Four Paths of Meditation Practice

    It can be almost impossible to have any sense of where we come from, who / what we really are. Usually we only get brief, vague, glimpses, intuitions, insights. But these nudges are recurrent, and our openness, readiness, preparedness to receive them fluctuates. At some point, some of us are drawn to open up & assent to this whispering call, to at long last say, 'Yes!' 

    There have always been those among us - shamans, wisdom keepers, prophets, mystics, saints, and countless ordinary folk - who remember their True Nature more clearly than most, and live as closely as they can to align with that insight: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial+philosophy

 
    Hearing / reading about our True Nature, especially for those with minimal direct experience of it, can be challenging. Language itself is dualistic - it comes from & reinforces a perspective that each of us is a separate entity in a harshly competitive relationship to people, animals, Nature, life itself.

    Those who've had profound direct experiences of ultimate reality, have powerfully experienced how everyone & everything is one, profoundly interconnected, expression of timeless, intelligent Love. 

 

    One of these awakened folks is the Zen teacher & poet, Henry Shukman. A few words he says about his latest book, "Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening" 2025:

     “What I’ve come to feel in the world of meditation, and what my book is really about, is that there are different paths. They’re all closely related, but they have slightly different purposes. They’re not all one and the same.

    So there’s a whole world of practice around mindfulness, which is basically therapeutic, healing. It’s about taming our anxieties, de-stressing, and getting our nervous systems in better shape, more balanced, more subtle, responsive and well-toned, rather than jammed into an accelerated position all the time, stressed-out. So that’s great.

    There’s a whole world also of discovering deeper connectedness, and discovering that underneath our surface life of name & gain and trying to get things, or what Wordsworth called, ‘Getting & Spending,’ beneath that surface life that we’re all so engaged in, there’s a kind of deeper life where we contact something some call the soul, like a deeper level of our personalities, a sort of truer, somehow more authentic self, that has very different concerns. It’s much more concerned with beauty, with spiritual things, and with deeper connection with others. Sometimes it feels connected to forces in Nature, and Nature itself. So to uncover that more connected part of ourselves is a whole other kind of practice. Mindfulness and meditation can help with it, but it’s a slightly different target zone from foundational mindfulness.

    And then there’s the whole world of flow states and absorption practices and what we call Samadhi in Buddhism. This deep absorption, beautiful states of mind that we can cultivate in our mediation, which are wonderful. That’s another world of practice.

    And then the fourth one, I say is Awakening, which is also not like any of the others. Yes, closely related, but it’s a sudden, dramatic shift from one way of seeing, where I am me, which basically I am in those first three kinds of practice. I remain me. I don’t have to suddenly discover I’ve never been here the way I thought. I can work with who I feel I am in mindfulness. Likewise in the deeper connectedness, I’m still a person. There’s no doubt about it. But I am feeling myself in a very different way, but it’s still kind of me. And likewise in cultivation of flow, my sense of self may get quieter, but I haven’t radically discovered that I’ve never been a self the way I thought. 
    In Awakening, we do discover that. Suddenly, we see that what we have taken ourselves to be, has just been a figment of our imagination. And somehow, what’s really been going on is something – well we can get it on different levels really, different depths. There’s no time, there’s no space, there’s no separation. It’s just one unfolding happening now. Just like this. And that’s what we are.” 
    Henry Shukman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ6uKrhAc_s

 

         “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

 Now is the Time

Now is the time to know 
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider 
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand 
That all your ideas of right and wrong 
Were just a child’s training wheels 
To be laid aside 
When you can finally live 
With veracity 
And love. . .

My dear, please tell me, 
Why do you still 
Throw sticks at your heart 
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside 
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know 
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time 
For you to compute the impossibility 
That there is anything 
But Grace.

Now is the season to know 
That everything you do 
Is sacred."

