When "It" wakes up

oh Kathy! glory. May I link this to our discussion in the Buddhist forum about non-dual? 

Holy Wow! How wondrous is this? A living breathing testament of “awakening”! Awakening to 'it' or “I” that is truly you and all of us….

I Love this thank you so much, you have share and written in such a charming, elegant, down to earth way of what I have read from so many others in all so many convoluted way that one needed another map to figure out what did happen, whether it could happen, to mere mortal's… 
I have been bless to have read and witness this experience…

I am Love, Jeff

Gosh, thanks for the reminder, this higher conciousness is what we are made to experience. The agitations slip away along with our needs and wants. We can see! We can feel! We are amazed! We would never want to mess things up by being in control. Just be~ing recievers / transmitters. Each moment in this state of being is our “On the mountaintop with God” experience. O' how I love to be there.

Such a wonderfully descriptive writing Kath! I loved these parts the Bestest!

I don't really care about Enlightenment happening, so babbling is gonna happen.

Wonderful! I don't care about Enlightenment, Happiness, Freedom or the other goodies. They are the by product of what you describe not the goal. Those things are pure slavery as goals. Dropping them… the spaciousness. Its all babbling! <smiling> especially this typing. Ha!

And then I woke up on my birthday.  Except, guess what?  “I” didn't wake up.  “It” woke up.

Yes, “I” was definitely not in control nor did I want to be.

In the last couple of days, it's…well, I don't know what it is.  I wouldn't call myself “awake”.  And I'm not sure if any human person ever awakens.  Awareness awakens.

Wonderful description. Thank you!!! That sums up very nicely what was experienced here. I didn't wake up. A space opened up and it reveals itself.

It was so ordinary.  Ordinary beyond ordinary.  Yet extraordinary beyond extraordinary.  It was joyful, but not high.  It was peaceful, but soooo alive.

Beautiful…

I wouldn't call myself “awake”.  And I'm not sure if any human person ever awakens.  Awareness awakens.  But awareness isn't stabilized in me.  It isn't REALIZED fully as a minute-by-minute happening.  It's more like bursts and puffs of realization.  Realization as living-it, not realization as thinking-about-it.

We are awake always. Conditioned thought is just the last to realize it, never can know it, and cannot release its attempts to own it. Seeing it can't be released was a release. My thought based self is so full of b.s. It plays God, and I worshiped it for decades. A total 150% devotee of what I thought. Such dedication! The difference is that something (Observer?) is starting to see the b.s. just before and sometimes just after it hits the fan. ;o) Thought wants to know it and take credit. It begins to see it can't. Same experience here Kath! (wipes off face)

“It” exists always. It was never born and will never end.

If it was born and ended, we could objectify the boundary. The alpha and omega…. isness.

Not silly at all Kath! So Great! I am so glad you wrote this. Resonated so clearly and deeply here.

Dancing with Delight Inside!
Deepest Bow!
z

Kathy,

This is a very beautiful and very real description, and I've had “moments” too, and “not moments”, too.  I have watched others who are very open to the expression of Spirit and I see them in their ordinariness and then, I see them when they aren't - ordinary - extraordinary and still “them”.  I am beginning to be able to discern, when those moments are happening in others when I am physically present, even when they are still not aware themselves, and it is like an overlay and they are being them but a bit more than the ordinary them, yet the ordinariness of them is still there.  
Oh, yes, silly words, how inadequate they feel at times, but you and I are also lovers of words, of trying to convey our feelings with them, and of a belief we can somehow succeed in doing so.  I feel that you have succeeded in doing so, as much as words will allow.

Yes, words do fail yet we try.  Oh, and Cheyenne, it is no wonder to me that she has been there holding space along with you, for she is so much like that and such a natural joy, as her self.  I haven't read any of the comments above me yet, just your blog, but in case it is a while before I can get back here, I wanted you to know that I came and read and understand - whatever my own ability to do so is, from my own perspective of what such feels like in myself, and looks like in others.

And at times, I think, that I am making it all up, I doubt that something so magnificent could emerge through me, or would want me to emerge through and to be me, and live me, and be aware of what it is to be me.  And of course, it is ME, the one who came here for its own reasons, not the reasons that have developed in the little me, in whom life has been unfolding.  It is all beautiful, yes.

Treasuring how you share your most
intimate experiences with us, always I do -
Deb

Kathy, thank you, thank you, thank you.  So beautifully expressed…genuine and completely you.  I especially loved:

It isn't REALIZED fully as a minute-by-minute happening.  It's more like bursts and puffs of realization.  Realization as living-it, not realization as thinking-about-it.
It's so hard to talk about…knowing that it's happened, but then doubting that it did.  Your description resonated so strongly with experiences I've had, but then questioned.  Thank you again for this clear expression of your experience that reminds me…there is no goal to reach, just a moment by moment willingness to be fully present, clear and open…and allow “it” to come through when and as it will.  Glorious mystery.

O, Dear Kathy! You wrote it so beautifully and perfectly!

I love every word of how you share this.  You remind me so of the Buddha…when asked what happened?  What did you attain.  He said, “I” attained nothing!  The seeker did not attain.  Something totally different happened, and the seeker simply disappeared!  I did not attain, he said.  Nothing happened to me.  Another energy, another life altogether happened!

So wonderful!  Oh, I want to write more…but was just informed that I have appointment! 

And Kathy thank you for your words to me..you know I have done nothing, but rejoice with you!  Thank you dearly…

And Deb (!), sister love, I know we will see each other!  Thank you too for your kind words!  I love you!

I wish to return when my appointment is complete!

Lovingly and rejoicing with you Kathy!!!
Cheyenne

Yes, when “It” wakes up it is like finding a new head on your shoulders.

Interesting…Kathy.

I don't get “it” but “it” don't matter at all that I don't…what matters is that you get “it”!

What ever “it” is…well “it” sounds…fun!

Hang on to “it”!

Well said, enjoy the ride as a tide in and out, up and down, but always flowing and giving.

What a heartfelt expression……The problem is trying to explain (using language) something which can't be explained…
Wonderful…..

Beautiful! To catch in words the moment of those unfurling lotus wings…

Thanks so much, I will go alinking!

Fantatabulous, Kathy!!! How wonderfully inspiring. 

Suggest some you or other, haha, might want to run, do not walk, to Adyashanti's The End of Your World CD set or book, if you would like to have a nearly word-by-word description of what YOU just described. This spiritual teacher is familiar with this pattern in many people, and all the little eddies and flows in it, including the in-and-out aspects, and including the “WE don't awaken, awareness awakens” that you nailed precisely.And including the NEXT STEP in the process, which is now that the ordinary personality self has been transcended, it then gets transmuted and re-included. Not One, not Two.

