Everything and Nothing.. not two.

Nothingness

Some spiritual practices really emphasize nothingness. Emptiness. Formlessness. Silence. The Uncreated. The Unmanifested.

Seeing this, we may go into meditation and do our best to detach from life, detach from our emotions, detach from our experiences, and recognize who we are independent of all circumstance.

There are also many losses that can be experienced.. loss of attachment, loss of desire, even loss of self! This may also be reflected “externally” (heh) in the world as loss of physical posessions, relationships, and so on.

Deep within we go, deeper and deeper, falling into the abyss of nothingness/nowhere, until it is seen that there is no one to fall, no one to surrender, and that the nothingness, the experience of nothingness, and the no one experiencing the nothingness are all one and the same.

Into the nothingness, nothing collapses, and explosion of everythingness happens. Silently, form, color, shape, fullness, love, creation, action, doing, celebration, dance, music, fullness, abundance, infinity… all are seen to BE the nothingness.

Non-dual

Everything and nothing are one and the same. Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness.

The ascetic who has little to no posessions is seen to be the same as the materialist who has lots of stuff. They are the same, identically one and the same. There is only one.

No understanding to be grasped. Nothing to understand. Beyond all understanding and yet imminitely present.

Everything and nothing, not two, not two.

Formlessness and form, not two, not two.

Manifest and Unmanifest, not two, not two.

Seeker and mystic, not two, not two.

Just the stripping away of all, without time and space, expressing itself as all of time and space.

Uncreated, uncaused, already existent, and active within consciousness now. The pure silent glow of the Divine, radiating as All That Is.

Here. Now. Always, in All Ways.

Here we are, experiencing the One in all its infinite manifestations. What’s this like? What’s that like?

Here’s a wonderful video that Matt Kahn recently published, talking about experiencing the fullness of life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUiEJDJLkhY

When I was 5 years old my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

-Unknown

Okay, so what drives human decisions? In a nutshell, we tend to move towards what we believe will bring us pleasure and away from what we believe what will bring us pain. It’s about our beliefs.

It’s not that we move directly towards pleasure itself and away from pain. I’m sure you can find many examples in the world, and perhaps even in your own life, when you have moved away from pleasure and towards pain. Interesting, no? Why would we do such a thing? It’s because on a deeper level, beyond surface-level appearances, we are moving towards what we believe will bring that which feels good and away from what we believe will ultimately make us feel worse. Much of this is subconscious.

So why do we do those things that we “know” aren’t good for us? For example, why do we resist reality? Why do we try to control others or the world? Why do we try and manifest things? Heck, why do we try and get enlightened!? Why do we do all this stuff?

Simple, because we believe that our happiness and well-being depends upon it! Quite literally! In the end, we all want to feel good. We all want to be happy, to experience joy, to love and be loved, to experience all those good feelings and emotions.

So, joy. We’re seeking joy. We want to be happy. It’s pretty simple, really.

Yet this joy we’re seeking is conditional. We experience our happiness dependent upon things out of our control, and that doesn’t feel very good, does it?

What if there was a better way?…

Seeking Joy

So as little kids, we’re happy when we get rewarded, when we get treats. When someone approves of us we feel good and so then associate happiness with approval and validation. When we’re scared and we get our blanket, we feel more secure, and so we think that our security lies in a “security blanket.” As adults this same pattern remains with us, though the security blanket itself may change, whether it comes in the form of money, a dependable spouse, a big house, etc.

Then we may begin discovering that, hey wait a second, we can be happy even without those things. We can feel safe and loved even without our security blankets.

If our happiness depends on an external circumstance, person, or thing, then our happiness is vulnerable. What can be gained can also be lost. We will often do everything in our power to maintain our happiness, but very often we find that we simply can’t control the world enough to maintain our happiness. It’s like the world is stronger than we are.

Seeing this and not wanting to be so helplessly at the effect of the world, we begin learning to let go, surrender, and release our attachments. The whole “spiritual pathway” thing. There are many helpful tools and techniques that can help us in this stage. They are very valuable and can bring us closer and closer to the freedom and joy that is already HERE.

Eventually we begin reaching the point where our tools have done their part and we can begin letting even them go too. If you hurt your leg, a crutch is a very useful tool to help you out until you your leg is strong enough for you to put your weight back on it and walk on it. But if we cling onto our crutch for, what was originally intended to help us out eventually becomes a limitation itself! Why do you think they call it a crutch!?

Many of our spiritual tools are designed to help us go beyond the experience of “my happiness depends upon XYZ.” Be careful that application of your tool doesn’t itself become the next apparent source/cause of happiness or else you have simply traded one condition for your happiness for another.

