, all we can see is what can be accessed in our memory (past) or created by the imagination (future). Neither of the two are indicative of the fullness of what happened or what can or will happen. They are inherently limited tools and attempting to identify reality or truth from either of those two is.. well.. it’s not gonna work, y’know?

Eternity

So, coming back to the awareness of awareness, to being conscious of consciousness, have you ever experienced a moment, consciously, where consciousness wasn’t conscious? I know there may be gaps in your experience, like when you get knocked out or go to sleep at night, and that’s okay, but you yourself as consciousness, has there ever been experience without consciousness?

Can we say for sure that just because we don’t remember an experience, it didn’t happen?

At the same time, can we be absolutely certain that just because we can’t remember what happened before we were born, we didn’t exist?

Is it possible that consciousness itself is eternal, and it is the body/mind/memory thingy that changes, that comes and goes, and is just a fleeting movie that is shown upon the unchanging screen of consciousness?

Spending time with the unchanging screen of consciousness itself, rather than focusing upon the images that temporarily flicker on screen… desires, thoughts, understandings, misunderstandings, questions, answers, people, ideas, food, clouds… all this stuff that comes and goes, what happens when we fall back and rest as conscious awareness itself?

Consciousness, this eternal presence, what is it like to rest in eternity, not bound in time? What is it like to live as awareness itself instead of the thought “I am this,” “I am that,” or even the thought, “I am awareness?” What is it like to simply rest as awareness itself, awareness that is effortlessly aware without any effort on our part?

Just consciousness conscious now…

When we believe our thoughts, then perhaps out a love for truth or a sincere desire to finally end our suffering, we can begin inquiring into our own thoughts. Byron Katie offers a wonderful method.

Is this thought true?
Do we know absolutely for sure that it is true?
How do we feel when we believe this thought?
Who would we be without this thought?
Is the opposite thought as true as or perhaps more true than the original thought?

As we systematically begin letting go of untruths and misunderstandings, more and more we begin to discover ourselves to be not our thoughts, but actually this empty, spacious, expansive, boundless, and inherently free awareness.

That which is aware of these words. That which is aware of what it feels like to be a separate person who believes their thoughts and then inquires about their thoughts. Not some conceptual mysterious invisible Infinite Self thingy that we have to go find, but just this awareness that’s so clearly right HERE!

As awareness, somehow there is love, adoration, affection, and overflowing appreciation for all that is witnessed, and oddly enough, somehow that which is witnessed is not felt to be separate from or other than awareness. Freedom as awareness, with nothing to grab onto, not even a spiritual nondual idea or belief system to call the truth. Nothing to grab onto. Just being what you naturally are…

The gift of Truth, it is then discovered, is not contained in a mental conceptual encapsulation of some ideas or collection of thoughts that are “the right answer,” but in the living conscious realization of what you truly are.

This is the end of the search and perhaps the beginning of truly living. This is the revelation of the Divine equally in every ordinary and extraordinary moment. The two are one and the same. Summiting a mountain or sipping a cup of tea, both are seen to be ordinary and extraordinary. All is radiantly alive, and this aliveness is what you are, seeing yourself in and as All That Is.

Infinite Love and Joyous Freedom beyond the mind, as awareness, here and now.

Noticing all the various spiritual points of view like the absolute and the relative, the individual, the one, the infinite, and so on.. we may find that these actually wind up being ways to divide up ISness, pure being. In this video, we explore this topic as we point towards what IS behind all these ways of speaking about what is:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGLIuVQaiNM

Been rockin’ out some talks on video lately as I travel around.

Here’s one on the nature of awareness, affectionate awareness.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgLAy7LqzMY

Alright, so today I’d like to address a point about consciousness.

In ego-land, we see ourselves as a being with consciousness, someone who has consciousness. If we get knocked in the head, we can lose consciousness. If we get on the spiritual pathway, we can raise our level of consciousness and become more conscious. There is my consciousness and your consciousness and they see different things. Heck, there are even people who are deemed unconscious, spiritually speaking.