I don't have time right now to read all the comments, will return later. But I had to add my celebration, and infinite gratitude for your willingness to share. It is not politically correct to say say one has “arrived” at the spiritual destination, it is only correct to strive. Especially in some particular religions like Buddhism and Christianity, though I know you have been an “independent.”

Oh, this is so wonderful. You've “popped” through. And so many thousands, even hundreds of thousands, are doing that these days. It is what is changing the world…..

In the Love We Are,
OM

All day long as I am offline, my heart will be singing “Another one popped, another one popped.”

So we'll still say YOU might want to.., like to…, choose to…, but we'll know the YOU is now much larger (more inclusive of the older personality-self) and IMO this YOU has (if it allows itself) preferences, loves, passions, but no longer needs, desires, should's or ought's. That's how I see it.

I am collecting first-person stories of awakening, especially abiding awakening, and I am happy to add your story to my collection, thank you, assume no objections. (Dunno what I will DO yet with the collection. If anyone can point me to accounts here on Gaia I can add, that would be great. I remember a few, but that was before I started my collection.)

Your own previous blog about “Has anyone met an enlightened human being?”, Kathy, now glows with a different light, doncha think? LOL !!!!

Love Love,
OM

there's an underlying awareness that seems ever-present. 
That's pretty much MY entire definition of “enlightenment.” 
And I know I am going in and out, too, mostly out for awhile, but the body continues to transmute to match that when it does come and abide. This is not just cognitive, or mental, and not just emotional either. It is whole-being. Goes down through biochemical, bioelectromagnetic, even atomic levels of the body. As I'm sure you are experiencing. But those aspects are rarely talked about. I'd love to hear more specifics about your experiences. Is there a physical precursor when you are going “in?” Like a heaviness in the body-energy field? Or do colors suddenly look brighter? Or do you find yourself smiling or in a good mood for no reason? And THEN “awareness” kicks fully in? Or simultaneously?


In and out is not the same as “abiding, but sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the background”. I would love to hear you say more about that, too. 


“Popped” was a word I came up with, and then I read some spiritual teacher say it somewhere! My visual image/metaphor was that beween ordinary consciousness and awakened awakeness (whatever the words) there is a huge giant paper membrane. Sometimes, someone's head pops through the paper, and they can look around above the paper and see who else's head is visible up there!!! This is just a silly metaphor and not a really accurate one.


Someone just told me about a book called – I think – The Translucent Revolution. About people waking up all over the world, or some such. I am in a hurry to get it. Anyone here heard of it? It's more of a report on what's happening to people, than a teaching. Published about 5 years ago, if I recall arightly.


Kathy, thank you again for your courage to babble and share. I know sometimes there is nothing to say, and a reluctance to speak, and other times nothing to say, but things come out. And other times a discouragement about being able to express anything useful. And other times “I've got to help them understand.” Speaking for myself, anyway.


Adyashanti said he went through a 6-year period of psychological house-cleaning AFTER awakeness abided in him/as him. Clearing out all the illusions leftover from an asleep human psyche. He cooperated actively with that cleaning/clearing. I myself believe some awake people complete the process, and others get stuck and never complete the dissolving of their “shadows.” But I am sure it doesn't take everyone 6 years. Some more, some less.


Still reading the comments, but I see you had already mentioned The End of Your World. Pretty funny, huh? I'm looking forward to reading the comments more thoroughly.

Love, OM

…and one day perhaps, we become headless, we disappear and awakening is.

{But you know what, that's what brought us to life, so while we're here, let's keep enjoying ourselves!]

Kathy,

As I was hiking yesterday, I was contemplating during some of my time in the forest, what you have been experiencing and writing about, from my own perspective, my own experience of something similar.  Though there have been times, when the experience of it was so intense, that was all I seemed to be - in that moment - for the most part, for me, it is quite integrated and comfortable.

I can go about my day in varying degrees of it; but I do not, most of the time, skew so totally to one or the other as to be as dramatic as you describe.  I do think the beauty of your having done so and, so freely sharing that with others - what that feels like - is, that it is the kind of guidance so many people lack upon the path.  A reassurance that “I'm okay” or “I will be okay”.  Regardless of how easily understood or common such experiences may be here at Gaia, in the world at large, our Gaian kind of common perception remains a rarity or minority, within the human element upon our planet.  Thankfully, not as rare as in Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna or Buddha's time.  I hope I don't err, that Krishna was a human incarnation, for I am not too well versed in that, and dear Meenakshi will correct me on it, I hope, if I did err.

The hopeful thing is, that more people are openning themselves to allow the Divine to be expressed and emerge through their very self, though the individuation, as and through who they are.  This brings the Divine from an otherworldly factor into the ordinariness of life, which I believe is one of Its own desires - to express gently as ordinary human experience.  What OM describes as that “abiding” awareness.  It is as though it made it through in you, and said “oh, there I Am, I am now emerging through Kathy”.

We bring that pure Spirit and Love into the world, when we have gained enough awareness to allow it to emerge and be our own self.  To my perspective, you are now aware that It can emerge and now, you begin to make that a more comfortable and integrated part of who you are.  It is indeed another level of human expression; not yet ordinary to the mass of humanity now living on our planet.  

Hugs -
Deb

Just like riding on the wind Kathy. I am aware of awareness.
Great article!
Love,
Hal

Hot damn!! I have never had a conversation more useful to me!!!!!! Oh I am so infinitely grateful to all the contributors here, and the creme de la creme is your latest comment just above, Kathy. I've never had a chance to ask anyone I could compare experiences to, about the details, though there are a few local folks I believe are in the same phase I am.

I can totally relate to everything you said, Kathy, with one minor exception that isn't so minor to me: The returning loving awareness that it was awareness choosing to forget itself, has been with me for ages, BUT it often (not always) feels more conceptual than actually in my cells. I have enough experiences of the “totality of embodiment” kind of Realizing or Awakeness that I have a basis for comparison between that and the more “conceptual” kind of realization. 

The difference is not a matter of inferiority of one over the other, nor a matter of “I the Ego gotta try harder to attain/return to that kind of Being.” As you so eloquently said, Awareness is doing it all, even the experience of “just” conceptually realizing itself, so as I suggested in my blog Presence vs. Awareness of Presence, there is no escape from Awareness!! At some point the human mind's sense of separation and of seeking to “heal” that separation, simply implodes upon itself in the awareness of that “immediacy” you mentioned: IT is intimately here, as “this,” no matter what “this” is. No matter WHAT the human mind is aware of, that's awareness. If even forgetting or getting absorbed or identifying back with the mind are activities of Awareness — where else is there to be?? That's what I call “implosion.” I experience it fairly often!!!

