Post 8

I’d like to talk about how for me, awakening alone wasn’t enough. I don’t think it ever is, but sometimes spiritual teachers represent their process as some kind of one time instant “ego death”, after which they became an enlightened being. This is typically how the legend of Buddha goes. Christ was supposed just to be born that way.

In order to have this discussion it’s important for me to even describe what, “awakening”, has meant to me. To describe the basic state it helps to have something to compare it to. I’ve had plenty of experience of being uninspired, tense, tired, bored, angry, anxious, or sad. I’ve also had many experiences of great excitement with a focus on a particular goal or event, object or person. Between these “negative” and “positive” states, I can feel certain degrees of freedom. I think we all can. When we’re sad and receive great news we become more animated. We have more energy, we’re more expressive, and more willing to make contact with others. Our tolerance level goes up by degrees, the happier we get. These states are intimately tied up in how we are assessing our world. Based on what we think about events and our situation in them, our emotional and physical state changes. We identify as a particular person and give our thoughts ultimate authority over us.

For me what “awakening” indicates is that we become aware of the reality of states outside thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. Awakening to this Reality has the effect, even if only temporarily, of loosening our identification with the body, with thoughts and emotions. The quality of the experience is of such a rich nature that we lose the compulsive investment in the story we were telling about ourselves and our usual ways of judging. It’s not that we can’t continue in the same life, but that we have more freedom of choice. The richness of the experience allows us to dis-identify even with the body because it’s sense points to life unbound. In this Reality death has no bite. We don’t wish to die, but on the contrary, our experience can be that it seems clear life has no end. This is not a hope, or a thought, rather the contraction around the “me” that might die, or might not get what it wants dissolves. We are left with a sense of unending Life, living through our form.

This unending Life is so rich and so much More that it tends to silence the mind. Our thoughts pale in comparison to its grandeur. It can fill and fulfill the heart. The heart seems to breathe of itself and expand infinitely in the most delicate way. Peace and Love, as the hippies say… A quieter mind and a more open heart, and we are satisfied beyond the positives and negatives of situations and how we judge them. All is ultimately well, Life endures, and it’s nature is Good.

How does this perception occur and what is it? I like to think of it as a type of frequency. This works well for how these states sync up with brain scans of meditators. Many studies have been done that show brainwave frequency changing according to states of meditation. Just as with color we can only see so much of the electromagnetic spectrum, in ordinary waking consciousness we can only sense so much of life energy. When we focus our attention and conserve our energy, we are able to shift our brainwave patterns to perceive other frequencies. The frequency metaphor is good but it only goes so far. The fact that this is what is happening physically doesn’t tell the whole story. At least not as I see it.

In mediation we can shift brain frequencies and change the patterns of connection happening globally across the brain. Typically we have a default mode network that is operating in our daily lives. This network is responsible for creating our sense of discrete identity, our sense of self. It creates narration for our lives. In deep meditative states (and incidentally in psychedelic states) the default mode network is quieted or goes offline and we perceive more globally across the brain. This results in less or no narration of events and less sense of an identity that is separate from the world. In these states we are not experiencing our usual “monkey mind” running around making us worried and distracted, so we experience a certain sense of relief. Levels of dopamine, serotonin and GABA all increase in response to these brain changes too. These are the pleasure, happiness and calming chemicals.

So the frequency explanation goes a certain distance in explaining more peace and satisfaction, but can it explain awakening? Are different brain states responsible for the immensity, the depth and breadth of what we experience when we have no doubt we have contacted Life most intimately? I would argue that meditation practice may pre-dispose us to make that kind of contact, it does occasionally offer us tastes of transcendent states. I don’t think it can explain the station of permanent awakening though. In fact I think mediation is an exercise in preparation for the surrender required to receive the grace of the awakened state. After staring at the wall for enough years we may finally give up on our efforting and reverently let things Be.

In my own case that’s pretty much how it worked. My path was the Christian mystical way, so it does differ somewhat from the Buddhist way, but in the end the last straw sounds remarkably the same across traditions. In Christian mysticism, the path goes through purgation, illumination, and union. In the Buddhist tradition the three stages are ethical discipline, concentration and wisdom. The first stage of these paths involves following the precepts, ridding oneself of poor habits, setting the strong intention to do good, and always sticking with your practice. It’s a turning of the heart and mind in the direction of the ultimate Good. The next stage involves cultivation of the heart and mind through practice such that it is predisposed to participate in transcendent states or to receive Grace. And the last stage is where union with God or Wisdom is achieved. It can’t really be called an “achievement” because it does not come of our own effort, it is more of a gift, but we can do the work of preparing ourselves to receive it.

As I experienced it, I have described the dawning of wisdom, or the experience of union with God as a delicate touch of Spirit at the crown of the head. It was like the skull opened and a feather tickled the brain. Some folks report much more violent energetic experiences but mine was not that way. In the Hindu tradition this type of grace can be transmitted as spiritual energy by a guru or diety and is called, Shaktipat. Once it is received, access to the experience is not lost. We can of course fail to prioritize our awareness of it, but it is received as a permanent gift. This is one reason I do not consider it to be a simple state of the brain.

For me this experience opened centers in the top of my head, in the forehead and at the heart. I haven’t really meditated much since then because to experience the silencing of the mind, great focus and the expansion of the heart all I need do is to turn my attention to one of these centers. If I am not already experiencing peace and love and I choose to prioritize these things I just open to them through the body and they arise. This is a gift of Grace, and not a cultivated brain state. I have gone years trying to bracket the experience out and explain it away, with no practice whatsoever, and yet as soon as I turned back to it, the centers opened and the heart and mind were soothed.

For decades I would not talk publicly about these things for the reasons stated early on in this blog. It took me a long time to more fully understand it all, I had to overcome inner conflict about it. And that brings me back to the original point of the post. Awakening is a permanent part of my experience. Any time I wish to enhance the state I can do so with a simple gesture of the mind. And yet there were many parts of “me” left unhealed by this gift. It was not a “one and done“ affair. I’ve had to live through many years of mistakes to see this. We can be plugged in to the energy of our Source, even permanently, and we all have infinite space within which to grow. As individual manifestations of the One Source in form, as long as that form exists, it can continue to evolve.

It was of course my own pride and naivety that caused me to believe the enlightenment myth of instant permanent perfection, but I think it can be dangerous for any seeker. In fact a belief like this can cause us to use our awakening to compensate for and inflate unhealed parts of ourselves. We grab the state and identify with it, closing back down the infinite flow of Life we’ve been granted access too.

In my view there is no human in a body (or out of one) who cannot continue to grow. We can decide to settle, and live within certain perimeters where we can support and more or less maintain our permanent peace, but exposed to new experiences there will be parts of our body/mind that can continue to adapt or be seen through. The potential of the Universe is infinite, and as extensions of this Source, so is ours.