Oneness: is it union, merger, loss of boundary - does it really matter?

In an attempt to deepen my understanding of my own experiences of oneness I've been reading what some of the religious paths to it have to say about it. The immediate frustration I faced with attempting this was all the contradictions and of course everyone thinks they've got it right an everyone else has it wrong.

I've listened to Adyashanti and Eckhart Tolle on Youtube.  I've tried to get my head around the different Shiva Hindu sects as well as Advaita (non-dualist Hindu traditions), the gnosticism of Tau Malachi and of course Kaballah.  Conspiracy writers like David Icke and Bob Frissell also have much of worth on the topic. I've tried to compare what they say back to my own experiences derived through meditation, moment in time insights and one experiment with a legal plant substance.

For me, my own experience was a loss of the conditioned self and a loss of boundary between the rest of creation.  It was a realization that I am the limiting factor, the blockage so to speak, creating my experience of existence as a singular entity when the other reality is - vast! It was a realization that I normally experience a world limited by my five senses, my conditioned ego self and co-created by the other parts of myself (other people, animals, plants and the planet) who are just as constrained by their own senses and conditioning, by fear, anger and self doubt.

The different religious views seem to describe oneness in one of three ways:

• Loss of boundary/ Loss of distinction between subject and object.
• Merger with the all pervading consciousness (dissolving back into the source consciousness) - the idea is that our individuality was only every an illusion necessary for the divine to experience the world of matter.
• Union (as in intimate closeness) with the all pervading consciousness (this is the path followed by those who want to evolve to be like the source or cling to it like a devoted lover

Frankly, faced with this confusion of paths where I'm at for the moment is trusting that love is the key to growing and increasing the frequency of the times I experience oneness and that on a practical level I need to look at what I am doing or believing that gets in the way. Accepting some responsibility for the state of the world I experience and trying to observe it without criticizing it.  The most profound idea I've come across in the last few days is that everything and everyone in the world is the way they are because I needed them to be that way and I helped to co-create them that way. I know that before know I wouldn't have been able to accept that level of responsibility or would have even railed against it.  Once I would have said that if I hadn't directly acted upon something then "its not my fault", "I didn't do it" because I saw them as outside of my experience of reality, separate from my own thoughts and beliefs.  Now I'm not so sure - everything is so connected and I believe we are just one consciousness that for some reason has compartmentalized itself.

Heart of Stone by Arwen Jayne - a bit naughty and lot enlightening

Australian author Arwen Jayne has just released her first novella Heart of Stone as an ebook on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008SNZGEG. At $2.99US it is modestly priced.

On one level this simple, lighthearted and fast paced, very Australian, paranormal erotic romance is a little bit naughty and quite a bit kinky. Underlying all that is a deeper message about love that is all accepting, transcends taboos and arbitrary values and connects us with the all pervading consciousness of the universe.

The heroine Tyra is a soon to be retired librarian.  She is woken in the middle of the night to find her uncle has died and a destiny she didn't know she had calls her to a small Australian country town.  To fulfill her destiny she must find her own liberation and make a bond of love that exceeds normal human limits. Tyra must let go of obstacles she has placed in the path of love and let go of boundaries of self and mortality.  And of course there's an ancient evil out to stop her.

There is some gay sex and bondage as well as left-hand tantra which may be confronting to some readers but no doubt this was part of the author's intention to challenge taboos and arbitrary social values. 

A paperback version is expected out in October 2012 and will also be available on Amazon.  A sequel is expected out in 2013.

Chakra Correspondences: Geometry, Number, Note, Location and Colour

Since my successes with third eye mediation earlier this year I've been experimenting with mediation on the other chakras.  The table below is a result of my own observations as well as influenced by numerous writers such as Ted Andrews in Sacred Sounds and GRS Mead's Simon Magus (Mead, G.R.S. (1892). Simon Magus. Theosophical Publishing Society) which contained a copy of Simon Magus's Diagram of Simonian Aeonolgy which is also on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonians and further explained by Simon's "Great Declaration". http://www.examiner.com/article/the-great-declaration-by-simon-magus gives a good overview of the Great Declaration.

I hazard to say that the practice of yoga and meditation are not religion but rather experiential.  As such the experiences of people around the world who undertake this type of exercise, by whatever name they choose to give it, are manifestly similar. For instance mediation on the lower chakras generates a kind of warmth at the base of the spine. It also stimulate the sex hormones. Yoga practitioners seek to raise this energy up the spine to activate the energy centers above. If you have blockages immediately above this chakra then you can easily get bogged down in hedonistic stuff and make no further progress.  I think a better approach might be to start with heart chakra mediation then work progressively outwards, over some weeks, with the chakras either side. In this way the complementary nature of say the solar plexus and throat chakra and then the hara and third eye keep you balanced.  Finally include work on the outer root and crown chakras, connect and balancing them.   I got my inspiration for this polarity approach from Esoteric Anatomy by Bruce Burger. Once you are sure you have adequately worked with and balanced all your chakras then you can do a bottom from the top meditation without fear of getting stuck at any points along the way. The ultimate aim being to connect Shiva with Shakti.  I sometimes use an electronic guitar tuner to help me sound the right note for each chakra.