Anyway, back to what you said, I am so glad you responded to my requests for words, thank you with all my soul. It is extremely reassuring to my human mind, being able to compare experiences. 

What Attainment encouraged you to do, going compassionately toward the contents of your consciousness that everything in you was trying to move away from, was perfect, classic, the highest advice. Especially since even that which was screaming to move AWAY, was also Awareness !!!!! There simply is no escape. To me, that is the bottom line of being Awake: There is nowhere else to go, nothing else to be. 

This morning's version for me, was noticing a lot of Ego saying “My experience should be such-and-such.” And then saying “Oh, I shouldn't be doing should's.” And then going “Oh, wait a minute. I get it. The Ego, the should, and the “shouldn't should” were ALL activities of Awareness. No wonder the sages call it all “Lila,” the PLAY of Awareness.

However, I still noticed that the “I get it” was not fully embodied, and so I got conceptually that that was still Awareness's choice of experience, as is the part of me still going “Yeah, but I SHOULD feel it as totally as I do sometimes.” 

Anyway, I blather all this in the hopes of passing along some reassurance to others like myself who are still not fully “popped” abidingly. It don't matter none !!!!!! And if we still find ourselves striving, struggling, trying, then, hey, so be it. Even “Stop trying, struggling, striving” is Awareness. It's got us, coming and going, hahahaha.

For me, then, since there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, the next question that arises is “I, whoever I is, still appear to have preferences that have to do with Quality of Life. So now that we've settled the big question, the next one is “What Quality of Life does the human self experience Awareness/Being choosing in/as its life?” And then “allowing” that to flow, although allowing or not allowing is still Awareness's choice. Implosion again!!!

Is this making any sense to anyone? I haven't ever shared this level of the nitty-gritty of my experience, but as Kathy's (and others!!!!) sharing was so incredibly helpful to me, I am having the courage to do this.

Blissings, OM

It is a blessing we can awaken and be aware… day by day…more than that would just be 2 much for our being. There is so much to look forward 2 :))

Whenever, Kathy. I feel inclined to clarify, in case someone misinterprets what I said about Quality of Life, that since there is a new identity, operating the embodiment, an expansion to ALL of Awareness, which is the One Self, any talk about Quality of Life is not at all focused merely on QoL for one embodiment. Quality of Life for one is inextricable with that for all Beingness, all Beings, all living Beings.

Hugs, OM

Welcome Home dear Kathy :)

I think you explained something that is almost impossible to explain –it has to be experienced first hand.  But you did a remarkable job capturing the essence using words, which is just about impossible.  But you made us “feel” what you felt, and gave us a glimpse into something possible.

Over the years I have had glimpses, peeks, tweaks, awakenings, illuminations, visions.  For me, Everything is One and Part of the Whole Spiritually and everything is alive.  A gladness comes and stays as we become as significant as the rock or rose we hold in our hand, or the speck in our eye.
I think at first it is like falling in romantic love. We cannot sustain he high permanently, and we get disappointed when it seems to fade or there are trouble spots. But “it”  changes us forever, and is always there for us as a Best Friend Forever, available.

Kathy,

Even before I read what you wrote this morning, I had read a Rumi quote in Elizabeth Lesser's - A Seeker's Guide (an excellent book from someone who has probably been exposed to more paths than anyone I've ever known of, thanks to her work with the Omega Institute) and thought of you -

This longing tastes like honey to adults and milk to children
It is the last thirty pound bale
When you load it on, the boat tips over

Even before reading this, I could feel this from you.  Such of love of being aware, as It being aware of Itself, as it looked out upon the world through Kathy's eyes.  I feel you wanting to be in that space, I feel the fascination with It, and when you are not, I feel you missing It and longing for It.

My FIL was not able to utter the word God most of the time I knew him.  He was quite against all religion but had been a Unitarian most of his married life.  When he was dying, a hospice nurse came to visit and felt moved to ask him, if she could pray with him.  This was quite against what hospice instructs them to be doing, that kind of assistance is supposed to be supplied by the clergyman, whom my in-laws had already rejected.  I believe something in my FIL drew that response from that poor nurse but my MIL was quite vocal in her anger regarding it.  

That night my FIL had nightmares.  He was so ambivalent and conflicted about dying.  One minute he would want to go, be yearning to go, be asking when his death would finally come; and the next minute he would fear to go and worry about missing us.  Back and forth, back and forth, he went - for weeks.

Alone with him in the car, on the way to a doctor's appt in St Louis, we talked about what this had done to him, about his fear that he had made a grave mistake with his life's journey, by not following a path more in alignment with conventional religion.  He worried he would go to Hell, all the childhood religious conditioning, re-emerging at the end of his life.

I reassured him that there was absolutely nothing wrong with his own path.  That there was no one path better than any other, no way he could “blow this incarnation”.  He came to peace after that and died soon afterwards.  After he died, as the hospice nurse was apologizing to me for the incident, I could tell her heartfully not to feel too bad, that I believe he drew it from her, to settle something within himself that he needed to face, before he died.

So, everything you have done, walking through life, upon your own path, is exactly what your own path was orchestrated by your soul to be.  So often we read about someone else's path, and we feel somehow inferior, somehow deficit.  I have struggled with that myself, felt it re-emerging even in just the last few days, as your blog has unfolded, a feeling of not being quite as good upon the spiritual path as you are, as Cheyenne is, as OM is, as Zennie is.  The list could go on and on and really, do not fret, I am just fine.  I understand that I am just exactly where I am meant to be, at this time, on my own path and that it is beautiful and magnificent and messed up and horrid - all at the same time.

What has been happening for me is a revisiting of my own path, my own special path, and it is special only to me, would be so very ordinary and not at all interesting to anyone else.  My path through this life, and through the development of understanding what the purpose of my being here is, has been unfolding with renewed intensity since my MIL died in Feb.  And evern more so, in the last couple of months, since returning from Chicago.  Realizing how all those awful things that have happened to me in this life have given  me insight and compassion and sympathy and understanding and humility, yes so much humility.

Big hugs to you Kathy, or to It, or to the plurality of whatever combination of all the lives you've ever lived emerges next.  You are a blessed breath of fresh air, of realness, of authenticity, and you are so very needed in a world where many people are “exposed” to be, not what they have appeared to be.

