Tonight I’m going to share yet another personal experience. This isn’t meant to be seen as a goal to shoot for, something to desire, something to achieve, or something to duplicate. The experiences I have will be similar yet different to yours. What you are about to read is simply the natural consequence of spiritual work.
Tonight I was driving my brother and his girlfriend down to the airport. They’re going up to visit her family for the holidays.
Perfect Peace
While driving, it was noticed that there was a deep sense of inner peace present. Cars would quickly change lanes at the last minute and cut me off, yet there was no reaction in this body whatsoever. No thoughts arose, the heart didn’t skip a beat, breathing didn’t change. The body simply kept driving naturally, peacefully, effortlessly.
Curious, the mind inquired as to why this peace was so unshakable.
There was the realization that no beliefs were being believed in. Nothing was better than anything else. With this cessation of internal conflict, a deep sense of inner peace revealed itself and began expressing itself as outer peace.
Nothing in the world has any control over this peace. In fact, that idea is simply absurd, because the peace arises due to not believing any thought in the first place.
This morning I was at Unity when about halfway through the service, it was suddenly realized that the veil of separation dropped again. Awakening happened again. Since it has happened before in this lifetime, there was less clinging to it, wanting to sustain it, or trying to do anything to change anything. Instead it was something to sit back and enjoy for what it is.
The Experience of Awakening
The first thing that I noticed was that there was no longer any separation between anything. The idea of separation became ludicrous because everything was realized to literally all be the one same thing. How could anything be separate from itself if there is only the One thing?
The second thing I noticed was that no matter what direction I looked in, every direction was the same. All sense of space had dropped away because there no longer was any space. There is only here. Everything is here because it’s all the same thing. There is nowhere else.
The third thing I noticed was this sense of transparency. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s not like you could literally see through things as if you had x-ray vision, but that suddenly there was the radiant glow of essence. The beauty of Divine beingness. I can’t describe it other than to say it seemed transparent, as if everything emanated this translucent colorless golden glow.
The fourth thing I noticed was that everything seemed so much lighter. Suddenly everything seemed to be almost weightless. Everything felt airy and almost like it could levitate as if it was lighter than air.
The fifth thing I noticed was that nothing in this world was taken seriously. It was all like a big joke. It had no more reality than smoke and mirrors. It’s like taking a movie seriously. It’s all just a play of energy. Life is a game of make-believe. There is literally nothing to it, nothing to take seriously. What a place of ease and relief!
In the past I’ve had spikes of awakening where it suddenly popped in.
It seems like now things are starting to bubble up a little more steadily. It’s like the Oneness repeatedly starts to become prominent as separation sort of fades away into the nothingness. There are several things happening.
1) Withdrawing From the World
There’s a sense of withdrawal from the world, not in the escapist sense, but in the sense that I find I’m letting go of needing approval from the world and letting go of fear while being in the world. It’s like I’m withdrawing from that fear-based false reality in the first place and instead resting in something infinitely larger. There’s the recognition that I am NOT the fear and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my true nature and so I’m withdrawing energy, interest, and all sense of validity in it. Am I totally there yet? No, but it feels like it’s definitely progressing.
2) Freedom In the World
Going hand in hand with the withdrawal from the world of suffering is a simultaneous ease with which to fully be in the world, a sense of being totally and completely free to be whomever I choose to be without holding back, to be myself with no limitation. With the progressive dissolution of giving reality to fear-based lies, there’s this immense sense of freedom and the ability to enjoy the world as it is rather than needing anything from it or requiring it to be a certain way in order to make myself happy. There’s the natural and automatic experience of loving the world as it is, every aspect of it. The Sedona Method is a wonderful tool to help spark this experience.
3) Bliss
Within this body there’s this incredibly pleasurable feeling of bliss pulsing through it. It is sublime. The more I can surrender into it, the greater the sensation. It’s a silent bliss, a feeling of ecstasy. It’s not a bouncing off the walls feeling of ecstasy, but more like a mind-melting turn-your-body-to-mush ecstasy. In this state there’s no real desire to move, talk, or even breathe. It’s like consciousness falls into this all-pervading bliss and whatever happens to the body happens.
I’m beginning to speak less, do less, yet that which I am is expanding. I am so much more.
