Awakening - the Next Stage in Human Evolution

     It's blatantly obvious, when an elderly person observes how babies physically mature into toddlers, then gradually teens, young adults, middle-aged folks, seniors and elderly. However, at none of the earlier stages can we fully appreciate the lived experience of any of the later stages of life. Our inability to understand the lived experience of later stages of psychosocialspiritual development is a far more serious problem.

    As an example, someone who is angry, bitter & cynical, blaming others for his misfortunes, just wants to wreak havoc on "the system" and fervently believes every conspiracy theory YouTube video out there, cannot be reasoned with. His powerful emotional charge (misdirected Life Force) has to gradually run down like an old battery in cold weather before it can sense the way Home. Even then, psychotherapy, possibly with medications, may be necessary to allow normal psychosocialspiritual maturation to get back on track.

    Many of us, even if we've lived a reasonably successful life, and are reasonably comfortably retired, do not seem to be ready, willing or able to actively participate in normal psychosocialspiritual maturation. DO NOT IGNORE this resistance! Life is shorter than you think & you have no idea what you're missing!

    As most of you who've been following my posts realize, I understand true spirituality as Perennial Philosophy - the common meeting place of ALL serious seekers of truth / wisdom, regardless of what tradition they started in or continue to support, be it Aboriginal Wisdom / Shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. 

    For those who are ready, willing & able, I HIGHLY recommend this 67-minute video which beautifully summarizes the current spiritual understanding of many of the teachers I most respect: https://awakentheworld.com/film/awakening-mind-film-part-1-know-thyself/ 

What happened to Love? Or even Decency?

    Executive orders abolishing or reversing any policy that's humane, ethical or simply decent, flow relentlessly, like sewage from a broken main, from this cartoon character. What on earth brought this nightmarish shadow on the U.S., the whole world?
    Such immoral behavior, and support for it, is caused by fear & ignorance about basic human decency, and certainly about evolved human behavior.

    We know that fear can cause the survival or fight, flight, freeze instinct to take over. This primitive instinct can go easily too far, as when during war, soldiers commit barbaric acts, which even in warfare are denounced as "atrocities." Committing atrocities unknowingly inflict "moral injury" on perpetrators, and so they become much more likely to suffer from PTSD.
    "Moral transgression," above and beyond all other dangers & hardships, is ... the most important cause of combat PTSD.
    Jonathan Shay. “Achilles in Vietnam. Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.” Scribner, 1994.

    Even without combat, many experience trauma, do not receive treatment, and thus can be triggered, causing harm to themselves and others. For various reasons, trauma remains largely unrecognized & under treated.

    Not just prisoners, but far too many politicians & their supporters are dysfunctional people coming from dysfunctional homes (inter-generational trauma), who continue to spread their unresolved pain & suffering far & wide.

    First, we MUST recognize, diagnose & treat mental illness to at least the level of "ordinary unhappiness." Electing cartoon characters to the highest office is extremely worrisome & dangerous, and accurately reflects the pathetic psychosocialspiritual level of voters. The 2023 movie, "Lee" starring Kate Winslet (Prime Video), is a powerful true story about what happens when a cartoon character is elected to head a powerful militaristic nation.

    It WILL eventually dawn on us that we're INFINITELY MORE than an isolated, separate, meaningless, worthless lumps of meat accidentally adrift in a massive mindless, soulless, mechanical cosmos. We WILL become increasingly more porous to & intimate with loving cosmic intelligence which is our origin, home & true nature.

    We progressively integrate our true identity with our daily life - with all of its ups, downs, sunny days, cloudy days, summer days, winter days, blissful days, tearful days... Our true identity grounds us more and more securely, like the ballast of a sailboat prevents it from being turned upside down, no matter how strong the stormy winds blow. We come to feel like the stillness & silence in the center of a tornado; the endless, peaceful blue sky, which is unperturbed whether visited by clouds, sunshine, or thunderstorms.
    We gradually recognize that we are, as Rumi writes, "the clear bead at the center," and that deepening realization "changes everything." 

The clear bead at the center
changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
Some say there’s a window
that opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall,
there's no need for fitting a window,
or a latch.
The clear bead at the center
changes everything.

