Spiritual Journeying and Transformation – the Battle Within

 

In the great mystical Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, the main protagonist, Arjuna, is in the midst of a great war about to be waged.  But the battle is to be fought is against members of his own family.  His family members are divided down the middle, filled with nothing but anger for each other, the sound of conch horns all around.  His anguish over how he can move forward under such circumstances is what sparks his spiritual quest.  Some have said the battle is an allegory of dark and light forces within and the battles we all have to undergo.  This is something I can relate to. 

This last year has been incredible for me.  I’ve met Amma and been stunned at her presence.  I’ve had a 2 week silent retreat, and felt great solace in deep meditation.  But the most significant experience was to partake in an ayahuasca ceremony.  Every word that I say to try to encapsulate this experience seems to cheapen it and lead me away from it – a little like the first line of the Tao Te Ching ‘the tao that can be told is not the eternal tao’.  Some poems can touch upon it.  But no words can directly even touch the beauty of this. 

Every day there is more distance between me and the experience.  And yet.  My need to want to share this with others is still huge.  Because for years I had been reading about the idea that we are all one consciousness, that this individual ‘I’ is in part, illusory – we are all part of something far greater and something beautiful.  And ayahuasca took me there – it was a deeply awakening experience.  My ego consciousness dissolved, the little ‘I’ that makes that which I call ‘me’, was transcended.  The experience was both transcendent and imminent.  I was plunged into a deep sea of universal loving consciousness so vast, and so way beyond anything I have ever experienced, that I was just in floods of tears.  The love was unconditional.  I realised that beyond all our daily ego chatter, beyond everything we do or think important, this love awaits us all.  That daily experiences we term ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are all under the umbrella of this love. 

After that, I initially felt transformed.  But the experience is fleeting.  And once it leaves, the ego once more kicks back into place with all its chatter and dreams of self-importance.  I thought I was perhaps ready to leave the UK and go live in India in an ashram for a while.  And maybe I will.  Meantime, I’m drinking more alcohol, smoking like a trooper and involved in a relationship that plunges me back very much into the blood and guts of day-to-day existence, that I have been actively wanting to disengage from in order to pursue my spiritual dreams.  My family too, pull me back into daily life.  I don’t want to live in an ashram because I’m running away, however.  Spiritual experiences are our birthright.  We all need to know that we come from something that never dies.  That our bodies are temporary vehicles, housing us in lifetime after lifetime.  That at the heart of existence, there is great love.  And how much would our suffering lessen, if we knew this to be true on an experiential level.  How much more compassion we would be able to show others, and how much would we be able to drop some of our ridiculous ego posturing.  Perhaps by focusing on whether or not I make it to India, I'm missing the point -- there is always transformational work that needs to be done whatever continent I'm on.

But how do I reconcile what feel like irreconcilable forces within?  The force that draws me towards life, and the force that wants me to follow a more disengaged, renunciate, existence. And the battle against old habits which I know aren’t good for me.  There have been times when I’ve felt hugely torn, and like Arjuna, it can feel like a battle on an epic scale.  I can’t help but feel amazement – I’ve had the most amazing spiritual experience of my life and yet I’m still not kicking old habits to the kerb.  What is wrong with me?!  But I guess sometimes these things take time.  One idea is that we need to purify our thoughts.  Because where our thoughts go, action will follow, and where action follows, so habits begin, and then we are plunged deep in the dungeon of our karma, once again. 

Atheism has become popularised by the likes of Richard Dawkins, with his book, ‘The God Delusion’.  Some people believe that religions are no more than a comfort blanket, and a pretty skewed one at that.  But to jump on any kind of bandwagon without great investigation is to miss the point entirely, and to be a bit of a sheep.   We shouldn’t take anyone else’s word for what makes up this existence.  Life is too wonderful to allow ourselves to become blinkered and close-minded.  Because once you become an atheist, effectively you are shutting the lid on a pretty damn big set of questions, no?  How did we get here?  What is consciousness?  Could there be a God?  What is our purpose on this amazing planet?  Etc.  Until science can lay claim to 100% answers, then atheism is just a hypothesis.  And a comfort blanket in its own right.