The tool is never the point. The tool itself is not even what is important. Finger pointing to the moon. It is a stepping stone towards something greater until it is no longer needed. It is something that we must let go of, yet this can be very hard for people to do. It’s scary to let go of your crutches at first and then walk and even run freely! But there is a point when we MUST let go of all our tools in order to go beyond.

A tool is not the source of happiness. A truly helpful tool assists us in finding the happiness already within us so that we no longer need the tool anymore! So this isn’t to invalidate the usefulness of any tool, far from it. It’s simply about put them in their appropriate context.

Tools help us become more loving, more spiritual, more conscious, more forgiving, and all that jazz. Yet simultaneously there is also the presence of that which IS, which isn’t affected by any tools, which doesn’t become more of anything or less of anything. All tools exist within this, but none of them can touch or change this.

The Source of Joy

The quality of inner silence and presence remains like a subtle energy inside this body. Each time you turn your attention in this way, you will notice this beautiful peaceful energy. Get used to it and gradually this current of joy and peace will remain unbroken in you.”

-Mooji

The more we let go, the more we find this natural sense of happiness, joy, and peace arising all on its own without us having to really do anything deliberately. I call this arising natural because it is uncaused, unforced, uncreated, unmanifested, and unfiltered. It’s pure and untouched, just as it is.

There is this ground of being, the felt sense “I Am”, one’s very own existence, Life itself manifesting as an apparent person. It is this unchanging constant silent presence that is the true source of joy, that IS Joy itself.

To BE is itself already a huge gift. When we live in the domain of the mind, there is a vacillation between “life is good” and “life sucks” and we tend to do whatever we think’ll make us feel better, but very often what we think will work doesn’t, hence the saying “be careful what you wish for” (because you just may get it and realize that it doesn’t actually give you what you wanted fundamentally… happiness and joy)

The more the mind and all its conceptual spinnings can be free to just fall away on their own in their own time, the more this ground of being can move from the background into the forefront of conscious awareness.

“This realization is such a profound shift, in that, one realizes the identity of self to naturally be awareness itself, and not the ideas or images arising in awareness. It is in this presence, that the reality of life unfolds. Therefore, there is only the witnessing of what comes and goes, that ever happens to exist — and you are that.”

-Matt Kahn

Causeless Joy

When we think that joy is a result, that it has a cause which comes as a result of some accomplishment or attainment, then we will seek to maintain this temporary event as long as possible, or to keep creating and recreating it, lest we lose that which we want. No! Anything but that!

Yet when we go deep enough within and discover for ourselves the presence of the ground of Being and what it depends on (if anything) in order for joy to be present, the more we can stop imposing all these unnecessary and artificial conditions upon our happiness and just BE. We discover that somehow, this itself is entirely sufficient. The quality and nature of Being may itself inspire positive emotion, yet it itself is somehow beyond emotional condition and thus it is free of the emotional pendulum swing. The presence of Being is NOT lost when you feel bad and so emotions need not be feared as if they cover this up.

Yes thoughts are inseparably tied to emotion, but what we are pointing to here goes beyond emotion.

“The truth is already itself, and you are that truth. If you are looking for truth, and attempting to find it somewhere else, or through a process of becoming someone else, you are unclear about what truth actually is; lost in the dream of a well-organized thinker, adrift in a sea of endless spiritual ideas.”

-Matt Kahn

The Law of Attraction

I’d like to wrap up with a little bit on the law of attraction here. From the place of seeking joy as a caused result, why would we want to manifest something? Because we see manifestation as an integral part of the cause of joy! Because we love the excitement of thinking about and anticipating the arrival of that which we want, because we love the experience of the creative process unfolding before our eyes, we enjoy the synchronicities along the way, and we are happy that we have creative control over our reality.

It feels great to “be in the vortex” as Abraham puts it, but when we start thinking and believing in thought that is out of alignment with reality, then we experience the response called negative motion.

As such, our happiness is still experienced to be conditional. It’s dependent upon thinking positive thoughts, allowing yourself to go with the flow, and so on. This is how we tend to experience life, is it not?

Yet what I’m finding is that when you start releasing these conditions upon your happiness, positive thoughts begin to happen on their own, when thoughts do arise in the first place, that is. The mind begins to quiet down naturally, yet thoughts do continue to arise, although they are taken less seriously and are not seen to be as much of a problem anymore. In the presence of Being, somehow you just don’t even believe these thoughts that keep passing by! They’re not being followed the way they once were, and they’re certainly not seen to contain more importance and weight than the presence of Being!

