One of the unique abilities of an awakened individual such as myself is the ability to know the minds of others. I don’t mean that all awakened people can read your thoughts (though, I don’t doubt that some can). What I mean is that I can have a conversation with someone – hell, I can even just overhear a conversation between others – and know after a short time just where they’re as far as proximity to awakening is concerned. Actually, it’s more like knowing just where they’re stuck.
Hearing someone speak is not different from hearing them think. Thinking, after all, is internal speaking. I’m told you can actually see the transition from when a child is somewhat unable to keep their thoughts to themselves, to being able to keep quiet – all while being able to see that their wheels are still turning. Most people don’t share all of the content of their internal speaking, mostly for social reasons (“If I could be arrested for my thoughts, they’d lock me up!”). But their style of speech is the same on the inside as it is on the outside, and the content doesn’t vary that much.
In that regard, I’m not receiving any information that you can’t receive as well. You can hear the same stuff I hear. But, you see, I’ve already unraveled the speech knot. I know, in an excruciatingly intimate way, just how certain kinds of thinking represent certain ways of being “stuck.” I learned to undo them for myself, so I know what someone needs to hear in order to remove the blockage… that is, if they accept the challenge to challenge their sticky thoughts.
The thoughts that keep us tangled in the dream world are basically what we might refer to as common sense. Common sense is particularly nefarious because it gallivants around completely unchallenged for the most part. And the most diabolical form of common sense thinking comes to us as assertions of “I,” of “me,” and of “mine.” In each case, there is an assumption of lack. If “I am” is assumed, then there must be something “I” can keep and hold as “mine.” But nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing at all is belongs to a “me.” But our assumption leads to a tremendous about of unnecessary suffering the expenditure of copious amounts of vital energy. We’re tired, we’re scared, we’re pissed off – all because we think we can actually “have” something.
Do you know what the most common thing people tend to think that they have? It’s insanely tautological; a heap of recursive nonsense. It is this: “I” think “I” have a unique personality. But this personality is who “I” am, from this point of view. “I have an ‘I’, OK! And I need you to respect and appreciate my ‘I’, or I’ll hate you!” Of course, this comes out, in common speech, as, “You need accept, appreciate, and respect ‘me’!”
I’m not advocating disrespect and rejection. If you think so, you’re missing the point. The point is that the assumption that one’s personality is somehow who they are, and that it needs to be defended, and that they can be damaged when someone says something bad about it, or doesn’t go along with its desires… that’s spiritual pathology. And this is what I hear all the time, day to day, in any social encounter I find myself in. It comes out in external speech.
There’s not need to try and throw a big bucket of freezing cold truth in the face of someone who holds some nutty common sense personality-view. That kind of act is very oppositional, and I question the motives of anyone who think it’s their job to cut down someone’s ego. The desire to cut anything down is itself an act of ego. It’s better to believe you have a self and be kind than to delude yourself into some kind of no-self-view (which is really a self-view in disguise), and then go around trying to castrate the selves of those around you. Again, not the point.
I find it much more practical to meet someone where they are at. Instead of throwing a whole new system of concepts their way, I like to keep things closer to home. For example, I was introduced to a friend of a friend last weekend. In getting to know him, I found out that he studied political science in college. The topic of political affiliation came up, and he said to me, “You know, it’s best not to associate with any ’ism’ or party or anything like that.” This statement is reasonable enough. A lot of people get stuck in their “isms,” (e.g. Marxism, Libertarianism, Progressivism, Conservatism, etc.) and are therefore too tightly affiliated with a particular group or teaching. But I knew from the way he said it that, although he had detached from needing to have a label- an “ism,” – he was stuck in the land of no-label, to the point of being turned-off or repulsed by the very idea of having an “ism” of his own. And yet, holding tightly to his position of no-position is precisely what isolates him, what keeps him separate and partial and divided. So, I said to him, “Yeah. So, do you think there’s an ‘ism’ that could be applied to those of us who hate ‘isms’?” At that moment I could see his wheels turning, just like the above description of the child. He said, “Uh, I don’t know. I guess there could be!” We had a good laugh about it, and then our conversation moved on to other things. You may not be able to recognize the significance of this, or maybe you can. But, by participating in this seemingly insignificant exchange of ideas, this guy got one step closer to the waking up.
