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Awakening Happens When It Happens
Start form where you are and watch the ripples of implication within implication within nuance within nuance spread out. I usually start BIG. Everything in form is a manifestation of the Universe, Absolute Reality, Absolute Truth, the Divine, and nothing in form is outside of consciousness. In essence everything is everything is everything is everything. (This tends to get mind fidgety but oh well.)
You and I right now are manifestations of the Universe, of the Divine, of Absolute Reality, without having to do a single thing in order to Be. We don't have to get thinner, wiser, more conscious, more intelligent, more aware. Water droplet consciousness and oceanic consciousness are not different, they are part and parcel of the same emptiness, the same formless awareness. Our everyday, ordinary consciousness and cosmic consciousness are not different, they are the same. We are formless awareness temporarily manifested as human being. But how do I come to understand this personally? I don't. I come to realize, or accept, I am that which I seek.
Formless awareness incarnated as Tony is not awakening to itself through lunar consciousness, or planetary consciousness, or solar consciousness but through human consciousness. This biological, body-mind.
Over the years I read so much about bliss and equanimity and flow and the cessation of suffering that mind thought it knew what it cannot know. Nevertheless it created an impression, an idea, a model, a belief of what enlightenment and awakening is suppose to look and feel like. And of course because I thought I knew something, I couldn't see what is always available.
Absolute reality and consciousness and emptiness and spaciousness and stillness and the present moment never go anywhere, IS always here, because everything is everything is everything is everything. I just wasn't seeing it because I was looking through the lens of mind, personality, beliefs, assumptions, experience and expected it to look different than it actually is.
I failed to appreciate how dualistic Mind is because of its reliance on language. The word,whatever the word is, is never what is being referred to. The word "elm" is not the elm tree. The word "consciousness" is not consciousness. The "word" is always referring to something other. When I got to "form and formlessness" and "conceptual / non-conceptual understanding" language completely failed me.
So a shift in perception came about. Because I was so biased in favor of mind, logic, language, and reason to make sense of the world around me, my shift has been a lengthy process. Filled with "I got it!" "Dammit! I lost it." In short, it wasn't one of those spontaneous awakenings.
First things first, the universe manifesting as universe is totally impersonal and detached and there is no right or wrong, good or bad, or fairness or unfairness, there simply always is what is as it is. And whether we are deep in the dream of separation or awakened to non duality it is as it is.
However, universe manifested as human being takes things very personally until it awakens to its formless nature. My inquiry over time shifted from Who am I Really? To What am I Really? Ah, I see. Formless awareness temporarily manifesting as Tony.
The shift in perception is a movement from mind to heart. The mind is all about "this or that" while the heart is about "this and that". The mind is about analysis, deconstruction, creating safe harbors and gated communities. The heart is more like formless awareness - nothing is left out, nothing is rejected. Until awakening happens, apparent opposites coexist simultaneously in all instances and all circumstances.
This is important to know for those who believe they have a strong desire to awaken and feel frustrated when it doesn't seem to be happening for them. If the desire is complete, awakening will happen. But opposite desires coexist at all times in all circumstances until awakening happens. On the obverse side of the coin is "I want to awaken", on the reverse side of the coins is "I don't want to awaken" and voila! I don't. It's not usually stated that baldly, but if you listen carefully to monkey mind you will hear the resistance, the feet dragging. The heart is about giving up nothing and accepting everything. Here is where mind balks, "I can't, won't accept cruelty, violence, cancer, suffering, disease, poverty." or "I don't really want to give up self. I kinda like self all it needs are a few improvements and modifications." It requires you really listen to what is being said and not said in the mind and not get too excitable in defense of the ego.
I want and I don't want. I love you and I hate you. I want to find a job and I don't want to find a job. The mind says fish or cut bait. This or that. And the universe says everyday it is this and that. It's about a capacity to accept and say yes to what is. Not the physical circumstances but the emptiness, spaciousness within which it all unfolds.
Thus, it's not a matter of reason or making sense but of being present in the present moment as presence and seeing the truth of impermanence. Bear witness to the unfolding. See for yourself that suffering doesn't last forever, only mind says it feels that way. And after all, this is the human incarnation where living happens, dying happens, laughter happens, sorrow happens, compassion happens, cruelty happens, indifference happens, lovingkindness happens, awakening happens, being stuck in the dream of separation happens, getting it and losing it happens.
Nothing in form ever remains the same and for every apparent lost opportunity there is this moment and this moment and this moment making up the only time there is. And because everything is everything is everything, you and I are the present moment as well.
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Arjen,
My outlook has been dominated by mind and conceptual understanding so I primarily pursued mindful insight as "my pathway" to enlightenment.
Bottom line, though I didn't know it right away because I believed myself to be a sincere seeker willing to do what was necessary to awaken, was that I was looking for a painfree mindful insight short-cut to bliss that would leave all that messy other stuff behind somewhere in emptiness.
That path wasn't in the cards for me. I spent a lot of time and energy building a large internal mental library of knowledge of advaita zen buddhism meditation mescaline LSD altered states of consciousness sutras wisdom teachings - basically useless in the dance of life because mind can and will usurp any experience, especially a juicy one like an authentic "epiphany" "insight" "crack in the cosmic egg" "glimpse of emptiness - the mystery - the source" and turn it into a story. For me the "enlightenemtn story" vs the "adventure story" or the "career story" for example. And was all that early accumulating knowledge effort truly useless - probably not. The universe was laying out its lessons, saying more or less - knock yourself out, do what you think you have to do, get it out of your system so you can see what it is you actually need to be as a conscious human being.
