| | Hi folks,
Never posted here before, but I have some questions for this fine community. Thanks for reading!
Roughly 5 years ago, I began searching for the truth. I didn't understand what that meant at the time, but I resolved to "stop lying to myself". I was naive, and lacked any understanding of the profundity of that simple change in paradigm. I felt the massiveness of the change build up rather quickly, however. I began to look at the world differently. I saw suffering everywhere. I was immediately jaded. I read and read dharma books. I practiced intensely, until I had an extroardinarily powerful A&P type event. After that, my concentration became the tits-- meditation became so easy despite some of the difficult sensations and thoughts. Since that event, I fall into awareness of the sensate field like I'm returning to my bed after a long day. So comfortable, so equanamous in my sitting. Within the next couple of months after the event, the dark night type stuff picked up. Eventually I had equanimity, and saw the fabrication of the self very clearly-- ignorance to becoming (later I came to be aware of dependant origination). Somewhere in there, I lost any doubt about the Buddhadharma.
As time moved onward, I repeated the same fruition, and my understanding deepened; dependant origination was very comprehensible to me. I kept meditating, trying to uncover the mystery of ego. Eventually, new understandings arose. I began getting sense that mind was primary, etc, without having "experienced" that to be true. Duality was beginning to weaken, but what seemed to be fairly slowly. Soon I reached another dark night. During a walking meditation, something clicked, and non-duality set in intensely. The lines defining inside and outside of my body began to really blur...quite a trip. Physicalism became silly to me, and I came to understand exactly the extent of physicalism/materialism on my experience. Things aren't things. I learned it so well that I was able to drop much of it and stay in a perpetual non-dual experience. Around this time I began to understand the operation of karma as it unfolds in my life. For awhile I walked around in the depths of non-duality, observing the karma that pulled me around. It was fascinating. I grew into an experience of equanimity despite emotions, and objects of sense (thoughts, things, etc). In understanding how my emotions and objects of sense pull me around karmically, I began to take greater steps to surrender, and moved into equanimity regarding those ideas. Again, things began to click, and I became very aware of these facets of awakening. I also surrendered into a very deep recognition of "no-self" for the first time.
Some months later (just a couple of months ago, actually), I ended up at a Goenka vipassana retreat. I spent the entire time deeply engaged with the dharma. I had an A&P type event with some odd experiences starting to arise-- in walking after my meditations, I would experience the movement as if the world was moving through me, instead of me moving through the world. Not sure if that makes any sense. My body became completely unattached to the ever-moving point of awareness that "I" control. Two other things of note occurred. I had an experience of seeing extremely nostalgic images of events which strongly contribute to my karma in the here and now. Seeing the ignorance in those extremely nostalgic images, I was able to glimpse aspects of my character that I had entirely forgot about. Moreover, I was able to resolve the karmic baggage--their egoic weight lifted. This only happened with 2 or 3 images. I think this was a "past-life" experience of some sort.
Since then, my awareness of the sensate field has coupled very well with my recognition of no-self, allowing me to quickly identify my egoic energy as it bubbles up. The egoic energy is just *so fabricated*, so not part of the emptiness within which I clearly *actually am*. This has just "clicked". Awareness of only the sensate field is present always, just sort of in the "background" when I have to think.When I finish thinking, and move forward with my day, I slip right back into equanamous observation of the sensate field. Thinking itself has become just another gateway to recognizing the "Deathless" or "unmanifested" or "emptiness" that pervades all my experience.
These are the events which have contributed strongly to my own awakening. In terms of pragmatic dharma, where would you all map me at this time? I'm really having a lot of fun with this, and thanks for your insight and opinions!
Thanks! |