Welcome to Reality

Initial Shift: On my first retreat in 2020 I had the clear shift of awakening after Lorn was kind enough to have a conversation and put some attention on me. The experience was one of a sense of expansion and a letting go of some of the restrictions of the mind and yet it was completely effortless and natural. Afterwards Lorn asked me how I was doing and then asked where the sense of “me” was and I responded that I could not find the “me”! That was when I realized that something significant had happened. At first during the following weeks the shift was somewhat subtle and in the background of day to day experience and at the same time was never lost. The mind and personality continued on as if nothing had happened. But there was a sense of a shift of perspective of who I was. Having practiced meditation for over 50 years I was very familiar with the deep silence one experiences during the practice. And the sense of me was now replaced with that same silence that was previously only experienced during meditation. I took a second retreat with Lorn and Lucia one month later and during that retreat the shift significantly deepened and expanded to become a clearer experience of the Self changing from one of limitation to thoughts and feelings to one of deep silence and unboundedness. The experience of witnessing, as if I was watching a movie of my daily activities, became more and more frequent and along with a sense of wonder and joy about this new perspective. Shift to Unity: I had been living the perspective of less and less of a personal self since the initial shift of awakening for many, many months and I was attending retreats with Lorn and Lucia regularly. On one of the retreats Lorn and I had a conversation and he said something during the interaction that immediately caused an opening to a new experience of everything feeling different. All of a sudden everything I saw became an extension of my Self and there was a sense of identification with everything that had not previously been there. All the objects of perception had a faint glow as if they were all made of energy and that was the same energy of myself. Although there was still a sense of separation between myself and the physical objects I was looking at, there was also a sense of intimacy with everything and that everything is just consciousness in flow becoming a physical manifestation. Life became more joyous and carefree. Shift to Brahman: After living in Unity for some time during a retreat with Lorn and Lucia, Lorn and I again had a conversation and coming out of that, there was an unmistakable new experience. Everything just disappeared! Although I could still see all the objects around me, the dominant experience was that everything I saw was just made of nothing. And surprisingly, consciousness itself dissolved into nothing. The previous experience of everything was made of consciousness, which is the same as myself, completely vanished, and I remember thinking, “Where did everything go”? At first this new perspective was a bit disconcerting and took a short time to get used to as it was so different from previous experiences. And at the same time there was a great sense freedom and even a sense of relief as if being let out of some type of jail that I had spent my entire life locked in. The nothingness had a sense of infinite silence that had no boundaries and gave a sense of deep peace that was wondrous and became the new way of living life. Everything including consciousness became nothing and it was wonderful! Shift to Divinity: I had been living in Brahman for a few months and during another retreat with Lorn and Lucia I shared with them an experience that I had been having during meditation for the previous 2 weeks, which was of a very strong light that would appear as if coming into my head from somewhere, and it was so strong that it would push my head way back. It was not unpleasant in any way, but it was powerful. Both Lorn and Lucia commented on it, and the following day, during meditation, the light appeared again and then turned into a figure of a woman that was draped or covered in some type of shawl. She then uncovered herself, and there was her universal form, and I immediately recognized her as the Divine Mother or the Pure Divinity. She was extremely powerful and yet soft and loving and both with a “form” and yet with no form. And she was beyond our normal sense of time and physicality. Such magnificence and glory as one had never seen or felt before was the experience. Having that reality dawn, all one can do is to immediately and spontaneously begin to praise her. And interestingly enough, along with the experience of her grandeur, there was also the fact that there was no person who was experiencing her, that there is only her. That praise and wonder at her overflowing power and joy continue. Everything experienced now is clearly seen as only her bliss as she revels in herself, and that the appearance of a world and universe is nothing but that Pure Divinity. — RM, California, USA

Initial Shift – I started reading about non-duality in 2013 – specifically Ramana Maharshi and his ‘Who Am I?’ self-inquiry practice. A few months later I experienced a Great Silence where the mind completely stopped. Full stop. This also included the (first) experience of realizing I don’t exist as I thought I did – and neither did anyone else. It was profoundly blissful, and I laughed at even the thought of politics, countries, people etc. But the sense of self (personhood) was still there nevertheless (this was realized in retrospect). It was during this experience that I had a deep and irreversible recognition of my silent, thought-free nature, which remains as a continuous thread of my experience to this day. The clear shift – I went on a retreat in Asheville, North Carolina, and I had a powerful shift out of the identity of the ‘me’ – and even the body. For the next several months, I was out of the body (seemingly), meaning that when I spoke with another person, it felt as if I was a third person watching my body interact with others from outside the body. From then forward, I leave no trail of experience. If I go to the store, there is no sense that I came ‘from’ anywhere. Wherever I am ‘IS’. I neither come from anywhere, nor arrive anywhere. I always seem to ‘BE’. And although my eyes settled back to seeing from the physical eyes, to this day I do not feel embodied. Shift to Unity – Shortly thereafter, I was walking in the park when all of a sudden there was a recognition of being everything, everywhere. I was the plane in the sky (and the pilot and passengers inside), I was the grass and the soles of my feet simultaneously. True unbordered beingness. Neither inside nor outside of anything. If I rest my elbow on a desk, there is no distinction between the desk and my elbow – except conceptually through thought. All that is felt is one sensation at the contact point. Is it the desk feeling my elbow, or my elbow feeling the desk? Something like that. I recall being afraid of eating that day for fear of eating my tongue. There were no distinctions anywhere. No orientation – nothing to hold on to. And although I use the word ‘I’, this experience did not include a ‘me’. Just