Going with the flow itself becomes a natural way of being in the world. Unconditional love and appreciation for all of life, including this mind/body/personality/history/energy blob we call “me,” somehow arises all on its own, all without us having to think our way to happiness. The happiness is somehow found to already be here! These things are our natural state when we stop placing conditions upon our happiness and joy. Our cork rises naturally when we quit resisting so damn hard! You don’t “raise your vibration.” Just quit resisting and it raises itself!!

and speaking of the LoA, here’s the ironic/amazing thing about how it ties into all this causeless joy stuff… The more we quit trying to control our realities and manifest stuff in order to create happiness and instead we let go and let go of that condition, the more we quit waiting for the manifestation of that which we want in order to experience joy and the more we begin experiencing that desired happiness and joy NOW. Woohoo! The more we begin experiencing that appreciation and unconditional love NOW. Sweet!

The more we quit making our happiness, joy, appreciation, and love conditional upon the world, since the world is basically our mirror, it has no choice but to reflect all that back to us!

What is it that Abraham keeps saying is the most important thing? “There is nothing more important than that you feel good.” The more we quit trying to “make this all happen” and just be happy now for its own sake, the more all the stuff that we want starts to effortlessly flow into our lives. Well gee, that was easy! The more we quit holding on to and defending our old and familiar patterns of egoic resistance, the more we can just relax into this timeless ground of Being without waiting for some ideal time in the future or thinking that it existed in some past moment or experience which we now need to recreate.

“Why are you happy?”

“No reason at all!”

Causeless joy, this joy within that is at the heart of what you are, here it is! And it has no cause!

P.S. Thanks to my facebook buddies for passing along such wonderful quotes used above.

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!

So I’ve been on the road about 5 weeks now, driven over 4600 miles, and have been living life in experimentation mode by applying various principles I’ve come to know and seeing how well they really work in this whole “real life” thing. I’ve made amazing friends partying at Mardi Gras, photographed a cheer and dance competition in Texas, skied in New Mexico, camped along the Rio Grande, hiked down into the Grand Canyon, had an ostrich bite my camera, been homeless in Colorado, discovered how every state has is very own distinct vibe, experienced the most ridiculous and consistent degrees of synchronicity, met amazing friends all over the country, had the universe repeatedly bring me all that I want including exactly the type of weather I want when I want it, been given free food and lodging all over the country… Quite honestly this is the most exciting and simultaneously the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

I’m learning SO much. There’s lots of things I’m learning that I didn’t know before and many things that I’m finally actually GETTING. To use an analogy, let’s say you’ve done martial arts for a while and your instructor keeps telling you, “Hands up! Keep your hands up!” and so you know that your hands need to be up but when you’re practicing, your hands subconsciously keep coming down. It isn’t until you actually spar against an opponent and get clocked in the head that you finally GET IT that your hands need to be UP!  This is a lot like that. As is often said, life is our greatest teacher… There’s a lot of things that I “knew” didn’t work, and if you were to ask me before, I’d tell you that no, such-and-such doesn’t work. If you asked me now, I’d be like “nah dude, really, that shit DOES NOT WORK!!” It’s that transition from mental understanding to gut-level understanding.

This has also been a very emotional experience in that it’s forcing me to really look at myself. I’m basically free to go where I want and do what I want (within reason… a 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive vehicle would be super handy for going up into the snowy mountain peaks and camping in the backcountry, for example, buy I digress…). One thing I wanted from this trip was to really shed light onto the remaining unconscious portions of myself. See, I remember Adyashanti talking about when his awakenings first started, and they also began in the nonabiding form as I am experiencing, when he was going through his process he’d sit down in a coffee shop for hours writing and writing about his beliefs and exploring any area within him that would still go into division. This has been a big part of my journey here. It’s really taking what I’ve learned and applying it all. Jump in with both feet and apply the law of attraction, for example. Apply the ability to surrender and let go when your ego gets bruised and you face your inner darkness head on. Do all the stuff you need to do because now it really matters. It’s crunch time and the pressure’s on.

Freedom of Experience

To what degree do I want to experience freedom? I’ve thrown up a tent and camped in state parks and enjoyed being out in nature. I’ve slept in my car and enjoyed waking up in new places and not having to tear down a tent in the cold mornings. I’ve stayed in hotels and loved the big comfy bed and the little kitchenettes that allow me to cook. I’ve stayed on friends’ futons and enjoyed the free lodging and social life. What is the most harmonious expression of freedom that I’d like to experience? Let’s go out and try a lot of different things and see what they’re like!

Now I’m looking for a more permanent home to throw down some roots. It seems that this country really caters to those with a home and address. Where do I want to live? I can live in Denver, a big city with lots of different regions all over. I can live in Boulder which is a smaller town with a great spiritual vibe and amazing outdoorsy people. I can live up in a small mountain town like Nederland which gets a lot more snow and has more unplowed roads. Heck, I can even go live in a tipi on a sustainable farm! So many options! What do I want? What does my heart say?

