Ordinary extraordinary
THIS is it. That can be a frustrating thing to hear for someone who is seeking Freedom or healing, because the ego is looking for something bigger, ‘special’. Once there is a glimpse of empty fullness, the glistening light and love of creation, it is seen clearly as all that could ever truly matter. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. But then this can tend to lapse back into the dull personal life, or 日本藤素
‘even worse’, into emotional turbulence. What happened to the wonder?
Of course, it is always the same wonder. We don’t need all-out bliss to know wonder; the essence of what Is is always exquisitely here. It is simply perception – the function of the body/mind – that has come back as energetic vibration lessens. As sensitivity dulls, the mind kicks in and tries to contain feelings with doubts and questions, and judgement of self or others.
Bliss State vs what is
Any personal experience or state, bliss or pain, will come and go. We can’t hang onto aliveness that WAS. The deeper ‘truth’, the rich wisdom, is to love what IS, whether it presents itself to the character as the dullness of is or the shining light of ISness.
The highly dramatic spiritual experiences in awakening which blow the mind and conditioned self to smithereens and are never forgotten, show you that Essence is always here. If ‘you’ are sensible, you still tether your camel in ways you deem valuable.
Nature kindly tends to give these awakening experiences at intervals, so that the vibration of the body adjusts. During awakening which lasts for a longer period of months or is permanent (as it sometimes IS), the body-mind can, even with the intense stimulation, get things done and settle in the exquisiteness. The extraordinary becomes the ordinary.
The ‘in’ and ‘out’ of awakening
Deepening in awakeness, the ‘in’ and ‘out’, is natural. People in their conditioning are not. They can easily lose heart, when me and limitation comes back, get frustrated, abandon the enquiry just at the point where breakthrough beyond a core conditioning is imminent. They can dismiss even real and hard-won transformations. It is a forgetting. Clear guidance is needed then. It is sometimes painful to bear witness to.
This is how waking up generally unfolds til it’s over and only Life itself is left. In and out of the ‘me’ story. Life is perceived as the oh so ordinary is, so the practice didn’t work did it? Dare you enquire until you see that what is could never be anything other than perfect? In the light filled revelation of awakeness, this is quietly obvious, always.
Beingness can most certainly be re-membered, realised, bodily, however, if the challenge of the in and out is risen to. It isn’t conceptual. And it’s your natural birthright, as much as anyone’s. In a satori – a glimpse of awakeness- a human being is transported into a bliss and calm. This can also sometimes by grace also happen when you are in overwhelm or trauma.
In this awakeness, it can be seen that none of the worldly challenge matters, nothing is happening, all is innocent and it is all love. All- oneness.
Waking up can last a few hours, days or months. When contraction returns, the personality can want that back and gets hung up on trying and grasping for it or says ‘well what’s the point then?’ But the magnificence of beingness, of Isness, simply is, always, anyway. It doesn’t belong to a person. And grasping pushes it away. You are ‘it’ anyway. The personality is very dull vibration compared with the open aliveness of Life itself, embodied, that’s all.
As waking up then going back to sleep happens beyond personal control, a willing conscious co-operation and the discipline of a regular sitting practice can happen. Then a humble enquiry can be undertaken into the depths and a profound and mysterious transformation begins to take place physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The challenge of increased light and consciousness
Deep sadness, strong rage, lust, jealousy, worthlessness, visceral fear – in particular any emotion that you have been unable to ever acknowledge fully, that you have suppressed – can suddenly push up from the depths to be released. Intense rage can emerge as the grip of conditioning loosens and the mind struggles to understand that which it will NEVER understand. Awakening happens beyond time. The journey of mastery of the mind and living freedom from being run by conditioning and aligning body and heart with soul before, during, and after awakening, can (but certainly doesn’t have to) take an entire lifetime.
Deep heartbreak at times is most characteristic for all who are waking up. It is seen that nothing in this world offers any lasting happiness or fulfilment. That you will never be perfect. Even spiritual practice can feel useless because it is seen that it wont make you perfect. Who said it would? Only the tyrannous mind.
Resisting this heartbreak is exhausting. If you are willing to be still and open to the life moving, whatever its colour, if you are willing to let your heart break open, all your fears, the rage at the limits of physical form, the ghosts of your past can be received fully and go free. Emotional turmoil is often the signal that liberation is possible. What or who keeps you from going counter -culture and turning in and in? Don’t worry, outer expression can still happen! It’s not either or!
Love of Life Itself, gratitude for simply This, is the essence-ial realisation. This opens your heart and true freedom, lasting happiness, and fulfilment – free of agenda- is possible.
However, Free fall, living from not knowing, living beyond the personal, is frightening for the personality anxious to preserve a status quo. The mind interprets this as physical death. It is actually ultimate death in life, death of the tyranny of conditioned self. (This is why Return to Source is an essential initiation and varies every time you might enter it) The conditioned self is a terrorist for all around it. The mind holds on to its resistance and disorientation after a glimpse of freedom. Sweet mind, it can never regain control because it was never in control at all, even when it thought it was.
What can you -apparently – do?
Waking up, followed by the contraction back into separation, is the royal invitation to meet everything, including the painful, that you have been culturally and physically conditioned to avoid and move away from. Yet everything can be tenderly and peacefully embraced by the rose of the open heart. Words and analysis sound so reassuring but they wont give you this embrace and peace. Full meeting, without analysis, with sadness, hopelessness, self-hatred or whatever arises as the mind writhes against freedom, brings awareness of the deeper material.
Then comes the literally life-saving revelation that this, that which has perhaps been most avoided or feared, is the gateway to the spaciousness, the honey, of your own heart. And the heart is the open gateway to the no-thing and every—thing of Being. That thirst of the deepest longing is quenched.
Laughter is a common response. So are tears – of joy. Sometimes both at the same time. Language cannot do justice to this Joy and Freedom.
You can’t try to make this happen. You can have high quality reflection, holding, structures and initiations that surprise you out of your usual safe prison, and daily practice and make yourself available, simply let life do you, be willing to be still in any emotional storm and allow the heart to be….and give spacious acceptance to the storm…Stillness can include movement and sound -the crucial difference is that it is not directed at anyone or anything). This sounds simple, but it is the hardest thing because all your cultural conditioning – to blame and complain and move away from terror or rage or judgement – is counter this. That’s why high quality friendships and community, which both keep you accoutable to the intentions you hold for your being and also where you are loved anyway, when you can’t stay still and bear witness, is so vital.
If you are willing to abandon the lies you tell yourself, about why you are hanging on to this particular piece of belief or conditioned response, or habitual response, the biggest being that you are a separate self with a particular identity, who deserves the perfect life, you will find peace and freedom and happiness that is not at all dependent on circumstance.
All there ever was, was Love. There is only Love. Dare you follow Love’s call?
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