The Awakened State

I am sitting here knitting a cotton dish cloth and listening to Adyashanti and a woman at a satsang that was recorded as a cd collection called Big Sword Swinging. The woman is talking about her experience, ten years ago, of awakening. When people talk about this, I really pay attention as I am still trying to verify my own experience(s). As I was contemplating and comparing my own experience of awakening, a pat phrase came to mind: "it was like a dissolution of self." Then I thought that it was as if the part of me that interacts with the world I live in, suddenly vanished. Then I thought, no, it was more like a stepping back from that part of me that interacts with everybody and my environment, and stepping into another aspect of me. Then I realized, no, it was is if that part of me that interacts with everybody and my environment is a shield -- I tend to think of this shield as me -- and this shield suddenly dropped away. I will need to spend some time thinking about this, but the shield analagy is the closest I have come, thus far, to what I experienced at that second awakening. Now I get to look at that aspect of my Self that is shield-like: is it protective? That's what shields do, isn't it? Why would it need to protect the part of my Self that is Source?

Namaste