Go dive into the unknown and follow that intuition… Let’s see where it takes me.

Spontaneity vs. Planning

What degree of structure do I want in my life? What works best? What feels best? What is most enjoyable? You can try going out somewhere in the world where you literally have NOTHING that you need to do. No plans. No nothing. Just show up and here you are. Where does your intuition lead you next? Completely and utterly spontaneous, allowing synchronicity to be everything.

Do you want a full schedule with lots of things to do and times to be at certain places?

Do you want to be generally open with only a few things scheduled to give your life some sense of  structure and direction while simultaneously being open to change direction on a dime?

I’m finding the last option to be most enjoyable for me. Complete and utter no plans doesn’t feel so good. I like having a next step to head towards in life and a few things on my to-do list. I like having an overall purpose for my life within which I allow the flow to occur. What do you like?

This is something that has been really valuable, to really let go and actually try out lots of different ways of being in the world and find what feels and works best for YOU. This is probably something that each person needs to find out for themselves…

Intuition

Intuition is SO bang on. It’s been my go-to option whenever it comes down to make a decision. Virtually every decision now is simply a matter of asking my intuition. What does this feel like? How does that option feel? Eventually you really start to develop the ability to discern between the feelings of expansiveness, openness, joy, excitement, and subtleness that usually comes with the intuition’s yes versus the sense of closure, downness, no, stopping, almost shut down that comes with the intuition’s no. Honestly one of the main challenges is getting the mind to align with the intuition. That’s really where the main challenge seems to lie, in getting the mind with all its logic and reasoning to surrender to a simple feeling that doesn’t explain itself.

Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction really works. I mean it REALLY works. I experience so consistently whatever it is that I most strongly think and believe deep down. It’s SO clear…

You are the light, mind is the prism, the world is your rainbow.
-Ash Ruiz

One thing I found amusing was to over and over hear people say “but this never happens!” It’s like everywhere I’d go, restaurants would hand me free food and beer, the weather would be perfect and just as I’d asked, things would just work out for me, and I’d just smile knowing that this has all been created within me and is being experienced due to my own inner alignment. At the same time, I only experience it to the degree that the alignment with inner being is maintained. It’s like a direct 1:1 relationship. Alignment with inner being, loving what is, non-resistance to the present moment, being in the vortex, being in a state of allowing, flowing the energy of Source through you, whatever you wanna call it… this one singular thing is what leads to the unfoldment of all that I desire in ways that are more amazing that I could have ever imagined had I been trying to micromanage or control any of this. It’s like having full creative power of choosing my vibrational state of being and simultaneously having no control over the physical world. The more I surrender control of the world and focus on inner alignment, the more the apparently outer world shows up in ways that reflect my inner alignment. This is really what the LoA is all about.

Happiness

This has been a pretty hard-hitting one for me. I really thought on some level that going out and jumping in to what I perceived to be a life of freedom and travel would bring happiness. It was subtle, but it was definitely here. This has been one false notion that’s been crashing down the past few days, and it’s been a tough pill to swallow. How many times have I thought that going out and “living the life of my dreams” would be what I was looking for? Wasn’t that what life was supposed to be about? It’s the idea that a certain lifestyle = happiness. Nope. Being out here in Colorado doesn’t make me happy. Heck, even manifesting all the stuff that I want doesn’t make me happy. Experiencing synchronicity and being in the flow itself doesn’t make me happy. It really doesn’t. I’m finding I keep placing conditions on my happiness and joy, as if something in life needs to be a certain way so that I can experience happiness and so I go about trying to structure my life a certain way. I keep placing these conditions on myself and finding that they keep come crashing down. They don’t work.

What I keep coming to find is that happiness DOES NOT lie outside of myself, as cliche as that may be. Happiness isn’t found in being loved. It isn’t found in living a certain lifestyle. It isn’t found in finally getting something you’ve always wanted. It doesn’t lie in mastery of a certain skill or achievement in a particular ability, including manifesting everything you want. Not at all…

The way it seems that it works is that happiness is found within, as if we ARE it. Literally. We find that we ARE it when we quit looking to FIND it. This inner being that is along for the journey every step of the way, this awareness that is ALWAYS present no matter how epic or traumatic the experience of life is, this presence that is always always always here, it’s so easy to get distracted from that and get lost in thought or lost in the world or lost in experiences, and yet this beingness is always here. When there’s a turning within, Love is found here. Joy is found here. Happiness is found here. Peace is found here.  Well-being is found here. It doesn’t matter where in the world I am or what is happening around me. It’s like this ground of being is becoming my home, silence is becoming my home, even if I don’t have a physical place to call home.