You are definitely loved by so many and are precious to all of existence.  You are cherished by me and I appreciate deeply that I have had the blessing of knowing you are and connecting with you, in the least little ways.

Deb

Hi, Dear Deb!  wow!  What a statement that you share!  But I wanted to say, I will not allow you to look over at my site and call me advanced.  I am a meditation teacher…that is my art.  I studied my whole life and I am obsessed with becoming the 'World's Best Meditation Teacher!”….a little Leo Ego!….

…we are either in the Soup or out of the Soup.  There is no possibility of one person being more advanced than the other.  NONE!  And you cannot judge.  A person might be closer than they've ever been to realization and they look sorrowful to us….and others looking so glorious, as if they have it all together, and OHHHH, how far away they truly are!

There's no way to judge.  The TASTER is one….the taster is God..and the taster is the same in all of us….the rest of it cannot be called advanced!!!  OH, no. 

You are a stunning soul!!!  Your truth shines and your reaching and growing is a gift…and more than that..it is the way you offer friendship that makes you perfect!  That makes you love! 

When you come to my place, you will leave saying, “OMG!  That Poor Cheyenne, I feel sorry for her!”….

I love you, Deb! 
Cheyenne

Cheyenne,

I doubt that is possible.  Uncontrollable giggles that I certainly needed.

Kathy,

Oh, those hummingbirds, mine are totally in my face, if the feeders run dry.  I love it when they peek in at me through the windows.  

Do the little, tiny white wildflowers wonder if the bigger, yellow ones surpass them?  The question allows not an attempt to answer.

Such openning of my heart to you at the word pain, such joy at no pain, such appreciation of awareness, such understanding of no awareness, such commonality in confusion, such blessings in clarity.  

And you Kathy are, without doubt, a blessing; 
simply you, however you are, at any given moment.

Big hugs, deep bows and heart wrapped around both of you.  

Deb

I have plenty of blogs tagged with 'babble' LOL…
Miss Kathy, this was SUCH a Beautiful blog, I LOVE your description of Awareness, it is something that I can't quite explain the way you did…but often I go through times like that (that's why I say I'm like a child seeing things for the first time, that's the best description I had LOL)
IT'S an utterly wondrous thing to see, read and experience…the process you've described actually brings tears to my eyes.
Much More to Come, Dear Kathy…we are All Waking Up more and more and more~~~<3

Granted this whole subject is essentially beyond words, but my particular mind seeks passionately to understand as much as possible within itself, within language, for some kind of “service” purpose, and this conversation among us is a precious and rare opportunity.

That's the context for these questions and observations:

It seems to me that when we are going in and out, therefore neither of those states or experiences is the ultimate final state or experience. I suspect what happens is that we cycle in and out more and more often, til a “blend” occurs, and the “two” different states cannot be distinguished any longer. Can you feel anything like that going on, Kathy? So you would no longer be saying “Oh, Kathy is back and Awareness is gone.” Kathy would be there, but so would the Awareness, in and as Kathy. Does that make any sense?

My burning question that I am pursuing in many ways is: Exactly what changes? You mentioned the “ordinariness” of Awareness being Awake as you, and I do grok that. But something does shift. But it's not the obvious things that most people who haven't been through the process, think it's going to be. So I pursue descriptions from those who've experienced the shift. “Ego death” doesn't do it, for me. The Ego doesn't die, it transmutes. Of course, that's a death of the old version. Something disappears, and I want to be able to language exactly what that is and isn't. 

Of course, it might be somewhat different for different people. Awareness would get bored having the same experience of waking up in each person. Variety is the name of the game, haha.  

But I still think there will be a similarity I can figure out. Pending my own experience. 

So, I think I am saying that the differences we are experiencing between when we are “in” and when we are “out” are NOT the difference I am hunting for a description of. I want to know what goes away (and what stays) when the awakeness abides.

WHY do I want to know that? I dunno. It feels as if it might be useful to folks. 

Anyone have anything to offer my quest? Or say ABOUT it?

Also, Kathy, you have touched on something Adyashanti says that I am not yet very familiar with. He says Awareness/Awakeness, is not an experience or state, it is Reality. Can you comment more about whether you can relate to that way of putting it?

Blessings, OM

Hi Kathy,
I thought I would share today's blog post with you and your audience. It was inspired by your essay and the comments about it.

Taste the Salt

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

William Blake, the 18th century English poet and painter, is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry and the visual arts of the Romantic Age. He never left London during his lifetime, but he produced vivid images of consciousness that some recognize as the essence of human existence. His creativity is filled with philosophical and mystical undertones. He was influenced by Jacob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg, but his work is hard to classify or catalog in a specific slot within philosophical thought. His awareness is as unique as any of his predecessors, contemporaries or successors. Blake is a bundle of Blake’s and he expresses that fact in his writing and in his painting.

To see the world in a grain of sand is monumental experience that exists within every moment. Experiencing heaven in a wild flower is personal awareness that exemplifies the existence of these other worlds. Holding infinity in the palm of my hand is a desire that continues to manifest as I become aware of my own entity and how it perceives itself. Each hour is an eternity in psychological time and my beliefs about time create the actions within it. Awareness is indefinable in its constant action, which vacillates from form to non-form as I align my thoughts with it. Electrical densities within awareness create different intensities and I choose to associate with elements of those intensities which are in alignment with my belief structure. Awareness that exists outside of my belief structure is in constant action so fragments creep through the walls of that structure and reveal other aspects of my self. I sense those fragments and either ignore them through ego associations or I expand my structure and allow these fragments to flow through me. As they flow through me I become a layered form of consciousness that expands as it perceives the value of awareness. Awareness of self is the innate action of an eternal entity.

Awareness of self is a multidimensional experience that reveals inner connections as I express them. Awareness is packed like grains of sand in a linear hour glass that gradually drops specs of itself into an open vessel so it can be filled space with form, although it also has the ability to fill space without form when it is not restricted by the linear beliefs of an hour glass. Consciousness and the awareness of it define my physical life in linear terms. Each form of consciousness creates physical awareness in different ways in order to experience its value and the essence of self. Like a grain of sand I am filled with awareness and express it physically in a sea of diversity to taste the salt of my own entity.  

Hal, thanks. I really dug that. As I did so much of what Deb and others have expressed here.

Yes, Kathy, that was extraordinarily helpful !! As Awareness, you are one with me, thus when I express a want or desire, you know intimately and exactly how to meet it, and if as me you allow it in, then here it is. 

