Posts Tagged ‘Personal Experiences’
Hey guys, I recently did an interview with fellow spiritual blogger, Myrko, of awakeblogger.com.
Interview available here.
Check it out!
Topics discussed include:
- A basic introduction about me and how I got started on the spiritual path
- A metaphorical description of awakening itself
- The most important thing in spiritual practice
- The value of the Now moment
- The interplay of personal development and spirituality
- Today’s evolving spiritual collective consciousness
and more!
I encourage you to check out the interview and share with us what you think, either on his blog or on mine.
http://www.awakeblogger.com/2008/10/interview-with-ariel-bravy-of-arielbravycom/
Enjoy!
This past weekend I drove up to North Carolina for a marching band shoot. (I currently live in Georgia and do a lot of photography events.) While driving in the car, I listened to the Sedona Method audio course. It really helps me become conscious of and subsequently let go of various egoic patterns. One of the things I love best about the Sedona Method is that it’s basically a program to systematically dissolve the human ego.
What AM I??
For the past few weeks, there’s been a lot of frustration present regarding my own nonexistence. See, it’s starting to sink in on a fundamental level that “I” really don’t exist, beyond just some hollow wise-sounding words, and there’s a certain amount of fear in this realization. There is a frustration in that there is not even a “me” to experience this frustration! 
It’s a very strange experience…
Now as this sinks in, all sense of location is also dissolving. Not only can I not find a “me” outside of thought, but I also can’t find a place where I, whatever I am, exist.
Sure, if you asked me, it could be recognized where this body that I have is, but that feels completely and totally irrelevant. It’s like if you asked where I am and I told you where my car was. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.
So not only can I not find a me and I don’t know who I am, I also can’t even find out where I am! 
Talk about frustrating!!
It’s truly shattering my entire sense of reality. Utterly. It’s a frustrating experience to the ego… and the ego I have is putting up a lot of resistance to this experience. All that can be done is to surrender, to let go of resisting. Read More …
Let’s round off this variety pack of topics, concluding Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Fears
“So do you have any fear? Are you totally free?”
Fear, yes. Is it believed or taken seriously? No.
The mind and the ego still exists, but it’s not taken seriously, just the same.
Enlightenment Fixing Life’s Problems
The funny thing is that it was always thought that this would always be the end-all-be-all solution to all problems. Life would be perfect. Everything would magically fix itself. All “problems” would fix themselves..
You know… “Yeah, I’ll just go get enlightened and my problems will all magically be solved.”
NOT TRUE
What happens is that One realizes the true silliness of all that was thought to be a problem, and it’s no longer a problem anymore because it’s not actually real.
Nothing changes on the outside, no one magically appears, including any angels descending from the heavens. Only the Self says “Hello, here I am. I’ve always been here. It’s good to see myself again. I’ve been pretending I’ve been someone else. It took a lot of energy to do it. It’s good to be home.”
Nothing changes externally.
It is an internal shift from illusion to Reality. That’s ALL.
Life is funny… 
Read More …
Let’s continue the previous post, sharing more of what was suddenly recognized to be Reality.
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Levels of Consciousness
The Hawkins scale of Consciousness is totally bogus.
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 …
Today I’d like to share with you some of my recent personal experiences and insights.
A few weeks ago, I’ve went down to the depths of egoic death as well as up to awakening into a state of true Oneness. While in both states, the experiences were written down and now I’d like to share them with you, starting first with the dark night of the soul.
A little background as to where “I” was before this experience:
I’d been into spirituality for many years, had read tons of books, did the meditations, various visualization and breathing exercises, chakra balancing, explored different paths, investigated various religious traditions, and so on. I’ve also picked up a relatively well-developed understanding of the nature of the human ego and how it seems to pop in the life that I live, particularly with respect to how it works in resisting reality and creating illusion and separation.
Along the path I’ve experienced a few dark nights of the soul, as well as a state of total awakening, the latter only lasting for maybe a few minutes. Regardless of the limited duration of that experience, to actually EXPERIENCE a temporary state of awakening/enlightenment and to actually see for yourself how absurdly ridiculous this dualistic world of physicality actually is radically changes who you are on a deep, deep level. It is a monumentally transformative experience.
At this point, it feels like “I” am no longer seeking enlightenment. A more accurate description would be that the true “I” is guiding itself back unto itself. Instead of “me” seeking enlightenment, it feels as if I’m being guided back home, like being sucked in by a tractor beam. The main thing for “me” to do now is actually to let go of resisting. The more I can surrender, the more quickly the realization of the Self occurs.
You see, the ego is not so much a noun as it is a verb. The ego is the process of pulling desirable objects and experiences towards it and pushing away undesirable objects and experiences from it. The ego, using thoughts, is basically a push/pull mechanism. It is undone, not by trying to pull in enlightenment or push away the ego, but actually by ceasing the inner push/pull struggle entirely. The ego itself is an illusion. The ego is not a real thing. It is the core illusion that creates more illusion. It is like a shadow. It can not be destroyed with more darkness. It is only by bringing in the light of non-resistance that the emptiness of the shadow is automatically realized to be totally and completely nothing.
So, now that we’ve set the stage as to where I was, let’s move onto what happens next. Read More …