an experience without an experiencer. Something like that. Shift to Brahman – I was on my computer, and I looked out the window and could no longer discern which view was real – the images on the computer screen or the street scene out my window. Then, as if I were a candle that had been blown out - the terror of existential death. Absolute nothingness. No orientation. No ability to even think or rationalize what was happening. Absolute death. Not off-line like in deep sleep – but the absolute terror which included the death of deep sleep. I was homebound for several weeks. My wife had to nurse me back to some level of stability to even leave the house. It destroyed all ideas I might have entertained about ever knowing anything at all. It destroyed all ideas. The only orientation (which is really no orientation at all) has been the refuge of thought-free being. Silence. Some call it ‘Mauna’. It has been my refuge. My reality is really a wordless reality. My ears ring with silence. It's beautiful. It can bring tears to your eyes. My Present Reality - I have come to a place where I not only see thoughts, but I see the entire mind. It has come to the point where I see that nothing is really happening in the way that we normally speak of as things 'happening'. Stillness and silence are ways of communicating that the sense of personhood has become transparent in favor of what I will now describe. I neither am nor am not. There is no ‘me’ as such. I am existence without a ‘me’. There is neither one, nor two, nor none, nor any other idea. Beyond words. Ineffable. Being beyond words is not a handicap or loss, it is a soft bliss of not knowing. Pure not knowing, without a ‘me’. There is nothing to know in that which is full and whose fullness dissolves all arising of questions. There is no loss. And there is no gain. No opposites apply to where I have come to. Existence alone is. There is no one to say I am that existence. One might say that existence says I am existence. But not even that. I am unlocalized. I am neither infinite nor finite, nor any measurement of any kind. I am unbound and free as to shape and size. Ineffable. There are neither ‘places’ nor a ‘me’ to be any place. I am neither in a body nor not in a body. The skin of this body no longer contains any sense of an entity. I must ‘think’ myself into the body otherwise there are no ideas about being in a body or not being in a body. Things neither appear in me nor do not appear in me. There is no ‘me’ for anything to appear in, and there is neither an outside nor inside for anything to appear inside of or outside of. Ineffable. As the sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “I am neither conceivable nor perceivable”. This is my experience. There is neither time nor not time. It doesn’t arise to be thought of. If I had to speak words, I would say there is no time. Timeless, eternal, etc, all point to ideas. One could say timeless if that meant without any idea of time at all. There is now a still-point of pristine thought-free being where there is no sense of self but a sense of unbounded freedom which sees all but is untouched by any of it. Unspeakably intimate yet impersonal and untainted and untouched by anything. It defies explanation or description. Being everything, everywhere, yet no things or places are registered. No me to explain or describe. No residue of experience. No history or trail of experience. Dream-like. Always ‘here’. No other places and no other times. Just always here, for no one. It’s like here - is here. Wherever this body is or goes is ‘here’. No place. Full, but nowhere. Neither somewhere - nor nowhere. Just Peace. Just the soft bliss of simple being. It has the tone of just repeatedly pinging itself over and over again, undulating, deepening its knowing of itself, becoming richer and deeper on its own level. All the ideas of Oneness, I am That, I Am, etc, have become transparent because something happened to the ‘me’. It is still moving in conditioned ways but it has thinned out to such a degree that there is no real orientation at all except conceptually. It is just as difficult to say I am not so and so, as it is to say I am so and so. I have no ideas about these things. They arise and play out spontaneously. I don’t feel connected to what plays out, good or bad. All extremes seem to have come to the center. I have disappeared yet see from another place. This place includes all places because there are no places as such. So it sees from no place. How can I describe what a human mind cannot grasp? The remnants of the conceptual mind is in disarray, disoriented, still seeking and still trying to be included. All of this is seen. There is no desire to do anything about those movements except to continue to favor the pulsation of thought-free being. The mental and emotional terrors associated with this revelation are understood to be movements of the conditioned mental construct which continues in the ever-deepening process of deconstruction; thinning out and becoming more and more transparent. The response to these terrors have been informed by an intelligence that has always been compassionate towards these movements. There seems to be a knowing and understanding that this undoing doesn’t have to be ‘violent’. Sages throughout the ages have spoken of ‘killing or destroying the ego’ or, alternatively, ‘allowing the ego to sink into the heart like a salt-doll dissolves when placed into the sea’. For some reason the latter has been what has informed how those arising are dealt with. I don’t feel I know anything about that movement unless I conceptualize it as I have done here. In truth, I have no idea what that movement is, and this that Is, is always choosing Peace, and so, the latter seems to be chosen. I have no ideas or beliefs that meeting it with compassion is meaningful or not, because in the stillness of being all that is ever known is That One Itself on its own level. Trying to ‘do’ something about any apparent happenings seems as futile as going to a mirage in the desert for a drink of water. Yet actions arise spontaneously, and it is sort of curious when things arise that do not align with this Peaceful equanimity I have been describing. What I have come to see is that this inert body has its own journey and it seems to be futile to try to interfere with it other than the dissolving effect remaining inward-turned seems to have. There is no residue from actions of the body/mind. There are no stories created around seemingly negative actions as there was prior to this shift. It is only more obvious and apparent now that this is so. It is sort of known in retrospect. And although I speak of qualities like Peace, and the soft-bliss of simple being, thought-free being can be experienced as without any qualities whatsoever, which creates an angst in the mind which again, is dissolved by favoring the pulsation of stillness and silence. In this sense, Peace is known to be eternal if one wishes to use the concept of time. But the deeper truth is that there is no past, present or future for Peace – there is just Peace in all times and places, despite there being no times and places as such. Ineffable. This is a summary of my current spiritual condition. — JM, FL, USA