| | Hey all, this website is a really neat idea. Crowdsourcing of this sort seems like a neat use of the internet.
Anys:
So I get the impression from reading these boards that people claiming to attainments is sort of tricky business. It's highly subjective, egos are involved, people get bound up in the prospect of being special or having some kind of calling, etc... I can certainly attest to this from my own experiences, which I'd very much like to share here - A handful of experiences which have left me more confused and isolated but also more free and full of faith than seemingly nothing short of a planecrash or NDE should be capable of instilling in someone. So it is with some degree of trepidation that I write this. It makes me feel special. It makes me feel like the walls of my prison are denser. That the guard has doubled and is more alert than usual. That my little secret digging spoon is softer. Escape feels more distant. So here's another A&P/SE/Satori claim with a twist: I cause other people to have the experience with me. WOO look at that self-importance fly! me, me, me. Walls made of metal. Need a bigger spoon. (I honestly have no idea what to do with this big pink elephant that appears whenever "I" talk about "me"...it's just so paradoxical that it demands to be pointed at and joked about)
I have had a handful of experiences, ranging from what seems to be A&P up through kensho and satori/SE. The satori/SE experiences have ALL occurred only while in conversation with other people, all of whom reported profound alterations in consciousness that very precisely matched the experiences as I witnessed them subjectively. I do not meditate and I do not know much about these things from a dharma(?) perspective, but the experiences have lead me nowhere but in this direction, so here I am reading about Buddhism and samsara and jhana and satori and kensho and bheosop and fablriwn and @$%^#. The reason I'm reaching out to this community is to find a teacher and because these message boards are just an awesome concept. I feel that my experiences may find themselves well on here.
28 year old, male, depression sufferer for 20 years. I was raised under a roof where religion is basically the root of most of the problems in the civilized world and that science is the only true path to understanding. Very interested in philosophy, very uninterested in religion/spirituality, until recently. No meditating, until recently.
About 6 years ago I started really digging my feet in. Life just didn't make sense and I wanted to get to the bottom of it: I was becoming intensely aware of the absurd impossibility of the whole thing..."Big bang? whatever! how can this possibly be happening? Even if the universe IS here for perfectly good reasons: How is it that there is this self projected inside of it?!" Everyday was like this giant question mark of HOW?! What am I? What is this? It grew in me daily...genuine confusion, doubt, absolute eagerness to see how there could be this little person sitting in front of a console displaying 5+ senses...how is it that there is thing, made out of universe, that is perceiving itself? Eventually I started having these little moments of AHA! that would last for a second or two...Eating breakfast, driving to work, at work, etc...my thoughts would zero in on the answer to my question like those moments in school when you aren't quite ready to understand how a certain mathematical principle works but suddenly get it for just a second, then it is gone. When the answer arrived at consciousness level it kind of brought the walls down around me for a second. It was passive, a lot like having something fall on your head out of nowhere...a totally unexpected Eureka from the subconscious. My experience would fundamentally shift just for a moment. It would feel like those times when you realize you left the oven on but good instead of bad. There was some electricity to it. A flash of truth and understanding for a brief moment. Then everything would be back to normal...looking around...that was...weird? Carry on. This has happened a little over a dozen times over the last 6 years. Last one was maybe two months ago.
These little AHA moments were taunting...they made me feel like there was something legitimate to my questioning of reality and it caused me to dig in even more. So at some point about 4 years ago I started really asking people what they thought about this situation that we find ourselves in. I don't think it was terribly humane, the way I went about it - I didn't really have any information about where THEY were philosophically. But people would indicate that they were trying to see eye to eye with me, that they genuinely wanted to know what was going on with me...so I'd try to explain it to them. Then, one day, I REALLY DID explain it to someone and the roof blew off, for both of us. The words came out of me without any trace of resistance, as if I wasn't really the one speaking them. It was like one of those little AHA moments described above popped up right as I was explaining my view and it stayed long enough for me to point to it between the two of us. Like grabbing this persons hand and putting it on that thing and saying "SEE?! LOOK AT HOW YOU DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE! LOOK AT YOUR SITUATION! IT'S LIKE A BIG ILLUSION!". This first time was with a male, 3 years ago, lasted for about 3 hours. The second, female, 2 years ago for 1 hour. The third, female, for 15 minutes.