Hafiz 'The Gift' translated & interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky

 

Insight Meditation Society (IMS), Barre, MA

 

     

Grief, Catastrophe, and the "Big Heart"

    I've written numerous blogs about both the damaging (eg PTSD), as well as the beneficial effects (eg Post-traumatic Growth) of trauma on individuals: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=PTSD and http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Post-traumatic+Growth .
    Yesterday I came across a fascinating book about the beneficial effects of trauma on large groups of people: Rebecca Solnit. “A Paradise Built in Hell. The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.” Penguin, 2009.
    And call it synchronicity, just today I received this wonderful essay (below) in my email from Zen teacher Henry Shukman:

Grief, Catastrophe, and the "Big Heart"
Henry Shukman
henryshukman.com

    "I occasionally hear from someone who has suffered a catastrophic loss or challenge. Or a series of them. Sometimes I quickly feel unqualified to respond, because they can be about severe losses I have been spared so far. But then I realize — wait, I've lost people as close as close can be. As a parent I've lived on the harrowing edge. And all of us are subject to the ills that flesh is heir to.
    As the Buddha put it in a sutra: four great mountains are rolling toward each one of us, that will inevitably crush us: old age, sickness and death. (The fourth mountain, 'rebirth,' is kind of irrelevant to us unless we happen to have a reincarnationist worldview.)
    We all live on the perilous edge. We may think we don't — and there are ways of heaping up apparent bulwarks against the uncertainties that surround us, but none of them can work for long. Death and loss is a truth we all have to face. The point of practice, some say, is to face it and make our peace with it before it comes.
    If we do that, then we are free to live. That's the claim the practices sometimes make — that once death is no longer a menace to us, we are able to live fully and freely. Death, where then is thy sting?, as old scripture puts it.
    A realist might say: accept it. Accept your own temporariness. You are a bundle of systems and conditions that inevitably must change and come apart.
    Zen, the deep realist, says: Wait, what actually is this experience we call life anyway? And who exactly, truly, am I? Examine this experience, examine your sense of self, and you will find that there really may be no one to die, and nothing to lose.
    This discovery, if thought about, if pondered intellectually, may or may not be much help. But how different it is to make this discovery personally, in the deepest depths of your own being.
    Then the discovery is profoundly liberating. It's liberating in an almost inconceivable way. It frees us from our most basic assumptions and preconceptions about life and identity.
    But that's not all it does. It also blasts open our hearts. It's as if it opens us up to one single, whole, all-inclusive heart, that is somehow right here in the midst of every moment of our life.
    What is this 'big heart'? Some teachings say that all things are made of fundamental consciousness and this consciousness is intrinsically loving.
    Some experiences suggest that all things are made of a single fabric, and that fabric is one, just one, and therefore all things are secretly unified already, and to get the merest taste of that oneness is to get blasted by a great love, the love of utter belonging.
    And some say all things are made of nothing, you included, and that all things are empty, so that all things are erupting from nothing and appear just as they do, and act and interact just as they do, while never ceasing to be, in reality, nothing. And to discover this personally is a kind of triple blessing.
    Namely — first, you find you are inseparable from all else. Second, you find that you are utterly open and free. And third, you emerge along with all of your experience right now, as a kind of surge of infinite energy.
    Whether that big heart is a single consciousness, or a single fabric, or an emptiness, a nothing, an unnameable source of everything, these are just three views of what it might be. I assume they're all correct and real. And I know some argue about that (I've done so myself at times). And I also assume that they are by no means an exhaustive list of its attributes. I assume in some way they are all also wrong, that they are just attempts at suggesting the unnameable.
    I also assume one day we'll actually understand all the above much better than we do now, and perhaps have language for it, and that it itself will teach us how to speak of it, as more of us discover it, and as this kind of human experience is subjected more and more effectively to scientific investigation.
    On top of that, we will find better and better ways of discovering it for ourselves, and living in contact with it.
    Right now, we are already privileged to be living in a time when many different methods and approaches to it are becoming accessible globally, and we will likely get better at matching person and method, as time goes by.
    But what does all this have to do with harrowing losses? Well, this big heart — it's the ultimate healing, the ultimate solace. First, it can definitely be a comfort just to hear of it. To hear that this world may be one big heart experiencing itself. Second, I've heard from people who in times of catastrophe found an unfamiliar peace, a radical acceptance, a sense that there was some way in which all was okay, or perhaps a spring of warm love opened in their heart — as if something that was a face of this 'big heart' showed itself, just when it was most needed.
    That doesn't mean there isn't grief or rage or fear. It just means that an access to a wider, larger, deeper love is sometimes touched, tapped, opened up, when it’s most needed. And that can make all the difference.
    But also, if we are touched and struck by this reality — of an all-encompassing 'singularity' — then the grace of that reality can wipe away all our worry and fear, by showing us that truly we have nothing to lose, truly we are right now being given the boundless gift of experience and consciousness, and yet, at the same time, somehow, they can never be taken away.
    Zen says: We are all traveling in a single boat. And we are all living under the shelter of the 'shadowless tree.' Somehow, against all appearances, we can't fall out of that boat, and no matter how we may sometimes feel, we can't lose the shelter of that strange shadowless tree."
    Henry Shukman henryshukman.com