Looking at this wording, we notice that in every situation, the word consciousness is used to point to something other than what we are. Consciousness is something we have, something that changes over time, something that can come and go. It is variable. It is something we want to develop, something to get more of, something to expand or improve.

It gives us a target to reach for, somewhere “out there” to arrive called a “place of higher consciousness” or whatever. Yet another goal in the future. We want to attain a certain level of consciousness. From this perspective, we are given something to seek and we can see that we are not there yet.

Now given all this, I would like to talk about pure consciousness itself, that which is ALREADY HERE AS IT IS.

In this moment, notice that consciousness is conscious of these words being read. Though the words are changing, consciousness itself isn’t.

Consciousness is conscious of one’s emotional state. Consciousness is not synonymous with one’s emotional state.

Consciousness is conscious of the degree of wisdom one has attained.

There is consciousness and then there is the degree to which consciousness is conscious of consciousness. Whether one is focusing on the world or whether one is looking within and noticing that they are conscious, consciousness is conscious of all of that just the same, it itself not changing.

Consciousness, pure consciousness, does it have any limits? Feel for them right now. Does consciousness contract or expand or is it conscious of all sensation and experience of both contraction and expansion? When there is the profound experience of “expanded consciousness,” is consciousness not conscious of that too? Experiences change. Consciousness doesn’t.

Are there different levels of pure consciousness or is consciousness itself conscious of how loving you are, how compassionate you are, what level of consciousness you calibrate at, and so on?

No matter what realizations have occurred, what experiences have been experienced, has consciousness itself changed or been affected?

It’s so easy, given how drawn into the changing world of form that most of us are, to associate unchanging consciousness with that which changes. These are all misconceptions.

Because we sometimes use consciousness to refer to unchanging awareness and other times we use it to refer to something that is variable, something that changes, something that comes and goes, this introduces a degree of confusion and misunderstanding as different people use the same word to point to different things.

I’d like to invite you to become more conscious of consciousness itself.

Notice that consciousness would be conscious of one’s effort to become conscious of consciousness.

When there is the pull to distract yourself and do something else, is consciousness still conscious of that? When you feel like you’re running away, does consciousness run?

When you’re in meditation, whether you’re doing a “good job” meditating or not, is consciousness conscious of all of that?

No matter what thoughts arise, what experiences happen, and if there is a “me” present or not, is consciousness itself not conscious of this whole game?

Regardless of how hard we try to be conscious, is consciousness not effortlessly conscious already?

Pure consciousness itself. Does it change?

Okay, so just a little jibber jabbering. I figured this whole “go out and live the life of your dreams” thing was gonna be a big epic adventure, and in a way it is, but honestly that seems to be a bit idealistic. People keep saying “Oh man! That’s so amazing what you’re doing! It looks so cool and so fun!” and yeah, I suppose it looks that way from the outside. At times it is, for sure, but perhaps the best word I can think of to describe it is RAW.

It’s not so much about experiencing life as I’m finding out, but experiencing YOURSELF. It’s basically about coming out of hiding and being more honest with myself and authentic than I’ve ever been…

Hypocrisy

It’s so funny to just watch this stuff happen. For example, I’m watching myself become a huge hypocrite. Things that I’ve given people crap about before I now watch myself do. It’s SO true that what you resist persists. I remember saying, “Oh, you don’t have to go meditate on a mountain to find God. You can find him anywhere! He’s everywhere!” and then I go march off to a mountaintop. In so doing, I’m  actually starting to see WHY people go do such a thing. There’s a reason that many spiritual places like Tibet are at elevation… there’s something special about the altitude and what it does to the human body. The silence and the intimacy with nature is pretty fantastic as well, for sure.

After it Manifests, So What?

