My Five Minute Awakening

[SoulSail]

It's probably not important that I start this story off with history, but a little might help it make sense.

This past year has been among the most stressful of my life. Major job changes. A cross-country move that is still wobbly. Two close family members needing major surgery, both sudden, both unexpected. I could go on, but imagine some unseen hand throwing darts at your forehead almost daily and you get the idea.

With this type of living, the pressure can build to an experience that is almost impossible to describe. It's as if you're going to spontaneously explode, but you're not sure how to do that. I was there earlier this week and something happened I've been reluctant to share, but decided to for my sake more than anything else. Take or leave what you will....

Driving down the highway, Minneapolis in view, I hit my explode point. But instead of the crushing stress and concerns, I felt something in me give way. The damn broke, and I "awoke" for five minutes. Yes, the enlightenment kind, only not the permanent kind.


Suddenly, and I mean that, without any clue or hint it was coming, the pace broke. Total collapse of meaning, compartments, schedules, tasks, needs, wants, etc. Time stopped. There I was driving and I felt like a child fully exposed and one with the present moment, on its terms. The awareness came that I've been way overcomplicating the whole business of meditation and seeking enlightenment. There was not one thing I had to do, nowhere to go, it was all "here." I felt warm, very similar to what it feels like after having a good cry--cathartic. In fact, I began laughing and crying at the same time. It was so easy! I've been making it all so impossibly hard just by thinking about awakening as a journey when there's just not much to it. It was peace. It was grounded in the present alone and not one thing around me could rightly be seen as separate from me. I was this. I was that. And not "I" as in myself, but I as in an eternal fabric, a configuration of energy and intelligence in an eternal mesh. I understood what the Buddha meant by the middle way at last: no embracing the moment as good or bad, no duality, no labels, for to do, think, or act so would immediately erect one thing's opposite and end the experience.

All simply was.

In this state I felt profoundly aware of just how much change was going on at once. Every single particle of the universe in flux. Every moment saw creation anew. There was no beginning. Creation, the whole of it, was popping faster than my feeble mind could grasp, and that's where the whole thing began to fade out. "I" became aware that I could not comprehend or keep up with the pace of the vibration that makes up reality, but I wanted to. "I" wanted to hold that moment forever so my handy little mind went about devising how to lock it in place, and so in trying to formulate a way to stay in that moment, I lost it all. I still felt at peace, but back to unreality.

The cell rang. I answered, why I don't know. But I was firmly back in samsara again.


But I'll say it here and now. I've seen it, and it flirted with me big-time, and I am that and will realize it.


Soul

[ButterflyWoman]

I'm going to PM you. I want to talk to you about this, but what I want to say is too intimate to post on a public board like this.

[IA56]

Soul, I can relate to this totally, thank you, and I agree with BW

[Korpo]

Moments of grace are quite something, aren't they? And you never are prepared for them. :)

[CFTraveler]

Just sayin' :thumbsup: .

[Sinera]

Unfortunately I did never experience the mystical state in (or ..from...) waking state. Sometimes I have some 'disconnections' or 'disassociations' from this reality in waking state when I manage to shut off my thoughts completely for seconds, being in "the now" thoughtless, observing, experiencing, staring into a kind of nothingness (with eyes open, blurry vision) and then "the field around me", wherever I am, opens up a little and it all flows into one, but I cannot hold it for long.
:wacky1:

I can relate to the mystical unity experience only by the short moment of BLISS I felt during a 'kind of' NDE I had in Sep 2009, but it was thus not in waking state. I then felt vibrantly (and 'vibratingly') "HOME" and connected to the "all-that-is" during these memorable moments (a few seconds actually), yet still I was more or less in the RTZ, just not in my body, but hovering in the surgery.

[LPCF]

Soul, I only just saw this very significant thread. My first instinct was to PM you, just like BW. The only thing which comes into my head right now are the words of Adrian Cooper, which go something like "Don't think; just BE".

Of course, this is more easily said than done. Luckily, I am 62 and my children are very adult; mortgages are long gone; more time is spent in the garden and field with plants and sheep, where I can commune with nature. But for you, my dear friend (I regard you indeed as such), it must be difficult for wordly cares not to intrude on you frequently and in a big way - especially with the worry about the medical condition of two family members.

But you are such a spiritual person, that I'm sure that you will quickly accommodate your new perspective with the necessities of earthly living. Your soul will surely achieve moksha - maybe even this time around!

BTW, how is your delightful Charlie? He doesn't think, he just IS! :lol:

[SoulSail]

Moments of grace are quite something, aren't they? And you never are prepared for them. :)

Grace indeed. And it's always good to see you here, Korpo. Hope you're well.

I've been meaning to write you but time got by. Earlier this year I had two dreams, both bordered on lucid and you were in both. In one you and I were operating tanks on some European battlefield, I couldn't tell if we were on opposing sides because we were chatting about our gear like old chums rather than enemies. In the other dream you were showing me around a very large house, almost like the school that Harry Potter kid goes to. We went room by room and you were pointing out artifacts and explaining their use and significance. Interesting.