    “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole.” Iain McGilchrist

Gradual AND Sudden Awakening

    A few nights ago, shoulder pain woke me around midnight. I got up & meditated on the meaning of the chronic, day & night pain, versions of which has been tugging at me for attention for at least three years. Soon after sitting down to meditate, I became immersed in a very complex, beehive-like buzzing - a manifestation of energy. And the pain & suffering melted away. This insight was a wonderful reminder of how everything is complex, intelligent, loving energy, and that pain is only one, tiny, insignificant, transient manifestation of It. I found this quote the day before, with the same message:
    “The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege & often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.” G.K. Chesterton
    I understood his word 'dream' to mean Mystery - our actual identity, dreaming up what we assume to be reality when we forget that we are the Dreamer, not the dream.

    “Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.” Ram Dass 

    'Witness' is easier to understand for our personal mind than 'writer-producer' - the One dreaming all of this.

    “It is said that awakening is an accident, and when we keep practicing, we become more accident-prone.” Nikki Mirghafori

    “chance only favours the mind which is prepared…” Louis Pasteur

    Zen teacher Henry Shukman concisely describes how - IF we're INTERESTED - we do evolve / grow / mature:

    "Broadly speaking, there are two approaches in human spirituality: gradualist and 'subitist.'
    The gradualist approach says we need to painstakingly, gradually improve our states of mind & heart, and we need long term training to do this.
    ... you work systematically ... reducing negative mind states, then eliminating negative mind states so they don't arise again, and gradually reducing & eliminating the causes of negative mind states. ...
    The subitist approach ... means 'sudden.' The idea here is that we're already whole, perfect & pristine, but we don't realize it. We actually are, but don't see it.
    Therefore, the logic of the practice here is to realize it, and suddenly see that that is indeed the case. We are already whole and okay, as expressions of a blessed empty boundless unity that all things belong to. Some call this 'pure consciousness,' others 'buddha nature' or awakened nature.
    The reason this kind of practice is known as sudden is that it’s a matter of finding what is already the case. Nothing really changes, except that we have a revelatory moment when we realize that all has been well all along, so to speak.
    This might sound extremely counter-intuitive, when the world is manifestly on fire, with war, oppression, cruelty & suffering. But actually, the logic here is that the world is only this way because we haven't realized how okay things actually already truly are. If we only see that, then our behavior will no longer be guided by our illusory way of seeing things, based on a separate sense of self, but by the reality of a larger wellbeing previously unnoticed, but always right here, which all things share.
    So one question is: are these two views and approaches reconcilable? And is it possible they're both right? The answer is surely, yes. It could be that by temperament some people are more drawn to one or the other, and that we may change our orientation as we change through practice. And it could also be that one without the other is incomplete. ...
    Either way, we are slowly & incrementally becoming more aligned with the underlying order of things, the fundamental wellbeing that is unfolding as this world – and which, paradoxically, we have always been expressions of anyway. But what a world of difference it makes to realize it. Yet, at the same time, on another level, it makes no difference at all.
    So on we go, down the pathless path." Henry Shukman henryshukman.com

    "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and it's ALL Small Stuff!"

    It's remarkably effective to remember who we truly are whenever life feels stressful & heavy: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=self-inquiry

     LISTEN to Eckhart Tolle clearly & humorously summarize, in 14 minutes, the heart of what I've been trying to say in over a thousand blogs: "The Mind's Limitation in Understanding Awareness" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrjHWpBQcFw

Release, Be and Share!

    OK, here's a major problem alluded to in the Tower of Babel story in the bible. What makes 'perfect sense' to each one of us differs! What constitutes rational thinking, speech & behavior is unique to each individual - we speak different languages, we're 'on different wavelengths.' And THAT is because of our unique personal histories, different traumas experienced, which in turn give rise to an array of different defenses (armoring) & preferences, neuroses etc. So what each of us sees is not the world as it is, but essentially a cartoon of our personal psychological 'baggage' or 'personality.' BUT, because we all do the best we can to survive, each of us is quite certain that WE see perfectly clearly, while others (especially those weird mystics!) need glasses or are blind.