Rumi, translation by Robert Bly & Coleman Barks

 

    “... this peace or quiet joy or sufficiency that is the nature of our being is always there… like the blue sky, it's always present but not always seen.” Rupert Spira

    Rupert Spira (now 64), has been meditating from the age of 17, and a full-time spiritual teacher since 2011, was asked by Tami Simon, "do you always feel in touch with that blue sky nature or do you have times when it’s a really cloudy day today, come on?"

    Rupert Spira: "I have times when it’s a cloudy day, so I would not say I always feel in touch with this background. I would say that I nearly always feel in touch with it. And what I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that fewer & fewer experiences retain the capacity to veil this background of peace & quiet joy. Some experiences do still retain that capacity, so I don’t always feel it, but fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil this peace. And when they do, they don’t last long. It’s not like the olden days when a feeling could obscure this background of peace and last for a week or even a day. So, yes, in answer to your question that there are days or times when the gray clouds temporarily cover this, the blue sky of happiness, but it happens less and less often and lasts for less and less time."

    Tami Simon: "And is there something in those moments that’s your personal Rupert Spira go-to move, this is what I do when that happens?"

    Rupert Spira: "Yes. There are two things I do ... One is pause, turn my attention away from whatever it is that is causing the gray clouds in that moment. And if my circumstances permit, I will literally pause and close my eyes and if not, I’ll do it in the midst of my experience and I just go back. Instead of being engaged with the foreground of my experience, the activity, the relationship, the object, whatever it is that is causing the gray seeming to cause the gray clouds. Because the gray clouds are never really caused by something outside of ourself, but whatever it is that seems to be causing the gray clouds, I’ll pause and I’ll go back and I just go back to the fact of being, I just go back to my being. My being and your being and everyone’s being is always at peace. It’s like the screen before it’s colored by the image, it’s colorless, it’s unqualified, it’s always at peace. So that’s one thing I do. It’s a turning away from experience, just a resting, going back to being.
    Now the other thing I do is rather the opposite of that, instead of turning away from whatever seems to be causing the gray clouds, the unhappiness, I’ll turn towards it. And instead of saying no to it, because that’s what causes the sorrow, it’s not the situation itself that is causing the unhappiness, it’s our saying no, I don’t want this. This shouldn’t be happening, I don’t like it. It’s our inner no, or resistance to the experience, that causes the unhappiness. So in that moment, I’ll turn towards the situation, whatever it is, and instead of saying no to it, say yes to it. I just embrace it.
    I just turn towards it fully and open myself to it. And I say to it, you have no power to cause me happiness unless I grant that power to you that the resistance is in me, you and you. That the situation, the person, whatever it is, are not causing the resistance, I’m doing that to myself. And so I positively affirm that this complete openness, this complete yes to my current experience. And in that yes, there can be no suffering because suffering is always no, I don’t like what’s happening. So I do one of those two things. And of course just one more thing to say, Tami, I don’t wonder which of these two approaches to take. It’s a spontaneous thing."
    Interview :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E45Lfv31TMY
    Transcript : https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/the-quiet-joy-of-being/

    The wise approach above is particularly valuable when dealing with those for whom most, if not all, of life is covered by dark clouds. We cannot expect them, or really anyone or anything else, to dependably part, or see past our clouds. These are our clouds. The best we can do is for us to see past our clouds, and share our clear skies with others.

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.”
John O’Donohue's blessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0bg7lNeKY4

Leonard Cohen - "You Have Loved Enough"

A Sober and Quiet Mind

    “My clouds, sorrowing in the dark,
forget that they themselves have hidden the sun.” Rabindranath Tagore

   "Despair is global, but hope is local. Hope is face to face, body to body, friend to friend and family to family, unmediated by technology or clickbait."
    Lewis Richmond https://www.lewisrichmond.com/hope-in-a-time-of-sadness/

    "... the Dalai Lama and Suzuki Roshi are ... offering the same Buddhist recipe for going beyond our discouragement. Even when a situation seems hopeless it’s important to keep a calm, clear mind. That is something (( we all )) can offer the world, to remain relatively clear-eyed when everyone else has gone crazy. If we can do that, then we are actually doing something. Is it enough, is it effective, will it work? Don’t worry about it, I think Suzuki would say. Keep your mind clear, your eyes open, and watch for an opportunity to do something, anything. Large or small is not important. In a real crisis, when there is no choice, people can suddenly wake up. We never know when that might happen. We should be ready."  Lewis Richmond https://www.speakingtree.in/article/buddhist-recipe