I just explain the situation to both of us, unrelentingly for about 10 minutes...The words are critical...there is something about the way the words come out, the way they're chosen and spoken and used to point at the moment in a very specific way. The Moment is just hell-bent on finding ways to trick the mind into turning away from it and the words are like this magic key that keeps the crosshairs on it until the mind can see, can attain. So then that attainment occurs: The feeling is what I now associate with the words "bliss" and "harmony". But my real fondness for the state comes from the profound "bemusement", the slight tinge of really pure humor as if someone had left a truly funny joke for me to suddenly come across. I have a very clear memory of feeling so utterly bemused by how simple and funny and obvious the whole thing was. It was just ridiculous. But the "I" that felt it wasn't there...this is CRITICAL to the state: The conversation partner that shares the experience and I are no longer separate people...it's like the thing that's making the experience for both facets is directly in between the two of us - we are no longer concerned with ourselves in any way. In normal everyday life, it's infuriatingly impossible to speak about it with any truth...even more so when I try to feel it for real, when I try to apply it to life outside of that state. The joke is now not so funny. The other thing about it that's really quite profound is "other" people in the environment. There is this powerful feeling of separateness from where they are in their heads. It is almost exactly what lucid dreaming is like when you meet a dream character and just observe how unreal it is...Or like when you are dealing with someone who is sleepwalking: They carry a vibe that doesn't really reflect upon the moment quite right. That always came up as a theme in these three instances...we as a single thing would look at other people, they would come up to ask for a pair of headphones, or something, and It was just so obvious that they weren't "here" in the same way. It was quite eyeopening and it has really changed the way I look at myself in normal every day to day life...I feel like I must be sleepwalking again, but lucidity doesn't come easily. In fact, regarding lucid dreaming, I gotta say: This state is uncannily like being in a dream conversation with a dream character, starting to become lucid during that conversation, pointing the dream character to that concept of lucidity and relentlessly convincing it that it is a character in the dream, and then SNAP, the dreamer becomes lucid. Since neither of you are the solipsistic end-all be-all of the universe, you both realize that you are not real, you are both characters in the Big Dream that this bigger truth is having - and I guess that is supposed to be the Buddha or something? Big truth Buddha. All of this stuff around us and inside of us is one simple thing and this one simple thing makes everything, including what seems to be us.
Then leaving the state. Each of the three times it was the same: We stayed there for the allotted time, whatever the reason for that allotment, I hope I find out someday. Then there's this moment where "It" just knows that the time has come to go back to sleep. There is a strong sense of "duty" like it is supposed to go back to make some more theater with itself and that the self will re-materialize from that theater. It doesn't feel bad or wrong, it just feels like that's exactly the way it's happening and everything makes perfect sense. Then the world starts to feel more and more like you are in it instead of watching it. Back to normal, but, what was that all about!?
My conversation partners, the 3 separate folks who on 3 separate occasions shared this exact same experience with me, have all corroborated the details of this experience. They are profoundly affected just as I am. Upon reflection with each of them, there was a feeling of loss of self, "crumbling of reality", a sensation of awakening from a dream, "being in a hall of mirrors", being lucid in a dream of dreamers...
So, again, I'm not coming from a world that is very friendly to religion so I have these subconscious fears of it. Buddhism fell under the radar of my family and I've never had any reason to keep a distance from it aside from it's organized-religious attributes, the procedural stuff like worship and symbolic rituals and hierarchical rites of passage just make my skin crawl - it's all sleepwalking to me, spinning wheels. These experiences have turned my world upside down, though. Some days I feel like I have been given a gift, which confuses me because it makes me feel like I'm deluding myself, strengthening my ego, and other days I feel like I'm in the most horrific prison and that I just want out...I want to go HOME, back to the truth! But that "want" makes the walls of my prison so much stronger and more impassible. It's like the parts of the Matrix that they didn't tell you about because it would just make the movie too confusing. To explain further: I find myself trying to reproduce the process, trying to go back home to the truth, having conversations with friends in ways that approximate the conditions of before, but it never works because my intention muddies up the purity of the words and the true-true. It just doesn't work when you try. Do or do not I guess. In any case, I'm sorta done messing around...The direct experience and the second-hand validation that has happened, 3 out of 3 times, has completely convinced me that there is something to the world that we just don't normally get to be with, and it is a better place, worth moving heaven and earth for. And it's right here between all of us and all of It, right in front of my nose, but ten million light years away. Chinese finger trap of the mind.
I feel utterly compelled to take this in a more tried and true direction.
I live in New Hampshire. Are there teachers for this sort of thing? Do I need to have a lot of money? Buying the truth just seems preposterous and a sham.
Is this even Buddhism? What IS that state called? Do you recognize it? What about the little AHA moments? Any information on transmitting these states to other people through conversation?
-CC
-Edit- A clarification I missed: -2 of these were sober experiences, one was slightly h*gh. |