Both my desires and my fears are manifesting like crazy and in the middle I’m finding that a) the experience of what I desired isn’t all they’re cracked up to be and b) the experience of what I feared isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. It’s like the extremes between the joy of desire and the fear of fear are starting to come closer together and I’m starting to find the happy medium in the middle as being more valuable than the polar opposites of what I want and what I don’t want.

Is it still a manifestation of victim consciousness to sit back and not take creative “control” of your state of being? Maybe. I dunno. Learning to allow is a BIG part of the equation as well. It’s not all about controlling every step of the process, which seems to be a big misunderstanding about the LoA.

How Much Do You REALLY Know?

This experience seems to be about embodying that which I have learned or have realized. I’m seeing the extent to which I’ve been bullshitting myself, how much I thought that I got that I really don’t. Yeah, when you see that and you stop running, whew boy…

When you get the ego hits, it really helps to again disidentify from it. When you feel it’s YOU that slipped and fell flat on his face, when your follies and mistakes are taken personally, it’s a tough pill to swallow. When you can step back as awareness and see that it’s just egoic conditioning that’s being brought to the light of awareness and that it’s not YOU you’re seeing, it makes it SO much easier to let go and release.

YOU have never made a mistake. YOU have never really done anything in your life. You only think you do…

Coming Face to Face with Emotions

Matt Kahn just posted an excellent bit on facebook called The Truth about Feelings. (I think you have to be a facebook member to read that link. Not sure if you have to be his friend too.) In that article, he points out the difference between experiencing feelings directly versus experiencing what you think about the feeling. BIG DIFFERENCE. As he describes, it’s like being a child who’s curious as to what it’s like to experience a feeling and feel what it’s like without all the preconceived notions and judgments as to what is good, bad, acceptable, unacceptable, or otherwise. It’s a far more pure and defenseless experience.

The past day or so I’ve been experiencing this sort of knot in my stomach and have been spending time just feeling it without trying to change it or do anything about it at all. Just really EXPERIENCE LIFE and all that is arising as it is in this moment. One could say, “Why would you sit there feeling bad when you can just reach for a better feeling thought and feel better now?” and this is a question I have been asking myself as well. My response to that excellent question is that there seems to be a difference between having your mind take the lead and having your heart and soul take the lead. When your whole life is based around reaching for better feeling thoughts, life becomes very mental, and to be honest I’m already overly mental… What I’ve discovered is that when you go within and connect to your heart and soul, they are MUCH better guides than the mind ever could be AND the energy of your light starts to penetrate into your mind and transform it. Then your thoughts take their cue from your inner being, rather than your mind constantly trying to be the one in charge. I’m certainly not a master at this yet by any means, but I definitely prefer this path right now.

More “Pieces” to Non-abiding Awakenings

Speaking of links to share, Sarojini recently posted a fantastic article on The Stages of Awakening. I’ve seen a number of teachers post such descriptions before, but this is perhaps the description I’ve read in that REALLY matches what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen in others. What others have written may certainly be valid in their own experience, but this is what’s been the case here.

Peace

Yeah, it’s been very chaotic lately. Perhaps you can tell. I’ve found it very challenging lately to simply sit down and SHUT UP. It’s very rewarding when I can for short periods of time and I know it’s necessary, but that’s one of the big dust storms my own ego has been kicking up lately. Alright, time to go turn the computer off, be quiet, and sit with all this swirling stuff within and face even more of my own stuff for myself, for my own sake. I could use some silence and stillness right now, even if all the action and opportunities sound much more enticing to my ego…

Buh bye now!

There’s a new documentary out titled Who’s Driving The Dream Bus featuring some of my favorite spiritual teachers including Gangaji, Jeff Foster, and Tony Parsons. In the film they discuss the age-old question, “Who Am I?”