I wanted to write a book about the Law of Attraction, put together a workshop, collect videos that were especially helpful and so on, and yet what I’m starting to find is that mastery of manifesting DOES NOT BRING HAPPINESS. If I ever do come out with a product on the LoA, manifesting is going to be seen as sooooo secondary to being joyous, to being joy itself.

Byron Katie

The other day I was listening to Byron Katie and she said a number of things that completely blew me away…

Her whole thing is about questioning your thoughts and no longer believing in thought whatsoever, thereby ending your suffering. Her process to help us accomplish this she calls The Work and it’s repeatedly proving itself to be so effective and powerful…

She says that all suffering is a result of believing in thought. Period.  She mentioned that one thing she loves about life is that when someone else experiences pain, she doesn’t. When she experiences pain, the other doesn’t. We *think* that we suffer because of what another says or does, but the reality is we suffer because we believe thoughts that arise within us about what another said or did. If we didn’t believe any of our thoughts, experiences would simply happen and we wouldn’t suffer as a result of them. When you no longer believe in your thoughts, you are in heaven. When asked if she still feels like she’s in heaven even when bad things happen to her, she said she no longer perceives them as bad because she’s done the inquiry and doesn’t believe the thoughts that arise that suggest something is bad. She then went so far as to suggest that what if you went to heaven and took all your current thoughts with you. Would you then even experience heaven at all? The thing is you wouldn’t, and this is the condition most people are in. We all are in heaven right now, and yet we don’t experience it because we believe in our thoughts.

This is something that Adya has mentioned before as well, that he has literally lost the ability to believe in his own thoughts… I’ve wondered how this plays out in terms of the LoA which says that what you believe you experience… The two perspectives kinda seem at odds and this is a paradox that I have still only partially resolved for myself.

In any event, questioning my own thoughts repeatedly is bringing SO much valuable insight to me, so much clarity, and so much understanding. It’s a very useful technique…

So What Now?

There is SO much I don’t know. Everytime I think I know something, life gently and lovingly shows me how completely utterly wrong I am. There’s just so much more surrender to experience, a continual opening up to even deeper love (especially the scarier places), finding more areas of darkness and bringing the light into them, being happy and joyous for its own sake without any reason necessary, letting go of those fears and resistances and doubts and worries, and really just BEING. Being, loving, enjoying, surrendering…

Really I don’t know anything. Geez…

All I know is that here I am, sitting in a coffee shop, reflecting on the past few weeks of… good god… I don’t know how to describe it…

Whew… So yeah… If you’ve made it this far along and enjoyed what was shared, If you wanna read more from a wandering guy who has no idea what he’s doing half the time  :lol  feel free to donate some cash and help me pay for food and gas. It’s certainly appreciated!

Until next time, happy living!!

-Ariel

Suggestions and pointers can be very useful, but we may eventually outgrow them. Teachings are helpful up to a certain point, but we must eventually let them go or else they will become limitations. It’s almost like sitting in a big slingshot. The slingshot will sling you forward, but if you continue holding on for too long, what once propelled you forward will eventually hold you back.

Enjoying the World

For example, one such teaching that I’m finding that it’s time to let go of is, “It is the ego which seeks to be constantly entertained. It does so as a substitute for the truth of your being, as a distraction. The world and its appearances are a distraction from going within. All the happiness you find in the world does nothing but strengthen your ego, furthering the illusion that your joy comes from the world. It’s more important to turn within than to focus on the world outside of you. You’ll never find that which you seek by looking to the world. Straight and narrow is the path. Waste no time.”

We could say that, especially in the beginning, the ego functions as a sort of emotional gatekeeper, as if it literally “lets happiness in” when certain external conditions are met and certain things “make me happy.” This is not true. The happiness comes from within and there is an infinite supply of it.

This teaching when misunderstood, ahem…, can be used to conclude that happiness from the world = bad. Imagine that… you get into something hoping to end your suffering, only to adopt a new (apparently “more spiritual”) belief system that has you avoiding everything you find joyful in the world! That’s messed up…

If you also have the belief system, “Life is scary and I’m terrified of it so I’m gonna run into my cave and transcend fear altogether by getting enlightened,” well than this way of avoiding the world actually becomes useful.

Causeless Happiness

Learning that our happiness isn’t literally derived from external conditions (which is true), we begin disassociating the cause of our happiness from external conditions, finding that we can be happy no matter what is happening outside of us. We find a wellspring of happiness that bubbles up from the I AM without cause. We only need to let go of resisting it to experience it. This is a great discovery. We find we’re no longer dependent upon external situations being a certain way in order to find joy like some sort of druggie. We’re no longer addicted to our sources of entertainment as if our joy depended upon it and thus those attachments progressively fall away.

