What You Are, October 30, 2009

The free flow of Bliss, which in turn can change into light, devotion or energy is spiritual transmission. I’m using the word “Bliss” here in a very general, universal sense, referring to that unspeakable quality that contains all three, that contains all spiritual paths, the energy that they use and the goal which they try to attain. So, from the outset everything is being provided in this raw material, the Bliss that’s native to Being.

The first step in awakening is to taste that Bliss, to know that it’s being offered and absorbed. The second step is to integrate it into every aspect of your life. What I mean by integrate is permeate, not the personal working toward establishing something. Talking about the drenching of the entire being, all aspects, all facets of the relative being with the Bliss Absolute. In that journey you will pass through all states, all states of awakening with many incites and breakthroughs along the way.

The key is to not get hung up here or there, not get locked into some teaching, some path, some conclusion to be drawn from limited awareness of that Bliss. When it fully permeates you should really have nothing to say. It will be identical to every aspect of your life functioning. It will not be outstanding. It will not be exorbitant. It will not be anything. It will just be your existence. So, you start from within your simple existence. You receive this Bliss, are utterly transformed by it and in it, and then you return back into your ordinary existence.

In that final arrival, you will have understood everything about human existence that there is to understand in terms of realization. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to tell the path of future events, the unfolding of future events or anything like that. It just means that you are aware of the movement of human existence in terms of why it takes place metaphysically. And in that journey, each person will have a non-replicable realization. No one will be able to have your realization, nor will you be able to have anyone else’s. And no two realizations are the same, just as no two petals on a flower are the same.

This is also what we enact together each time we sit here or in some other place. We begin simply as we are, are transformed into something radically expansive, and then returned back to what we are. So, you can never transcend what you are. You can only be what you are both in universal or impersonal and individual aspects. The whole is both universal and individual, and they cancel each other out nicely. So, you are just left with what you are. It sounds easy, but to actually do this is quite an ordeal, only because of that more radically expansive phase and then the stabilization of that back into your ordinary individual existence.

Individuality always returns as long as you’re in a body-mind. Individuality, separate existence, the feeling of it, the vision of it will always return, that’s just a fact. As long as you see a world out there, you are inhabiting an individual space. So, there’s really no room for disagreement on this topic unless you just don’t want to define individuality, you just don’t want to talk about it, but that’s a whole other strategy, one that’s called denial. As long as you come back into human form after your realization, after your samadhi, you are re-entering constricted existence. Not that it has to feel constricted. When I use the word constricted I don’t mean to have emotional overtones understood or implied. What I mean is that the very fact of a separate observer that sees an apparently separate world, and I don’t know anyone in a human body-mind who doesn’t see a separate world even the most highly realized being, implicates himself or herself as an individual.

So, in the end all of your tastes and preferences all have to come under the sway of being absorbed within the ultimate, universal Consciousness and then expressed in that same way.
So, there’s no escape from individual life. There’s no escape from birth and death. There’s only becoming realized in the midst of it. So, spirituality is not a fairy tale. It’s not a sci-fi world. It’s very real and commensurate with this world.