These are questions everyone should think about – not just once and then dismiss.  We take so much for granted.  We worry about stupid little things of no importance, and our minds are full of clutter, some thoughts perhaps useful, some not.  We worry and get fraught when stuck in traffic.  We allow ourselves to freely rain down judgements upon others without examining ourselves first. We can become drawn into battles with desires, selfish goals.  Many people might believe their sole purpose in life is to become ‘successful’, because this is a notion our western society currently champions.  That to be rich, or famous, or respected, is what is important.  Is that true?  I believe it’s the journey that is important.  It’s all those in-betweens.  It’s the times when you were busy looking the other way.  To be successful or not is not the point.  To to find greater compassion and love for others, to live with our eyes and hearts wide open, is the point.  To be kind.  To follow our own true purpose, our individual callings – because we cannot lead the life another has proposed for us, only we can know what dwells deep in our hearts.  To allow ourselves a little joy that we are here at all.

Eventually, we will all get a call to deepen our awareness of something beyond our physical senses.  And the times of hardship in our lives are often the times when we seek answers the most.  Because at these times we realise the transient nature of everything, that nothing can be held onto forever.  It’s human nature to want to cling to our achievements, family and friends, whatever we think constitutes our ego identity.  But all of it will eventually slip away.  Religions try to cling onto their version of what God is – and some have distorted some very simple and beautiful truths.  Some people choose to follow a religion out of fear, or perhaps sheer exhaustion, life having given them a good kicking, they don’t want to think anymore, just follow meekly.  But they are not good reasons for becoming religious!  We should all do some work ourselves to find answers.  Humans have a natural herd mentality at times, we want to belong to a group (just look at the behaviour of some football fans!).  But we need to move beyond that, and do some investigative work ourselves to find the answers.  One reason I love the Baha’i faith is because it very logically says all religions point to the same God and that they all equally hold the same message.  Some people would say that this idea alone is blasphemy.  But we have to move beyond old, antiquated ways of thinking now and embrace truth, not fear-led superstition.  The times we live in urgently call for greater co-operation, not divisive behaviour.

Jesus said ‘love your enemy’.  Whether or not you believe in Jesus, what a powerful statement. Could he have been alluding to the fact that we are all one, all part of God, and therefore what we do to others we literally do to the self?  Either way, what a huge spiritual challenge, to ‘love your enemy’.  How many of us ever try?  Yet love is the most powerful healing force there is.  Carrying hate in your heart is self-poisoning.  In Buddhism, there is a meditation called the Metta Bhavana, the loving kindness meditation.  In this, you are encouraged to think kindly towards someone you struggle with – not hate, but have difficulty with.  The more often this is practised, the more you can begin to see the good beneath the flaws, perhaps even be able to see another’s reasons for behaving in a way you find difficult.  We are all odd creatures really.  We all see saw between feelings of compassion or annoyance, indifference and callousness and greater kindness.  We all have driving forces within we need to be aware of.  We always associate violence as being ‘out there’.  Yet the battle is very much inside.  We cannot transform another through violence, or hate, or anger, all these forces simply incite others to think or act in kind.

Love truly is the greatest transformational force there is.  We are already all on an incredible spiritual journey.  Just don’t take my word for that. 

Modern Man Under a Spell: Spirituality in the Material Age

It began as a feeling of uneasiness that something was off. Way off.  I was 25 and beginning to feel compelled to read more and more spiritual books, turning my back on the world of fiction which I’d loved.  For the next ten years, through ups and downs and riding some bumpy terrain, it was the spiritual books (and occasional experiences) that pulled me through.  A sense that we are more than just a bunch of random atoms that have somehow cleverly learned how to work together to form a human being - that somehow we are supposed to have evolved over the years from a bloody fish.  That if there is no God, there is certainly a positive and loving force that holds us all.  That we are all connected.  A spiritual epiphany was to follow, when reading the second of Neal Donald Walsh’s trilogy ‘Conversations With God’.  I suddenly realised, with tears streaming down my face, that I’d come home.  A friend who I told about this, said he thought there was one book out there for each of us, one book alone that could speak to our souls.  (I have now added two more books to this list, however!)