4) Detaching From the Body
There’s even a sense of not really being “attached to” the body. It’s similar to what I’ve experienced just before leaving the body. Before I rise above the body, it’s like I let go of being confined within it. It’s almost like floating in water and stepping out of a shell. I’m suddenly extending a foot or two beyond the skin, almost bobbing around like a cork in the water, twisting and turning a bit. The physical body doesn’t seem like it has much if anything to do with the physical sensation of who I am. It’s tougher to point down a location as to “where” I exist. My location seems to be moving around a bit.
5) Resting in the Mystery
Fear of the unknown has long been one of my greatest fears in this lifetime and I find myself now abiding in the unknown, resting in the mystery, becoming totally okay with not knowing, becoming friends with not needing to figure things out.
In this place there’s space for anything to happen. There’s the space for all of Creation to arise without limitation. I’m not telling things what should happen or how they should happen. There’s a space for the flow of life itself to arise unabated.
I know that I truly don’t know and I sit in this space of not knowing, in peace, in love, in bliss.
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?
Today I attended an Abraham-Hicks workshop here in Atlanta with close to a thousand other people.
Here on this blog I’ve been periodicallydiscussing the differences between the pathway of enlightenment and the methodology involved using the law of attraction, but there’s still been some nagging uncertainties that I’ve wanted to address, so I formulated a question I wanted to ask Abraham about enlightenment, about how thought fits in within the synchronistic and spontaneous unfoldment of Creation.
I went in somehow knowing that the question would be answered. Nevertheless, I still tried to intend my way into making it happen the night before using the LoA techniques, but it felt silly trying to nudge the system into doing something I already knew would unfold perfectly in its appropriate time…
The Workshop Begins
So we get there and Jerry gets up first to do the welcome and introductions and then Esther comes up on stage. As soon as she did, she said ‘goodbye’ and began channeling Abraham the same way you’ll see in their youtube videos.
It was cool to see the shift in person. There was a very definite and tangible shift in energy and demeanor. Esther is very playful and yin while Abraham is more deliberate and solid.
(Abraham is really a ‘they’, a collection of non-physical beings of Source energy, but Abraham speaks through the body of Esther and for the sake of convenience and discussion, I’m going to refer to Abraham as ‘she’ since they were working through Esther’s body.)
Abraham spoke for a little while as the workshop began and then started asking for volunteers. It wasn’t so much a structured workshop that follows a preset plan, but rather a series of Q&A’s that drive the discussion. Many of the youtube clips are literally questions taken from workshops.
I didn’t really feel ready when the first question was opened, so I just let go.
When that conversation finished, Abraham opened the floor for another person to come up. Within the sea of hands, I raised my hand and casually sat back in my chair. Much to my shock, I got laser targeted by Abraham to come on up. I was pretty taken aback, like when you casually scratch off a standard lottery ticket and suddenly realize you’ve just won a bunch of money.
So I head up and have a seat in the hot seat directly in front of Esther as the assistant aligns the mic stand in front of my face and whoa, Esther is much bigger in person than on a little youtube window. She’s not a particularly huge person, but she’s up on stage and just a few feet in front of you, just radiating this silent love and powerful presence. It was intense and almost surreal. Read More …
There is a phenomena that happens upon awakening, something often called “God shock.”
See, we’ve all heard the spiritual truths like we’re all one, there is no separation, God is infinite, and so on, but the direct experience of it is infinitely more profound than a simple conceptual understanding. In fact, I’ve never heard a person who awakened say, “This is exactly what I expected it’d be like.”
The direct experience of the infinite bliss can be so overpowering that the desire to speak ceases for words can not convey what’s being experienced, nor is there really a desire to do so. The idea of speaking seems almost absurd and fruitless.
For example, Ramana Maharshi, after a sudden and unexpected Enlightenment, was mute for two years until encouraged to speak. He took no care of the body at all.
His student, Nisargadatta Maharaj, wandered off on foot to the Himalayas upon awakening in search of eternal life, but eventually came back home to Bombay upon the realization of the futility of his quest and the realization that his life was already eternal.
