Tag: awakening

Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 44

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This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

FORGIVENESS

Why would I want to forgive? For me, the answer is that it feels better.

Does forgiveness mean not having boundaries? Not at all. Forgiveness and boundaries go hand in hand.

How can I find forgiveness?

One answer is specific approaches like understanding, heart-centered practices (tonglen, ho’o, metta), inquiry like The Work of Byron Katie, and so on.

Another answer is more general. I find it through finding forgiveness for myself. The more I can forgive myself, and live in that forgiveness, the more I can find forgiveness for others.

Is it easy? Not necessarily. Wounds can go deep, and wounds make it difficult to find genuine forgiveness. Healing opens up for forgiveness. Those two too go hand in hand.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

BRAIN FOG

How do I experience the brain fog?

It has several aspects.

It feels like cotton in and around my head.

It makes it difficult to remember.

It makes it difficult to take in information. (And my brain gets tired quickly.)

It makes it difficult to process information.

It makes it difficult to string words together and communicate.

In general, the more drained and exhausted my system is, the less energy there is for my executive cognitive functions. (Thinking, talking, making decisions, intentionally relating to what’s coming up, etc.)

It really seems that life wants to experience brain fog through and as me these days.

The baseline brain fog is from the onset of CFS in my teens, following a mono-infection.

When the CFS dramatically worsened 10-15 years ago, following severe and long-lasting pneumonia, it got a lot worse. My memory got a lot worse after Covid last year. (Teflon brain.)

And I suspect severe Lyme some years ago and septic shock last summer also play a role.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 43

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

IS WHAT I WRITE ABOUT HERE MY WHOLE LIFE?

I mostly write about awakening, healing, and CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) here. So if you know me just from these writings, it may seem that this is my whole life.

Of course, from my perspective, it’s quite different. These are aspects of my life, and far from my whole life. Most of the time, I am just living an ordinary life where I go to the store, talk with people about practical things or nothing very important, make or laugh at a joke, enjoy simple things in daily life, deal with ordinary life challenges, and so on.

LIVING WITH A DISABILITY

I live with a disability. (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / CFS.)

It doesn’t mean that it’s who or what I am.

It doesn’t mean it defines me as a whole or fully.

It’s not even close to being all of my life.

It’s a part of my life. It’s something I live with.

That’s just about it.

It’s the same with a lot of other things in my life: my gender, ethnicity, age, education, politics, and so on. It’s part of my life, but it doesn’t define me and it’s not even close to being all of who or what I am.

And none of it is what I more fundamentally am. What I am is what allows all of it, and forms itself into all of it.

POINTER OR PHILOSOPHY?

When I write about my nature, is it philosophy?

In a sense, yes. Anything that’s mirrored in our mental field becomes philosophy.

And a more real answer is that it depends. It depends on the receiver.

If we use it as a practical pointer to look and expore here and now, then it’s a practical pointer.

If we let it stay in the realm of mental representations, then it’s a philosophy.

It’s up to each of us if it’s one or the other.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 42

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

CONSCIOUSNESS AS A MOVIE SCREEN?

Some people like to use the movie screen analogy for consciousness.

Just like a movie is projected onto a screen without affecting the screen, our consciousness experiences all sorts of things without being affected.

That’s true enough, and the analogy may be useful to highlight just that.

But, in general, I prefer not to use the analogy. It can mislead more than enlighten.

For instance, a screen is physical and consciousness is not. And the light hitting the screen comes from somewhere else while consciousness forms itself into its own experience.

I prefer to use dreams since it’s an example and not an analogy.

To ourselves, we are consciousness, and to us, the world happens within and as the consciousness we are. That happens in dreams and it happens in waking life. Waking life is, in that way, no different from a dream. The difference is that it tends to be a bit more consistent than dreams. There is more continuity there.

WILL AWAKENING TAKE CARE OF TRAUMAS?

Does awakening take care of traumas?

Not necessarily, and perhaps not even typically.

I suspect most still need to actively work on emotional issues and traumas, even within our nature recognizing itself.

At least, that’s how it has been for me. My nature recognizing itself does not give me a free pass.

COMPLETELY HEALED?

I sometimes talk with people early in an awakening or healing process who says: “it’s completely healed”, “it’s gone”, “this technique healed it completely”. (When I say “early”, it may be within the first five or ten or fifteen years of the process depending on a lot of things.)

To me, that seems like wishful thinking. It brings to mind I Ching’s Youthful Folly hexagram.

How can you know? Yes, a certain issue may not seem to be up right now, but how do you know it’s healed? How do you know it won’t come up again later? How do you know there are not more layers? How do you know it’s not connected to a much larger network of similar and supporting issues?

My sense is that with maturity, we learn to hold all of this with a grain of sand. We see it more as questions than statements. We know that the mind sometimes wants things to be over and goes into wishful thinking. (Which can be comforting on the surface and for a while, and also makes the contrast stronger when life goes in another direction. It may also go against our deeper knowing.) We know that life has a way of surprising us.