I remember when I was “in” for an extended period a year ago February (and blogged about it, I don't have time to link, but Update in Feb 08, and Further Update in March 08, for anyone interested.) What came up was possibly one version of the intense pain you mention. For me, it was terror. Stark raving terror. It seemed to be the natural ongoing condition of an identity that regards itself as “separate” from everything else. Many of Ego's activities seemed designed to protect itself from awareness of that terror

Both Ken Wilber and Adyashanti mention the “burning fire” of awareness as it burns out the density of unawarenesses that are our identities, thoughts, beliefs, built upon the “reality” of “separation.” Ken Wilber wryly called it something like “The most fun you can have without dying.” However, there are folks in whom that burning process does not complete. They are the gurus with huge “shadows.” Awareness as them chose the experience of turning away from the pain, of judging it, fearing it, blinding self to it. Not embracing it, being in compassionate awareness of all the dark corners, as you are doing. This makes a huge difference, I cannot tell you what a huge difference that makes. Your approach is a fabulous model for everyone. 

Adya reminded us here in Seattle about the Zen saying “Always Being. Always Becoming.” He said the “process” of awakening never completes, never stops, and is always complete! So I imagine there will always be ever-deepening versions of “reality” awaiting – I was going to say awaiting “us” but the referent for that pronoun is getting kinda blurry, haha. I could say awaiting “whover we choose to regard as ourselves.”

I think “immediate here now” or however you phrased it does not need to include sensory experience at every moment, delightful as that is. I think we can be full of a “here now” that is a memory, or is in a somewhere sometime that doesn't include this human body and its senses. Anyway, I see lots of folks who mistake Eckhart Tolle's teachings to mean they have to be focused on their sensory experience or they are not “practicing Presence,” and I think Presence is just as present in ideas, thoughts, imaginings, as it is in tastes or smells or touches or sights or sounds, etc. So I just wanna put my two cents' in on that matter.

The thought drifts through my mind this morning that there is a way in which this conversation is a culmination of all my two years' participation in this community. Not an ending, and not the only value, but probably the most personally relevant interaction I've ever had here, one that everything else was a step toward. So I shed tears of gratitude to you all.

Blissings, OM 

What a wonderful post Centria.  I am delighted for you! 

I understand how it feels to move between these poles of experience.  The personality, with its likes, dislikes and judgments is like a frightened little child, while awareness simply is.  Those moments of intense silence and presence are simply delicious!      

Wow, guess what Sandra Jensen JUST said on this other thread, about regarding one's dark corners with compassion!!

Bob, thanks for articulating that. I think some of us are experiencing “poles” while recognizing at least conceptually that the personality is nothing but “awareness” dimming down its awareness of that aspect of itself. Awareness is, and is the personality, too!! The ol' paradox thingy.

Love, OM

OM,

I remember your experience of a year & a half ago, quite vividly.  I was following those blogs and as you've popped in and out of Kathy's blog here lately, they have been very much on my mind.  So, I have understood that you are understanding and remembering from your wild ride those days.

The Zen saying Always Being, Always Becoming resonates with me and with something I came across not too long ago - Awareness seeking to “fully” experience separation and that means as unaware reality in most beings.  The expansion of awareness is yet expanding and seeking boundaries and blowing through those boundaries and never finding the boundary really.

I am nodding my head “yes, yes” with your 2 cents.  Even as I was reading your “here now”, Eckhart Tolle did pop into my mind, before I saw those words had come from your fingers.  He clearly indicates one can be here now and be remembering the past but knowing they are here now remembering it and not living “there”.  It is such an important point you bring up, that is the way that he intended, I believe, but is all too often misunderstood.

Or they can be planning some future destination for their Self along this path, and be doing that planning here now and not putting their here now experience on hold, for a better day in some future that never comes, but appreciating that they intentionally navigated in that direction, when they arrive at that pre-planned point, along the unfolding edge.

When I am “practicing” a metaphysical response to some situation, circumstance, condition etc, I am aligning myself (and perhaps some other who has asked for a re-alignment of where they are finding themself or a bit of a metaphysical push, to change their trajectory some) as you so wonderfully point out - in mind, in thought, in concept - is where my Awareness is, with something that could be said not to be “present” but I know in my heart, that if it can be conceived, then it is present in some dimension.  So, I seek to feel myself (and/or the person asking) as being presence in that place.  Wow, words just are hard to use in describing such.

So, that is how I have personally come to an acceptance of no name, no form, presence emerging in, as and through my own self.  While it is my belief that we all have the capability, I also believe not all of us are here to “achieve” that in this lifetime.  I truly believe some simply come to serve and keep it all going here on Earth and I am very grateful to each and every one of those.  In its own very real sense, that “not aware” is a blessing.

Love & Peace to all
the kindred Spirits 
I am fortunate enough 
to have found
this time around … 

Thanks to Gaia - truly.

Deb

PS - Oh, I'll have to go and see what Sandra has said now … yep.  Shadow work is tugging at me and stalking me every direction I look these days.  Fine tuning the integration and expression of Self is never ending or, for some of us, it might get a tad boring …

It is our natural state when we stop our minds, impluses, will and simply let Nature have It's way within. Connection It is.

Hi Om,

When I am intensely present and aware, I see the personality for what it is …a collection of thoughts and beliefs that I occassionally identify with, and sometimes, wear for awhile.  It might be helpful to think of the personality like a suit of clothes.  The being that animates the clothes is awareness, the clothes are not.           

Kathy what a wonderful post. I don't know you, but I appreciate your blog. Your discoveries are our own discoveries.
I first read a discription of this constanst state ofpeace here
http://www.satsangs.co.uk/interviews/finaldestination.shtml
and i've also written about the emotions on my blog.
My deepest regards for you.
rl
 
 
 

Oooh, the honesty with which you describe what's happening to you, Centria… oh man, I'm in love with That. And how! That spontaneous babbling bursts forth from the source in me too, and so I recognize it in others immediately. That's the Self becoming a fountain of words… then falling silent again, or temporarily going underground, covered up by old, filmy thoughtforms during relapse time into the confines of the accumulated personality.

You are so right! Everything you say coming from That is true and effortlessly understood as such by those who are also moving in and out of that Always-Isness.

Dear OM, thank you for directing me to this blog. If I could, I would remove all remaining doubts you might have that what you say may not make sense. It does to me, alright? Surely, that should be enough, heh heh heh.

