Awakening Patiently Awaits!

    We are FAR FAR MORE than the sad stories we keep telling ourselves. Only after we become sufficiently dissatisfied with "ordinary unhappiness" do we become serious about waking up to who / what we truly are. Awakening is far less exotic & difficult than we assume, and nicely described by Lisa Natoli below, transcribed from the excellent documentary video "Awakening Mind" (link at the bottom of this page).
    We CAN wake up from our sad "story of me"! This is how Lisa Natoli experienced it :

    “I really just love to teach people how ordinary the experience is to wake up to your true nature and know peace, joy & happiness. Many people think it’s an impossible or out-of-reach goal to know the Self. My purpose as a teacher, just because of my own awakening, has really been to make it very practical, very down to earth. I love to teach people how it’s available to everyone.
    Awakening is the recognition of your true nature. It’s the realization of what you really are, which is Consciousness. Consciousness is just one word for many words that people use for Awareness, Life, Love, God, Light, Buddha-nature, Christ-consciousness … It’s like waking up to the recognition that I’m not this body, that I am that which never dies, and that which is never born.
    That was a very difficult idea for me. I’ve been on a spiritual path since 1992. I started with ‘A Course in Miracles’ – I studied it religiously. I was so committed to knowing the self, knowing God, waking up. I couldn’t get it because I was under the belief that Awakening was something mystical, that something would happen and it would be like Jesus or Buddha or all of these enlightened Masters and it wasn’t happening for me. I couldn’t understand. Why when I’m so committed, and having deep moments of peace, happiness & joy, and yet I’m still struggling?
    The thing that changed for me, it was in October 2018, I started to realize the simplicity of our true nature, which is Awareness. So for someone who’s listening to me right now, the Awareness that’s hearing this voice – that’s what we are. And it doesn’t have a location, it doesn’t have a gender, it doesn’t have a color, it doesn’t have a body, and it’s totally unlimited. At first the mind doesn’t know what to do with that, because it’s that Awareness of our experience that is our true nature. It’s without labels, it’s without patterns, it’s without conditioning, it’s that part of each and every one of us that is just aware. We wake up to the realization that I am the Awareness of this experience, right now as I’m here. And it’s so ordinary that we miss it. We think it can’t be that simple. 

    And after October 2018, I began to just entertain the idea, because it doesn’t fit into our thought system. It doesn’t fit in a box because we’re so used to thinking it’s going to look a certain way and it’s always going to be in the future.
    After that there was a period of really starting to live from the Awareness. And that was life-changing. That changed everything. To begin to see when the person Lisa was showing up, when the habits were showing up, the conditioning, the beliefs, the preferences, the likes, the dislikes. Those all belonged to the person – and they’re not good or bad. But when I began to really stay as the Awareness where I could see all that activity, I could see what Lisa was doing. I could see what was happening. And that’s what an Awakening is. It really is that simple.
    And again there are many different ways one can wake up: just in stillness with the eyes closed and being aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations arising, that’s an amazing way to do it. The way I did it was begin to be awake to what I am not. So I was sick with physical symptoms for over 6 years, and I was the sickness – I am sick, I am in pain, these are my physical symptoms, this is when it started, this is what I’m doing to heal it. I didn’t suspect a thing.
    So the Awakening for me was to begin to be awake to those patterns, to be awake to when the thought ‘I am sick’ arises, and so to stay as the Awareness of the thought ‘I am sick’ arising. That which is aware, of the thought ‘I’m in pain’ that arises, is my true nature. So now there’s a distance. You’re no longer so identified with (the story of me) ‘I’m sick, I’m in pain, this hurts, I don’t like this, why is this happening, this shouldn’t be happening, this is how it started, this is how I think it started.’ Awakening can happen many different ways, it can happen very spontaneously for some, or be gradual. For me Awakening was a very gradual thing, where there was a distance between the experience of the body and the awareness of the body. And the more that I stayed as the Awareness of the experience, where I no longer identified myself as someone who is sick, I started to more & more abide as the Awareness, as Consciousness, as Love. And all of that (story) just started to disappear. It was no longer my experience. There was no longer identification with that which was happening. 