And at the risk of sounding like a cheesy infomercial, SO CAN YOU! Most people are not awake, because most people do not practice. Those who practice well, and practice all the way to the end, wake up. You can consider the “knowing the minds of others” ability a nice perk after a job well done.
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October 27, 2011 at 1:19 am
Joel
This ability, knowing the minds of others, you speak of in terms of being able to tell how far from awakening the unawakened are, what their sticking points are. Fair enough as far as that goes. I certainly concur that when hearing people’s conversations it is like they are scripted, you know what they are going to say, how they’re going to say it, how the other person is going to react to it, and what the response will be like. But for all their conversation is scripted, and so can be ‘read’, I do find it often has a wondrous variety of inflection, tone, and wit, for all they are living in delusion their language can often be beautiful and remarkable.
And then I contrast this with the language of the apparently awakened, where suddenly a lot of the colour seems to drop out, it is still scripted but it’s often a thin repetitive dirge, and there is a kind of stiff nervous unnaturalness too, which is quite ironic. By contrast the language of the deluded can be full of life and vigour, most of which often drains out of the language of the apparently awakened. Whereas the unawakened, not being conscious of mouthing a script, are unselfconscious (another irony) and so allow language to flower, while the apparently awakened are only too conscious of the language they use, and so become less free in its use, particularly when it’s early days and the fear of relapse haunts for all their voiced certainty, so they become just too careful with their words, stiff, such that it seems they are voicing the letter of it but not the spirit, which of course is the origin of dogma and self-hypnosis. Such, at least, is what I have noted.
December 5, 2011 at 5:22 pm
awarenessishere
I have not experienced my language as stilted or scripted since I woke up…I wonder who you are hanging out with dude.
December 5, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Joel
I’ll tell you what I see quite plainly from just the single sentence you have chosen to address to me: a desire to appear superior through flippant ready-made language intended to be demeaning and dismissive, and a certain defensiveness. This tells me your ‘awakening’ will become subject to doubt and self-criticism. Good luck in handling that better than you have handled this.
December 5, 2011 at 6:25 pm
awarenessishere
Hi joel:
my words were meant to be playful.
thank you for your heart felt well wishes,
Lori Ann
December 5, 2011 at 6:47 pm
awarenessishere
Hi again joel–thanks for being a teacher here. I have had the coolest experience around that sticks and stones thing–while I read your words that seemed to be a harsh assement/attack at me, I had the most curious response…my heart rate increased (the way it would say, when a bear is attacking) and yet, my mind was empty and curious and still…I have been finding since waking up, that my body can have a response to a stimulus (such as my 12 year old daughter in a pre-teen fit, causing my stomach to clench) but my mind does not engage, stillness is here and there is no emotional reaction arising in me that i recognize, just sometimes a beautifully startling physiologic reaction…which leads me to the big ah-ha that emotional reactivity follows a thought!
I am curious…what thought did my orignal post to you give rise to?
In clumsy new awareness, curiously
Lori Ann
December 5, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Joel
Ah Lori Ann, our words can be meant to be all sorts of things, but the skill is in having them come across as we intend them. Still, I accept your good wishes and reciprocate. On the original point about language, do you really think there isn’t a kind of ‘language of the awakened’? There are clones everywhere. Ten of twenty years of silence would benefit many of the ‘recently awakened’.
December 5, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Joel
Our comments crossed in posting.
What thought did your original comment give rise to? Oh, here’s someone who thinks they’re clever. That’s the thought that came.
December 5, 2011 at 8:39 pm
awarenessishere
yes, but silence might not benefit the collective evolutionary impulse to wake up…so clumsy newly awakened awareness babbling might be better than 20 silent years while the not-me perfects the speaking of the unspeakable…where Sam makes the point that seems relevant here is that newly awakened are sometimes better teachers to almost-awakeneds because we’ve just been through the motionless motions of waking up. We are closer to it than the concert pianist, trying for instance, to relay a beginners lesson. And my first post was humor, but might have seemed to be attempt at clever. Funny or not, I have really had a screwed up sense of humor since i woke up–i laugh when no one else does, and am serious when all others laugh. Hugs to you, Mirror man. Lori Ann
December 6, 2011 at 9:22 am
Sam Watts
Both of you (Joel and Lori) bring up some good points.