 
    “Life will always remain unfulfilled and the heart will always remain restless UNTIL it comes to rest in that mystery beyond name & form.” Daniel Schmidt http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/02/we-can-experience-light.html

    “One must seek awakening like one with their hair on fire seeks a pond to jump into.” Ramakrishna

    In a recent blog ( http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/02/fear-to-love.html ) I suggested that instead of cultivating ever-increasing hatred & other dark adversarial emotions towards today's top-of-the-heap 'bad actor', WE CAN CHOOSE an INFINITELY more useful, beneficial alternative - to imagine as if he were our only child, and therefore wish that, instead of swift punitive revenge, he be mercifully contained, prevented from continuing to hurt others (& himself) and provided safe conditions for psycho-social rehabilitation. 

    ALSO HIGHLY RELEVENT & RECOMMENDED is carefully reading or re-reading Sue Morter's "Bus Stop Conversation" and watching Natalie Sudman's video BOTH on my blog: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html

     ALL THIS makes it easier to LET GO of hatred and FREE our heart from prison!

“All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others;
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.”
Shantideva

 

    "Everything is perfect, but there is always room for improvement." Shunryū Suzuki

    “We are here to find that dimension within, that is deeper than thought.” Eckhart Tolle

    “… the larger ties that bind us – ties of love, connection, purpose – have ripple effects on our health and the world at large.”
    Kelli Harding. “The Rabbit Effect. Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness.” Atria Books, 2019.

    “through our activity we communicate with each other, intentionally and unintentionally. We should always be alert enough to communicate with or without words.”
    Shunryū Suzuki. "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." Weatherhill, 1970. 

 
    "The great Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki came to Columbia to teach [in 1951] and I went for two years to his classes. From Suzuki's teaching I began to understand that a sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of things that come in through the senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this."
    John Cage, in Mark Epstein. "Psychotherapy without the Self. A Buddhist Perspective." Yale University Press, 2007. 

    "We should never ignore or deny our weaknesses, or tell ourselves we don't have to work on becoming better or stronger. But we should also, and simultaneously, see right through it all to the perfect one inside. We must put on our bifocals and see both parts of ourselves because together, both parts of ourselves constitute the full truth about ourselves."
    Alter RM, Alter J. “How Long Till My Soul Gets It Right?: 100 Doorways on the Journey to Happiness.” Regan Books, 2001.

 

"Put Your Lights On" Carlos Santana ft. Everlast

 

We CAN Experience the Light

"We are all walking in the dark

but with a handful of candles 

that is in our power to ignite.
With every choice we make,
I chase the darkness.
But, I choose to believe in the light."
Closing lines of the 2024 BBC miniseries “The Jetty”

 

     Daniel Schmidt (a Canadian!) is writing, producing & narrating a series of imho impressively wise, beautiful, powerful movies, designed to point us towards directly experiencing our true self.
    Here's my transcript to a small portion of  Daniel Schmidt's "Samadhi Movie, 2018 – Part 2 (It’s Not What You Think)" :

    “In this film when we use the word Samadhi we are pointing to the transcendent. To the highest Samadhi which has been named Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

    The actual word Samadhi means something like to realize the sameness or oneness in all things. It means Union. It is uniting all aspects of yourself. But do not mistake intellectual understanding for the actual realization of Samadhi. It is your stillness, your emptiness that unites all levels of the spiral of life.

    It is through the ancient teaching of Samadhi that humanity can begin to understand the common source of all religions and come into alignment once again with the spiral of life, Great Spirit, Dhamma or the Tao. The spiral is the bridge that extends from the microcosm to the macrocosm. From your DNA to the inner Lotus of energy that extends through the chakras, to the spiral arms of galaxies. Every level of soul is expressed through the spiral as ever-evolving branches, living, exploring. True Samadhi is realizing the emptiness of all levels of self. All sheaths of the soul. The spiral is the endless play of duality and the cycle of life & death.

    At times we forget our connection to the source. The lens we look through is very small and we identify with being a limited creature creeping upon the Earth, only to once again complete the journey back to the source; to the center that is everywhere.

