About a month ago, a reader of this blog named Konstantin sent me an email about the awakening he was experiencing. With his permission, I’d like to share with you what he wrote:
Hi Ariel,
there has been a hunch to write you some fanmail and although I’m not really sure yet what to write, I’ll just send you a few lines.
First of all, thank you very much for the work you are doing. I read your posts nearly daily now and I just love the way you put truth.
After a lot of contemplation some very profound realizations came to “me” lately that really resonate with everything you write about so wonderfully on this blog. Just yesterday, without any particular cause, consciousness awakened for the first time in this form and saw itself as oneness.
It was the direct experience of what I only read about on your blog before. I saw around and realized me to be everything and consciousness and my vision started to go peripheral. Humans didn’t seem in anyway different than the chairs they sat on, there was a sense of belonging flowing through everything attention went on and it all seemed to be based in … Love
Now today after more contemplation on this truth there was even a letting go of the “me”, the self in all of consciousness so that only the feeling of a vastness remained, a vastness that everything physical and nonphysical belongs to.
Now, I was at work today and that required the usage of the mind during most of the day, but that knowingness remained in the background. And it remains now as I use the mind to write you these words. That is something previously totally unknown to me.
Now the reason why I even bother writing you all of this is because I’d like to ask for your input on some things.
First of all there was a belief in reincarnation before but now looking at it it seems completely bogus. Of course nobody really dies… as suddenly death seems completely bogus too. Where should anything ever go? Outside of allness? And of course as everything is one as (let’s call it) “consciousness”, the one gets born over and over again as form as long as ONE chooses to. But the idea of separate souls that reincarnate into a set of bodies, that belong to the history of that separate soul, being bound to soulfamilies and whatnot … seems like a nice children’s fairytale right now. What’s your (mind’s) pick on this? Man, it’s actually funny seeing myself going back into mentalization.
Also now the outlook on life seems completely different. It doesn’t leave one with a whole lot to do. Spiritual research and consciousness raising also seems needless right now, as what is there to raise to begin with?
Last night I listened to an Adyashanti satsang called “The Three Phases of Awakening” and in his talk, he brought up some traps which really resonate with me, traps which I’ve found myself getting caught in.
The trap is that once you get a taste of the Absolute and realize that all is perfect, then who cares about the world of the Relative because it’s all perfect anyways. Who cares because it’s all an illusion? At this point, you even have the choice to sit back let the body waste away and not really engage the world because hey, it’s already perfect. What more could I do?
Let’s examine this together and see exactly what’s going on.
Fear of Life
Many of us have a fear of death, yet there’s another fear that’s not talked about as often: fear of life. For some people, fear of life is even more intense than fear of death.
It’s like when we’re born, there’s all these bright lights, people pulling us this way or pushing us that way, lots of commotion, and then we get slapped. What an entrance. Perhaps there’s a part of us that says, “Man, I don’t like life. It was better before I was born. All of the sudden I’m suffering.”
It’s almost like some people don’t like life right from the get-go and this never quite heals.
Escaping Life
This is a very common experience for people since life can be so unpleasant. Some people will try to escape life through drugs, alcohol, music, sex, food, sleeping, or whatever other distraction works for them.
Perhaps people get into spirituality with the hope that when they become enlightened, life will suddenly become magical and wonderful. It will be the solution to all my problems!
So they take this (inaccurate) idea with them, proceed down the spiritual path, and eventually they find themselves abiding in the Absolute reality.
Hiding in the Absolute
In the Absolute, everything is as it is. Perfection is. What we call “real life” is seen to be totally an illusion and nothing really happens. Everything just is. It’s pure beingness. There’s nothing we could do to make life better or worse. Even the Hitler’s and diseases of the world are seen to be part of the perfection.
Now it is true that the world we live in is illusion and ultimately unreal, but there is still an element of experiential reality to it, is there not? It’s like, no matter how enlightened you are, if you get hit in the head with a hammer, it’s still gonna hurt.