Yes, it’s quite possible to convince people that you’re awake when you’re not, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Some people are just confused about where there are in terms of progress. Some start out thinking their awake, begin teaching, amass some followers, and then realize they aren’t as awake as they thought, but feel too embarrassed to recant. Of course, there are others who simply fake it on purpose because they enjoy deceiving people. So, the whole “wait a while before you teach” principle can be very wise.
It can also be unwise, though. It depends on whether or not the newly awakened individual is actually deluded about their progress. If someone is newly awakened, and knows that this is just the beginning, and that there’s a lot to learn, and maybe even has a teacher who embodies and reflects what awakening “looks” like 10 or 20 years down the road, then it may not be a bad idea for the freshly enlightened person to have a hand in teaching others to do the things that worked for them to get to where they are. These are not likely the only conditions in which this early disclosure could be helpful, of course.
The exuberance of the newly awakened can come off as naive, or even annoying, to seasoned veterans of insight practices, in the same way that teenage love/infatuation is often nauseating to someone who has been married 20 years. The veteran knows that to some degree (often a significant one), the young lovers are in for a reality check in the near future. But that doesn’t excuse the veteran couple from being cynical. That isn’t the only possible response, and definitely not the only helpful one. It can often be more harmful than good.
Some people think babies are cute, and others just see poop-factories. The same applies to enlightened newborns, I think.
December 6, 2011 at 9:57 am
Joel
If it was really better to learn from someone fresh out the egg, and everyone learnt that way and there were no older hands to learn from, then everyone would be complacent.
Whenever someone tells me they’re awakened I tell them to go back to being deluded because you were less of an asshole then. I have never in my life told anyone I was awakened. It just seems crass to me. If I am, in their terms, ‘awakened’, then let it be obvious. And if it’s not, what do I care?
December 6, 2011 at 10:40 am
Sam Watts
“I have never in my life told anyone I was awakened.”
What revelance does this have if you aren’t subtlely, yet indirectly, claiming that you do in fact consider yourself awake to some degree? Asked another way, can the “to disclose or not to disclose” dilemma arise for something who has nothing to disclose, and thus, no reason to disclose it?
This isn’t a challenge. I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from. It sounds to me like you think you know a thing or two about this awakening business, or at least have some strong opinions about it. The fact that some people openly share their experience about awakening, in matter of fact terms, seems to bother you, and many others. I can’t say I fully grok the reason for this taboo.
December 6, 2011 at 10:48 am
Sam Watts
“If it was really better to learn from someone fresh out the egg, and everyone learnt that way and there were no older hands to learn from, then everyone would be complacent.”
I never said that it would be better if no older hands were around to learn from. I said that people who have developed a level of competency or mastery relatively recently tend to have a different kind of awareness regarding the details of how their practice developed. As mastery deepens, the rudimentary details of a practice become less and less attended to. When you ask a master, “How did you do that?” many will answer, “I don’t know. I just do it.” That isn’t very helpful for beginners.
A world without masters is unthinkable, even unrealistic. Progress takes care of itself after certain rudimentary habits have been established. Over time, Mastery follows. This isn’t just true of the spiritual path. That’s all I’m saying.
December 6, 2011 at 10:52 am
Joel
The relevance of never telling anyone I’m ‘awakened’ is that I don’t consider I was ever asleep. I find the whole notion of ‘awakening’ a misnomer, though of course I understand what it is taken to mean. I find the claim to ‘be awakened’ just another way of going to sleep. An illusion. Although of course there are certainly those who use this sort of language who I would recognise as sharing the same realisation. I just don’t operate in those terms, that’s all.
December 6, 2011 at 11:03 am
Sam Watts
OK, that makes sense. You recognize now that you were never not-awake. Since this is ultimately the case, it isn’t accurate to say that any real change occurred when you recognized that this was true.
