Waking Up Alone

I am curious as to what my spiritual journey would be like if I did it all on my own: no books, audio tapes, contact with instructors of any sort. It is my understanding that the ultimate goal is to become good at listening to Universe/God so that one can figure things out. Sometimes, I get practical suggestions from Universe/God. For example, one day when driving south to Victoria, I was suddenly hit with the question -- for me, the best instruction seems to appear in my mind as a why question -- why don't I turn off at Helmecken Rd.? This question arrived with the excitement of the prospect of adventure. Immediately, my practical nature piped up with the argument that by turning off at Helmecken, I would be adding twenty minutes to my journey. So I continued south towards the exit I usually take. As I came around the last corner, there was an automobile collision at the intersection in the oncoming lane. As a consequence, I had to sit in a left-turn lane for forty minutes while the dented cars were removed to allow flow of traffic. This wouldn't have been so challenging if I had been the only one in the car, but Sadie was with me, too and it was August and despite being lightly overcast, baking hot. Knowing that dogs don't do well in hot cars, I had to open doors and I even leashed her and stood with her on the median. Fortunately, I had water for her. By the time I drove through the intersection, I was joking to myself that if I had listened to the Universe, I would have been home twenty minutes ago.

Occasionally, I get spiritual guidence or suggestions from Universe on what I should be doing to enhance my spiritual practice that will help me progress towards enlightenment, but it doesn't yet flow as it obviously has done for Joel Goldsmith or does for Adyashanti, Tolle, and Jed McKenna. I guess that this is partly due to lack of something or other on my part: not listening tentatively enough or cluttering up the air waves with mental mind chatter or not being ready for more messages than I am getting or maybe the Universe thinks I just don't need more information yet. I am quite certain that many enlightened awake individuals of the past had no outside help to attain this state. Jesus had nobody human to help him.

This morning as I meditated, I tried, as always, to adopt a listening attitude as suggested by Joel Goldsmith in Beyond Words and Thoughts and in some of his other published works. However, all I could hear were birds in the garden, the refrigerator, Sadie licking her paws, and two cats fighting. And this despite having tried to adopt an attitude of inner listening. And of course my mind wandered a little, yet again, so there was some interference from mental chatter. In my experience, it only takes a split second for Universe to insert practical guidence into my mind and it seems quite capable of wedging it in between the incessant mental chatter that fills my mind, so I am not convinced that a still mind is totally necessary for receiving information.

Ten minutes after I broke from meditation, Universe decided to be benevolent: an elderly woman who employs me to assist her telephoned and asked me to go this afternoon and help her fold her laundry. As I am grateful for every opportunity to help another human being, I said yes, and as my bank account is looking emptier than I would like, I am feeling gratitude for the money. I know that I am approaching this situation from humanhood and it certainly doesn't fit with a passage from my morning reading:
-- "The goal of the mystical life is to be a beholder of God in action, a life in which nothing is ascribed to one's self, not even good motives. As for desire, there is none. There are not even needs because every need seems to be met before one becomes aware of it as a need. This is living by Grace, but you can live fully by Grace only as that selfhood, that which has a desire, a hope, or an ambition, disappears." Goldsmith, Beyond Words and Thoughts

How difficult this all is. Maybe this is where one uses autolysis as recommended by Jed McKenna. I am intrigued by the idea of autolysis and have used it for big problems in my life such as trying to get over my ex who I still love while at the same time feeling totally cheated and betrayed by him. But I really haven't used this tool for dealing with mundane things such as anxiety over job hunting. There are some good examples of how to use autolysis in McKenna's second book, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment. I gather that one uses autolysis for exploring and disconnecting from and annihilating everything to do with the false self: dismantling the ego.