Once we free our joy from the world, we’re free to experience it in the world as much as we want.

We begin finding the always available joy within and, interestingly enough, noticing that it has a natural tendency of wanting to express itself in life. Joy naturally wants to be expressed. Once we discover this, we’re free to reengage with our previous activities which we had previously been detaching from. We no longer need to do certain things and in this there is freedom.

Now we find ourselves inspired and guided from within to move in a particular direction. Instead of trying to derive joy from activities, we find that our inner joy harmonizes with certain activities quite naturally and thus we do those activities as an expression of inner joy. We bring the joy to the world. We live as a source of joy, as joy itself in human form.

This energy needs to flow out into the world. It’s part of “bringing heaven down to earth” you could say, of grounding the higher chakra energy down into your lower chakras. Simply pooling the love and light up within yourself and blissing out in meditation is sort of the spiritual equivalent of masturbation. Stripped of societal judgment, masturbation is basically a way to give yourself pleasure and that’s a wonderful thing and I’m all for it, but maybe it’s possible that there’s something more to life than that…

It’s okay to play. It’s great to have fun. It is good to feel good. There’s a reason the Buddha is often depicted with a smile on his face.

Time. I don’t wanna get into the discussion about time, eternity, the illusion of past and future, and all that jazz. I’m just not feelin’ it right now. Instead I wanna address some direct and distinct shifts that are occurring, namely that time (among other things) is quite literally starting to break apart and fracture right before my very eyes.

It’s not just about the experience of timelessness or events seeming to either fly by or take forever, not just those internal personal experiences, but I’m also now beginning to see these internal things be reflected back to me in the world. Digital clocks are now sometimes literally beginning to skip, as in several minutes or hours at a time simply won’t exist for me even though there is still the continuing experience of life. Analog clocks (the ones with minute hands and hour hands) around me are slowing down and getting off sync with other sources of time, and it’s not just old clocks and dying batteries…

It’s quite literally as if certain parts of life literally do not exist for me.

To be honest, there’s a number of things I’ve held myself back from talking about here, either because I wanted to keep this blog focused specifically on awakening or because some of the topics are a little too *out there*… But you know what? Let’s roll with it and see where this takes us, especially now that a bunch of you are reporting to have similar experiences anyways…

Telepathy and Empathy

My latent telepathic abilities have started awakening and I’ve noticed that my inner guidance is often operating in harmony with other people wanting to tell me something. As mentioned yesterday, it’s like being part of a flock of birds, both individual and simultaneously unified, where multiple people are cooperative components to a greater whole. We can call it co-creating the experience of intuitive communication. It’s as if two of us are somehow on the same frequency and can pick up on one another’s thoughts, feelings, intentions, and desires.

This seems to be correlating to a sudden increase in empathy (and actually sympathy at times) and intuitive strength that has occurred within the last two weeks. I now feel people much more strongly and even cry and laugh quite often for no logical reason, both in meditation when releasing my own inner stuff as well as when feeling other people’s emotions. Heck, I’ve been crying when watching American Idol auditions these past few weeks, much to my surprise! It seems to occur particularly often when I observe people who really really really want to make it to Hollywood. It’s like I can connect to them and suddenly feel all their emotion come pouring through me.

Again, developing the ability to surrender and maintain a sense of transparency so that the energy flows through me without me absorbing it personally, this is a really important skill. I often prefer this to simply closing down my heart and blocking out other people’s energies, though that certainly has its place in terms of learning to moderate the flow of energy and not take in more than you can handle.

As an aside, long distance wireless communication has always fascinated me. When I was younger I built WiFi antennas, spent time with friends who were amateur radio operators, studied electromagnetics and lasers in college where I learned about RF communication (like radio and TV) as well as optical communication through fiber optic cables, spent time ogling satellites and satellite dishes, and studied up on the basics of quantum teleportation-based communication. This blossoming of interest in telepathic communication is not about the desire for siddhis and supernatural abilities, but a natural progression of and development of an lifelong passion of mine.

Beyond Earth

I’ve also started getting flashes of not only past lives on earth, but past lives elsewhere in the cosmos. Ever since I was a little kid, looking up into the stars feels somehow like being home. Recognizing this and seeing my own galactic history makes it much easier to accept freely for myself many of the extraterrestrial beings who are channeling down to earth at this time. (The Essassani, Arcturians, and Pleiadians are among my favorites that I have come across thus far.) Being able to accept this and release so much internal resistance and denail has been a HUGE relief for me, like a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders.