I guess there are those who consider the moment of recognition to be an awakening, and so they talk about it that way. It’s something they didn’t recognize, and now they do. This is life changing in the relative sense, in that this recognition cannot easily be forgotten. The perception of their being a change in this context is obvious.
It all depends on which perspective you speak from. I tend to think that language is rather ineffective when used from the polar extreme of either of these points of view. In between the two is where language dances, and often steps on its partner’s toes.
December 6, 2011 at 11:17 am
Joel
That’s it. The unchanging is the unchanging. It doesn’t ‘awake’, what ‘awakes’ is awareness of the unchanging. I like language to have a certain precision, as much as it can have. Thirty years ago I had the experience of ‘being enlightened’. It took many years to wean myself off that immaturity. So when I hear someone say they are enlightened or awakened, I say that what you’re really saying is that you are immature with it. This i regard as ‘skilful means’ rather than coming from a polar position.
December 6, 2011 at 11:57 am
Sam Watts
I think sometimes it’s immaturity, and other times it’s personal preference, or even a matter of participating in the way it’s done in a specific tradition. Knowing this, I do my best to reserve judgment. That, and I generally prefer to play along with language rather than insist on its precision, at least when having blog post discussions.
Precision of language aside, you and I both agree that there is a recognizable maturation process that follows the recognition of the way things are.
December 6, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Joel
I don’t disagree, Sam. But I do say quite straightforwardly that ‘enlightenment’ and ‘awakening’ are illusion. In this sense, then, there is still room to enlighten the enlightened, and awaken the awakened. Some have addressed this by saying that enlightenment is realising there is no such thing as enlightenment. That’s one way to talk, not one I like very much, but it’ll do to show something else that is the ‘real enlightenment’, the ‘real awakening’. So, if that is so, what then are those who talk about their enlightenment and their awakening actually talking about? Some know, and ‘prefer’ loose language (though I would say it’s not a preference but lack of skill with language), while others don’t know and have what might be called a ‘false awakening’, as when one wakes up from a dream into another dream. It is important to discount awakening in order to alert those who are still somewhat naive not to believe in ‘their experience’, because as ‘their experience’ it is just another transient arising that will subside.
December 6, 2011 at 4:09 pm
awarenessishere
Wow the panel discussion is on! Words cannot convey the Truth of realization any better than a camel can carry the sun on its back, and you can quote me on that.
Joel, this is the heart of it, in your words “The unchanging is the unchanging. It doesn’t ‘awake’, what ‘awakes’ is awareness of the unchanging.”
Of course! And yet, the metaphor of “waking up” reaches peoples imaginations and tickles at the part of them “alseep”. It’s just a way of capturing a greater truth that in some way they are living in the unreal because the mind that dreams believes itself to be real.
Joel, I dare you to read my blog, then get back to me with some slice and dice wisdom of precision wording.
By the way, a natural outcome of the shift to “awareness of the unchanging” is the end of like-dislike, positional thinking, judgement and dilemma…at least from this one expression of Awareness called Lori Ann.
So Sam saying he’s awake and Joel deferring from any such proclamation is just dandy. Diversity of expression is here, and from Awareness point of view, all expressions are welcome.
As i said once.True Awareness points in one direction only. At Itself.
(Yes, that’s my homegrown koan)
Lori Ann is Here
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
Skills « freestyle awakening
[...] enlightened, it’s a good idea to hang around enlightened people. Because many of us are able to know the minds of others, we’re able to use language in a way that can point your mind in a direction that will be helpful [...]
December 5, 2011 at 4:46 pm
awarenessishere
You are preaching to the choir here, and I am loving it…I have yet to find another awakened writer who so clearly communicates from that rumi field. I call this knowing the minds of others, Enlightenment Smarties…(post number two in this six week unfolding of freshly hatched me.)
What I have seen A LOT OF since i woke up six weeks ago, is how many people say to me, “Oh yeah, me too, I’ve been awake for years,” and then go on to demonstrate a bout of angst, a whooping complaint, a judgement or a verbal attack.