All this was in the backdrop.  I thought I had to do the same as everyone else, keep the day job and then do all this searching in my spare time.  But now, as though waking from a dream, I’m realising that we don’t have to dance to another’s tune, even if that ‘other’ is a huge, slick, consumer-driven, society.  We can quietly slip off the beaten path and find our own way.

I look around me, and feel a huge sense that mankind has really lost his way.  I am confined to a house made of bricks on a street lined with lights that prevents me from marvelling at the stars at night before I go to sleep.  This house keeps me from much interaction with neighbours.  It’s a cage that has not been successful in trying to tame me.  It tries to lull me into thinking thoughts concerning stability, permanence, to lull me away from the true nature of existence.

Inside this house there lies a thing called a television, a big, black, commanding, monolith standing in the corner of the living room.  We switch it on to amuse ourselves, watching fictionalised accounts of how we should live, or the ‘news’ whereby we are told what to think.  Television tells us in no uncertain terms “life outside, BAD!  Scary!  Stay indoors.  (As I write this, because of the Boston bombings in the US, people of Boston are currently being advised to do just that.) Bill Hicks, that brilliant comedian who is now sadly no longer with us, had a cool take on this.  What if we had a positive news story for a change?  Wouldn’t it be great if you turned on your TV and saw a newscaster say this: 

"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves.

Here's Tom with the weather!"

Because what Bill knew, is what Buddha knew on an experiential level (heck Bill might have known it on an experiential level too, he took enough mushrooms, apparently!) and what all the great gurus have been trying to tell us for years.  “We are all one”.  Simple.  We all think we are individual because our consciousness has been funneled into our bodies, thus giving us the illusion of separation – but it is just that, an illusion.  The vast sea of consciousness is collective.  Allegedly.  (Incidentally it makes for interesting reading, checking out the etymology of the word guru on wikipedia, if you feel so inclined:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru)

But we get it drilled into us from a young age that safety, permanence, mortgages, job security, all these things are important.  So we swap actually living our lives for this illusion of safety.  What is a life well lived?  It is YOUR life so only you can know.  As Jeff Brown (author of Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground among other books) would say, ‘don’t hand your tools to anyone else’.  So many people are just surviving – many have little choice.  You may have had to listen to well-meaning parents or guardians when growing up, but they probably simply tried to hammer into you the story they were told by their parents, or what they have learned through fear of life. 

“Take the safe job.” 

“Life is hard.” 

“Don’t take a risk.”

“What’s that you say?  You hate your job? EVERYONE but for the very lucky, hate their jobs!  That’s just the way life is!” 

Every time you hear that barrel load of crap, you just run for the hills, OK?  It’s all rubbish.  It is based on a fear-based system, in which we are taught to believe it’s a dog-eat-dog world and everything you do had better be self-serving coz their ain’t no-one else going to help you. 

“Toughen up!  Only the strong survive!”

Bullshit.

All of this is simply what they were told, and they are unthinkingly passing this on, believing it to be true.  The weak are often the most difficult to be around, or the most cruel, because it is harder sometimes to be openhearted that it is to close your heart.  We think closing our hearts makes us strong.  It doesn’t.  It just makes our world more lonely.  Expansion is key.  Opening up, taking risks.  Allowing your heart to embrace compassion.  Yes, it is painful, but not so bad when you know this world is but one aspect of existence.  Life can be hard, yes. But we can find ourselves in much greater emotional pain if we don’t try to follow what our hearts and souls are trying to communicate to us.

And here’s another gem:  Did you ever hear how what we all need is a “good war, so that young men will be able to get out all their anger in a ‘healthy’ way and it will pull us together as a country?!”  I grew up with batshit logic like that!  If you too grew up with similar and felt it was crazy, then at least you’re not alone.  As the Indian spiritual philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti said: 

“It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

And is our society sick?  As I write this, we are bulldozing  vast swathes of rainforest to make dams to create electricity – literally killing the lungs of our planet.  We have crimes of hatred for different skin colour, or simply for supporting a different football team.  We cram our children’s brains with facts, but do nothing to prepare them fully for developing their own psyches in an increasingly fractured world.   

