Mundane and Accidental Experiences of Higher Consciousness
January 30, 2018
I wanted to share a few of the experiences of falling into Awareness. It is really behind every corner, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for us to make the slightest shift of attention.
My childhood, like I suspect most childhoods, was filled with seemingly mundane events that produced profound insights. One of the first I remembered transpired while watching my favorite Saturday morning cartoon show, The Real Ghostbusters. In this particular episode the four Ghostbusters needed to find something or someone. Three of them went off, frantically and energetically searching far and wide. Ray, however, decided to sit down on a bench or by a fountain. His notion was that if one were to only sit in the same place, eventually the whole world would come to him, and indeed the object of the search presented itself nearby a short time later. This statement, though not seeming to be the most practical means of seeking something, hit me like a ton of Koans, and sent me headlong into a vast, cavernous sense of Presence. My body, the room, the television all dissolved into a field of Light. Something within that notion seemed to answer all of life’s problems. There was nothing missing, everything was fullness. The conditioning that was beginning to accumulate was shaken off like so much dust, the other members of my family were not right about life, they simply needed to watch cartoons with me, and the light would go on! (my poor family had quite enough to put with as far as Ghostbusters watching. For at least a year, I may have watched the movie every day, often complaining until it was started)
On another occasion a couple years later, I decided to try out my dad’s Gameboy, which he was given for Christmas in 1989, but hardly ever played. We had two games- a Star Wars game and Tetris. Electing for the Star Wars game I soon became proficient enough to make it through a few levels until reaching the asteroid field escape. This I found an entirely impossible proposition, try as I might, every combination of up-down-left-right proved to be an exercise in utter failure. This process repeated until I accidentally moved the Millennium Falcon all the way to the bottom of the screen. While it appeared that the asteroids would surely crush the ship, they glided harmlessly by. 3 seconds of watching this sent me into a vast silence and within that silence the thought dawned on me that the way to avoid all obstacles was to go to a place where they couldn’t hit you. This simple and obvious thought moved my mind into an even deeper place as it became clear that this was one way of expressing the answer to all of life’s seeming problems. So long as one stayed in that vast Presence, no amount of life’s slings, arrows, and asteroids could possibly do any damage to the Essential you. While I soon faded out of the clear state, the ripples of deep coherence from this experience would continue to permeate my life.
Jacob’s ladder- Fast forward to the topsy-turvy world of Middle School hormones and insecurities and my 6th grade class was on a field trip to one of those team building rope courses that were so popular in the 90’s. My class came to the Jacob’s Ladder, which is a kind of rope ladder diagonally strung between the ground and a tree. Several people volunteered to attempt to climb it before, with the majority or all being flung to the ground. Preparing myself for the same fate, it came to me that I should just climb in harmony with "it's essential Way"- a novel phrasing for the time. Instead of attempting to remain on top, I’d lock my ankles under the wrungs so as not to fall. Much to my surprise this strategy was absolutely perfect and after being flipped over I scaled it upside down with complete ease. After my successful scaling, my classmates proceeded to easily climb up in the same manner, which, for whatever reason seemed to slightly annoy the ropes course master. Were we supposed to be learning resiliency through experiencing failure? Did we cheat the Kobaiyashi Meru?
The true significance for me was the mystical state that the successful scaling of the ladder produced. Apart from my complete surprise that this had happened, there was an immersion into the sense of a vast Flowing Silence. Within that silence there was a deep and clear sense of a current or a river that meandered through all of life, that all problems were really products of attempting to go against the current or cling to the sides of the river, and that the solution to all of life’s apparent viscissitudes was simply to flow harmoniously with this subtle stream of energy and intelligence. Years later upon discovering the Tao Te Ching I was pleased to find that there was an entire philosophical system that expanded and illucidated this one point.
Love for a Day- In my Junior Year of High School I had been reading a book that stressed the importance of the development of Unselfish Love as a means and core reality of spiritual development. Much of the time, meeting the particular definition of this Unselfish Love seemed a completely daunting task to me. I would not have put myself forward as some kind of ever-full, non-needy, fountain of love. However, one afternoon it came to me that if I put forward an intent in that precise moment to live the next day immersed in the field of Love, it would be so. I wholeheartedly aligned with the intent on the spot, though I wouldn’t have placed any bets on that coming to fruition.
Upon waking the next day, both myself and world felt completely permeated with a vast full field of Love and Awareness, to the degree that there was very little differentiation between the world and I. The Love was so strong that none of my buttons or psychological triggers were at all active. If harsh words were spoken to me, while I could hear the negative intent and perceive the configuration of stress that produced them, the whole experience was softened by directly experiencing that all people and things were emanations from this underlying field of Love. What a wondrous day. Unfortunately, upon waking the next day, I was rather back to square one! The old familiar mind chatter was back and gone was that wonderful sense of living in the field of love. Fortunately, my sense of humor was very much intact, as I slapped my knee exclaiming, “Shit, I should’ve asked for more than one day!”
While no technique is needed, for most of us it's exceedingly helpful. A good technique, such as the one this site is built around, can bring one to a continual experience of Presence in a lifetime or far less. For some I've known, it's taken far less than a decade of consistent practice. If you have any questions on that or experiencing higher states of Awareness, feel free to contact me through the website contact button. Now based in Japan, I'm happy to travel anywhere for courses. In addition to teaching meditation classes in person, I also offer different kinds of "coaching" sessions over Skype or Zoom.