Dr. Jill Taylor, a scientist who studied brain malfunctions and then had a stroke herself, was featured on Oprah just the other day. Her story of her experience of losing her sense of separate self is incredible. While this isn’t exactly the same process as enlightenment as I’ll point out below, the experience is strikingly similar.
Note that in Jill’s experience, she literally loses the capacity to separate and language, while in the spiritual pathway, there is still the capacity to discern and differentiate while simultaneously experiencing the Oneness. Enlightenment isn’t about brain damage the way a stroke is. Pick your favorite enlightened person such as Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Krishna, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, or anyone else and notice that they can experience the Oneness and still differentiate on some level between the body they have and the outside world, even if it ultimately is recognized to not actually be a genuine separateness. Read More …
So I’m in somewhat of an emotional slump at this point. Spiritual growth isn’t always rosy and happy. It’s about knowing who you truly are and being willing to look within and face what you see, no matter what it is.
There’s this saying I’d like to paraphrase:
The 3 most mysterious things in the universe are:
Air to a bird
Water to a fish
A man unto a man
A bird is always using air, flying through it, breathing it in, yet what is it? It is completely immersed in air and has no context of airlessness (or vacuum) in which to compare the air.
What is water to a fish? Water is what surrounds it, is everywhere it looks, even flows through the body of the fish. It doesn’t know water because it’s always known water. It is totally unconscious of and unaware of water. It isn’t unless it’s actually scooped up out of the water that it can look around and say, “What the heck? What just happened? My entire perspective is shattering.”
Our perspective of the world is a lot like this. We may perceive the world in a certain way such as “People are untrustworthy” or “When people give me a certain look, it means I’m unworthy” or “Connecting to others and becoming vulnerable is dangerous and threatening.” Whatever it is we believe deep down at our core, we will see this belief reflected back to us in the world. The belief has no inherent reality, but the world will show us that our belief is, in fact, right and thus our beliefs are self-reinforcing. Instead of realizing that we’re subconsciously creating this same reality and the same experiences over and over again, we mistakenly believe that this is “how the world really is.”
It is our subconscious beliefs that we are blind to, like the water to a fish or the air to a bird. We are blind to our beliefs and perspectives of the world, mistakenly thinking this is how things actually are for we simply don’t know any better. Anything we are unaware of controls us. Bringing awareness to what limits you automatically provides a space for its release. Automatically. Read More …
So a question came up recently about looking at the world without mental distortion. How do you look at the world without getting the ego involved? How do you see beauty where there is so much ugliness?
The short answer is to simply look without judging, labeling, categorizing, or adding any sort of mental commentary. Allow awareness itself to be aware and allow attention to rest solely upon the witnessing itself. Thought doesn’t enter into the picture whatsoever. Just look.
I was watching TV with my mom the other night. When she asked me about seeing beauty, awareness kicked into high gear.
I explained that there is a difference between human beauty and divine beauty, human love and divine love.
The mind has its preferences and reasons for why it deems something beautiful or worthy. The mind has its reasons why it loves someone. The reasons are its conditions and thus the love is conditional.
The human definition of beauty requires that something appeals to us for whatever reason. Divine beauty, on the other hand, shines forth when mental commentary is withdrawn. Pure essence becomes visible instead of mere appearance.
I can’t describe what’s being seen, but there’s an intuitive understanding that you’re looking purely at what is. A flower is seen to be just as beautiful as garbage, for literally no reason at all. Just because it is. Thought actually muddles over this realization, distracts from it.
Beyond thought, there is a recognition of the formless Unmanifest expressing itself as manifest form.
Everyone has this capacity, including you. Yes you. There’s no need to try and see this, to learn to develop this skill, or look for what I’m describing because it shines forth automatically when you stop putting everything into little mental boxes and attaching descriptions to and creating stories around what you’re seeing.
Just look, as purely and innocently as possible. Allow the looking itself to do the looking. Awareness itself is witnessing, not you. Read More …
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.
God how I love this ego dissolution.
The first thing that I noticed was that there was no longer any separation between anything. The idea of separation became ludicrous because everything was realized to literally all be the one same thing. How could anything be separate from itself if there is only the One thing?
She’s not a particularly huge person, but she’s up on stage and just a few feet in front of you, just radiating this silent love and powerful presence. It was intense and almost surreal. 