One quick point about past lives: When I look back I find that they’re not really past lives. They’re more like multiple simultaneously occurring incarnations. Since I’m now finding my consciousness starting to periodically disconnect from the apparent stream of linear earth time (or more accurately consciousness ceasing to create the experience of time within itself), there have been some discontinuous breaks that have been experienced as mentioned previously. It’s not under my deliberate conscious control. It’s like something that just seems to happen as I fully surrender to the moment. It almost feels like I’m gradually entering the world of time travel and have yet to find the steering wheel or the panel that allows me to pick a time and place to jump to. Either way, looks like I’ve got both a flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts at my disposal.

There have also been some conscious connections strengthening with archangels, in particular Archangel Michael. I don’t have a two-way verbal dialog happening with him yet, but his presence is quite clear and visceral to me. His energy I can actually feel quite distinctly, as if he’s standing behind me like the picture above illustrates. (My head even has developed a natural tendency to lean back, again just like that picture above, ironically enough…) Every being, whether collective or individual, seems to have uniquely different energies. This applies whether we’re talking about spirit guides, angels or archangels, extraterrestrials, or even your very own light within. Each has a unique vibrational feeling signature, much like different notes in a song.

This universe is far more expansive than we’ve been taught in school. As nontraditional and even woowoo as some of this may seem, right or wrong it’s something I just have to let go and allow to arise through me. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction…

So the usual definition of enlightenment would include something along the lines of seeing reality as it actually is in its undivided state, seeing the One in the All, returning to one’s natural state of unity rather than separation, recognizing your true nature to be present moment awareness, or quite simply being who you really are.

To add another perspective to the mix, let’s look at Abraham-Hicks’ definition of enlightenment, which is basically being a blended being and being in the vortex by aligning to the energy of Source energy, but not necessarily in every moment of every day. This is somewhat different than the Advaita, Zen, and Buddhist perspectives of enlightenment.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKi3CSRk5ew

There’s this idea that once you’re enlightened, you will no longer experience any negative emotion and you will be in a place of permanent happiness, and yet what I have from my own experience (which was very confusing at first), from those I have talked to, and even from well-known teachers like Adyashanti, Papaji, Mooji, Nisargadatta, and numerous other enlightened teachers, it’s not about a lasting experience of happiness or peace, but recognizing the well-being that is present from the eternal Self that you are, regardless of any emotional state.

In the video above, Abraham points out that while the well-being of Source is eternal and unchanging, the experience of that and the manifestation of that here in this time/space reality is not how any of us are designed to live our lives in physical form. We’re designed to experience the contrast as a way to continue the unfoldment of creating. By seeing what we don’t want, that helps us know what we do want and thus can be used as a positive way, even if the focusing on what we don’t want takes us out of the vortex momentarily. To experience the negative emotions that result from that is very much okay. It’s by design. It’s not a sign of failure or not being spiritual or enlightened enough. It’s just a sign that thoughts are arising within us in the moment that are out of alignment with Source energy/Love/Truth. That’s ALL.

Living It

It’s easy to get into a discussion about nonduality, consciousness, awareness, oneness, and all these topics which to me honestly feel kinda heavy at this point to talk about. Very seri0us almost.

And yet what I’m coming to find is the more I surrender, let go, reach for thoughts that feel better, perform self-inquiry, do some releasing work like The Sedona Method or The Work, or allow things to be as they are, which are all basically ways to release the ego’s resistance to what is which is the foundation for the separate self that for so long has been a part of the human experience, the more I both expand my awareness of All That Is (the light and the dark) as well as discover this eternal bliss that is always present, and the more I live life as an expression of and celebration of joy and love. Heck, I find myself just not really caring about “enlightenment” anymore and instead enjoy living this life experience in this moment, here and now, fully as I AM.

What is being discovered is that, as so many masters have said, YOU are the point, YOU are the Divine, and the Kingdom of God is within YOU. YOU are the gift. YOU are what you have been looking for. The I AM is IT!! Just to BE what you ARE is already a tremendous blessing, and to be that in living expression by having this life experience which allows us to both know and EXPERIENCE who we really are… MAN that’s so good… That’s grounding the spiritual energy into the physical, uniting the up here with down here, and bringing heaven down to earth as is often said. And so the point is just to enjoy the love that is you, the joy that is you, the well-being that is you, here and now. EnJOY it! In Joy.

“If you really want enlightenment, just lighten up!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkxFNc8kCY

True Enlightenment is moving to the rhythm of the internal inspiration that is coming in response to the individual desire.

Enlightenment is allowing my connection to the Source that is me for the fulfillment of the things that I have individually defined in my time/space reality. That’s as good as it gets, you see.

