What Is “Awakening”?

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Worth Reading Off the Web – The author, Scott Kiloby is an international speaker on the subject of freedom through non-dual realization, a Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor/Registered Addiction Specialist.

EveningofLight

EveningofLight

Awakening is a living, breathing, constantly unfolding moment-by-moment adventure.

The Head-Awakening

What gets passed off as awakening is a certain shifting that happens, where one sees that they are not the concepts in their heads. In awareness-styled awakenings (there are different awakenings that look and feel differently in different traditions – awareness-styled is just one), the shift usually involves some sort of non-conceptual realization of awareness, being, presence or no self that seems to be an end point at first. It can be a sudden or gradual shifting, but people generally report this kind of change in perception. Things are seen to come and go within awareness inseparably or things seem to come and go but there is no self to be found.

Because this opening reveals a profound seeing that separate things, including a separate self, are not really there, it is easy to see why the proclamation of “I’m done”. In many ways, one is done – done with seeking as a self in time and in thought. But this is only a head-awakening. Even in a head-awakening, it can feel as if the body is open and transparent at first. But given time, areas of the body that are dense with the feeling of separation start to become conscious.

There are at least two other big areas to be navigated after a head-awakening.

1. The baggage of mental concepts around awakening itself.

2. The body.

Let’s start with the mental concepts. In my experience, there is a desire in many people to grasp mentally what has been realized. There are elaborate conceptual frameworks devised to “make sense” of awakening, just as this writing is a conceptual framework. There’s nothing wrong with having a conceptual framework, until it becomes the new mental prison. Just as there is a rush to a head-awakening, there is often a rush to neatly place the realization into certain conceptual boxes. There are many boxes. All the buzzwords you hear in awakening circles can be imprisoning boxes, including:

• “we create our own reality”
• “everything is just a concept”
• “nothing is true”
• “life is a divine mystery”
• “oneness is the ultimate truth”
• “no self”
• “awareness”
• “I AM”
• “all there is, is THIS”
• “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao”
• “The Middle Way”

People can spend years after a head awakening endlessly identifying with all sorts of mental stuff around the awakening. This is the time when people desire to be teachers. I went through it. It’s really very innocent and comes from good intentions. But what gets passed off is only what a teacher has realized, nothing more. And many times what gets passed off are ideas about static, fixed things that are taken to be objectively true and real. Spiritual experiences and realizations get concretized into doctrine or dogma or “this is the only way” type thinking.

Eventually, what becomes important is the living of the realization itself, rather than the conceptualizing and understanding of it.

Conceptualizing goes on, but things are held a lot more lightly and non-seriously. The Living Inquiries were born out of my experience of being first immersed in certain boxes and then turning attention towards the moment-by-moment living and seeing.

The Body

The body has its own say in the matter. There are other chakras – not just the crown and mind’s eye. The heart can feel heavy, dense and closed for years after a head awakening. So can the root chakra, the sacral, the stomach and the throat. The result is often an arising of addictions, anxieties, self-limiting thoughts, grasping after understanding, issues with money, depression, big ego trips, issues with control and jealousy. I found this out by proclaiming that I was done too early. My issue was the continuation of certain addictions long after the head awakening. In my conversations with other teachers, they reported similar things. It takes a while, sometimes years, after a head awakening to fully see the darker, denser aspects of the body that remain closed. This is why becoming a teacher right after a head awakening is not a great idea. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

Adyashanti speaks eloquently about the post-awakening dilemma. Somewhere between 3 to 7 years after an awakening, the other shoe drops. Everything that was held in the mind and body and that was not seen through in that awakening will come up and bite you. It’s like it all wants to be seen and released. And it can be painful. You can even wonder why you started the awakening process to begin with. The body awakening doesn’t happen through seeking. It happens just from remaining open and working with those energies in skillful ways.

Try working with a therapist on this “Shadow” self. It is the doorway to greater and greater levels of evolution and freedom.

Article Source: http://kiloby.com/premature-claims-to-awakening/

Recognizing the Sacred in Our World – Part Four

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A great read from off the web …. Please take the time.

SPIRITUAL WISDOM: Recognizing the Sacred in Our World by Christopher Chase

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”  ~Victor Hugo

Every religion, at its core, is based on the idea that our world is a sacred and mystical place, and that each of us is on a spiritual journey, that all life is sacred, and that our entire Universe is a mystical creation.

Below is some of the wisdom common to most of the world’s mystical schools and spiritual traditions. Mystical teachings are at the core of all the great religions. They provide an alternative to hate and fear, to our illusions of separateness, reminding us instead of the beauty, interdependence and sacredness of all life.

21 Core Ideas of the World’s Spiritual Traditions – 18 – 21

  1. THE CONTINUOUS NATURE OF CREATIVITY~ The Universe is a creative event, always changing and in progress. Chaos comes out of order, and order out of chaos. Nothing every stays the same because everything keeps growing and developing further. Violence and death are a part of this endless creative dance, the Unbroken Chain of Being. This is the way Spirit expresses itself in our Universe. The world was not created in seven days, it is continuously being recreated every day, and as children of God we have the opportunity to celebrate and participate in that creative process.

“An epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where there is nothing old, where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoice as at the moment of creation.”   ~Abraham Isaac Kook, Jewish MysticBeingPresent

  1. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS SACRED AND ETERNAL~ While most of our human experiences are focused on limited tasks, the past or the future, on problems or expectations, the present moment is where Spirit dances and touches our lives. This is why the Sabbath is considered holy, and so much emphasis is placed in most traditions on seeking God in our present lives and surroundings. The past and future do not exist, actually. We live only in the present moment, the Universal “Now.” In the continuous NOW, we perceive the ever-changing physical expressions of Eternity, the movement, evolution and unfolding of the Sacred in our world.

“As a child, I understood how to give. I have forgotten that grace since I became civilized. I lived the natural life, whereas I now live the artificial. Any pretty pebble was valuable to me then, every growing tree an object of reverence.”  ~Ohiyesa , American IndianTree

  1. THE PREVALENCE OF BEAUTY~  Our Universe is fundamentally an extremely well organized and harmonious place, especially when creative forces are in balance with one another. When one looks at the world from the perspective of the Divine Soul one is overwhelmed by the intense beauty of everyone and all things. Our greatest musicians, artists and poets have captured something of this dynamic harmony that surrounds us at all moments, the spiritual and mystical beauty present in cloud patterns, in children’s smiling faces, flowers, animals, friends and what we commonly call “reality.”

“The beauty which the knower knows and the lover appreciates, the mystic worships. His God is Reality. To every question that arises in the heart of the mystic, he finds the answer in the life before him.”     ~Hazarat Inayat Khan, Sufi mystic

dewDrop“See simplicity in the complicated, seek greatness in small things. In the Universe, the difficult things are done as if they were easy.”    ~Lao Tsu

  1. SPIRITUAL REALIZATION AND PEACE ARE IMMINENT~ If the great masters and teachers of humanity are right, that life is a spiritual journey being undertaken by spiritual beings, then peace and harmony on our planet is our unavoidable destiny. We can fight and fear all we like, but sooner or later humans are all going to wake up to remember who we really are at our core, all of us. Our destination is unavoidable because of who we really are. Eventually, a world of peace will be created by each of us, one at a time, in a wave of love and caring that will encircle the entire planet. It happens in our lives as soon as we release ourselves from anger and fear, and cultivate love in our world. It is in fact, already happening.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as One.”    ~John Lennon

 

Amen