Category Archives: presence

The Accidental Mystic

Posted on by under Healing, Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality, transformation

For many years, I followed the New Thought beliefs at Unity and Religious Science meetings. I attended Self Realization Fellowship. At all of them, I enjoyed the meditation and the message. I believed strongly in the teachings and became involved in these groups, including board activity and teaching the kids. I studied New Thought literature and read books by sympathetic thinkers such as Emmet Fox. When our minister was out of town, I often conducted services.

This involvement had a positive effect on my life. But it took a health crisis to really connect with spirit.

I woke up from a three-week coma a couple years back, and the person who woke was different from the person who entered the coma. When I woke up, something else was looking out through my eyes. Something larger than the little me.

As I recovered, learned how to walk again, and resumed my life, the sensation or presence didn’t go away.

In trying to understand what was happening, I read further than deeper. I now think that what I’ve experienced is what is often called oneness or non-duality. I’m the same person walking around, working, and interacting with family and friends. My personality is generally the same, but there is a presence that is with me all the time, something positive that seems to neutralize negative feelings. Anger and frustration are gone. And while humor is still part of my life, the cynical side of humor is absent.

Reading about spirituality is quite different now that I’m trying to understand what’s happening to me rather than trying to make something spiritual happen. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the decades of spiritual study helped bring about this positive change. Don’t know. But the world – which once seemed inhospitable – now seems beautiful.

Everything Is Not Enough

Posted on by under music, nourishment, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality

Lately I’ve been listening to the late Texas folksinger/songwriter, Townes Van Zant – always worthy time spent. One verse in particular stood out. On first blush, the words are rather plain. But the power of Van Zant’s words floored me on this recent go through. The lyrics come from the song “To Live Is to Fly”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JGc2CvM0EQ

Everything is not enough;
nothing is too much to bear.
Where you been is good and gone;
all you keep is the getting there.

While Van Zant is not ordinarily considered a spiritual songwriter, great songwriting always has spiritual aspects. You can’t say anything truly meaningful without saying something spiritual.

The first line, “Everything is not enough,” captures the crux of life. In this illusory world, true satisfaction is not possible. Since the world is an illusion, it cannot nourish. We must take nourishment from the vision of oneness within. So “everything” is the world could never be “enough.”

As for the second line, “nothing is too much to bear,” we get another look at the same thing – the world can’t give us what we need. Indeed, if we look to the world for satisfaction, we will receive “nothing,” and that’s a heartbreaker – it’s “too much to bear.”

The next line, “Where you’ve been is good and gone,” shows that the past also cannot nourish. Where we have been is “gone.” Then, he shows what we can “keep” from our experience in this world, it’s “the getting there.” The “getting there” is the now. We get to keep the now. It’s all we receive in this world because it’s the only thing that’s real.

These simple words sung in the folksinger’s vernacular – no fancy or poetic language here – says something quite powerful about what it’s like to be alive. In just 24 words, he has said enough to fill a book.

 

The Tiger and the Cherry Tree

Posted on by under enlightenment, fear, Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality

A young girl was walking through the fields when she noticed a tiger had spotted her. The tiger began to stalk her. She started to run, and the tiger hurried in pursuit. The young girl came upon a tree and scurried up. The Tiger came up to the trunk of the tree and began to climb toward the girl. So she climbed further up the tree, going out on a branch. As she moved out on the branch she was startled to see a poisonous snake.

The snake was slithering toward her. She looked behind, and the tiger was making progress up the tree. Suddenly she noticed she was in a cherry tree and there was a ripe cherry was right in front of her. She plucked the cherry, popped it into her mouth . . . and it was delicious.

What does this Zen story mean? It’s been told many ways, but the central facts are the same from telling to telling. There is danger behind, danger going forward, and the fruit is very tasty. In the Zen story, the tiger is the past, the snake is the future, and both are very threatening . However, the fruit is the present, and it is fine and wonderful.

I believe you can take the story a step further. As with the Zen lesson, there is no tiger and there is no snake, but perhaps there is also no cherry tree or luscious cherry. The cherry is part of the illusion that includes the tiger and the snake.

You can take it a step further yet: there is no young girl, for she is also part of the illusion. There is only consciousness which is neither tiger, nor snake, nor cherry, nor tree, nor young girl. All that exists is the taste, and it is delicious.

A Shift – And Then the Search Is Over

Posted on by under enlightenment, Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality, transformation, True self

A friend asked what is meant by “spiritual awakening.” I thought, good lord, that’s like trying to explain the taste of ice cream – or why the Beatles meant so much once. I decided to see if anyone had a decent description I could borrow. I researched a whole host of descriptions of mystical experiences: Kundalini awakening, psychic break, deep meditation, LSD, psilocybin, sweat lodges, the effects of following a guru. While I found exciting tales of dips into the mystic and powerful revelations, none described what I was seeking to answer my friend’s question.

Then I found a site that just nailed it. It was Bonnie Greenwell, Ph.D.’s site, awakeningguide.com.

Her description is simple, eloquent, and blessedly void of drama: “The experience of waking up is different than mystical events, and in fact has often been said to be no experience. It is a ground-level shift that occurs right now, right here, and whether it lasts a minute or a lifetime, the Truth of who you are is known,” says Greenwell.

She continues with her clear description of a spiritual shift: “Waking up is what happens in response to the question ‘Who is having these experiences?’ and searching neither thought nor emotion to find an answer. It is not the process of having an experience, however ecstatic and profoundly mystical it may be,” says Greenwell. “It is the understanding of that which has an experience, or that which lives through us and is eternally present through all time and experience. To wake up we have to give up the idea that we are a personal identity who is seeking experiences, and begin to wonder what is really true underneath and behind all experiences that humans live.”