I make no claims for the following table being definitive.  It is purely what I've worked out for myself through insights and what I've experienced, tried and read. I've tried to take the jargon out of it.  A lot of people get the location of the heart chakra wrong, thinking it to be lower down on the sternum but being a shiatsu therapist I go for where the indent is on the sternum. Also I believe that the location of the root chakra is slightly different for men and women but I'll leave it for someone braver than me to explain that - look it up on Google!  For more information, but full of jargon, try the explanation on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra.

Finally: the number values I give relate to sacred geometry, not the number of petals on each chakra as stated in the Hindu tradition. 

When ordinary life becomes meditation

I've started working through Jay Michaelson's "God in your body: kabbalah, mindfulness and embodied spiritual practice".  The first exercise he gives is in mindfulness. I took the time to try this.  I made a batch of my favourite gluten free vegan sorghum scones, doing them as welsh scones on the frypan. I thought about each ingredient as I added it to the bowl: the sorghum flour, chia seeds, psyllium, sunflowers (for crunch), coconut oil and a pinch of salt.  I took a moment to enjoy the stirring, observing the texture and consistency.  I shaped them and placed them in a pre-warmed frypan, turning them when they browned on one side. I made a cup of green tea, plucked a scone from the pan and settled done to mindfully consider it.  What was its shape, colour and texture? I enjoyed the toasty smell and the warmth of the scone in my fingers.  It was crisp but yet had a slight amount of moisture in the heat rising off it. I took a bit and savoured the taste, the texture, the warmth and the flow of saliva in my mouth. As I chewed I considered where the ingredients might have come from, the lives of the people that grew them, the gas that had fired the stove and where it might have come from, the transport involved in getting it to the line of merchants and me as the buyer. I swallowed and felt the food descend.  I tried to imagine it in my stomach and took a moment to savour the satisfaction of having food in my stomach, nourishing me. It was an amazing piece of scone. Surely a better way to "say grace" than a few rote words.

I've thought much about this in the few days since and I've realised ANYTHING can be used as a meditation.  Travelling home on the bus tonight I made the effort to notice the smell inside the bus (no not bad - just bus-y), to listen to kids playing on the floor (trying to neither like or dislike their noise but just to notice it), to feel the motion of the bus as it went around corners, to consider the texture and fabric of the seats and the metal trim - who made them and how? Strangely the whole trip seemed very short.

I'm like a child again, rediscovering the world, the wonder and delight of it.

Before and After Awakening: Surrender

In awakening the path I experienced was paved with these stepping stones:

• realising the limits of the five sense reality
• mindfulness/being in the now
• love (compassion, forgiveness, compassion, courage, trust, acceptance), loving others as myself, loving myself as all.
• surrender

After awakening I know who I really am but a choice I face in every moment is to chose between the ego's "created self" and the "one self" that is everything (and nothing). Its a constant choice in which perspective to operate from and indeed reminding myself that I have that choice. Each moment presents me with opportunities to let go, to surrender - to allow everything to be what it is.  "it is what it is" is an affirmation that applies to people, things and events.  I forgot this today and suffered for it but listening to Adyashanti's talk on surrender (parts 1-10) on Youtube (starts with http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=JCQcYTWi9DY ) gave me the nourishment I needed to realise this choice I now face in each moment - to surrender or to not surrender and therefore chose to suffer. Adya says this is a stage and eventually there is a going beyond this choice as the choice no longer needs to be made because there is complete surrender.

Studying kabbalah made me acutely and painfully aware of my ego and how it operates to fulfill its needs.  Neuroscience showed me the power of the mind and made me acutely aware of how I create my own reality through what I give attention to. Awakening has made me more acutely aware of how my conditioned self operates and causes me unnecessary suffering. These things were always there but I am conscious of them now, I observe them.

I am discovering how much I prefer experience as a learning tool although I find much nourishment and signposts in what others say and write. I friend told me about the Buddhist concept of "pointing at the moon":

"All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty." http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/pointingtothemoon/

A simple road map to awakening

My current understanding, based on my own experience and reading is as follows:

The Five Sense Reality
When we're at the bottom we have to get past the materialist-rationalist model that we are taught - aka this is the world as it is - a solid reality that we are born into as sentient mammals, we live, we die - that's it folks! - Make the most of it while you're here!

