I have recently come across several new videos and websites that I have found to be very interesting and informative, which I will endeavor to post here over the next several days. First, I must mention a website / blog written by a gentlemen named Kaushik, called Beyond Karma. Kaushik is on-point, sobering and his writings are simple and powerful. It is through his site that I have now discovered Adyashanti. Both of them have helped further illuminate the struggle in which I have found myself over (I guess this entire physical incarnation) but particularly this past year. Kaushik has written about the Dark Night experience in such a way that it is easier for me to understand. It is also comforting to read about such experiences in others, because it helps to provide a sense that one is not alone in this type of (or any) experience.
The first post of Kaushik's that I read was about the Dark Night, which I've written about extensively in terms of my "I" experience. That post was written nearly a year ago. As I further explored his website, what really blew my mind was where Kaushik was in the present day, in December of 2010, after reading his "Maya Is A Bitch" post. I realized as I was reading it, that I left out one of the most singularly profound moments of my Cosmic Initiation experience around this time last year. This realization was not something that I took notes on, and surprisingly, not something that I remembered until reading his post. It was this: I do not exist.
That realization came to me after my Atonement period, and it came in a somewhat inverted sense at first. I still had the vibrating pulse on my back, and was completely in the woo-woo world around New Year's Eve last year, when sometime in the early morning hours, meditating and praying while slowly walking in a circle in my kitchen, a thought arose within me with the power of a freight train, as if a magician had just pulled a table cloth off of a fully set table. It was profound in that creepy, larger than life sense with which one first becomes aware of sheer horror in front of one's eyes, a confrontation with reality. At first that thought was, "I am totally alone within this holographic experience. There is no one else here. My family, friends and everything in the world is an illusion."
That concept was something that I had pondered and I thought I had incorporated into my world view for many years, as the Buddhists teach such. However, this full-on assault of a realization was akin to a profound halucenigenic experience and stopped me in my tracks. I immediately felt claustrophobic, alone and paranoid. How could that be true? I wondered. Then, it flipped the other way. I did not exist. Yes, the energetic being that is my higher self exists, but me, the person, the mind that is the endless collections of thoughts that I have identified with as me, did not exist in reality. This was profound and it really frightened me. It's no wonder that I didn't put it down in a previous post regarding that time last year. Why? My ego, no doubt. I hadn't forgotten it, but it seems as though my ego, or false sense of self, would rather leave that part of my cosmic initiation as a footnote somewhere along the way. What lies beyond that it what some call The Observer.
I had taken time and even at times incorporated that awareness into my daily life. It's a part of the art of detachment and it can be quite eye-opening when you develop that sense... that there is an observer observing your mind as it calculates, analyzes and plans. I believe that observer is the higher self, the part of us, as an energy body that already inhabits another, or many other, higher planes. It's all too easy to get caught up in the mind, its thoughts and the ensuing projected emotions though, in a day to day sense, because that is how nearly all of us on this planet have been conditioned. Such condition is slavery to the matrix, the left brain or egoic mind, and has been developed so that we serve blindly within the matrix of form without realizing our true nature, which lies beyond all of this physical plane, Maya or whatever you call it.
Depending on where one is at on their spiritual journey, it may take some time for that to sink in, and I mean really sink in. It's best to sit for a time and contemplate that, wrestle with it. It is indeed truth and it's a hard truth to take. But, on the other hand, there is a liberation that comes from pushing through that illusory wall of fear. The ego itself is what drives us toward awakening, toward enlightenment. The ego has all sorts of great plans about how wonderful and blissful life will be "once we make it to a state of constant bliss." The irony is though, that the ego can only serve to help to get us to that point, but it cannot enter the eye of the needle, the tiny space within one's heart, where the gates to the higher dimensions lie within each of us. The ego in that sense is like highly motivated sherpa, but cannot actually reach the mountain top, which it is not aware of. That part of the journey involves the greater part of ourselves that lies beyond this physical plane, beyond the mind and the useless babble of thought collections. This is a difficult lesson to learn, yet one must keep going. There is no other way.