She also well describes the absence of effort involved in awakening: “When there is no longer any struggle, because all that is left of the little ‘me’ is a slight memory and flavor, and perhaps a few insignificant preferences that can easily be put aside, the spiritual journey is over.”

Thanks you, Dr. Greenwell.

 

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

Posted on by under Darkness, Healing, Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spiritual light, Spirituality, True self

When we have a spiritual awakening, it’s natural to ask the question: How do I live now? How does this change my life? Does the internal breakthrough come with external responsibilities?

The simple answer is no, nothing has changed.

The more complicated answer is yes, everything has changed.

The title of this blog comes from William Butler Yeats. In his own spiritual development, it became clear to him that great dreams come with responsibilities. Your response to the world will change as your view of the world evolves. This works both ways. Slip into a dark place, and you will see an unforgiving world that is hurtful. Your actions will follow: hurt people hurt people.

But when your spiritual life expands, you see more and you will begin to understand you are part of everything and everything is part of you. As the small and ever-pressuring self begins to break apart, you will see that your presence itself begins to have a healing effect on those around you.

Dark, constricted vision produces after itself. Light likewise, produces light. As you develop spiritually, you will automatically pull away from hurtful behavior as from a hot fire. You will gravitate toward healing behavior because it is nourishing and feels right.

Detachment from worldly pressures does not mean separation from others. Quite the opposite. It means freedom to do what is lovingly needed. In the dream of a greater, more spiritual existence, you will see where you can be helpful, and it will be your pleasure to serve.

You will see the thorn in the other’s palm, and you will remove it – not because you have new strength to take up this weighty task, but because you will see that it is so easy to do.

How Long Have I Been Here?

Posted on by under Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality, True self

The answer to that depends on what we mean by “I.” During a good portion of my day, I’m very aware of “me,” the human being who was born a few decades ago, who had particular childhood and adult experiences. A good deal of the time, those experiences seem very personal and overwhelmingly real. “Of course they’re real,” I think.

But there are times when I’m not looking out through the eyes of “me.” There are times when the notion of “me” seems to have little charge. I’m surprised sometimes at how easy it would be to let go of it, to let it fall back into the energy of unrealized potential – or whatever energy goo our lives fall back into when they are behind us altogether.

When I was a teenager and later a young adult, I fealt threatened by the notion of having my life wash out like a rain drop into the ocean. I feared that would be obliteration – the death that some see as simply the lights going out.

Now, when I consider the idea of my life washing out into the ocean, it seems a blessed relief. The personal “me” is useful. It’s a tool. The experiences in our lives – in any one of our lives – are rich and colorful. But less and less do I see them as personal. My life is all our lives. I don’t own it, I don’t hold it, I simply use it.

Some say the “me” doesn’t exist, that it’s an illusion. Oh, it exists all right, but you don’t have to identify it as who you are. Who I am has moved on, or has always been beyond. I’m not sure. But I know the lights can’t go out on the who I experience now.

I Ain’t Wasting Time No More

Posted on by under Oneness, presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality

You reach a point in life when you don’t want to waste any more time. Time begins to seem precious. Time becomes a limited quantity that can slip away forever with hardly any notice, until years have passed, decades have come and gone. You look in the mirror and – wow – time has passed you by, leaving its scars or gravity and worry. And you haven’t written that novel, you haven’t trained for that marathon, you haven’t even unpacked all the boxes from your last move.

And that’s fear talking.

You can always count on fear to try and snatch the moment away – and the moment is what you have. It’s all you have. It’s all you need.

You have the moment if you choose to accept it. The moment is eternity. The moment is now. Right now. You can bring it into focus by changing your breathing. Slow down your breathing. Let the air all the way out. Let it back in slowly. And be where you are.

It doesn’t matter where you are. In traffic. In your dentist’s waiting room. On hold during a call that’s going to make all the difference. There is only one thing that can make all the difference, and that’s to experience . . . what is called so many things . . . oneness, holiness, centeredness . . . being whole.

It doesn’t matter if you feel broken. We all feel broken in so many ways. Some say that spirit enters our wounds. But spirit doesn’t have to enter us. We are made of spirit. There is nothing else to make us from.

We lack only one thing – the awareness of spirit within . . . and spirit without. It is ours as we choose to have it. This moment is all you need to be one with spirit. Breathing in, breathing out. Right here in this moment that holds all of the time you could ever need.

It Guides Me Now

Posted on by under presence, spiritual awakening, Spirituality, transformation

For most of my life, I’ve been aware of a “still small voice within” that seemed more important than the rest of the thoughts banging around in my head. While many associate this phrase with the Old Testament, Mahatma Gandhi also used it when he said, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still small voice within.”

For much of my childhood and adult life I was aware of something inside me that was more essential than all the noise of the world. During much of that time, I could only barely hear the voice, and I could only barely feel the presence that seemed to go with the voice.

I often thought, there is something inside me that knows.

I had an odd confidence in that voice. Yet the nose of the world nearly obscured it for years. There were times I tried deliberately to increase the volume of that still small voice. But it stayed remote and scratchy, like a radio station in the middle of the night you can barely hear – a station that happens to be playing the music you most want to hear. It slips away again and again.

Then, I experienced a physical trauma that suddenly changed how it felt to be in the world and changed what it meant to be in the world. All for the better, surprisingly.

As part of that change, the still small voice became clear. The shift in clarity seemed almost physiological. The voice was suddenly at hand, and the sense of presence I always associated with the still small voice seemed to permeate the very cells of my body. Instead of far away and indistinct, the voice and the presence became accessible.

I don’t know what to call it. I don’t know what it is. But I trust it and it guides me now.