    Chuang Tzu said, ‘When there is no more separation between this and that, it is called the still point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the spiral one can see the infinite in all things.”

    The ancient mantra, ‘om mani padme hum’ has a poetic meaning. One awakens or realizes the jewel within the lotus. Your true nature awakens within the soul, within the world AS the world.

    Using the hermetic principle, ‘As above so below, as below so above’, we can use analogies to begin to understand the relationship between mind and stillness, relative and absolute.

    A way to begin to grasp the non-conceptual nature of Samadhi is to use the analogy of the black hole. A black hole is traditionally described as a region of space with a massive gravitational field so powerful that no light or matter can escape. New theories postulate that all objects from the tiniest microscopic particles to macrocosmic formations like galaxies have a black hole or mysterious singularity at their center. In this analogy, we’re going to use this new definition of black hole as ‘the center that is everywhere.’

    In Zen there are many poems and koans that bring us face to face with the gateless gate. One must pass the gateless gate to realize Samadhi. An event horizon is a boundary in space-time beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer, which means that whatever is happening beyond the event horizon is unknowable to you. You could say that the event horizon of a black hole is analogous to the gateless gate. It is the threshold between the self and no self. There is no ‘me’ that passes the event horizon. In the center of a black hole is the one-dimensional singularity containing the mass of billions of Suns in an unimaginably small space. Effectively an infinite mass. Literally a universe in something infinitesimally smaller than a grain of sand. The singularity is something unfathomable beyond time & space. According to physics movement is impossible, the existence of things is impossible. Whatever it is, it does not belong to the world of perception, yet it cannot be described as merely stillness. It is beyond stillness & movement.

    When you realize the center that is everywhere & nowhere, duality breaks down, form & emptiness, time & the timeless. One could call it a dynamic stillness or a pregnant emptiness, within the center of absolute darkness.

    The Taoist teacher Lao Tse said, ‘Darkness within darkness the gateway to all understanding.’

    The writer and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell describes a recurring symbol, part of the perennial philosophy which he calls the Axis Mundi; the central point or the highest mountain. The pole around which all revolves. The point where stillness & movement are together. From this Center a mighty flowering tree is realized. A Bodhi tree that joins all worlds. Just as a Sun gets sucked into a black hole, when you approach the great reality, your life starts to revolve around it and you begin to disappear. As you approach the immanent self, it can be terrifying to the ego structure. The guardians of the gate are there to test those on their journey. One must be willing to face one’s greatest fears and at the same time accept one’s inherent power. To bring light to the unconscious terrors and the hidden beauty within. If your mind is not moved, if there’s no self reacting, then all phenomena produced by the unconscious arises & passes away.

    This is the point in the spiritual journey where faith is most needed. What do we mean by faith? Faith is not the same as belief. Belief is accepting something on the level of mind to bring comfort and assurance. Belief is the mind’s way of labeling or controlling experience. Faith is actually the opposite.
    Faith is staying in the place of complete not knowing, accepting whatever arises from the unconscious. Faith is surrendering to the pull of the singularity, to the dissolving or dismantling of the self in order to pass the gateless gate.

    Belief and disbelief operate on the level of mind. They require a knowing, but if you enter into your own investigation examining all of the aspects of your own being ((self-inquiry)), finding out who is doing the investigating, if you’re willing to live by the principle ‘not my will but higher will be done,’ if you’re willing to travel beyond all-knowing then you may realize what (this film has) attempted to point towards. Only then will you taste for yourself the profound mystery & beauty of simply existing.

    There IS another possibility for life. There IS something sacred, unfathomable that can be discovered in the still depths of your being, beyond concepts, beyond dogmas, beyond conditioned activity and all preferences. It is not acquired by techniques, rituals or practices. There is no ‘how’ to get it. There’s no system. There’s no way to The Way. As they say in Zen, it is discovering your original face before you were born. It is not about adding more to yourself. It is becoming a light unto oneself; a light that dispels the illusion of the self.

    Life will always remain unfulfilled and the heart will always remain restless UNTIL it comes to rest in that mystery beyond name & form.”