Many of us go out to work in a firm we couldn’t care less about.  We knee-jerk react en masse to news stories, stories which allow us to feel a sense of justification to be angry at others instead of taking a look at our own ego-based issues and problems.  We never go within to find any answers, even though that is the first place we all should go.  We create genetically modified food - why, when nature is so abundant? (1) 

We spray our crops with poison and wonder why we all get sick – we even put some industrial ingredients in our food (2)

We spend weekends listlessly milling about in vast shopping malls, great big churches dedicated to the empty pleasures of consumerism, buying stuff which in a couple of weeks will have been forgotten about.  We kill animals – huge amounts of them (according to Viva.org.uk in 2011 we slaughtered over 958 million in the UK alone), for food when the vast majority of us could very well easily eat only a vegetarian diet.  And we don’t kill them without often inflicting great suffering.

And, as I write this, our country is a bit strapped for cash, and so it is trying to claw it back -- not from the rich (which would be more humane and logical) but from the disabled (or so it seems). (3)

We try to anaesthetize ourselves from an internal pain we can’t quite find the reason for, and huge amounts of us take antidepressants because Western medicine doesn’t have a clue about what to do when your head feels a bit broken inside apart from ticking boxes and putting you into a category.  And we drink.  Oh how we can drink here in England!  As a nation of barely functioning alcoholics, we're doing really well.  What is it we're doing?  Sleepwalking our way through the part of existence we should be enjoying, the bit when we're not working.  Why?

What then, is missing?  So many don’t know.  They don’t know that’s what they’re missing is our birthright, a divine connection with God, with Mother Earth, with Nature (because yes, we really can communicate with Nature herself, with animals and other creatures, too).  And often we are overlooking our own souls, smothering their voices, believing we have to conform to rules which stifle our hearts.

Many turn to God out of desperation.  Life has kicked the hell out of them and they are willing to surrender to anything at that point.  Don’t be those people.  Surrender only to a path to God that resonates with your heart.  That cool guru, Osho had this to say:

“My work is hard because the first thing is that I would like you to be uprooted from your misery, then only can my work start. This is a prerequisite, an absolutely necessary requisite. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be put aside, it has to be fulfilled. First you have to become a little happier, you have to learn to be a little more love-full, joyful; your life has to have the color of a little happiness.

Then go into the search for truth and you will be moving in the right direction, because then no lie can ever deceive you. You are no more interested in lies, because you are no more interested in consolation and comfort. Now you are ready to know the naked truth as it is. And to be a seeker of truth is the greatest thing in life. Okay!”

The sheer magic of things like the fact we are alive, of the fact that scientists still can’t tell us how consciousness works, of marvelling at the sights of nature, all of these are often forgotten as we trudge along in a collective fog, often pharmaceutically induced.  Just trying to get through another day.  Just... trying.

And so, perhaps after many years of feeling comfortable yet dull, of not taking risks, of perhaps feeling like we have lost a bit of our own souls somewhere down the line because our joy is missing -- of not attempting to develop our own characters or simply even just becoming aware of our full potential, we go and cark it. :)

Does this sound like a life worth living to you?

This passes for normality on a planet teeming with mystery, spinning around a sun in a galaxy with 200 to 400 billion stars, a galaxy that is one of perhaps 100 or 200 billion (maybe more).  To me what passes for society is a real waste of a huge exploration into human consciousness. 

I want to go within and I want to find my tribe of other people doing the same. I want to take risks, to allow my own intuition to be my guide.     And I want the freedom to be able to travel where I please, to dwell under the stars if I so wish, but definitely not to stay put in one house until the day I die.  I want people to be able to live a nomadic existence without stigma. 

To me, so many of life’s problems would melt away if we all turned, en masse, to a more spiritual way of life.  Sitting together of an evening and really talking.  Allowing someone you love to reveal their pain, and you, in turn, revealing yours.  To gently hold a sacred space for that pain to be let out.  And to allow both men and women to cry, because crying is such a beautiful release and we shouldn’t deny anyone that.  To sit together and sing songs or share poems that speak to the soul. To give thanks towards something greater than ourselves and feel a sense of awe of the sheer magic of existence.