Getting past the five sense reality barrier
A number of reflections or experiences will get you past this:

• near death experiences
• paranormal experiences
• experiencing the power of the mind to heal or create our own reality
• or simply a thought - hey! what if what I perceive is like a PC which is limited by what is inputted from the keyboard, webcam, microphone etc.  Maybe what I experience is only a fraction of what there is.

Now just in case we make this leap there are a couple of quagmires or sand traps set up to block further realisation or simply to get us to doubt it.  

Trap A 

This is called the control trap - it is set up to keep you distracted by keeping you busy chasing achievement, money, jobs and education to pay your bills, put your children through school, pay for that mega-expensive marriage your family said you had to have and doing all that stay on the right side of the law, pay your taxes and be a good dutiful citizen. That should be enough to keep you way too busy to find time to escape the suffering and stress of it all.  But in case you do start to this trap has built in fail safes called, wars, economic depression, racial and religious hatred etc. Its basic premise is that if you don't achieve in life you will be a failure, which leads to guilt and low self-worth.

Trap B

This trap is far more insidious. It seduces you with comfort. Spend your life watching movies, drinking at the cafe, holidaying at the trendy five star resort or in vogue destination, buying the new fashions, going to the latest rock concert, partying, yachting on the Riviera etc. Its basic premise is that if you are not happy, not one of the beautiful people, you're a failure, which leads to guilt and low self-worth.  There is all sorts of "help" available to tell you what you need to do to be and stay happy. Actually a certain amount of restlessness and feeling that something is amiss is an indication that you're tossing in you're sleep and have the potential to wake up.

The two traps interact and overlap.

The escape path requires us to realise the nature of the two traps, we can't keep elements of them out of our lives all together unless we want to live in a cave but we can chose not to identify with them. Observe them but don't buy-in to the traps. This doesn't mean you have to give up you job or sailing on the Riviera etc, its not what you do in this world that matters, its how you identify and react to it. Anything can be used for exercises in present moment mindfulness, compassion and treating all as yourself. We start by saying "I love you" and extending it in our minds to include ourselves, those we obviously love, everyone else and everything else.  See the suffering of those trapped in the traps and develop compassion for all of them. This isn't about pity, its about understanding that the "them" is you. You can do this by mentally putting yourself in their shoes, feel what their suffering might be and its burden on them, breathe that it and breathe out love. If this is difficult because you don't like the person, animal or thing that you are focusing this on just remember that they aren't how they have defined themselves either. We are vibration, existing in a field of energy with no boundaries.

Getting past the ego/self barrier

• Don't seek it, do it ... don't waste a lifetime following what others tell about how to awaken (including this blog post), at best these can only be hints, direct experience is the only way. Our default state is awake to our oneness - to wake up let go of your identifications.
• Understand what leading edge quantum theorists and other thinkers are saying: we are all one and start living your life on the premise that that is true.
• Live in the present moment, practicing mindfulness in everything. One pointed meditation and brainwave entrainment may help but should be seen as optional tools, many other ways are possible.
• Be willing to let go of all your identifications: the reflection in the mirror, your body and its state, your past story of upbringing and life experiences, your goals and desires (as something that exist in the future)...

It may help to envision that these identifications are just layers of clothing that cover the naked awareness of oneness.  Or imagine that oneness has divided itself, within the context of this world, in to different characters so it can play out a game for the purpose of experiencing itself. Its sort of like a sim earth virtual game that can be played multiple times until the player, the one consciousness, works out what variables are necessary for all the characters in the game to realise its only a game and finish the game the way it way meant to be finished - recreating paradise with the power of collective mind.

Levels of understanding beyond that

There are most probably levels to this that I am either not aware of or as yet only dimly guess at. Something immeasurable, infinite and incorruptible...who knows. Getting past the barriers and starting the journey is a good place to start.

Letting Go of attachment to a past awakening experience

After digesting all that came to me during my recent meditation awakening experience I came to the realisation that the next thing I needed to do was let it go.  To keep my mediation present focused I need to keep it free of distraction from expectations and memories of past mediation experiences. Awakening as I experienced it was the result of letting go of identifications of the self, surrendering to the experience and just being in the moment.  I wasn't going to get another experience like it unless I let the last one go - which is after all now only an imperfect memory in the mind - its no longer based in the experience of the now.

I'm still using brainwave entrainment with my meditation.  Now experimenting with Lambda, Gamma and Epsilon brainwaves.  The Epsilon so far seems to be very grounding.  The Lambda gives a sensation of healing and wholeness.

I've been having some amazingly detailed early morning dreams which I don't seem to have any difficulty remembering.  I've had the experience of asking questions of characters in my dreams that I've got answers to - usually driving me to a bit of googling the next day. For example, two travellers who rescued me from some pursuers and healed me told me, when asked, that they were sifu.  I googled that one expecting that it would be somehow related to a nomadic tribe or some sufi term but it turned out to be a Cantonese word meaning master (as in an apprentice's master).