Take care friend,

Soul

[SoulSail]

BTW, how is your delightful Charlie? He doesn't think, he just IS! :lol:

Hi LPCF,

So nice to hear from you as well. I always appreciate your view, take, and words. Know that Mr. Charlie is fantastic. He's about more love and fun and mischief than one household can take, but I am so glad we got him. For a long time now I thought he had doggy anxiety...turns out he's trying to herd me at all times. We call him the close talker. Here's a shot I took today after I questioned him on why he had eaten one of my wife's decorative Thanksgiving gourds. Too funny.


Best to you,


Soul

504

[SoulSail]

Thought I'd post a few follow-up observations on my spiritual practice after this momentary awakening. Please know that I am not suggesting I have any special insight or "rightness" here. We each have a path and hopefully, an idea of where we'd like to end up. As always, take what you will, leave what you will.

1. My practice will now be decidedly subtractive, meaning I see that there is much to cut away rather than accumulate. There is no destination to reach, no greener grass after years of self effort toward some ideal state of being. A "perfect" self would only mire me further in the hall of mirrors. Cancelling hope for a better tomorrow. Sitting down today to realize the whole show is right here, right now, and so close I've been pushing it aside in order to find it.

2. My meditation will no longer be about achieving desired states or proficiency in concentration or insight. Meditation is not the road to liberation, only a tool in helping me reaffirm that a vertical reality bisects the horizontal time-driven unreality I presently occupy. Desiring any one state only feeds that state's shadow side, enforcing duality, tension, suffering.

3. No complicating matters. No worrying about whether or not my energy is blitzed, cloudy, low, blah, blah, blah. This is needless.

4. Continue to express compassion toward all beings, realizing this is not a holy act, only the safest stone to balance on for now.

5. Surrender. Grace. Surrender. Grace.

Best,

Soul

[ButterflyWoman]

My practice will now be decidedly subtractive, meaning I see that there is much to cut away rather than accumulate. There is no destination to reach, no greener grass after years of self effort toward some ideal state of being. A "perfect" self would only mire me further in the hall of mirrors. Cancelling hope for a better tomorrow. Sitting down today to realize the whole show is right here, right now, and so close I've been pushing it aside in order to find it.
An analogy I like is that you find you're locked out of your house, so you desperately climb up onto the porch, up onto the roof, into the slightly open attic window, get in, come downstairs, and find that the front door was unlocked all along. :)


Meditation is not the road to liberation, only a tool in helping me reaffirm that a vertical reality bisects the horizontal time-driven unreality I presently occupy. Desiring any one state only feeds that state's shadow side, enforcing duality, tension, suffering.
Agreed. And very well stated.


No complicating matters. No worrying about whether or not my energy is blitzed, cloudy, low, blah, blah, blah. This is needless.
YES! And stop worrying so much about "positive" and "negative" and so on. You can characterise things that way if you want to, but it's so unnecessary (and the act of judgement of "positive" versus "negative" and "right" versus "wrong" and all that is grounded deeply in duality, anyway, obviously).


Continue to express compassion toward all beings, realizing this is not a holy act, only the safest stone to balance on for now.
*nod* Again, agreed. When I fall too far away from the position of compassion, I generally fall off my perch entirely. *squawk*


Surrender. Grace. Surrender. Grace.
And so it is.

[Frater.Akenu]

Soul, I would say there is some important message cipher hidden for you. Think about what these all events want to tell you, what's the message?

[Korpo]

Hello, Soul.

Interesting to hear I made an appearance or two. Which is funny! What did I look like? ;)

The one with the tanks sounds very coded. The Hogwarts one sounds like the kind of dream I would have once in a while as well.

So, your dog is a herder as well? Mine always tries to coax me towards the kitchen or the front door. Herding dogs can be very patient but persistent that way. ;)

[SoulSail]

Interesting to hear I made an appearance or two. Which is funny! What did I look like? ;)


Erwin Romel.

Just kidding.

Actually you had blonde hair, glasses, looked like some distinguished intellectual type. But we were both in uniform and just going on and on about our tank gear. For some reason I kept getting the hunch that we'd worked on many components mutually in the past and were discussing how those components were doing. Even though we were in tanks, and there were many tanks. The whole scene was totally free of violence. The sun was out, the grass very green, and the whole thing was rather pleasant.

The Hogwarts dream was far more mystical. Your house was a maze of rooms, rooms of rooms, hallways both long, curved and all sorts of up and down. It was full of ancient artifacts, almost like something you'd see in an old Tibetan monastery.

Who knows?


Soul

[SoulSail]

Soul, I would say there is some important message cipher hidden for you. Think about what these all events want to tell you, what's the message?

I agree and admit to looking at the experience from one side perhaps to a fault. That this five minutes was sort of juxtaposed with a mind-state so fully compressed with stress and problems...I can't help but see a deeper point, or "cipher" in the whole narrative. I do not know. I have sensed that very subtle instruction to look closely at the order of events all the way through. Best course seems to leave the story open so my understanding isn't clouded when more comes out.

We'll see.


Soul

[dreaming90]

You had what the Zen masters call "kensho." :)

I have only a brief prayer for you: "May the next time be permanent."