Hey Zennie, fancy meeting you here at the Inn of the Babbling Brook. Refreshments abound, no end to the singing of praises in words and sounds never used before to describe this ancient Sumpthin' we cannot grasp with our thoughts.

Total surrender, Centria, one-way ticket, yeah. You said it very well.

Kathy, you said: Am suddenly sensing that perhaps this Awakening never does end.

That's been revealed to me also, many times. There is no finality in this dive, this freefall, this endless deepening into the Self by itself.

Thoughts of finality occur to me: “Wow, this is It! This is final establishment in the Urgrund… this is pure being beyond the mind,” and so on. But there's nothing static about awakening; it's eternal stillness in motion, movement within that which never comes or goes.

Hi kathy,what a beautiful blog. Thank you for the invitation to read it. Has this gift of awareness changed how you interact with others? Friends ,Family etc. Does the anger go away? Is the ego more silent? I am sorry about all of the questions,but I am interested in what happens.
This journey is new for me and there are so many questions. I once had a teacher tell me all you need to do to reach enlightenment is to “lighten up”.
Namaste, Ram Prem

I'm late to this blog. I didn't read any of the above comments. I raced directly to the bottom of the page to wail….


“I'm sooooooooo jealous!”

Beam me up Scottie!

http://www.here-now-tv.com/fileadmin/video/rick/satsang02/02/en_rick_satsang02_02.html

Yes, I'm in touch with a number of folks including myself who are increasingly feeling that words are like a thick molasses we are less and less inclined to put forth the effort to move into. And yet sometimes they pour forth. But with less and less “investment” in them. 

I don't remember what you said about anger, Kathy, but you can bet your bippie there is some part of Awareness which is quite angry at having been so contracted for so long. It feels like God's victim, or even a victim of the part of itself that volunteered for the project of contraction. There's a part like that in me, anyway.

How completely true, the words are about memories, and are not the living reality. How often Awareness entertains itself this way!

Continuing thanks for your continuing sharings, though, like about your body and the hot lava, and about others not detecting your change. Most interesting!

Dashing off to a meeting,
Love, OM

I coudn't resist A Gift… :o)

http://felipeoliveira.com/narayan/samples/a_gift.html

A little note regarding anger, Anger, like emotion itself, is little understood in the western world.  We use words like anger, joy, depression and apathy to describe what we’re feeling, but in reality, these aren’t feelings, they’re concepts.   In the western world, we don’t feel our feelings; we conceptualize them.  For example, we don’t say, “I feel hot, prickly, explosive and tense.”  We say, “I feel angry.”  The first sentence describes the actual sensate experience; the second is simply a label. The reason that this distinction is important is that if we are to move beyond the limitations of our current thinking regarding emotions, we must learn to fully connect with the feelings and sensations within the body without giving into the temptation to judge and label what we’re feeling. What happens when we make judgments or apply labels to what we’re feeling is that we create a structure that holds these unwanted conditions in place.  On the other hand, if we’ll simply become present to what’s happening within us and connect with it fully; our intuition and presence will provide everything we require to bring the turmoil to peace.  By connecting with it I mean …to extend our loving, compassionate awareness and become one with the actual feelings and sensations within.
 

OM,

I am in intensive Anger contemplation, before Kathy started babbling, before we all started babbling.  I never thought Anger was in me but its worse, there is Rage.  What is the source?  

OM, your words echoing in my mind during my hike, caused me to pause and grab a pen and bit of paper to jot this down.  I attempt to capture adequately in words what came internally as an answer to my own long pondered question.  Not that this is all there is but -

It is the anger of the Ego, at the realization that the Higher Self has been there but was suppressed, feels that it did not need to be suppressed, but was.  Feels deceived by being allowed to believe in itself, as self.  It is part of the birth / life on Earth soul contract.

The Ego, a construct of It, required for the experiences chosen before birth, is what is Angry - at having been denied awareness of the Higher Self during all the years of the Ego's struggles with the karmic necessities.  Feels the awareness of Self would have prevented much pain.

When Awareness emerges, the Ego in surrender to allow that, intentionally sublimated by longing to allow that, suffers from having proven, it's delusion's reality - allowed to go on for too long.

Deb

Perhaps Kathy in her present phase will allow us this conversation, Deb, and I regard it as totally relevant to the phase of awakening we are in, you and I and many others. I believe it is soooo helpful to understand this anger!!

I think you've got it pretty well. As I have attempted to get acquainted with my anger (a la what Bob describes so well) I allow it to speak, and what comes out I would call “rage at God.” I believe many spiritual teachers have spoken about it, through many past centuries. I think it's a simple and simply inevitable response to the suffering caused by our voluntary journey into contracted awareness, Self-forgetfulness, and the ensuing fear and suffering. I think you nailed that; it's simply part of the package. It is not a defect of Ego, it is simply part of what Ego's do. That is how I reach “forgiveness” and understanding. IOW I don't take the anger seriously. 

It is kinda like the anger of a child who has been bound and constrained and not allowed to move freely. It knows something has contravened its true nature, it is suffering, and it is angry about that. 

IOW, there is some sense in which the anger is “justified.” Namely, there is something “unnatural,” from the perspective of our what you might call Higher Selves, or what we might call Full Awareness, at this Self-forgetting, this pretended unawareness, this portion of our infinite Self that we have taken into painful binding and contraction. 

One of my “arguments with God” is that this period of pain has NOT been worth whatever the planned result was, whatever Self-knowledge and Self-appreciation was the goal of it all. I don't know that my Ego-self will ever be convinced that the millions of years of suffering was worth it. I hold that possibility open. And I know its perspective will shift when it is able to observe more of the “rewards” phase; I ain't fully there yet, so all Ego-I can see is the downside. 

In a way, like anger at the surgeon for the effects of the cutting, because the benefits of the surgery are not apparent yet. Bad analogy, but vaguely appropriate. 

The closest my Ego-self has come to an acceeptance that reduces the anger, is simply the perspective that I will never understand the whole of the matter, that so much about suffering (mine and others, especially since those are not separate) will be beyond the capacity of the Ego to grasp, to comprehend, so Ego-self becomes – sometimes – content to give its pain under the anger, into The Great Mystery, into Divine Compassion, and let it go, forgive God, and move on into whatever transmutation it is undergoing in this process of being reclaimed by Awareness.

That is a comforting aspect: Awareness has finally come and reclaimed “me” from my suffering. Through grace. It is not redemption for my sins, nor is it an achievement. It is simply the time. The project is over. (Some higher-consciousness Beings have said it that way, I discovered after I got that phrase.) Sometimes my Ego is an ungracious (no pun intended haha) receiver of the bounty of this liberation, grumbling at the feast about its past hunger. But, that's just natural for it to do, from its perspective on things. One doesn't fault dogs for barking, hahaha.