“Be still and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10


“To realize the Self is to be still.”
Ramana Maharshi


“Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish
and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
Which is the way of the Tao.”
Lao Tzu


“The secret of the receptive
must be sought in stillness.”
Zhou Xuanjing


“The complete stillness of the brain is an extraordinary thing;
it is highly sensitive, vigorous, fully alive, aware
of every outward movement but utterly still.”
J. Krishnamurti

PLEASE watch the entire SUPERB 60-minute video
"Samadhi Movie, 2018 – Part 2 (It’s Not What You Think)"
After transcribing a portion of this movie, I noticed that Daniel Schmidt generously provides complete transcripts! https://awakentheworld.com/transcript/samadhi-2-its-not-what-you-think/

Fear to Love

    Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." It is indeed sad, stressful, disgusting and terrifying that a 'crime boss' is ruling, at his whim, over the most powerful military & financial gang in the world. Many around the world must surely be amazed at the psycho-social-spiritual level of a nation that would not once, but twice elect such a leader.

    “Worryin' is just prayin' backwards."    David Chethlehe Paladin

    Fortunately, a proportion of us also intuitively understand that there is ultimately only one real force or form of energy, and that is love. Like darkness is the lack of light, fear is the lack of love.
    There is an old Jewish legend that every generation has 36 saints (lamedvavnikim) on whose piety the fate of the world depends. By now, our world must surely have millions of awakening evolved human beings!

    So when we witness consistently irrational, heartless, uncivilized behavior, it is best for us & everyone else to consider, 'What if this perpetrator were my only child? How would I want them to be treated?' Not beaten or murdered. We'd certainly want them to be arrested & securely restrained, and ideally, if at all possible, rehabilitated to become as functional as possible, & if possible, safely re-introduced into a decent, law-abiding society.

“If this world is to be healed through human efforts,

I am convinced it will be by ordinary people

whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”

Joanna Macy

 

    Poetry, along with other arts, has the wonderful potential to connect us with our heart, right-hemisphere, body, the now, others, Nature and the Divine.

 

When she was a garden spider
Terry Ofner

and she hovered improbably above the patio
on that autumn morning, she caught me
with a filament across the brow.

Now, here comes the longest night.
People gather around solstice fires
as sparks drift into whatever comes next.

Angels, too, must have a ritual for this,
the moment of perfect imbalance
when the dark is collected in one place.

They must lean into it, their weightlessness
floating us through gravity’s fingers.
For me, I need a face. One I can recognize.

Take this photograph of my aunt Claudia
who died in childbirth years before I was born.
How do you know what’s no longer there?

Or take the field mouse that nibbled on a seed
under the feeder that late November evening.
A blink of owl-white and it was gone.

What we don’t know comes out of nowhere,
takes us up to the other side of doubt.
She’s gone, but traces of her remain.

A dun-shaded egg sac tucked in a corner
out of sight, full of now and hereafter.
Or light. Or wings.

Or that which floats or falls
when let go into our cousin night.


Winner of the Thomas Merton Grand Prize in the annual Poetry of the Sacred Contest www.centerforinterfaithrelations.org published by Parabola, Winter 2024-2025 www.parabola.org

Each individual's Loving Zest for Life is the Real Power

What Can We Do?

    “I’m often asked, ‘So this is all very fascinating about hemispheres and your analysis of how we got to be where we are. But it’s pretty important isn’t it? What are we going to do about it?’
    I think people can easily become overwhelmed by the thought of the scale of, for example, the ecological crisis that threatens, but almost the most helpful thing of all is that you can begin in the inner temple, which is you. You can begin with the one thing you do have control over, which is what you do, how you think, what you value. And that can be done here & now, and doesn’t involve persuading other people necessarily.
    If we start to ensure that we are at least aligning our own lives, with the things that are deep and important, then a lot of things will follow instinctively, and they won’t need to be formulated in the way that people want to formulate. ‘Well, I think what we should do is change the curriculum, and we should …’
    Those things are important, but once you begin to see the world differently, you begin to act differently, to prioritize things differently, and different things follow effortlessly because it is a stream. A stream that is currently blocked in us, and it’s a stream that can become unblocked.”
    Iain McGilchrist — Aligning with the Creative Impulse of the Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCtPDS5AVSo

Carefully listening to this 66-minute Iain McGilchrist interview in its entirety is imho time very well spent.