    “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

    THIS is why, on rare occasions, when we briefly drop all our defences & neuroses and are momentarily our true Self, we perceive the world accurately, as it really is, everything, including the most mundane things, so amazingly bright, glowingly beautiful, other-worldly & unforgettable. Perhaps this is how we experience everything - for a while - as newborns.

    “Many people have intimations of their true nature in childhood – the sense of a benevolent presence guiding their life, a radiance that shines forth from all things, or a current of love that unites us all. …
    But we lose touch with this luminosity as we age … we forget who we really are and succumb to the way others see us...
    By adulthood we've more or less forgotten who we truly are, and have passively absorbed the current cultural fad of being frozen in the armor of materialism, meaninglessness & cynicism. Not surprisingly, something in all of us 'continues to weep over the barrenness of modern life.'"
    Stephan Bodian. “Wake Up Now. A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening.” McGraw-Hill, 2008.

    Humanity now faces crises on multiple fronts: climate, pollution, wars, 'ethnic cleansing,' over-population, economic, addictions, colonialism, many forms of xenophobia (eg patriarchy, misogyny, racism, religious exclusivism, etc), loneliness, meaninglessness & spiritual bankruptcy. Our left-hemisphere-dominant society, 'frozen in the armor of materialism, meaninglessness & cynicism,' created & exacerbates this dystopia. This ancient part of the brain that we share with reptiles is ONLY concerned with personal & tribal survival / supremacy - 'my tribe (color, 'religion' & politics), right or wrong' - the 'partisanship' paralyzing the US. This narrow, primitive level of thinking & behaving, while somewhat useful in emergencies, short-term, is - much like the caveman-like leaders we tend to elect in times of war - NOT capable of nurturing all that is deeply meaningful & valued so human beings can evolve & flourish. http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/02/more-than-one-way-of-knowing.html

    Einstein long ago warned that we cannot get out of this mess using the same level of thinking that got us into it.

    “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.” Edward O. Wilson

    "Wisdom comes when we live from the heart. It’s the recognition that love is the only power that is moving any of this." Jac O’Keeffe

        “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

    Michael Singer does a wonderful job illustrating how the evolution of the cosmos is equally miraculously wonderful from a scientific and spiritual perspective: Michael A. Singer “Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament” Sounds True, 2022. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

        "The Great Way is not difficult
         for those who have no preferences..." Sengstan

    Much of our 'self-talk' is repeatedly telling ourselves, 'I like this - I have to have it' or 'I don't like this - I don't want it.' This unconscious brainwashing creates a false small self made up for meaningless likes & dislikes ie 'preferences.' Most of us are so used to the burden of our 'psychological baggage' - a big part of which are 'preferences,'  that we actually mistake it for who we are. No wonder low self-esteem is rampant! Psychotherapy helps us let go of 'psychological baggage.' 

    In his book, Singer recommends practicing intentionally letting go of our 'preferences.' Instead, he advises that we accept*** everything we encounter, and do our best to nurture ourselves & others helping us to flourish, with no personal gain in mind. Again, it's a very wise, helpful book.
    ***Acceptance – “open to seeing & acknowledging things as they are in the present moment; acceptance does not mean passivity nor resignation, rather a clearer understanding of the present so one can more effectively respond.”
    Shapiro SL, Schwartz GE. “Intentional Systemic Mindfulness: an Integrative Model for Self-regulation and Health.” Adv Mind Body Med 2000; 16(2): 128-34.
    Everything, even things that terrify us, such as death – our own & that of our loved ones – is best dealt with in a friendly, open mind & hearted way. If we “lean into” (rather than keep avoiding) even such scary things with curiosity, self-compassion & acceptance, at our own pace & possibly with expert guidance, we benefit greatly in the long run!

    "The light within you, when resolutely recognized in all circumstances, has the capacity to embrace everything. This uncompromising acceptance is, in fact, your true nature." Amoda Maa

    Mystics & saints operate from a qualitatively higher level of consciousness, able to directly experience ultimate reality. Such wise elders repeatedly tell us something that drives many 'bat-shit-crazy' angry: "Everything is perfect just the way it is." Of course our reptilian level of mind cannot cope with paradox & helplessness in the face of our own (& everyone) suffering, that we (& everyone) age, get sick & die, AND that we can't fix it. After all, the small self is exclusively about controlling so as to survive!
    We're dealing with TWO qualitatively different LEVELS of reality - consensual, every-day, shallow, relative reality of the small self, AND ultimate reality of the true Self.
    Our usual level of thinking cannot make any sense of ultimate reality because our psychological baggage and energies are focused almost exclusively on survival & thriving on the material plane of existence, the noisy, stressful busyness of which veils or hides the much more subtle, peaceful ultimate reality.