I remember Adyashanti saying once that he can only tell if someone is Awake by observing them over time. It’s the demonstration of Awareness that is most potent, in a person who has ceased to be a personality. For me this has been the loss of any emotional reactivity, yet nor I am a detached robot with no warmth. I am delighted, curious, quietude — best words for it, with intermittent bouts of my heart flying open into boundless bliss. Those moments feel like they are increasing as the silence is tickled by this bliss thing.
Thanks for sharing…osho told a student once, i am just a friend ahead of you on the path. I see each of us awake as friends just reporting the terrain to the rest of the gang who will be here soon enough.
Lori Ann
December 6, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Monkey Mind
Hi Lori
reporting the terrain: the ups and downs don’t stop. It’s vast, and can be lonely, or barren, or stark in some other surprising way. Emotions are just as causal as everything else. It’s useful to take good care of your personality, because it will freak people out if you don’t – just like body hygiene should be maintained if you want to have close relations with people. There is fear at the heart of beauty – deal with it. The void is very compelling – deal with it. Death can’t see you any more, but you can see him all the better, and he’s no idler.
And since you quoted the Mahesh – he bumbled through all of the above, but it’s not mandatory.
Cheers,
Florian
December 6, 2011 at 4:28 pm
awarenessishere
Florian, you made me laugh…yes, well, I will make sure to feed and care for my personality. It’s still here actually (brash, eager, naive, clever puppy it is) but it clearly in obedience school as Awareness had the leash firmly in hand. Thanks for your words. Lori Ann
December 6, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Sindder Streg - 7 months awake
Hey Lori Ann, none of these fine people are trying to insult your awakening experience. But that’s all it was, a passing experience. Nothing in physical reality has changed. Body, mind, nothing else. Just those two. Awareness does not exist. It’s all body and mind. Nobody is better off by your enlightenment. There is no collective drive to awakening. The Earth will be destroyed and we all will die. What ever happens, happens. There’s no questioning what happened. It did.
December 6, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Sam Watts
“Body, mind, nothing else. Just those two. Awareness does not exist. It’s all body and mind.”
I’m always a little taken aback by how matter-of-factly this is stated by some people. The truth is, you don’t know for certain whether or not this is true. Your statement is a reflection of your worldview (and notice how I didn’t say it was “just” a reflection…), not of the truth – at least not in terms of what it means to awaken.
I’m not saying Awareness is or isn’t. I’m saying it’s pointless to argue about it when it’s completely beside the point.
December 6, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Monkey Mind
I’m glad you got a laugh out of it, Lori! I was beginning to think that my post looked a bit gloomy.
Cheers,
Florian
December 7, 2011 at 8:55 am
Sindder Streg
Hey Sam, thanks for the clarification, it’s greatly appreciated. That was definitely meant as an expression and not as fact. In the wake of an awakening experience it might be useful (it was for me because I certainly fell for it) to understand, or have pointed out to you, that just because Awareness is everything, or nothing, that ‘you’ are not done. At that time, one doesn’t understand everything yet- that it’s a process- (or at least I didn’t, even with what I had read and thought I knew about it- and I’m still learning), especially when everything is all hunky-dory and peachy chillin with Awareness. I’m not saying there is a time when one understands everything or even that one needs to, but ‘understanding everything’ or ‘understanding enough’ may be the realizing that there’s nothing to understand, that there’s no ‘enlightenment’, and the giving up that spontaneously occurs. This seems to be my current experience anyway. The wording here is certain not to be airtight, and I’m not sure it needs to be. It’s been difficult for me to write about this stuff with a lasting degree of satisfaction. I read back my writing from around the time the experience occured and I think, “oh what garbage, I can’t believe I thought I was enlightened”. My thoughts on the subject change all the time, but now in my opinion that’s what ‘enlightenment’ is: a subject. But what’s the object of enlightenment?? I don’t know, this typing maybe. I think the object of enlightenment is what a lot of the fuss is about, and it can never be named, yet we’re human: so we’ll sure as heck try. But as a title (with a disclaimer) or pointer or sigil, the word enlightenment works great!
December 7, 2011 at 9:36 am
Sam Watts
Yes, I agree that it’s good for those in the throes of realization to keep in mind that they have not reached an idealized end state, and that further growth/change/transformation/maturation is going to happen… and growth hurts.