We can start by simply paying attention to our souls.  Carl Jung, that ‘modern day shaman’ and behemoth of a psychoanalyst, spent years in search of his which culminated in his astonishing work, The Red Book.  If he spent years in search of his, that alone should be good reason to keep hold of yours and pay attention to it if it’s not happy – and, if it isn’t, be prepared to have to do whatever needs doing to go in search of it, even at the risk of total ridicule.  The payoff for that is much greater than we can ever know, it’s a real step towards healing.  This is YOUR life you are weaving – your song to contribute to this strange, collective and beautiful madness.  So sing it.  And switch the TV off!  

 Sources:

(1)   http://todayyesterdayandtomorrow.wordpress.com/genetically-modified-food/heres-names/monsanto/

(2)  http://www.collective-evolution.com/2011/12/04/did-you-know-many-mystery-ingredients-in-fast-foods-are-often-industrial-chemicals/

(3)  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/braindamaged-amputee-fit-for-work-says-atos-8547539.html?origin=internalSearch

Vipassana Retreat: A Journey into Silence

I went on a ten day Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, retreat over Christmas, at the International Meditation Centre near Chippenham, in Wiltshire. I had some trepidation about going, not least because it was a silent retreat; aside from speaking to the course leaders, we were supposed to not speak for the entire duration. I wondered how I was going to cope, and with a schedule of 6 hours meditation a day, in addition to the Buddhist discourses and tuition time.

But any trepidation I felt was put at ease immediately I arrived and spotted the enchanting pagoda, all lit up like a giant Christmas tree, and I was greeted warmly by a lovely person who showed me around. I was given a quick lesson in the first meditation we would be doing by Roger, the course leader who would be instructing us over the next ten days, and handed over my mobile phone (this wasn't mandatory, but I felt in order to properly immerse myself in the retreat this was a vital step. And so it proved).

It was lonely at times, and it was interesting to see how the mind writhed and wriggled, looking for an external distraction from any kind of pain. I missed people. The combination of a difficult meditation and the adjustment to a heavy meditation schedule meant that my mind thrashed about like a really annoyed mongoose at a heavy metal gig. I got bored and dispirited. It was interesting (and also painful) to see what the mind brought up, both in dreams and also during the day.

And yet. I experienced great feelings of happiness too, along with a sense of profound sacredness; especially in the walk to the meditation hall at 4am in the darkness; in silence, apart from birdsong or the bells on the top of the pagoda tinkling softly. Sitting in silence in the meditation hall felt very special. I cried tears of sorrow and also tears of laughter. Our course leader, Roger, was a very open and gentle person and it felt humbling to be around him. I loved being woken by a gong in the morning, I loved the pagoda with its pretty lights and golden turrets (which looked a bit surreal in the English countryside). And I really enjoyed some of the discourses on Buddhism.

We learned two different types of meditation while we were there, the mindfulness of breathing (anapana) and insight meditation (vipassana, which means 'to see things as they really are'). The anapana really shows how difficult it is initially to calm the mind down. (It was far more difficult than the technique I had learned at the Triratna Buddhist Centre, but because it has given me a greater appreciation of the mind I have far more respect for it.)

The day before we left was talking day, and it felt as though I already knew a couple of people I had been smiling at across the canteen or meditation hall, and I realised just how much we can gauge from body language alone. My joints ached from spending around 5 hours a day sitting on the floor in meditation and listening to discourses, I felt like fleeing for the hills on a couple of occasions and I had an epic battle with myself to not take my phone back from the secure lock-up. And the last couple of days it was a huge battle to do any meditation at all, at times. But, here's the thing. Despite the difficulties, it was still a deeply enriching gift to myself that will stay with me for some time, an inner journey that gave me a sense of achievement and a feeling that the anapana meditation is going to be a great new friend. I would recommend a retreat like this to almost anyone as a way to go into yourself a little deeper. And who knows? Maybe if you have accrued enough good karma you may even become Enlightened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sitting in silence, nestled in the embrace of the night sky I hear a blackbird sing- singing for the joy of it all. Singing for love. And it is as though I am hearing for the first time and tears fall, but they are no longer mine alone.

Religious evolution: a short manifesto

Christianity:  “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (from the words of Jesus)

Islam:  “Those who know themselves know their Lord”

Judaism:  “He is in all, and all is in Him”

Confucianism: “Those who know their own nature, know heaven.