So while I predominantly oriented myself to the world via conceptual understanding, those "insights" and "epiphanies" had in fact activated, awakened the energy of consciousness. And once that started, I had to let go of all the rule books and maps and neon signs I had accumulated. But I didn't know that at the time. I thought for sure I could keep some of the "special" ones, the "important" ones.
And that eventually brought me to encounter non-conceptual understanding. No concepts. No labels. No thought. Not relying on the inner commentary to tell me what was going on outside of my skin. Instead, feelings. Imagery. Intuition. Dreams. Music. Dance. Drumming. The heart beat. Breathing in and breathing out. Body awareness. Attributes mind discredited as unreliable, ever changing, unstable.
Until I couldn't keep them in the background any more. Four years ago my 23 y/o son Greg, an LMU film school graduate, experienced some back pain. He refused to go to a doctor but when he collapsed on a film set off he went. He had a fractured spine as a result of cancer lesions throughout every bone in his body. He was 6' 1" and 200 lbs of gym built muscle. Five months later he died and was 115 lbs of skin and bones. In between it was hellacious.
All my "spiritual insights" were for naught in the grief, loss, sorrow,emptiness that exploded within me and my family. It was as if an emotional atom bomb had gone off and we haven't been the same since.
Mind started reeling out sentences immediately. "This is not right. The pain is too great. I'm drowning in a sea of tears. I can not bear it. My heart is broken. All there is is loss and suffering." That turned into stories of "woe", of "loss" "of "grief".
"It" felt as if my wolrd had fallen apart. But as I bore witness I saw it wan't the world that had fallen apart only my assumptions about how the world was suppose to be.
I saw the truth of impermanence. Life is ephemeral. Here one moment gone the next. Life is not lived in the past or the future. And grief does not last forever. Nothing in form, thought form or otherwise, lasts forever. It only seemed that way if I held onto the pain and sorrow and grief and loss.
How did I let go? I didn't actually let go because I didn't know how to let go of those emotions. I fact, I wasn't even sure how I was holding on to them.
I stayed with what "is" because I didn't know how to escape the present moment. And in being "open" to the present moment I was "releasing" "letting go" without knowing that was what I was doing. I didn't know that embedded within "being open" is "letting go'.
It meant not being outcome oriented. Just be willing to be with what unfolds and experience it how you experience it. I wanted him to get "better" and was "heartbroken" when he died. All of this "stuff" is part of the "story" of awareness awakening to itself as human being.
One night as I sat by Greg's bed while he slept, the oncologist counselor dropped by and I said, "There's a saying that when the student is ready the guru appears. And I've got this bad feeling feeling my son is my guru but I'd rather have him as my son."
And the counselor said, "Sometimes you don't have choice in these matters."
Thanks a lot for your extensive heartfelt reply.
If I understand you correct you talk (putting it my own words) about a big Yes, in which even a no can arise naturally. And true awakening is seeing irrefutably that there ultimately is only this big Yes. And there is no use in trying to be this Yes, or applying it, because then we make it into an object. We would then be back on the track of fixing things, for example 'since everything is Love, we shouldn't feel this despair.' As if this isn't a part of the big Yes also.
There is what there is, so also the natural 'human condition.'
This is were the warmth arises. Thinking about it. I guess it is possible to cut yourself off from human pain, at least to a large degree (and call it awakening), but then you would also not feel the warmth of life to it's fullest.
Arjen,
You've put it most aptly and succintly. A big Yes. Follow that path and it can take you all the way to here. In its simplicity it is a radical path. It includes confusion and many pit falls for conceptual understanding. Of course these are just words. Neither good nor bad right or wrong. And there is no path other than the one you are already on.
If a "teaching" brings awareness to the present moment work with it, if a "teaching" leads awareness to "what if" discard it. But "using" or "discarding" is not the point. There is simply the present moment and our capacity to be yes to what unfolds. A capacity both mindful and heartfelt.
You are individual being and cosmic being simultaneously. Therein form and formlessness co-reside, along with conditioned self and unconditioned self, and the manifest and unmanifest. Awakening to This upsets more than one's apple cart
This is not a matter of conceptual understanding but a matter of seeing what is. And if what you initially see is confusion than that is what is seen. Ripening happens as ripening happens which usually falls outside our expectations.
Very interesting read.
A thing that I'm currently looking at is the matter whether the insight that 'everything has it's place' can also be picked up by the mind somehow. And then someone starts living from this renewed mindstate (which may be an impovement in comparison to the previous mindstate, in terms of relaxation and so on.) I think that such a subtle shift can happen especially when someone had some profound experiences of oneness for example. Perhaps this person now lives a more happy live (and that's great) but he/she still isn't truly free. Because when they meet difficult situations in their life they still deal with it with an imaginary textbook in their hand. Things are not met fully. (perhaps you've seen my Byron Katie example in the 'discard even the teaching'-topic)
To get things clear: although cetainly there's a deepening going on within me (whatever that means) I'm definetely not free yet. So looking from this persepctive I see 'the cancer example' like this:
There is what there is what there is... Everything happens in ultimate Freedom/Love. But this doesn't mean that we should love the cancer. No, it means that it's totally healthy to experience the situation to it's fullest, and so it may happen that we see the cancer as a very very unwelcome guest. And this human experience of liking and not liking happens within Love. I do think that in practice the fact that one sees this fully, will mean that having cancer becomes very bearable (and someone will die with grace), but this is a by-product.
And I think that the essence of new-age is that they pick up this byproduct and make it a goal. So they say: bear negativity with grace, and you will be content! But they leave out the first part, namely: face everything and act natural upon it (anger may happen).
(and then as a byproduct negativity may fall away)