Now I haven’t seen the movie and it’s very rare that I post HERE about something before checking it out myself, but knowing the people in the film and seeing the trailer, it looks to be a fantastic piece of work and it’s my joy to share it with you guys. The trailer is posted below and the film is available for purchase directly from their website, www.whosdrivingthedreambus.com.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AVQFWkfSls

Okay, so let’s get into the nitty gritty of awakening for a bit. To be honest, there’s been quite a bit of struggle arising here, wanting desperately to return to the experience of wholeness, of unity, of the lack of lack, of the conscious recognition of what I am. One of the main issues about the human condition is the sense of lack within. We can talk about that void that people try to fill with food, sex, experiences, physical possessions, and so on. On a deep deep level, it feels like something’s missing and people will do whatever it takes to fill that void. From the perception of a separate self, I myself am not sufficient and thus I need something other than me to fill this gaping hole within me… but nothing I get is ever sufficient. If it does feel sufficient, it’s only temporary. Like a drug addict, I always need another fix. I always need more…

Now there’s a really weird experience that can arise after an initial non-abiding awakening. Basically what happens is that you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the egoic self is not you, that your thoughts have no reality, and that there is literally no such thing as a separate self, and yet simultaneously for some reason you continue to believe in and experience a separate self. You experience living life as a “me.” It can create a tremendous amount of conflict within, as if something has gone terribly wrong. You believe something and don’t believe something simultaneously. It’s really crazy to really experience both at the same time…

Disidentification

I took a drive down to downtown Denver today to check out the flagship REI store in all its multi-story glory. There was traffic along the highway and I spontaneously found myself falling into a sort of driving meditation. Basically just relaxing into the moment. Suddenly and without warning, it was as if there was a silent balloon bursting within me and there was a sort of separation (too strong of a word.. more like complete and total disidentification) with the body. I just looked down at my arms holding the steering wheel and was stunned to see in perfect clarity that this body that was driving here was literally NOT ME… at ALL. It was just some sort of suit to use to move around with. This body has more in common with the car that was being driven than with who I am. The body is a vehicle.

Then the line of statements naturally arose, “I’m not this body. I’m not anything here that is happening. I’m not any of these passing thoughts or feelings that arising now. What am I?”

Awareness turned back around on itself and it was stunningly clear that there was NO ONE HERE to be aware.

“Ohhh shit” was my response. Pure emptiness was then recognized to be what I truly was. Emptiness is literally no one. No thing. Yet somehow this pure emptiness is aware. Inexplicably. It’s like recognizing that infinite empty space is aware. It is conscious. There’s nothing there and yet it is aware.

Being

Eckhart Tolle talks about our true nature being “pure being.” Isness. Existence. The word “being” is easily misunderstood so I’m gonna get a little nitpicky here because the misunderstanding of this word has led to both delusion and confusion here. When we refer to being, we are not talking about a being. It’s not a spiritual being, as opposed to another type of being, not a human being or a living being or a dead being, not this being as opposed to that being. Just being. One without a second.

We are not conscious beings, as if there are more than one of us. You are not “a conscious being.” Neither am I. There is only being. What you are inside is literally emptiness. No-thingness. Spaciousness.

Separation, Only In Imagination

Have you ever noticed how someone can say something and our minds will spin an entire story filled with drama and fanfare about how rude they were and how wrong they were and how on-and-on-and-on… and yet they were being totally nice! It’s like we misinterpreted them and thus experience them as if they were being mean. We experience something that literally isn’t true and never happened, except for in the presence of our own imaginations. This is the same thing about experiencing ourselves as a separate self. We think we really are a person. I have “my body” and “my ideas” and “my history” and “my life.” There is the experience of a separate self in our imaginations, but there really isn’t one.

Now I know this isn’t what human minds are typically designed to understand. We are taught to “be somebody,” to be rich or famous or a doctor or a teacher or whatever else… be something. Yet what if the reality was that you are not a something at all? What if the very creation of a “someone” in itself creates a “something else” that exists in relationship to “me”? Instant duality.