 ”Taoism:  “In the depths of the soul, one sees the Divine, the One

”Buddhism:  “Look within, you are the Buddha”

Hinduism:  “Atman [individual consciousness] and Brahman [universal consciousness] are one”

from the Shaman’s Journey:  Supernatural or Natural by Ede Frecska M.D. (printed in Inner Paths to Outer Space)

So many people can become fixated on the differences within religions, and I can understand why. Some of the main religions teach there can be only one path, and only one God, and that anyone worshipping a different path is ultimately misguided.  Oh, and that might mean that they up off to a rather hot destination when their end is nigh.  People are judged not for their good deeds, but rather, which religious box they have happened to tick.  And religious people are arguing for their very sense of purpose, for the ultimate truth, the heart of all existence everywhere.  If you have been brought up your entire life to believe only one truth, it becomes very hard to accept anything else.

The tragedy is perhaps that while people are busy arguing over who is right, and incorporating their arguments into their egos, they can forget the essence of the spiritual messages that cross all religions.  The messages are simplicity itself, with love at the heart of them all. Love, unity, laughter, compassion, gratitude, humbleness are words that immediately spring to mind. And a deeper connection can be found only by going within, by deepening our spiritual journey. The spiritual path can sometimes seem a lonely one.  Going within is a job that requires nothing outside of yourself and only you can get you there.  Yet anyone who has been on a spiritual path for a time will tell you the rewards far outweigh anything previously encountered.

Religion can be incorporated into peoples' lives for many different reasons and we are very much fallible creatures.  To believe in a God, or an afterlife, these are huge concepts.  We're going to want to protect deep beliefs such as these as much as possible, and if our beliefs are very narrow, fear-based, or very deeply ingrained, the idea of allowing a little flexibility into the equation can be damn near impossible.  And that is perhaps a real tragedy if people are unable to see anything beyond the confines of their beliefs.  Their restrictions can lead to a life perhaps lived akin to the people in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, seeing the shadows of people cast against the wall of the cave and believing that world to be the ultimate reality.

Some people want to wear their religions like a badge, quote a little from the Bible, attend Church and yet, even whilst acknowledging the beauty of their belief system, they may be unable to allow that beauty to do its transformational work on them.  In this way, they are perhaps still more concerned with status.  They are less self-aware than they need to be in order to develop.  But haven't we all been a little guilty of this?  I remember when I used to go to Buddhist meditation while simultaneously thinking myself just a little 'cool' for being there.  The ego can be slippery and elusive!  We can't eradicate it but we do need to be aware of it.  Because religious beliefs can be so powerful, it is often hard for people to disentangle their beliefs from their true identity.  We all want to be right.  And if we believe there can ultimately be only one path, everyone else potentially threatens our position.  And some religious teaching can be a little like brainwashing.  There is simply very little room for ambiguity, for allowing other religious to co-exist, peacefully, alongside. 

This all might be OK, if say, there were only several thousand people on this planet.  But we currently stand at just over 7 billion people.  And there are some pretty urgent issues that need our full attention.

So how to go forward?  We need to pare things down to basics.  To being Humanists first and foremost, being kind to fellow humans and animals and our planet which lovingly sustains us.  And being kind for its own sake, not for an imagined reward in a life hereafter, not for fear that a God might strike us down.  We need to develop an attitude of compassion and kindness.  Blind faith needs striking off the list.   We should be able to test our faith by allowing ourselves to have our own religious experiences, whether through meditation, prayer, fasting, walking in nature or just being kind to someone.  We need to allow everyone else their own beliefs, providing those beliefs do not harm any other lifeforms.  Co-existence simply has to be the way forward.  Life on this planet is starting to feel a bit crowded, and we need to collectively turn our attention towards more urgent questions, such as the problem of mankind's impact on this world.  We can't do that so effectively if we are too busy fighting to protect our beliefs.  We are currently having a pretty devastating impact on this planet -- it's huge.  From the threats to coral reefs, the amount of rubbish we produce, to GM crops or the amount of trees we needlessly chop down.  We often don't want to acknowledge the mess we're creating, and we can find all sorts of ways to distract ourselves, from fighting about pointless things, to going on a consumerist binge through vast, soulless, shopping malls.  Our ability to walk through life, blinkered to all the terrible things that are currently going on, shouldn't be underestimated.  But we all need to participate more in the care of this world.  Turning a blind eye simply isn't going to work as a long-term strategy.  We're threatening our own survival as a species through our current actions.