    When the world is so full of conflict, and without hope, how does one cope?
    My answer to that is, do not cope. It’s the coping that’s the problem. Everyone is coping with the world problems and what it looks like is addiction, social media, etc we’re doing things because we’re trying to cope with the suffering, we’re trying to manage how we feel and bring ourselves out of the discomfort, so we see just a lot of destruction in the world. So coping is actually the one thing you don’t want to do. You do not want to cope, because coping will keep the personal-self identity, makes you feel like you’re out of discomfort but you’re not. So the thing to do is to be aware of the discomfort, and the conflicts, and how you feel, and the thoughts that are coming up about your own life or the world’s, or your relationships, and stay in the discomfort. That’s the opposite of what we’ve been taught in the world, because we’re taught to do things to get out of the discomfort so we can feel better. To solve it, you go and you start eating, drinking, smoking, watch TV, binge on your devices, whatever people do to cope and manage, because they don’t want to feel these emotions, they don’t want to be with them, so we push them down. That’s never worked!
    So start welcoming the feeling. Welcome the discomfort. Welcome everything without trying to change anything. That’s the key. You’re not trying to change your overeating, or whatever you’re doing excessively, whatever the addiction is, you’re not doing any of this to change the thing that you’re using as the mechanism for coping. But what happens is that when you stand as Presence in the discomfort, things do fall away, and things do change.

     So for me again that was a game-changer, because my whole life was ‘this shouldn’t be happening, I have to do something.’ And I had evidence from the past, where I had maybe lost weight, I had been on a diet and I lost weight, but then I gained it all back again, because I hadn’t gotten to the cause of the problem. I was dealing with the effect. But as soon as I started getting to the cause, which is the personal-self identity, which is the problem, and I just let myself welcome the overweight body, welcome the sickness, welcome the alcoholism, welcome the cigarette smoking, welcome all of those things without trying to change them, one by one things just started falling away. And the paradox is, I didn’t need them to fall away. I wasn’t trying to make them fall away. I would have been happy even if nothing changed. Because the mind will get in there – ‘Oh, we’re doing this technique now so I can lose weight,’ or ‘I’m doing this technique now so I can have a better life.’ So you just want to be aware, ‘Oh that’s the pattern, that’s the personal-self identity.’ This is why I think a teacher is important, because a teacher can really highlight the roadblocks for a moment. You just need a teacher for a moment, to just guide you, who can really shine a light on the path and can see, ‘Oh, I see what’s happening here, no judgment.’ It just makes things much easier and faster. So that would be my answer, ‘Don’t cope.’ 

    What does one need to Awaken?
    I think someone who’s interested in these matters, who’s interested in waking up, who’s hearing what’s being said in this documentary, to simply really begin where you are. This is always going to be the spot. It’s not later. Just know that what is in your heart is all that’s needed.
    The personal-self identity (self-talk, small self, ego, ordinary mind, left hemisphere dominance) makes it way more complicated. It just thinks ‘I have to do something, I have to go somewhere, I have to pick up another spiritual practice, I have to read something.’
    My experience really came from this place of stillness. It’s like that because that call for Awakening is from the Self. It’s coming from the Self. It’s coming from Consciousness. It’s calling us back, because we tend to look outside of ourself for happiness, peace & joy. It’s been calling us back forever. Every single thing in life is trying to get our attention, for us to turn our attention from the external to within. And you later discover there is no external and there is no within (- it's all One).
    But that’s the starting place, when you really can say, ‘I want this.’ ‘I don’t know how to get there, I don’t know the journey, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, I’m scared.’