Awake and Asleep

It seems that the main difference between the asleep state and the awake state is one of identification. Asleep there is identification with something that awareness is aware of. It’s like watching a movie on TV and literally thinking you ARE what you’re looking at. You watch your thoughts going by and think that you ARE your thoughts. You look at your body and think that you ARE your body. Awake, there is just the effortless passing of all form in front of the screen of consciousness. You are the nameless, formless, emptiness that gives rise to all form and yet is not separate from all manifestation. You create it all, and yet paradoxically there is no “you” present to be a creator or do the creating. It all simply arises.

There seems to be a process of awakening which involves all the letting go, surrender, and spiritual work and practices that we can do. It’s the game of the doer. The process takes time. Then there is the actual instantaneous flipping or awakening, the shift from delusion to Reality. The awakening itself takes no time.

After going through this experience, I put Adyashanti’s program The End of Your World back in the CD player and started listening through it again. As always, it is so perfect. It really gets to the heart of the non-abiding awakening process and explores many of the more subtle issues and confusions that arise. Again, highly highly recommended for anyone going through the non-abiding awakening process.

Facing Inner “Stuff”

One thing he talks about is the willingness to face anything and everything that creates any anger, resentment, resistance, or inner conflict of any kind. It’s like a willingness to face yourself, or at least what you perceive to be the resistant aspects of yourself. This is one of the biggest parts of my own process right now. I’m finding myself facing lifelong insecurities and fears. What if I wind up homeless? Well I am now. What if I don’t know what to do with my life? Well I have no clue now. What about facing the aspects of myself that have caused problems in intimate relationships? I’m facing those too. Yes there is fear within me, but I’m not afraid of having the fear. Fear yes, but not the fear of fear. This seems to be the big key. There’s an understanding about the nature of fear, of emotion in general, and a willingness to face it. What I’m fearing manifests. What I desire manifests. Everything within me is really showing up in the world. One thing that I’m finding is that those things that I fear really aren’t so bad. It’s almost like our fears are little kittens with the roar of a tiger. They seem terrible before we actually face them.

So saying all this, I don’t want to separate out the living of everyday life from one’s spiritual awakening, as if one’s spirituality had to be separated into a neat little box. Like “I’ll be spiritual when I go meditate in my quiet room, but the rest of my life is separate from my spirituality.” No, no. They really seem to go hand-in-hand.

Is it necessary to go out and physically do all the stuff you’re afraid of? *shrugs* I dunno. This is simply the way much of this experience is playing out here. It’s going out and really putting some of my deepest unconscious beliefs to the test and giving the ego nothing to hold onto. Stuff that I’ve resisted for years, here it is and so what? It’s no big deal. It’s not in alignment with how things actually work anyways. I can let that go. It’s clearly not true and I have no reason whatsoever to buy into those beliefs anymore.

The Doer and the Self

and so there seems to be this Ariel guy here, living his life, doing all the stuff he does, surrendering or resisting, and yet having no control whatsoever over his awakening, as if he was the one who would awaken. Ariel can’t awaken. He is just a mental collection of ideas and physical matter and emotions and.. stuff. He is an abstract concept, but he isn’t real. He has no real existence. He is part of the spinning world of name and form existing only in the mind of consciousness.

Then there is this emptiness that doesn’t actually do anything. The conscious recognition of emptiness by emptiness. The recognition of the Self recognizing the Self that we call awakening, there doesn’t seem to be any real trigger to it. There is literally no control of it. It literally feels like an on/off switch that is switching by itself.

The following quote just passed by on facebook and it feels so fitting right now:

Realise that the conceptual thinker and conceptual thoughts seemingly obscure the non-conceptual natural state. Pause a thought even for an instant and the natural state is fully evident. STOP and SEE. In the seeing, pure awareness gets used to itself…

-Sailor Bob

The bit about pure awareness getting used to itself, this seems to be SO key. It’s about getting used to being no one, just spacious emptiness awareness. It is unborn and uncreated. It has no face. Rather than the world of name and form and thought and physicality basically pulling consciousness in to a sense of contraction and identification which is the hallmark of the asleep state, there is a sort of getting used to being pure awareness, of being the no thing that simply is.