Initially, for all those who are spiritual or religious, we need to allow ourselves space to worship, to feel reverence, but to back off and allow others to feel perfectly entitled to the same whether for 'our' religion, or a differing one without feeling the need to become self-righteous (or to relegate their belief system as being 'less').  Respect for other religions is key.

We need to be able to let go and allow gentle scrutiny to replace blind faith; and allow ourselves to be able to laugh at our indignant and childlike, egos.  The more self-awareness we bring into the whole affair, the more we develop understanding and compassion for ourselves and others.  I imagine the most judgemental people are the ones who practise the least self-awareness and humility. 

Ultimately, perhaps, we also need to lighten up.  We can take ourselves so very seriously. How would we act if we truly knew the heart of all life was love and joy, that we are truly all One consciousness experiencing itself subjectively (as Bill Hicks used to say!), and that God is perhaps being revealed at all times through endless acts of creation.  And,that at any minute if we stop and listen for just a second, we might hear the song of God, softly woven into the fabric of the universe -- just waiting for us to notice.   

Inner Paths to Outer Space

Another book I'm reading about awakening experiences, is called Inner Paths to Outer Space.  It's interesting, outlandish, and rather wonderful.  Drawing upon different accounts from ingesting psychedelics such as DMT, Ayahuasca, and magic mushrooms and drawing upon shamanic experiences, the authors weave fantastical tales of connecting with the mystical.  One woman having taken DMT, recalls being watched by friendly beings, and recalls  this:

[...] 'At that point, it opened, and I was very much someplace else, being, dancing, with a star system.  I asked myself, "why am I am doing this to myself?" And there was "This is what you've always been searching for.  This is what all of you has always been searching for."

(image from www.club-t-shirts.com)

Reading about the Ayahuasca experiences and studies, it's becoming apparent just how important a book this is.  There is a great deal of respect for the sacred, the numinous, and how no-one should ever engage with a sacred medicine such as Ayahuasca, lightly (if you were thinking of ingesting for frivolous reasons, perhaps the account in the book of one person's alien abduction while under the influence of Ayahuasca might give you pause for thought.  People have reported many different types of experience after taking Ayahuasca, it can bring you beautiful experiences but also you may have to confront some painful ones along the way.  However, from most reports I've read or heard, of participating in an Ayahuasca tea-drinking ceremony, people seem intensely grateful to have had the experience and it can be literally life-changing).

People undertake experiences like this to find deeper meaning, a sense of touching the divine, or to bring healing into their lives.  As the author notes, in our increasingly fragmented and postmodern world, the need to find connection and meaning is increasingly important.  I also believe the need to touch the mysterious is important, to connect with the wild parts within ourselves that often get neglected in our increasingly materialistic world.  When we try to govern ourselves from a rational standpoint only, we often can fail to appreciate the depths within us that don't wish to conform simply because something appears to 'make sense'.  The journey the soul wishes to take might differ wildly from what our ego wants for us.  Using a sacred plants or meditating can offer us a way to find and connect with hidden parts of ourselves as well as offering a glimpse of communion with Divinity.  

Waking from Sleep

I’ve finished reading Waking From Sleep, and it’s a great book.  Presenting lots of different awakening experiences from all walks of life, Percy Bysse Shelley is quoted in there, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Jill Bolte-Taylor, are just some of the examples of people who have been able to see beyond the narrow world-view we are presented with, to have a deep insight into the richness and 'oneness' of everything.

The author, Stephen Taylor, describes two different common experiences, one, which he has abbreviated to the ISLE state, is an intensification and stillness of life energy.  As it suggests, this is a low key experience, often brought about through meditation or quiet periods of solitude.  His high intensity awakening experiences are the more volatile kind, such as with raising kundalini energy.

The author describes his own mild awakening experiences and the routes he took in order to facilitate them.  He explores different reasons for ‘waking up’ at the end of book, and discusses how it might benefit us from an evolutionary perspective.  And he quotes a native Sioux Indian.  ‘We believe that land and people are one.  We believe that only people with an integral relationship to the land can survive.’  And he notes that some contemporary indigenous peoples such as the U’wa people of Colombia or the Kaiowa of Brazil have threatened to commit collective suicide if their land is taken from them.  One Aboriginal elder said:  ‘unless whiteman learns to enter the dreaming of the countryside, the plants, and animals before he uses or eats them, he will become sick and insane and destroy himself’.