The understanding that this world is an illusion and not real is an excellent instructional understanding, but there’s still a sense of practicality that needs to be integrated alongside this understanding. This is the part where we become “in this world, but not of it.” Rather than abiding in the Absolute as a way to escape the life of suffering, we recognize that All That Is INCLUDES the world of the relative, illusion or not. Read More …
There’s a very important difference I’d like to talk about because without being aware of this, it may seem like two different paths and ideologies can be in conflict with each other whereas they’re simply choosing to ultimately achieve the same thing, fulfillment of the soul and a place of well-being, but via different methods and teachings.
The Saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.
-Fingers Pointing Toward the Moon by Wei Wu Wei
Historical Background
When the Buddha came to the earth and began teaching his Dharma 2500 years ago, he basically began teaching a pathway to enlightenment. His eight-fold path leads to the end of human suffering and self-awakening.
Enlightenment is essentially a complete disidentification with the ego, our idea of a separate self. As one searches for Truth and begins to look within, they will often find that there really is no separate self in the first place, only the idea of one which they can then pretend to be real and thus who I am. Enlightenment is about letting go of identification with the false self, with that which you are not.
For those of you familiar with David Hawkins’ map of consciousness, spiritual awakening corresponds with consciousness level 600, the initial level of enlightenment.
Now practically speaking, total spiritual awakening can be a pretty challenging task for people, especially for people back thousands of years ago who were far less spiritually evolved than people today. You and I have a bit of a head start compared to people in those days since many of us are open to and have been exposed to higher level teachings our whole lives.
Yes you can become enlightened this very instant, but it generally takes a lot of effort to get to that level of surrender.
When Jesus came down, 500 years after Buddha, he taught people to strive for a different goal which is easier for the masses to reach: Unconditional Love.
We can’t really say to ourselves, “Let’s be enlightened now” and have it happen just like that, but we can choose to be unconditionally loving in the moment.
Jesus taught about loving your neighbor as yourself, being a loving person, and so on. His teachings basically guide people to being the best “me” that they can be. He encourages people to become the highest and most loving and compassionate separate self possible, even though he does mention how we are all Gods and ultimately One.
For those of you familiar with Hawkins’ scale of consciousness, Unconditional Love calibrates at consciousness level 540, the highest level attainable before enlightenment at 600. Again, if you don’t know what the numbers mean, no worries. What’s important to take away is the idea that Unconditional Love is the highest state that an individual can attain.
Both paths, unconditional love and enlightenment, are absolutely amazing and deal support the fulfillment of the soul. It’s not about gaining worldly possessions and attaining worldly power and status, but about fulfillment of the soul and becoming whole and complete as a being.
If everyone in the world reached the level of Unconditional Love or Enlightenment, MAN what a place this’d be!! Both levels are utterly phenomenal. Read More …
We often perceive growth and development as a process of addition. We learn new skills and techniques, acquire more knowledge, understand deeper truths, read more books, attend more seminars, search for more spiritual teachers, and so on, but the pathway to awakening doesn’t play by these rules.
The “enlightened you” that you are looking for is actually the one who is looking and thus as long as you are looking for something to obtain or an understanding to acquire, you’re missing it. It is the seeker who is the one being sought.
Awakening is a process of subtraction.
What am I?
Am I the mind? No.
Am I the body? No.
Am I the beliefs and personality? No.
Am I the temporary role that is being played of the seeker, father, mother, son, teacher, or anything else? No.
What you are is realized by cutting away identification with that which you are not.
Strip away all false ideas which cover up Truth and the Truth of your being will become radiantly apparent.
It’s impossible for the Real You to not be, for it already is. All that’s necessary is for the self to quit making up stories about what it thinks it is and to just Be.
The more one can surrender all false ideas, the quicker Reality will be realized.
What you are looking for already exists here and now, not just as some potential reality that will come about if you change your thoughts and beliefs to believe you are enlightened, but if you literally drop away all those thoughts and look at what’s left.
With the stripping away of that which I am not, the Reality of that which you are automatically comes rushing in. What you truly are is everything, but this is only realized by first stripping away that which you are not. This understanding arises automatically, not deliberately. It can not be taken by force.
Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows.
There is no spectrum, no scale, only the appearance of such.