When awakening matures, you begin to understand and experience life, awakening, and everything as a dialectic. You’re OK with saying there are those who are awake and those who are not, while at the same time being OK with the fact that there is no awakening, no Buddhas or sentient beings, no path, no nirvana, no samsara. You don’t feel the need to disagree with either, nor affirm them. The context that arises as a given situation simply expresses the meaning that is appropriate. As the conditions change, so does the meaning. And then you let it go when it dies.
In Zen they say, “No fixed position!” Ji ji mu-ge - from thing to thing, no block. The path leads here, if you let it. I think you’re well on your way.
December 7, 2011 at 10:19 am
Joel
Ah, jiji muge, this is a wonderful expression. In the Chinese it is ‘shishi wuai’, which really translates as ‘everything unimpeded’, or I might even say ‘nothing in the way of everything’, since the ‘wu’ (‘mu’ in Japanese) is not just the negating word but nothingness also and ‘unimpeded’ is literally ‘nothing in the way’. ‘Shishi’ is ‘thing thing’, but it means ‘everything’. I understand the phrase to mean all phenomena are the same, or the same substance, there is no difference anywhere save that given by the defining mind that separates out of the everythingness particular objects to name and give a boundary to. So ‘shishi wuai’ means everything runs together, no boundaries. Such, at least, is how I take it.
December 7, 2011 at 10:34 am
Sam Watts
“Such, at least, is how I take it.”
Me too. Thanks for sharing that.
As an aside, it’s fun to point out that neither my words nor yours can adequately express this reality to which they make a feeble attempt to refer. But I can read your description, and you can read mine, and we can decipher what we’re both pointing to.
When the nature of language is deeply apprehended, its limitations are no longer so much of a problem.
December 7, 2011 at 10:30 am
awarenessishere
Hello there:
What I hear in your statements that nobody is better off, and “there is no blankety blank” is postional thinking, or opinions. And that is great, because there is room here for diversity of expression. And too, for your own experience, which is uniquely yours, uniquely how an awakening/fog lifting moved through your form and mind. So in the spirit of curiousity, I would ask what were you experiencing when you read my words and were moved to respond? And is your mind still on hiatus while vast stillness is present? Or is the mind busy? I ask with great curiousity and simply wondering?
As for my “reportage” of my own fresh awakening, I am simply reporting the unfolding, not purportng to know a destination, nor certainly know it all. In fact I’ve never known less in my life. To say I know nothing (and everything) might be more apt line. Yet I have come up with some discoveries too, of how language divides..and how even though truth can piggy back on words, it’s a bit like a camel trying to carry the sun on it’s back.
Since i began blogging, several “awakened” ones have lobbed a lot of “you don’t have a clue” material at me, along the lines of “just wait until you come down from this spiritual high, sucker.” Which of course, makes me laugh, because I’m not attached to high or low, simply here. Yet there seem to be a lot of folks who think that they woke up, had a beautiful flight, and crash landed.
It’s interesting too, because positional thinking is gone here, and so I listen. I watch. I wonder a bit. But there’s certainly no sense of needed to argue my case! I am having this experience of not-lori and this experience is having me. And so it goes…
Lori Ann (oops, I think i replied to the wrong place earlier, getting the hang of this)
December 7, 2011 at 11:13 am
Sam Watts
“(oops, I think i replied to the wrong place earlier, getting the hang of this)”
No worries. I deleted the duplicate comment.
December 7, 2011 at 11:31 am
Joel
“When the nature of language is deeply apprehended, its limitations are no longer so much of a problem.”
– Words are made out of distinctions. While we make distinctions, some distinctions will be more accurate than others. That’s one aspect of the nature of words, to seek accuracy of distinction (another might be to seek vagueness and ambiguity, if that suits the subject better, but here we are talking about accuracy of distinction). They are not much good for describing what cannot be distinguished, but they are good for distinguishing between various attempts at distinguishing and pointing out why one is better than another. For instance, words can both mislead and lead, and so may be used to lead one to see what is misleading. Once one has seen what is misleading, the ‘leading’ need not be clung to, though of course many do mislead themselves in this way.