    “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete.
    Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.”
    Philip Kapleau “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998.

     HOWEVER, when we learn to accept the laws of Nature (which like gravity, are impersonal ie have nothing to do with our individual preferences), and learn to be curious & grateful about EVERYTHING, we eliminate all unnecessary suffering and discover that life is filled with joy rather than 'ordinary unhappiness.'

     "There’s only one happiness and it’s who you are. There’s only one place to find lasting happiness, and that is to know who you are and to be who you are.” Francis Lucille

    "I would’ve claimed to be pretty awake prior to the cancer diagnosis. I’m much more awake now. There’s no reason that we can’t all wake up. That’s the overarching message that I want to broadcast is ‘Join me in the celebration, the appreciation of this miracle that we all find ourselves in.’ ” Roland Griffiths PhD

“To me, every hour of the light
and dark is a miracle. Every
cubic inch of space is a miracle.” Walt Whitman

    “The whole point of spiritual practice is to discover that we’re already good enough. That we don’t have to prove a thing. That’s the fundamental purpose of all spiritual practice." Henry Shukman

    “By giving up our attachments (preferences) in life, we open ourselves up to more opportunities, more spontaneity, and more chances to cultivate deeper connections with others.” Lama Tsomo

    “If you abide in this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and lightness, free of struggle.” Eckhart Tolle “The Power of Now”

    Many of us spend a large portion of our short & precious life, bitterly unaware that we're all honeybees swimming in a cosmos of honey.
    The bitter distraction is wanting some experiences & wanting to avoid others. We take our preferences dead seriously, actually believing that a cocktail of neuroses is our actual identity. And because of this common delusion, we forget who we truly are.
    By not taking preferences seriously, and instead, engaging intimately with all that we're presented with, a QUALITATIVE SHIFT occurs: the veil lifts, and we embody our true self - Self, the One Source of honey AND see that every One is swimming in honey. At this level, we DO see things as they are, AND as WE are!

    RELEASE more & more unnecessary suffering, BE your Self, and SHARE your nurturing presence!

 

24 Brand New Hours! - by Molly Hahn www.BuddhaDoodles.com

Gold in Dark Places

    Our survival instinct helps us reflexively avoid life-threatening danger - "the dark." Add some 'negativity bias' & 'harm avoidance,' and we end up with a very narrow 'learning zone,' immediately beyond which lurks DANGER - KEEP OUT!
    So, instead of being curious & motivated to learn from the vast reality beyond our tiny comfort & learning zones, most of us timidly ignore, discount, dismiss & even ridicule others,' & even our own direct experiences IF these are BEYOND safe, suitable-for-dinner-party, small-talk.
    BUT some intentionally 'take a walk on the wild side' not just once, but repeatedly! WHY?
    Let's briefly gather a bit of courage & curiosity to just consider more adventurous peoples' experiences, that as a DIRECT RESULT of their COURAGE & CURIOSITY, are OUTSIDE our tiny box of assumptions about what can & must not be 'real'!

    "... the most important work you can possibly do is to have a healthy, loving relationship with fear. It simply changes everything." Kristen Ulmer, former world champion extreme skier

    "It is often the hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives that crack us open. For some people, these experiences are chosen, or accepted as a consequence of risk-taking. For others – for most of us – they come without warning. Unlikely gifts that rip away our layers of insulation, allowing us glimpses of the mysterious, the ineffable – the infinite realms of human consciousness.”
    Maria Coffey. “Explorers of the Infinite. The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes – and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communications, and Touching the Beyond.” Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2008. FASCINATING & WELL-WRITTEN

    “We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This in the end is the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to find the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that in this sense, people have been cowardly, has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called ‘apparitions,’ the whole so-called ‘spirit’ have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

    “(Meditation) practice is not a matter of learning more & more and studying more & more … It’s a matter of emptying out, peeling off layer after layer to empty out … We need to start peeling off all our opinions, all our ideas, and all our cleverness and just remain very naked, in the moment, just seeing things as they are, like a small child.” Tenzin Palmo
    Maria Coffey. “Explorers of the Infinite." see above for full details