There is ONLY the One.
The idea of variation is a result of looking at different expressions of the One, but all expressions of the One are illusion and thus not real, despite the fact that they are the One.
Nevertheless, he did people a huge favor by breaking down the unbreakable.
There is only Consciousness, the very source of Consciousness. There is no 200, 500, 600, 1000. There is only 1. Read More …
After the latest dark night of the soul that I experienced, a few days later came another temporary awakening to my true nature.
It was the total dissolution of any reality of a separate self, not only the separate “me” existing as an individual person, but the total disappearance of anything as a separate reality in and of itself. There was the realization of existence as only the One.
This actually happened an evening just before I headed out to a party with some friends. The experience that was had was absolutely incredible.
In the awakened state, there is only the reality of the infinite welcoming openness of Love itself. There is only the One, no others. In social situations, there is no social anxiety, fear, worry about judgment or approval, or the desire to do anything other than give and love, to be who “you” truly are..
See, fear only exists as a reality when there is another to fear. If there’s no one else in the universe, there’s nothing to fear. Literally. Fear only exists within a divided state of consciousness.
The experience wound up being a total connectedness, an infinite openness, and a joyful welcoming to be or do anything. Sense of humor is automatic and awesome for it is a natural characteristic of the One’s true nature.
After coming home from the party, “Ariel” sat down and started writing about the experience. Let’s share this experience with “you” now. Read More …
When many various individuals throughout history, many of which had never heard of one another, speak of the exact same non-physical transcendental Reality, there’s got to be some truth to it. Here’s a list that compares quotes from the Enlightened who all say that there is no doer.
Just like the heart and lungs, the mind is going and going all by itself. The problem is that we identify that automatic random thinking as being “me”, when it’s not. Since you can watch the mind and its thinkingness, you are not the mind. This means that only Awareness (that is aware of the mind) is Reality, and the ego/mind is an illusion, and there is no individual “I”. The only real “I” is the Totality of All Existence as formless Unmanifested Infinite Awareness that is aware of Itself.
Translation: There is no doer.
“I am nothing. He is all. I do nothing of my own. He does it. I am God’s pencil. A tiny bit of pencil with which He writes what He likes. God writes through us, and however imperfect instruments we may be, He writes beautifully.”
- Mother Teresa
Translation: There is no doer.
“Paradoxical though it may sound: There is a path to walk on, there is walking being done, but there is no traveler. There are deeds being done, but there is no doer.”
- Buddha
Translation: There is no doer.
“When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.”
- St. John 8:28
Translation: There is no doer.
“All processes are out of my control. When one sees this with understanding, then one is disillusioned with the things of suffering. This is the Path of Purification.”
- The Dhammapada verse 279
Translation: There is no doer.
“The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills.”
- Meister Eckhart
Translation: There is no doer.
“Whatever you may be, you are being ‘lived’. You are not traveling, as you think: you are being ‘traveled.’”
- Wei Wu Wei
Translation: There is no doer.
“All Actions are performed by the gunas of prakriti. Deluded by his identification with the ego, a person thinks, ‘I am the doer.’ But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other; they do not claim to be the doer.”
- Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, 3:27,28
Translation: There is no doer.
Everything is happening spontaneously, all by itself, as an automatic consequence of what one is. Or to put it even more simply, EVERYTHING is karma.
Translation: There is no doer.
“Going on the path of inner experience, I attained the true knowledge, destroying the I-am-the-doer sense at its root. Afterwards, the ever-functioning mind was dead.”
- Arunagirinatha
Translation: There is no doer.
“From the standpoint of the Self ‘practicing advaita’ (nonduality) is an oxymoron since in that state there is no longer an entity who can make choices about what should or should not be done. In that state action arises spontaneously from the Self, unmediated by the I-am-the-doer idea.”
- David Godman, Translator of Ramana Maharshi’s works
Translation: There is no doer.