December 7, 2011 at 10:31 am
awarenessishere
Hello there 7 month hatchling…I am not sure that I replied correctly yet! Bad student me, in this figuring out which reply key to hit…so if you scroll down my answer to you is under Joel’s comment. LA
December 7, 2011 at 11:20 am
Sam Watts
Ha! I didn’t see the “7 months awake” by Sindder Streg’s name. I love it.
December 7, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Sindder Streg
Hey Lori Ann, I appreciate your spirit of curiosity and the playfulness of your writing. To answer your questions, (first off, I believed that you had an awakening and what was shown was what I saw) I was thinking that I recognized a bit of myself in your writing and that you are having a great time looking at Awareness, but that I’ve said and written things that I regret post-event and they’ve not been very productive for relationships, so I guess I wanted to warn you if I could (by pointing you away from Awareness itself, as I’ve seen a tendency of some to dismiss pretty much everything and use Awareness as an excuse for poor behavior- I believe I’ve seen Florian call this spiritual bypassing, and I’ve done it in the past A LOT). I’m not saying you’re doing this and maybe I was being too presumptuous, sorry if I offended you. I know I couldn’t have heard about bypassing early enough. But like I said, I could be a nihilistic jerk at times. You just might be a nicer person than I was! In my opinion you’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just (from me anyway) encouragement, and hope you attend to each day with self-observation, or whatever practices you may do. Basically: way to go, keep going!! Is my mind still or busy?? Seems like it runs like normal, but I can see the space that was there too, and recently if I look at it I’m often pushed into the immediacy of experience, like I can’t really look it or I’m being told that it itself is not the point. I think I crash landed right when I had that experience. I was left with nothing but my life, which, honestly, was what I was trying to get out of. But, it’s much better this way, every day is filled with subtle glory. Reality is much more interesting that any escape or utopia I could have imagined or planned. I hope you keep writing as I see it as a valuable resource for others on the path.
Glad you enjoyed the ’7 months awake’ addition, Sam. For comparison purposes only of course. Joel and Lori Ann were so honest about when they had their experiences that I wanted to join the party!
December 9, 2011 at 12:14 pm
awarenessishere
Hi again:
What strikes me are your words that you were left with nothing but your life, that you were trying to get out of. My experience of “my” life is that nothing has changed on the surface (still have a 12 year old, a partner, my house, my creaky bones, well, creaky hip!) and yet there is a richness (subtle glory?) in the is-ness of this life.
Escape, utopia, are what I probably imagined being awake was about because i certainly had encountered blissful ecstatic mystical break throughs in my life story over the years. Yet here is waking up, just a soft point of view shift that changes nothing but changes everything.
thanks for your clarification,
Lori-Ann (seven weeks awake
December 9, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Sindder Streg
Lori, yes! You understood me correctly! The moment of awakening for me was a shift in emphasis from the foreground of awareness-content-(thoughts, etc) to the background-context-(abundant silence). But when I said that “I was left with nothing but my life” I mean those hopes and dreams of enlightenment being “some thing” were torn apart, and that hurt. And the shards are unpleasant and unadvantageous so I work to move away from that type of thinking. The nature of the mind doesn’t change but the content does and the content is important to me because it affects my actions and my actions affect my family and friends. When I was aware OF awareness, it was still content, not context. Emptiness is empty even of itself! Hence, why I said earlier that Awareness doesn’t exist, only matter and mind. But really there seems to me now to be only motion. This has been my experience so far, thus my encouragment and excitement for you. Keep observing, because, well, life goes on.
December 8, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Monkey Mind
To be clear about it: the term “spiritual bypassing” isn’t my invention. I learned about it on Jackson’s blog:
http://truthaparadox.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/spiritual-bypassing-the-damnedest-thing/
Cheers,
Florian
December 8, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Jackson
Thanks for sharing the link, Florian.
I got the term from John Welwood’s work. I think he’s the one who coined it. His book Toward a Psychology of Awakening is one of my all-time favorites.
Sam, I dig your blog.
-Jackson
December 9, 2011 at 9:45 am
Sam Watts
Jackson, thanks. I like that book, too.