    After Amoda Maa experienced numerous major traumas from early childhood on into her 20s, “something started to reveal itself, and that was the abyss. The abyss was experienced as a very barren landscape, like a dark night of the soul where there is no God, there is no life, there is no meaning, there is nothing, it’s devoid. It really is devoid. And yet, my external life at the time was reasonably good – I was teaching a certain method of movement & meditation, and I had a lot of different interactions, it was creative, it was flowing – so it wasn’t to do with the circumstances, it was an inner experience.
    It’s in that, that a deeper surrender happened. In some ways, everything had been a surrender, but this was a conscious surrender. (Before,) the surrender had happened through loss & all these different circumstances that kept changing, but this was a different level of surrender. It was met consciously. I consciously surrendered to the desolation of nonexistence. And that’s when something changed. That’s when something changed.

    ... my discovery was that life is the guru. Life is constantly calling you, like the beloved, into its arms, inviting you, not just to have a blissful experience, but through the darkness, through the difficulties, through the challenges, through the darkest places (it doesn’t have to be terrible on the external), but through the places that we hide from ourselves within ourselves, to surrender to that because everything is love – in the darkest places is light. And somehow that was the wisdom I gained from my own direct experience. ... And that’s what changed everything – it was unexpected.”
    Amoda Maa Talks About Her Life Before Awakening : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4sn-jz-QA0

    We instinctively keep trying to escape even those challenging experiences that are positively transformative - such as 'ego death':

    Amoda Maa experienced a “dark night of the soul, which had nothing to do with my external circumstances. Nothing bad was happening, in fact there was a lot of peace and joy in my life. But it revealed an existential aloneness, an existential abyss, and this went on for several months. ... I'm a practiced meditator, so I’m familiar with that inner landscape if you like, but I noticed a very subtle movement of mind – the subtle movement of mind that pulled me away from being with that existential abyss. And it was so subtle, that it could easily be overlooked. But in seeing it, I felt and sensed that this was a pattern – the archaic pattern of ego-self that is always moving away or moving towards something, never resting fully in presence, because the present is death to the ego. And again I didn’t know this intellectually. I just felt it. It’s like whole lifetimes of practice, and insight, and searching all came to a moment of realization. And so I kept still in my mind, and it was effortless, but it also caused me to meet such an existential terror of annihilation.
    I could easily have just got up and picked a book off the bookshelf. I like to read, and my books were very inspirational at the time. And that was a way of moving away from death – the death of ego-self. Because the book would inspire me, then I feel good. Or it may be as simple as making myself a cup of tea – a very English thing to do. It’s very nourishing, and soothing, and so on. But I just noticed how that was an obstruction to falling into the abyss of emptiness, where there is an end of the self.
    And so I just faced it. And in facing it, I didn’t expect anything. I just knew that was the right thing to do. But in doing that … the sensation was of dying. It was a death, of me, as a separate entity. Because as I met the existential abyss, I also felt the terror of aloneness. Not an aloneness of the personhood, but an existential aloneness – that there’s a me here, and a vast universe of existence, the whole of existence that is spread over time & space. The me is a separate me. It’s a tiny, insignificant and also separate me, in this vastness of existence. And as I sort of died into that, it was like a death, and it did remind me of the attempts of suicide, at least on a psychological level. And this time, I surrendered into it, knowing obviously that there was no physical death in it. But it was a profound psychological death. But the amazing thing was that the sensation, the energetic visceral sensation was of merging into the totality of existence, rather than disappearing into the totality of existence – well it was that, but it was also a merging into it, so I became the totality of existence. So I called it merging into God."
    Amoda Maa - Falling Open in a World Falling Apart : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAqQ6hrj-iE

    “Heaven is this moment.
     Hell is longing for this moment to be different.
     It's that simple.” Jeff Foster

“Emptiness is two things at once:
the absence of self
and the presence of the Divine.
Thus as self decreases,
the Divine increases.”             Bernadette Roberts

    “Life uses us and does not care how we feel about it. It lives through us, as us. We object & resist, or concur & are pleased – it makes no difference either way.
    Only when we surrender our will, and along with it our notions of identity, can we touch our real life, and enter it, and taste, at least a little more intimately, what it is to be alive. As so many masters said on their awakening: ‘Now I am like a person who drinks water and knows for themself whether it is warm or cold.’”
    Henry Shukman https://www.mountaincloud.org/message-from-henry-surrender/

    “All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.” Adyashanti