Sometimes, and this is happening a lot these days, I become totally confused and cannot figure out how to move forward with my spiritual journey. Maybe I expect too much and want to see signs that I am progressing, even though I have been told by many "experts" that it can take a lifetime of effort before one produces a sign that things are working. I am so driven. Am I addicted to this stuff? I don't know. I sometimes wonder. If what I have read is true about having to dismantle the ego, I can't see how anybody but an addict would have the energy or the drive to pull it off or succeed.

Adyashanti recommends not doing anything and it will just happen: one will just wake up one day. How does he know that all those years of effort he made meditating and practicing Buddhism didn't help him to awaken? I expect I am as driven as he was as I can't seem to let it go. Thinking about spirituality and puzzling over how to make it work for me, pervades my life: that and the latest concern about my finances. I hardly ever stop thinking about either.

And there was a strange experience I had in 2005 or thereabouts and I now wonder if this was a taste of what it is like to awaken. It literally did just happen, as Adyashanti says: "It just happens," and lasted for about twenty minutes. And in retrospect, I have had at least four similar experiences. Really, there is no way to describe it. It is easier to say what it was not than what it was; how it was not than how it was. It was evening, around 1900h, and I was sitting at my ex-mother-in-law's dining table with my ex and her: my marriage hadn't yet fallen apart. I think we were drinking weak tea as there is a constant flow of weak tea in that house and it is used to accompany most visits. My ex and his mother were talking when I suddenly experienced a perception shift. It was like I was suddenly in the audience and at the same time I was in a movie and it was only because I suddenly found myself in the audience watching or observing that I realized that up until then, I had been in a movie. If I had not suddenly found myself in the audience, I would never have realized that I had, up until that moment, been a star in a movie. This is so difficult to explain. I was completely at ease with the situation and felt no emotion or fear and everything seemed quite normal. But I knew that if anybody found out about my situation, I ran the risk of being hauled off to a doctor to be checked out. I was determined to protect myself from this as I somehow knew that although everything had suddenly become very strange, it was okay. What was particularly difficult was that I was living in the moment to such a degree, that I couldn't track sentences. I could hear a word and know what it meant, but as soon as the word was spoken, it was gone from my memory. Not being able to string words together meant that I could not understand a thing being said by my ex or his mother. I had the thought that if I were asked a question, I wouldn't be able to answer and at that point, I might get caught out or at least, cause suspicion to be raised about my mental wellbeing. As it was, I was asked something and I had to have it repeated and I worked very hard to try and understand what was being said. I hoped I had got the gist of it and an answer came to me, but I could not formulate it into a spoken sentence as I could not string words together. Eventually, I managed to get out a short three-word reply that I hoped would make sense. This state eventually gently invisibly lifted and I was able to function again: or maybe not. Maybe that other state was functioning and the one I am presently in, is not.

If this is what it means to awaken, I can see why people like Adyashanti say that it can take five to ten years to learn to function in the world of human beings. I imagine that this is what happened to Jesus: he awakened and then had to vanish while he got it together enough that he could appear in public and not be labelled "mad." That's probably were he was for those missing ten years of his life: learning to function in the privacy of somewhere safe from prying human eyes. Adyashanti mentions somewhere that it took Tolle two years to recover from his awakening. He also says that monastaries and the like are useful places for newly awakened beings to hide out in while they figure out how to function. At the time that I had this experience, although I was familiar with the term "enlightenment," I didn't know a thing about awakening and that this is what people meant when they talked about enlightenment. So it is possible to have a spiritual experience without having knowledge or know-how. Therefore, it must be possible to have a successful spiritual journey without the aid of teachers and only one's own inuitive self to guide one.

If this experience that I had, is it, when one is in it, it is an intriguing state to be in. I felt no care or fear and, in fact, I remember it as being devoid of emotion, although I felt curious. It was as if an entire part of me had suddenly vanished. But I was still there. Life as I live it these days, ceased to work for me a long time ago and I would be relieved if I could regain that odd state or if that is not what being awake is like, I look forward to awakening anyway, however that is.

Namaste