     Most people when they hear these ideas, there’s a tremendous amount of fear that comes up, because somewhere deep inside, each and every one of us, we know this is going to change our lives. We know it is probably going to dismantle certain elements of how we live, it could change our relationships, it could change our job, but, that call from the Self is so deep, ‘Yes, let’s go!’ So to me, that’s how someone begins.
    If someone is hearing this and they’re listening, and they say, ‘I want to know the Self. I want to experience peace, joy & happiness. I want to stop struggling. Yes, yes, take me there. Show me. Tell me.’ It really does begin right here in this moment with that desire.
    For me, it began with that one word, ‘Welcome.’ Welcome everything. Just welcome everything exactly as it is. That’s how it happened for me. Many different people explain it in different ways. They say, ‘All paths lead to God.’ ‘All paths lead to the mountain top.’ Whenever someone is feeling that in their heart, and they’re feeling that call, to me that’s all that’s needed.”
    “The Simplicity of Awakening: An Interview with Lisa Natoli” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoV7pw6wiog

    For the important CONTEXT, I HIGHLY recommend watching this 67-minute high-quality FREE documentary video "Awakening Mind" Part 1, “Know Thyself” (2023) https://triality.nl/index.php/2024/04/10/awakening-mind-part-1-know-thyself-2023-complete-hd-film/

 

Gradual AND Sudden

    VERY serious, DEEPLY committed spiritual seekers, Bill & Susan Morgan, who've spent a good chunk of their lives meditating, including a 3-year silent meditation retreat at the wonderful Forest Refuge (in Barre MA), and who a week ago returned from a 1-year silent meditation retreat, shared some of their insights last night with over a hundred folks who gathered around them for a New Year's online sitting.  

    Bill shared that he had always gone on retreats planning to have the BIG awakening experience - by which he meant the final, once & for all, complete enlightenment, where suddenly, he would be completely transformed forever.  

    But that has not been his experience, and it's certainly not for lack of interest, know-how or effort. Interestingly, and this is important for all of us, Bill & Susan have come to realize that focusing on the goal of an earth-shattering experience can easily overshadow the many, small but meaningful insights we all invariably have on this journey. So while most of us will not experience sudden mind-blowing fireworks, we WILL gradually experience deeper & more abiding levels of calm, peace & gratitude. And this is wonderful!

    Society's present focus is overly self-centered - survival & "success" of our self & closest loved one(s) first & foremost. So it's very counter-cultural & counter-intuitive to shift from striving to achieve a sudden dramatic personal goal and to instead, recognize & value calm, peace, gratitude, equanimity, stillness, silence, interbeing, spaciousness & intimacy with ALL. Even within Buddhism, and some other spiritual disciplines, there is debate over sudden vs gradual awakening (though there is general agreement about the life-long necessity to skillfully integrate spiritual insights into one's daily life).

    Appropriate self-care & self-compassion are important parts of life, in context of the BIG picture, which includes everyone & all else.
    "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 https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/ - AN ESSENTIAL DEEP DIVE towards WISDOM & BALANCE 

    “As we travel through life, we are all seekers
     after something larger than ourselves…” Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer PhD

    “The inexorable yearning for something beyond the mundane or the explainable runs deep in the human psyche. It arises from an urge to find meaning in existence, for something bigger than ourselves. It also comes from a need to belong, to experience life in terms of a harmonious interaction – with others, with nature, with God, with the universe. An interaction that was once part of the human condition.
    In hunter-gatherer societies, religious belief was always linked to nature. Facing constant danger, people sought ways to live in harmony with the unpredictable environment by worshiping the earth, its elements, its wild animals. Life was shot through with spirituality. And the powers of ESP, or psi – contact with the dead, premonition, telepathy, astral travel – were accepted as an essential part of man’s interconnection with nature.”
    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!