Wow, I never have expressed this stuff on paper (haha) before. Deb, I am thrilled that what you said is so similar to my own inner wanderings into this anger. I wonder what others can relate to this, or how their experience of this might be different.

So, Kathy, that hot lava description is more like what  Bob was suggesting, methinks!! No label, just being Aware of the energy pattern. 

Thank you thank you – all !!!!!

Love, OM

“I don't take the suffering seriously,” Excellent attitude OM.  Nor do I take it personally.  Nor do I know what it means. 

    


 

uhmm
isn't everyone it all the time?
i only get annoyed when someone wants me to stop “it” and be slow and glah and ungrateful to follow a 'script' i guess i'd call it
basically to stop living

i missed you!
or maybe i havent' been away at all…

I just got a “Note from the Universe” (www.tut.com) that reminded me of this conversation :-D

“Honestly, I can't say I like everyone. No. I'm not going to tell you it's because I already love everyone. Ariela, I AM everyone. And so are you.”

It really is very amazing to see you witnessing…and describing the experience of being in all places and all people!
Love you!~~<3

Hi Centria, I don't how but you blog appeared in my box, and I'm greatful
that happen.
I'm so happy for you, is so beautiful when this things happen in our journey,
in different forms, in moment that we don't expect, the unknown take us and for moment or many moments we are one, and is not really a way to
expresed because is not body there at that moment, how you say,
Awareness be aware of awareness”, how this is possible if awareness is all
what it is and no body can be there to be aware of!!. IT, the mistery, have
blesse you  and kiss you.

Thank you for sharing such intimatet experience of you Soul with all of us.
It bring more courage into my jouney to no where.

Much love, sincerely, Chaitanyo

I will love to say thank you to Bob Bloom for such good understanding and sharing about the word Anger.

Anger can be our friend at time, and at time can bring a lot troubles in our life because of lack of awareness!, undesrtanding.
If we totally look at this hot energy in the very beginning that start sprouting,
it will disappear and awareness will be there with what it is, but if we miss just a second more, it will arise and it will look a way to go out. Now, my understanding is that is nothing wrong and depend of the development of the person the out movement will happen in different ways and if don't move out and stay in, is no good either. Find a devise for transform energies it call
alquimia.  To my understanding the best way to transform is by be total with what it is, but real total, Like Jesus when hi was angry or Osho hi to ones was angry, and Bodhidarma to. Choosing to be total with total presence and awarenes, and the cuality is different, transformation happen, is impossible no to happen, is the nature of things and them, lighteness come to you like
Jesus walking in water.

A little history to share
Everybody in the past use to say that something it was no righ with me, they say, there is agrer there. I was very unconfortable with that, why they say that, I was such sweet persone, until I start going deep in my meditation and be honest and do the real work, and one day in one workshop I new that is was going to happen the poison it was going to come up, and it come up
in the middle roon sorounded by almost 200 people looking at me,
I break throught and I scream to everbody, God, Universe, to life, Fuck you, big big big!!!
(please alowme to say this word now, because this is what it was). and it was coming from my belly and all the pain that I was carrie. Such silence it was in the room, such compassion. And them, real sweetness start to happen, it has the real space to grow.
I don't say that everybody need to do that, what I say is that totality is at must.

And you my dear Centria, evey cell of you being must have touch the totality
of here and now for IT embrace you.

What a JOY, thank you, love Chaitanyo

Here's another first-person account of “waking up” which shows remarkable similarities to yours, and fascinating differences!!!

http://groups.gaia.com/ips/discussions/view/487990

I cross-linked this blog there, too.

Love, OM

Hello 1vector3 I have yet to finish your posted cross linked blog but it got me to thinking of something that has been driftingh around me the last couple of few days. Stuck somewhere as piece of something I am unable to remove from my teeth, an unfinished meal of sorts.
The Flip of the Coin.
For those who can see into the future it must be as the flip of a coin all chance it would appear. Coin in hand they place it on top of one finger beneath another create a path of resistence between the two and puff up goes the coin. It spins and spins at such a rate it appears to the eye to even change it's shape. Twirlling at speed, arching into the air unclear as to it dimentions it reaches it's apex and begins to decline from it's heights, a wave that crests to it's peak it would appear. It tumbles now down ward some might think back, for those obseverant enough, to the hand from which it came. Caught to a resting placeing again, to be tossed at will from those with the skills to do so. Ever mindful that the path most sough is hard to see, but that from the beginning and to the end you can hold the treasured chance in the palm of your hand. Acquiring from the start an idea of how the whole experience must  feel.
Thanks
J.M.

the dance of possibilities… can we follow in our mind the myriad potentialities of every moment that continually converge in our actual lived experience? The surprise, the delight of the Now, with you, my own. How I adore the workings of your mind and heart, the creative play of your words.

Kathy, my perspective is that most of us have awakened any number of times in past lives, and what's happening in this life is that our process of awakening is IN SERVICE TO the larger world. Maybe I said this already somewhere in a comment. So there's absolutely nothing personal about you which is influencing the pace and rhythm of the process. Awareness itself has a plan, and this is all part of the plan. You wouldn't be of so much service if you were permanently awake one day from thence forward. There is much to be learned and shared in the going back and forth. So that's WHY we go back and forth, my story about why.

You are far from ordinary.

Love, OM

OM, so true. ”:So there's absolutely nothing personal about you which is influencing the pace and rhythm of the process”

Perhaps being ordinary is just that. Amazing…

As I'm discovering now, the joy of knowing absolutely nothing about everything!

“Alas.” Well, perhaps. And just perhaps if you got there and stayed there, the Game would be over. Which part wants or NEEDS the Game to be over? 
The part that longs desperately to “get back there” might feel a tad guilty for not being there? As if the matter were under its control. So who is it that's filling up the day with busyness and not doing what it “should” to get into the space of witnessing and being present again? The Wizard of Oz, that's who!!!!

It's also true, I think, and one of my consoling thoughts, that really Awareness HAS programmed us to find the Awake state the very best experience available to the human self. Nothing to compare that the world can offer. Thus, longing to be There, or return There, is totally natural, totally planned, a really “valid” motivation for the self which experiences itself as able to make choices about what to do or not do. To me the longing is NOT automatically evidence of ego co-opting the awakening process. To me, it's what keeps “biasing” our choices toward choosing that which we already are. It's just part of the Game. 