-Abraham

We can talk about going with the flow, and from a place of Oneness, there is only the flow of life. There are no separate parts, just this one harmonious flow of many apparent individuals. To paraphrase the Sufi poet Rumi, you are the entire ocean, and the entire ocean is contained in each drop, expressing itself as each drop. We can allow everything to be as it is and find that there’s this natural intuitive movement within us to flow this way or that, as if we have an inner sense of what the next step is and how to respond spontaneously in any moment. No rules. Just natural flow. Simple. Light. Ease.

You know what? I love video posts. These are a lot of fun and I’m feeling called to develop my speaking and presentation skills and so I’d like to do more videos now instead of writing.

So here’s a video where we talk about those times when we get taken over by negative emotions. What to do then?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIO--pfXMuc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRpjDXCRwiM

Here’s a pattern I’ve noticed: Some of my greatest awakenings, realizations, and experiences in this life have been preceded by dramatic lows beforehand, emotionally, mentally, and otherwise. It’s almost like a lot of gunk comes up, is brought into awareness and experienced vividly, and once it is finally flushed out through giving up fighting against it anymore (acceptance and surrender), I am refilled with a tremendous degree of love and light.

There’s an old saying, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Once we begin seeing this pattern unfold, we can begin to let go of our resistance to and pushing away of the painful and uncomfortable aspects of the process and begin trusting the process itself. There’s a method to the madness. It may be harder to trust and let go when you’re right in the midst of the depths, sure, but it is very much possible.

Gratitude

One thing that I’ve been receiving lately is the knowledge that gratitude helps reduce the extreme swings of the pendulum. (Thank you!!!) As has been shared with me, “gratitude is the glue” that holds things together when it feels like it’s all falling apart.

As I write this, I’m getting the sense that this is a different type of “holding together.” It’s not a sense of control and resistance to the crumbling of the old energies as a way of trying to limit one’s pain and stay in one’s comfort zone, but more of a way to help you move through the process and allow change to happen without so much of the previous struggle that has been associated with it.

Gratitude Gratitude Gratitude. We hear about it all the time and blessed is the day we finally listen.

Today’s post isn’t about something I know, but about something I’m still learning about and would like to have your input on. It has to do with the topic of emotional interdependence in relationships. The question itself is at the end. The majority of the post is just contextual setup and lead-in.

Dependence

When we’re little kids, we’re very dependent upon our families for food, shelter, love, and so on. Without those things, we’d shrivel up and die.

Independence

As we grow up, we begin to develop a sense of independence. We often start to rebel against our parents in our teenage years, go through a time of trying to “find our identities” and develop an independent sense of self, and then eventually move out of our parent’s place and start a life of our own. We develop our independence.

In this independent stage, we can recognize that our happiness is in our own hands. No one else makes us happy. All our emotions are available within, and our mind can act as a sort of gatekeeper or trigger for our emotional states. Realizing this, we recognize that we can simply give ourselves whatever it is we want. For example, the sense of happiness, peace, abundance, well-being, joy, success, or whatever else. Our emotional state of being is completely independent of our external experiences.

Seeing this, we could then say that we could sit around all day visualizing the life we want, injecting ourselves with the emotional stimulation and visualized experiences that we prefer, but you know what? Life is meant to be lived! Visualization and giving yourself what you need yourself is not meant to be a replacement for life, but an addition to it.

Interdependence

Eventually we may come to see that no man is an island. Although much of the journey within is an internal journey that must be walked alone, there’s more to life than the just internal journey. Other people are very important in our lives as well. We can accomplish much more together than we ever could alone. In fact, there are many things in life that you quite simply can’t do yourself. Other people are not only important, but flat out necessary.

Seeing this, we can begin allowing ourselves to become more interdependence and this is where my questions for you guys lies.

We are responsible for our own emotions, yes. No one else is responsible for our happiness and it’s a recipe for suffering to give someone else the responsibility for our emotional well-being. That said, when we enter into a relationship with another, it can be wonderful to have someone there to cheer you up when you’re feeling down, to encourage you and inspire you when you’re feeling discouraged, and to celebrate with you when you’re feeling great.

Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.

-Swedish Proverb

Nevertheless, the person shouldn’t feel obligated to help you, like it’s their duty or their requirement as part of the job. There’s a balance between standing in your own strength and leaning on another for support, between not requiring another to help you out and yet fully opening to them and allowing them to help you out anyways. Where is that balance?

What Do You Guys Think?

There may not be one “right answer” to this, but in terms mutually supporting one another emotionally from a place of unconditional love, what would you guys say is a beneficial way for the two people in a relationship to relate to each other?

Maybe sometimes you help them heal. Other times you leave them be. Things change depending upon situation, context, personality, etc. and so there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

Nevertheless, what have you guys done in the past in your relationships and what’s worked for you? What would you say the role of a partner is in terms of emotional intimacy? This applies both to platonic relationships (friends) as well as more intimate relationships, but perhaps moreso the latter.