However, if you or I were to say right now that “there is no doer”, that would be the ego/mind talking because we’re still identified with the mind and it’s thinkingness. Only the Enlightened who have permanently dissolved all mental activity can say that there is no doer, just as the ego can’t say the ego is an illusion. That’s simply the ego playing it’s clever games to keep consciousness identified with it. The Enlightened have no use for words except to explain things to those who still think words are important. Words only serve a purpose until it’s realized that they don’t serve a purpose. They are useful for the sake of explaining to “others” that they are useless. When they happen spontaneously by themselves, in the moment, for the sake of “others”, in the form of writing or speaking, they serve a purpose. Words are only symbols and representations that cannot fully describe anything. The word chocolate is not chocolate. The Truth is beyond all words, and it’s meant to be experienced, not merely talked about. But you don’t really “experience” it because there is no “this” experiencing “that” when there is only One. You are that One.
“The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are Illusions.”
- Bodhidharma
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Jarett Sabirsh temporarily ceased all thought and experienced samadhi, a profound realization of one’s true nature as Awareness. As a result of experiencing Truth/Love, he helps “others” dissolve the barriers that stand in the way of experiencing It for themselves. He is dedicated to truth/love in all of its relative forms, and it’s absolute non-form. http://www.thetruthsoflife.com
It’s been said that the whole world is an illusion, yet there’s still something being experienced, and there seems to be a “me” to experience it. Let’s take a look at how we can graphically illustrate this illusion-creating process through a pair of 10-minute videos and see how our bodies interact with the illusion, if the world is, in fact, an illusion at all.
The world as we know it can not actually be perceived. The ONLY thing that is ACTUALLY being experienced is the electrical signals stimulating the appropriate areas of the brain. So while it looks like we may be looking at another person or at a movie, we’re actually seeing the brain’s perception of a visual experience.
It’s similar to how when we dream at night, we can “see” a world that feels very real, and even though our eyes aren’t looking at anything other than blackness, the brain is still activated via electrical signals and thus we can “see.” The same is true when we close our eyes and visualize. It is recognized that the dream and the visualization are just illusions because they are not coming through the eyes.
The physical world may seem more real because it comes through our eyes, but that doesn’t mean that we can actually see a real physical world. We can ONLY see the brain’s perception of it. This sounds like a subtle difference, but it’s actually a key point. We can NEVER actually interact with the world itself through our minds, only our perceptions of it.
Let’s continue with the video.
So we can see that the brain is constantly interacting with electrical stimulation which we interpret to be an external reality, whether at night when we dream or during the day when we’re “awake.” It’s a lot like watching a movie comprised of electrical stimulation.
Who is it that’s watching the movie? The movie may be changing, but there’s always “someone” there watching. In the video, they called this observer the soul. It can also be called awareness, spirit, the witness, or even God. (The video cuts off at the end so we will continue on our own from here, now that it has set the foundation.)
When we start looking more closely to figure out who this observer is, who this soul is, we ultimate find that there is no me. At best, we can say that awareness exists. Thoughts may be running around the brain, but “I” am the one observing this. The soul is watching the show.
In many spiritual traditions, “enlightenment” essentially boils down to reconnecting and reidentifying with this witnessing soul, a non-localized awareness. The experiences shows us, experientially, that the physical world is entirely an illusion. When we “awaken,” it’s very similar to waking up in the morning and realizing that the whole dream, even though it felt monumentally real when we were immersed in it, is actually totally made up. It ONLY existed within the mind and it has no reality on its own.
So now let me offer you a few questions to consider:
Is the one who experiences the dream and interacts with it the same as the one who witnesses the dream happening?
Is the experiencer the same as the awareness?
Does the observing soul have the capacity to be affected by or damaged by the dream world abiding in the mind?
You Are Truly Loved features content designed to guide people towards enlightenment, unconditional love, and living a life of joy through Self-realization and proper application of the Law of Attraction.
Many of us have a fear of death, yet there’s another fear that’s not talked about as often: fear of life. For some people, fear of life is even more intense than fear of death.
When the Buddha came to the earth and began teaching his Dharma 2500 years ago, he basically began teaching a pathway to enlightenment. His 
When Jesus came down, 500 years after Buddha, he taught people to strive for a different goal which is easier for the masses to reach: Unconditional Love.