“We clasp the hands of those who go before us,
and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other’s arms,
and the larger circle of lovers
whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures,
passing in and out of life,
who move also in a dance,
to a music so subtle and vast
that no one hears it except in fragments.” Wendell Berry, “Healing”

“We consist of and are sustained by interweaving currents of matter, energy, and information that flow through us interconnecting us with our environment and other beings.
Yet, we are accustomed to identifying ourselves only with that small arc of the flow – though that is lit, like the narrow beam of a flashlight, by our individual subjective awareness.
But we don’t have to so limit our self–perceptions ...
It is as plausible to align our identity with the larger pattern, interexistent with all beings, as to break off one segment
of the process and build our borders there.”
Joanna Macy

 

     Join Bill & Susan Morgan for their daily sit starting Monday, Jan 2, 2023 : https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/online-programs/

Sudden and Gradual Awakening

     Full or complete awakening or enlightenment, from a Buddhist perspective, is freedom from greed, hatred & delusion and therefore is a state of "unshakable" peace, equanimity & joy. Unshakable means independent of life's inevitable ups & downs ("8 worldly conditions"): gain & loss, disrepute & fame, blame & praise, and pleasure & pain; and of course also independent of: constant change, aging, sickness & death. To be able to experience peace, equanimity & joy through all of that is literally beyond imagination.
     So is awakening an all-or-nothing situation? Can we gradually work our way towards achieving this desirable state, and gradually reap more & more of its rewards OR must we take a direct path towards sudden awakening?
     Adyashanti recently gave an online course ("30-Day Wake up Challenge") focused on this topic. Below is a short excerpt from one of his talks in the course, discussing sudden & gradual awakening. Adyashanti / Sounds True will offer this (IMHO excellent) course again in the near future: https://content.soundstrue.com/wake-up-challenge-course

     "The debate about sudden vs gradual awakening has been going on within Buddhism for hundreds of years. Gradual development of course is a really important part of being a human being. Whether we have sudden awakening or not, if you think you’re going to get out of gradual human development, you’re fooling yourself. In awakening, you can transcend all of your suffering and false identity in the snap of a finger, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that some amount of it isn’t going to be waiting for you when you come back from your transcendent honeymoon. Usually a lot less is waiting for you, but there’s generally something there.
     When we’re really engaged in a progressive path, the positive part is that it can create a real stable container. A stable psyche is not to be underestimated. A good stable psyche is useful. A good functional ('quiet') ego is of profound benefit spiritually.
     And there will often come a time when you just start to feel like OK, I’ve been doing this gradual path but I really want to know the depth of my being. I really want to know that. Then you can really look towards the essential. That’s what this whole ‘30-Day Wake up Challenge’ is. … It’s going after a very particular aspect of spirituality that I think is extremely fundamental – the awakening aspect. That’s the reason I constructed it the way it was. It’s purposefully not dealing with the full spectrum of a human being because we can’t really do the full spectrum really well all at the same time.
     So generally we know what’s relevant to us because it’s what we feel deeply called to. That’s when we know. If I’m called to get my life together, get my ego strong, healthy and also more gradual spiritual development, then great. There’s great value to that. But all of a sudden it might hit you, ‘OK, there’s something I’m still not satisfied with. I’m feeling like there’s a deeper breakthrough that I’m looking for. That’s when you engage in something that’s a little more direct – direct meaning it really zeros in on your true nature. It just zeros right in just like a bull’s eye. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing during this ‘30-Day Wake up Challenge.’
     Most of the questions (posed by participants) deal with things that come up for people (doing direct path practices), so obviously the challenges of being a human being don’t just disappear when you go for a direct path. But the direct & gradual paths really go together more than people think they do. As human beings, we’re all going to be growing our entire lives, whether we awaken or not.
     Hopefully, and at any point in that growth, we can feel really called to get right to the point. Who is this that I call ‘myself,’ that is healing, that is expanding, that is growing, that’s doing all of that? What am I really talking about? What do I really mean when I say ‘me’? 
     When that kind of question hits you, you know it kind of grabs you. When it authentically hits you, you’re not doing it because you’ve fallen for the sales pitch for enlightenment: ‘What’s it going to get me?’ ‘I’ll get bliss’ or ‘it’s going to take care of all my problems.’ When it hits you in a really authentic way, it’s not because of even what you think it will do for you, it’s that something in you is innately wanting to wake up. And at that point, it’s not really relevant any more how that’s even going to feel. When your time’s right, you just have to know. And when you do, that tells you, ‘OK, focus in that direction for a while.'" 
         Adyashanti. "30-Day Wake up Challenge." Q&A session, Sounds True, August-September, 2019.