From some perspectives, the longing, the finding of our natural state as the most pleasurable experience possible, so that we in our natural human seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain, end up choosing the state which is beyond pleasure and pain — that's the fail-safe built into the experiment of going into “amnesia” or darkness or Self-forgetting, so no soul can stay in the darkness forever. Sooner or later, that motivation kicks in just because of the way the human was constructed by Spirit.

At least these perspectives are what has occurred to me about my own experiences. I join you, Meenakshi, in knowing nothing about everything! Does that make us anti-experts or mirror-universe experts or something like that?? LOL !!!

And now, a word of silence from our Sponsor.




LOL!!!
Love, OM 

nothing ordinary about you my love! and the story is far from being all told…

kathy,,,,feel free to respond or not; just wanted to put this here about knowing or not; I felt that we're made of clay and need to remain moist; but not wet; so first we keep filling up and then when we're full, we empty or we'll disintegrate, sink and so on…But even when the water leaves us, it has moistened us and allowed us to  - start filling up again! A little involved I know, but that's what came. It's like what we ingest after eating, to put it more physically, and what we allow to leave us - AND what stays inside, undigested.

suffering can sneak up from many directions indeed, my sweet. let us continue to hold intention for freedom for all beings from being trapped in those cycles of suffering. much love

There are some unusual and insightful first-person descriptions of awakening in this thread, read down til they begin, not very far down. Very different experiences from yours, Kathy, so interesting similarities and differences!

Love, OM. 

o.k. now I am going to write something from the heart. I wasn't moved til now.

Thought will never get it. Thought focuses in on one aspect of life or the thing being thought about usually a situation. It covers an aspect. Isn't the situation more than that one thought or group of thoughts can describe? Even a group of thoughts can't see the the total picture. You write that you are back to ordinary and asleep. That is just thought carving a boundry around a slice of Kath! You have to tell the truth. There is a part of you seeing the thought that says that. There is an awareness of that thought or you couldn't even write about it.

No one thought judging a situation can know everything about it at the same time. Thought separates and divides. It can't help it. It really is trying to help. It is kind of sweet in that way… except it is b.s.

Thought isn't bad or to be avoided. It just can't cover the expanse of life or situation in a thought or several thoughts. It appears and passes. Isn't that so?

I have the same experience Kath wanting to get back to the awakening experiences.

We want to feel good, lovely, a specially connected way to that special experience of awake. Talk to a few terminally ill cancer patients where all apparent hope is gone. All that b.s. is gone. Why? The jig is up on the body\mind. It is going to turf. Then…. with that possibility the luminous appears because there is nothing left to invest in. Very interesting.

So, it is here anyway and judgmental thoughts about my condition is just taking up the screen of attention. Sure it has an energy and pull. It isn't permanent we know that because it always changes its view. What's for dinner? ;o)

Even with the observer, there is a gap where the observer is watching thought. The boundry for the real to see what is passing by. That is close, but…

The direct hit… the direct connect happens and then thought goes oh Wow look what happened! Always after the fact that we were just lived. It can't be controlled cause…. it is us….. naturally.

Here, I experience the same as you maybe at different times. As I see the same old dance of “I have lost it” show up, it loses its appeal. Yeah, I've seen you before Mr. Lost It. Coming back for a visit eh? Good! Come on in. I am going to be honest here not spiritual. When frustrated just be frustrated. Be totally frustrated if that is what you feel… or whatever you feel. Welcome it. Oh yeah! You are doing that… kind of… with out the pissed part. ;o) It is part of the show and you know it passes. You know that. I know you know that. I am not writing to asleep awareness. No such thing.

What is here is wordless, right? A knowingness or a…. sense. It communicates and only after it hits do I\we realize Oh! Wow! there it was. It is so close direct and natural that…… it is us before we know it is us. Isn't that cool? We can relax and let the clouds passs through the sky of awareness.

So the ebb and flow happens until the mind realizes hey here it is again, and ok here we go again until we don't. I can see it, and maybe this time I buy into it a little bit less or just say f it, I am not going for it period and just let my attention rest in the aliveness, radiance, silence, nothingness or whatever you want to call it.

You are soooooo far from asleep Kath! You will never be asleep again!!! Ever!!! You have Awakened! BANG You can't buy into that anymore or you wouldn't even surface it as asleep. How do I know? Well how would you know you were asleep if you weren't awake in THAT place to judge it asleep. What's looking to even front that judgment.

Nope, not buying it. Just clouds passing through the sky. You are here with us.

Hold my hand! I love you. You are here with all of us… in This!
Ben

Hi Ben is beautiful a full of energy what you just say BUT I love to clear
something…
you say    ” I am going to be honest here not spiritual.
Well, The truth is that to be spiritual is to be honest, if is not like that, is
just the ego showing off cleverness or insecurity.

Big smile, Chaitanyo

Wonderful discussion. I am not talking about denying thought or anything else for that matter. At the same time resistance will appear, and is not about feeling good necessarily..

I think Chi you misunderstood my meaning, and my words were not the best. Yes spiritual is honest, but sometimes I have thought I needed to be spiritual despite how I really feel. The ideal and the practice don't always match in the human sense. Again, the difference between thought and all the ways life actually unfolds. Almost anything you focus on and take issue with I can take another view or expand beyond it and provide a nuance unless the words are very spacious and open. Why? Because thought is limited. Not bad. Just limited in what it can grasp. Unless the words are very open and spacious, it becomes a game of words and what about this? what about that?

Yes all thoughts are welcome. They might as well be, they show up anyway do they not? What I hope to point to is that when attention opens there is another vast universe and way more to life than thought which really only experiences a focused slice of life. Thought isn't the only way of knowing, and some of those ways are so full and rich especially the one that lives us.

Thanks for the open space to communicate!
Ben

Oh my oh my oh my!!

How thrilling to hear you say that about what Adyashanti says!!! Isn't it extremely amazing how well he describes “it????” He and Ken Wilber are my current favorite “pointers.”

Though I must say everyone here is doing a great job in one way or another, and I am printing out and sharing some of the comments here with people in my life who are going through similar expansions.

My infinite appreciation for the loveliness,
OM

Kathy, Thank you so much for sharing your truly amazing experience.  I'm sorry that I don't have the eloquence to express what your post means to me.

I am so touched.  Thank you.

Namaste

Resonance. Poetry. Depth. http://groups.gaia.com/starseeds/discussions/view/490505#491392

It's happening all over.
Gratitude beyond bounds,
OM