Hi Xeno, thanks for sharing....Re: this...."Then all hell broke loose. A vast amount of repressed material rose up and flowed out of me. A total surprise. So clearly the awakening was not a clean slate. It was ultra intense, say twenty times more intense than anything I had experienced up to then. And the experience was truly unusual because while my regular life flowed along, there was this other stuff that I knew was not real, but it felt so real it was impossible to not act on it."
Something akin to this happened to me once.....except that I thought it was real. Smile. Keep 'em coming Xeno..... --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" > anartaxius@ wrote: > > > > I experimented and researched. But eventually it was kind > > > of full circle, I ended up reading about things that > > > initially propelled me on the journey, and found answers > > > to questions I could not find easily within the TM org > > > and TM teachers. > > > > > > What propelled the restoration of interest in all this was > > > a sudden unexpected shift in experience. Everything I had > > > thought had failed, proved in retrospect to have been > > > useful, but to have had more specific information at > > > specific times in my life would possibly have made the > > > process more efficient. > > > > I'm not convinced that would be true. "Information" that > > told you what an experience "meant" would have been just > > one more bit of misinformation, after all. The experience > > was what it was -- nothing more, and nothing less. > > > I was thinking along the lines of not what a description of an > experience means but how a description helps one navigate an experience. > Obviously, if I have the thought that things might have been 'better' if > I had had more useful information at the time, this thought is not going > to apply to me now, but it might be useful to someone else later on, so > they do not get quite so stuck. Not so much what this means, but what do > I do, if anything, when such and such happens, and I do not understand > what is happening? Certain traditional hand-me-downs do become useful, > such as what a screw is, and what a screwdriver is, and how to use them > in what circumstance, and how these items relate to sticking things > together. > > After what I would call a very clear but subdued awakening experience > some years ago, things were pretty nice for several years. There was > something about this particular experience, unlike others I had had long > ago, that I could not grasp in any way. Even the attempt to talk about > it stymied me. Then all hell broke loose. A vast amount of repressed > material rose up and flowed out of me. A total surprise. So clearly the > awakening was not a clean slate. It was ultra intense, say twenty times > more intense than anything I had experienced up to then. And the > experience was truly unusual because while my regular life flowed along, > there was this other stuff that I knew was not real, but it felt so real > it was impossible to not act on it. It was like my mind was split in two > with two parallel lives running simultaneously, one the present and the > other thoughts, feelings, behaviours from long ago. I had no clue what > was happening. > > If I had asked a TM teacher what was happening they probably would have > said I was 'just unstressing, that I should take it easy and maybe get > my meditation checked or something'. No really useful information or > guidelines that apply directly. Extreme experiences like this seem to be > swept under the rug by TM teachers, anything not in the template. I > suspect they do not really have any training to handle them. I found a > solution in what I was reading. It seems that after a clear awakening, > one's ability to keep repressed material repressed simply falls apart. > The can of worms is open, and if something triggers the experience, you > cannot close it, and the experience really does seem like you are coming > apart at the seams. All you can do is endure it. Nothing helps. It is as > if finally there is enough room in your world to experience this. The > intellectual knowledge that this is common, that others experienced it, > and that it is super intense, and that you have to go through it because > there is no way to back out, is really useful. Kind of like the > emotional equivalent of childbirth as far as pain. That information, > along with the stability conferred by awakening allowed me to get > through it, just barely. Without that information I would have been a > lot more confused, and perhaps would have done things even more stupid > than had occurred to me to attempt at the time. Half of my time during > this was acting on a mental delusion caused by the release. Finally it > subsided after a few years. It was a strangely miserable/wonderful > several years. After that my sense of stability was much, much greater, > and the character of the experience that I had had before this happened > was much clearer. Maybe it will happen again. I simply do not know. > > The result now I would not call bliss, but a sense of profound evenness > that has been stable for some time. I have no illusions that this > evenness will never be disrupted again. But it has been pretty nice. > > An example of evenness occurred a couple of days ago. I was preparing > breakfast. I had put a small amount of oil in a frying pan. Then while > it heated up, I sat down at the table and started to read the following > comic (courtesy of Randall Monroe at xkcd.com): > > [xkcd comic: Questions] > > I found this comic hilarious, but because it was so dense, I just kept > reading. After an interval, the smoke detector in the home began to > screech. The kitchen was full of smoke which was billowing out of the > pan. Another family member ran about in something of a panic, opening > doors, turning on fans and advising me not to try to cool the pan with > water because it would splatter, although the kitchen sink is stainless > steel, and turning the pan over in the sink, the hot oil would not > damage the sink, and I could gradually cool the pan down using water so > the oil would stop smoking. The whole process was just like taking a > book off the shelf or taking a walk. I did things, but no turmoil at > all. That does not mean some other situation will not press some > unsuspected button. > > Now this might bring up the question how could a supposedly awakened guy > let something so stupid happen? This is the cure for the myth that when > awakened one is some kind of all seeing eye probing into the depths of > creation and beyond, knowing everything that happening about. Awakening > is a transition, but a very odd sort of transition, because when one > clearly crosses the threshold, nothing is different from before one > crosses the threshold. This takes a bit of getting used to. It is like > the ultimate magic trick. All through 'being on the path' one has this > expectation that 'enlightenment' is going to be some kind of superduper > experience lasting indefinitely throughout all time, and that > expectation is totally wrong, for what was really being sought was there > all the time; ordinary every day experience is all there is, and all > that happened was the delusion things were going to be different from > this finally ran out of gas. > > Depending on your background, there might be several ways one could > verbalise this experience; what I said here is just one way. Take this > sample: 'But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to > become children of God, even to them that believe on his name, who were > born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of > man, but of God'. Now that seems like a wholly different sort of > experience from what I am saying here, but whoever wrote that in the > late first century CE is talking about this enlightenment thing from a > very different verbal perspective, a different culture that had a very > different understanding of the world. But he had to express this > experience according to the prevailing understanding. > > What really proved valuable in all this was that massive release those > few years back. Having this very clear experience for some time and > having 99% of it vanish in a second enabled me to experience how the > delusion of identification with thought arises, but there is no way to > control or manipulate the process. It is very much like magic. One is > either caught in a thought, or free of it. When caught, the description > that is the thought, is what is perceived as reality, and when not > caught, everything silently together is the reality, and thoughts are > like background noise. So idiotically simple. This is what it means to > see that the nature of thought is hypothetical, is always largely an > opinion. As that old Zen master said, all you have to do is get rid of > your opinions, but it took me nearly a half century to get to the point > where I could experience that with reasonable clarity, because it is not > a matter of pretending not to have opinions, or of appraising this > matter intellectually, it is a matter of experiencing directly that all > your thought is a pile of crap that has been mercilessly dragging you > around for most of your life. >