     IF you're deeply interested in awakening, via the gradual or direct path, (IMHO) a very useful, deep, well-written book is: 
       Guy Armstrong. “Emptiness. A Practical Guide for Meditators.” Wisdom Publications, 2017.
 

Illustration by Pascal Lemaître in "Listen" by Holly M. McGhee, Roaring Brook Press 2019

Mysticism Deprivation

     “A householder who was nevertheless engaged in an advanced meditation practice known as tantra, Manibhadra attained enlightenment while carrying water from the village well back to her home. Dropping her pitcher one day and seeing the water gush out of the broken gourd, she was suddenly liberated. The broken pitcher served as a powerful model of what her meditation was trying to show her. Like the water breaking forth, her consciousness flowed out and merged with all of reality. This jarring loose, or breaking free – this going to pieces without falling apart – is what Buddhism acknowledges as one of the self’s secret needs – to be released from a belief in its own absolute reality.”
 
       Epstein M. "Psychotherapy without the Self. A Buddhist Perspective." Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 2007.
 
     The latest scientific research on the neurobiology of psilocybin-induced mystical experience raises the possibility that human beings may actually suffer if DEPRIVED of mystical experiences: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2015/03/650-effective-management-for.html

Freedom & Responsibility

     During meditation we intuit
     Meaning independent of all we've known
     Self-concept & worldview - radically transforming
     Great freedom
     Now integrating, embodying
     Vast openness in everyday life

 

Tea Break by Don Pentz   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_pentz.html

Have Patience & Keep on Truckin'!

     Hui-neng, an illiterate laborer, on accidentally hearing the Diamond Sutra, had an immediate profound awakening. He immediately inquired about the Sutra, and sought instruction from Hongren, the 5th patriarch of Chan Buddhism.
     Most of us take a much slower, more circuitous path - gradually (instead of suddenly) awakening. I read about Zen for 30 years, finding it captivating, but really understanding nothing. Then I slowly got into a sitting practice. It's been a very slow 15 year journey so far. Unlike Hui-neng, it's quite remarkable how slow many of us are catching on, and to what extent it happens.
      We're repeatedly advised to focus on the process itself, not the goal - awakening. Doing so becomes easier, the further one is down the path. Impatient zeal gradually transforms into infinite patience, persistence ...
     Initially, our priorities are egocentric AND we're so unaware of our egocentricity, that we would argue vociferously to the contrary.
     Gradually we see present reality with increasing clarity, gradually we let go of self-cherishing, and gradually we open our heart-mind to what is. Clarity and ease come very slowly, but they do come, and it's well worth the effort. Slow and steady wins the race. "Keep on truckin'!"

Studio 21 Art Gallery, Halifax, NS   http://www.studio21.ca/

Immediately Available

     “until there is no movement to escape this environment for a better spiritual setting, we will continue to suffer.”

     “The most important understanding … is the immediate availability of awakening. Awakening need not arrive after a long, protracted practice history unless we believe that this is necessary. We deliberately delay our readiness because we are divided about what we really want. We practice until we are tired of preparing for what has always existed here and now, then we become quiet and surrender.”

       Smith R. "Stepping out of self-deception. The Buddha's liberating teaching of no-self." Shambhala, Boston, 2010.