As stated earlier in this post, here is a link (it's audio-only - so the screen will appear black) to part of a talk from Adyshanti, which is on this subject. I found it to be very illuminating, and will be exploring more of his talks on YouTube.
I had to add this one on here as well. Inspiring, simple and short. From Adyashanti.
The first post of Kaushik's that I read was about the Dark Night, which I've written about extensively in terms of my "I" experience. That post was written nearly a year ago. As I further explored his website, what really blew my mind was where Kaushik was in the present day, in December of 2010, after reading his "Maya Is A Bitch" post. I realized as I was reading it, that I left out one of the most singularly profound moments of my Cosmic Initiation experience around this time last year. This realization was not something that I took notes on, and surprisingly, not something that I remembered until reading his post. It was this: I do not exist.
That realization came to me after my Atonement period, and it came in a somewhat inverted sense at first. I still had the vibrating pulse on my back, and was completely in the woo-woo world around New Year's Eve last year, when sometime in the early morning hours, meditating and praying while slowly walking in a circle in my kitchen, a thought arose within me with the power of a freight train, as if a magician had just pulled a table cloth off of a fully set table. It was profound in that creepy, larger than life sense with which one first becomes aware of sheer horror in front of one's eyes, a confrontation with reality. At first that thought was, "I am totally alone within this holographic experience. There is no one else here. My family, friends and everything in the world is an illusion."
That concept was something that I had pondered and I thought I had incorporated into my world view for many years, as the Buddhists teach such. However, this full-on assault of a realization was akin to a profound halucenigenic experience and stopped me in my tracks. I immediately felt claustrophobic, alone and paranoid. How could that be true? I wondered. Then, it flipped the other way. I did not exist. Yes, the energetic being that is my higher self exists, but me, the person, the mind that is the endless collections of thoughts that I have identified with as me, did not exist in reality. This was profound and it really frightened me. It's no wonder that I didn't put it down in a previous post regarding that time last year. Why? My ego, no doubt. I hadn't forgotten it, but it seems as though my ego, or false sense of self, would rather leave that part of my cosmic initiation as a footnote somewhere along the way. What lies beyond that it what some call The Observer.
I had taken time and even at times incorporated that awareness into my daily life. It's a part of the art of detachment and it can be quite eye-opening when you develop that sense... that there is an observer observing your mind as it calculates, analyzes and plans. I believe that observer is the higher self, the part of us, as an energy body that already inhabits another, or many other, higher planes. It's all too easy to get caught up in the mind, its thoughts and the ensuing projected emotions though, in a day to day sense, because that is how nearly all of us on this planet have been conditioned. Such condition is slavery to the matrix, the left brain or egoic mind, and has been developed so that we serve blindly within the matrix of form without realizing our true nature, which lies beyond all of this physical plane, Maya or whatever you call it.
Depending on where one is at on their spiritual journey, it may take some time for that to sink in, and I mean really sink in. It's best to sit for a time and contemplate that, wrestle with it. It is indeed truth and it's a hard truth to take. But, on the other hand, there is a liberation that comes from pushing through that illusory wall of fear. The ego itself is what drives us toward awakening, toward enlightenment. The ego has all sorts of great plans about how wonderful and blissful life will be "once we make it to a state of constant bliss." The irony is though, that the ego can only serve to help to get us to that point, but it cannot enter the eye of the needle, the tiny space within one's heart, where the gates to the higher dimensions lie within each of us. The ego in that sense is like highly motivated sherpa, but cannot actually reach the mountain top, which it is not aware of. That part of the journey involves the greater part of ourselves that lies beyond this physical plane, beyond the mind and the useless babble of thought collections. This is a difficult lesson to learn, yet one must keep going. There is no other way.
As stated earlier in this post, here is a link (it's audio-only - so the screen will appear black) to part of a talk from Adyshanti, which is on this subject. I found it to be very illuminating, and will be exploring more of his talks on YouTube.
I had to add this one on here as well. Inspiring, simple and short. From Adyashanti.
Namaste.