It does seem to me that in these times where we are so dependent upon materialism to the point where we’ve forgotten where we truly begin and end, where we place great value upon meaningless things and place self-interest above our fellow human being, that we are in urgent need of change.  There is a beautiful force at the heart of everything, of this I am sure.  And we do need to pursue ways in which to ‘wake up’ to become balanced again, remind ourselves of our place in this wonderful universe.

Awakening Experiences

I’m reading a book at the moment called ‘Waking from Sleep’ by Steve Taylor.  It’s a look at different types of spiritual experience and ways to achieve them. Apparently the Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson practised a form of mantra meditation by silently repeating his name to himself.  'This act frequently induced high-intensity awakening experiences in which he lost all sense of seperateness, and became part of the formless spiritual ‘ground’ of the universe.  As he describes it:

"Individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this was not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words – where death was an almost laughable impossibility – the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life."

Taylor discusses how dancing, meditation, listening to music, contemplating poetry or painting, running, or simply sitting contemplating in silence, can all induce either high-intensity awakening experiences, or something calmer and more peaceful.  I know from my own small experience of meditating how I can lose a sense of boundaries within my body, and I have experienced a great sense of love and peace.  And some people experience transcendent sex -- when you have a mystical experience during the act of sex, without necessarily having any interest in or knowledge of, mysticism or religion.

Epilepsy or other brain conditions can sometimes induce powerful states, too, such as the scientist, Jill Bolte-Taylor, who apparently experienced Nirvikalpa samadhi.

Jill says:

"I could no longer define the boundaries of my body.  I couldn’t define where I began and where I ended. […] My left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent, just [as though] someone had taken a remote control and pressed the mute button.  At first I was shocked to find myself inside a silent mind.  But I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around  me… I felt enormous and expansive.  I felt at one with all the energy that was and it was beautiful there…
My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.  Nirvana, I found nirvana…"

And a quote from the author and spiritual teacher Alan Watts, from his autobiography:

"Every morning when I first awaken, I have a feeling of total clarity as to the sense of life, a feeling of myself and the universe as a matter of the utmost simplicity.  “I” and “That which is” are the same.  Always have been and always will be.”

I read an article recently about how it’s common for astronauts to have deeply spiritual feelings or experiences.  Since then, a quick search on Google reveals just how common an experience this is and it even has a name, the overview effect.  It is said to be a similar effect that is experienced by Buddhist monks whilst meditating.

Here's an interesting article about the first 24 astronauts on the moon -- upon their return most of the astronauts found their perspective on life to be considerably changed.

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who rode on Apollo 16 in 1971 describes how a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe.

"What I do remember is the awesome experience of recognizing the universe was not simply random happenstance…that there was something more operating than just chance."

Astronaut James Irwin founded the religious organization, High Flight Foundation and Charles Duke formed the Duke Ministry for Christ.Mitchell founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences, a leading institute for consciousness studies, upon his return. He also maintains that UFOs are real, and that the US government has been covering them up for 60 years.

Some people say that these astronauts just went a bit crazy upon their return.  And it's a natural reaction, given the tiny constraints of the worldview we normally operate within, which has little time for spirituality and religions, and most view both with the highest degree of scepticism, especially given the recent trend of atheism with people like Richard Dawkins jumping into the fray.  Some might think it's just the physiological effect of being in space, and that the chemicals in the body produce euphoria-like effects which have us fooled into thinking there is something more mysterious out there.  But, in terms of evolution, humans are puny!  We have a small understanding of the world around us and are currently grappling with science to attempt to make Einstein's theory of relativity fit into the world of quantum physics. We can't discount the vast swathes of mystical experiences on account of not having proof for it yet. We don't have proof to entirely eliminate the possibilities these experiences present, either.  Personally, as a believer in God and a believer in a mysterious universe, I find these experiences continually fascinating.  And I hope one day they point us in the right direction for our own spiritual evolution towards a more peaceful world.