And we may also see that this is what’s happening during a certain phase of the process. It’s innocent and natural. It’s not wrong. It’s part of the process.

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Dream: A more nuanced Buddha

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I am with an English Buddhist group. They have two images of Buddha side-by-side. One is a grey and white tone image with not much details. The other is the same, but with colors and a lot more details. It shows an attention to the nuances and details of awakening and living from and as our nature noticing itself.

I connected by accident with an English-affiliated Buddhist group in Oslo. (I walked along a street, saw it, walked in, and had a very good conversation with the guy running it.) I liked their approach. They seem pragmatic and down-to-earth without losing the essence of what it’s about. The group in the dream has a similar vibe.

The images are similar to Roy Lichtenstein paintings: large blow-up versions of printed comic books where you can see the dots making up the images. The first is white and grey with a little yellow. The second is exactly the same but with a lot of details within each of the dots making up the main image, and with more and brighter colors.

I love both the simple picture of awakening and going into the details. Over the last few months, I have explored the simple image in my writings here. Maybe the dream is inviting me to go back to explore the details and nuances more?

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The banality of awakening

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There is a certain banality to awakening.

THE BANALITY OF IT

It’s what we are noticing itself. It’s our nature awakening to itself. And our nature is completely ordinary. It’s all we have ever known and all we will ever know.

When our nature recognizes itself and gets used to it, it becomes ordinary. It can even, at times, seem a bit banal. (That’s part of how our human self may relate to it.)

It’s also banal in that it’s not so difficult to notice. Through guidance and pointers, just about anyone can notice it and get a taste of it. The most effective approaches I have found are The Big Mind process and the Headless experiments. These can give a direct taste within minutes or seconds. The Kiloby Inquiries (based on traditional Buddhist inquiry) are also effective, although it’s often a slightly longer process.

So it’s banal in that it’s our nature – what we already are – noticing itself. It’s banal in that this too gets ordinary over time. And it’s banal in that it’s not so difficult to find and notice, with the right guidance.

AWAKENING

What’s awakening about?

In a conventional sense, we are this human self living its life in the world. That’s not wrong, and it’s an assumption that works relatively well. It matches reality well enough. And the ways it doesn’t match is where it that assumption creates discomfort and unease and perhaps even suffering.

More fundamentally, we are something else.

In my own immediate experience, I find I am more fundamentally capacity for any and all experience. I am what the whole field of experience, all content of experience, happens within and as. This human self and the wider world happen within and as what I am.

Logically, I find the same. If I “have” consciousness, it means I – to myself – AM consciousness. And it also means that, to me, the world happens within and as what I am. I am this field of consciousness any and all experience happens within and as. Logically, it cannot be any other way.

When we find ourselves as more fundamentally consciousness, we also notice what mystics across time and cultures describe. We find oneness. We find that the world, inevitably, appears as consciousness, and if we are so inclined we may call that the divine, Spirit, God, Brahman, and so on. (The world appears as consciousness to me since, to me, it happens within and as the consciousness I am. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the nature of all that exists.) We find a love that’s all-inclusive and doesn’t depend on emotions or shifting content of experience. (And which may be covered up or sidetracked by the hangups and biases of this human self.)

What’s my connection with this human self? There is a special connection with this particular human self. I receive sense information through the physical senses of this human self. It seems that thoughts and emotions are connected with – and perhaps generated by – this human self. This human self is around all the time during (what we call) waking consciousness. This human self is what many others see me as. In a way, it’s my vehicle in the world. And it’s not what I most fundamentally am, in my own experience.

THE EXTRAORDINARINESS OF IT

There is also something extraordinary to it.

There is something extraordinary in that anything exists at all. How come there is something rather than nothing? How come there is consciousness? How come there is an apparent world? That’s completely baffling to me and the question stops my mind. (1)

If the oneness we are has taken itself as something in particular within its field of experience (this human self, an observer, a doer, etc.), and it recognizes its nature, then it tends to be experienced as amazing and extraordinary. It’s typically both very familiar and feels like coming home and it’s something we have always, somehow, known, and it also seems completely amazing and extraordinary. And it does become ordinary after a while, which is good since it allows us to focus on something else instead of being distracted by our experience of the extraordinariness of it.

As with just about anything else, there is no end to wrinkles and intricacies of awakening and how to explore and live from it. In that sense, it’s anything but banal.

MY EXPERIENCE

When the oneness shift happened when I was sixteen, it did seem absolutely amazing. It turned my (experience of) the world and myself inside-out and upside-down. My human self and psyche responded to it by seeing it as amazing and extraordinary for many years, even as I kept exploring it. (My nature, how it interfaces with my human self, how to live from and as it, and so on). It took some years before I found anyone talking about this or describing it, and although what I found at first was filtered through a culture different from my own, I found it fascinating to see how people talked about it.

After a while, it became more ordinary – and sometimes even banal. This took a couple of decades in my case (!), perhaps because this human self tends to be fascinated by the mystery of it all. It’s an ongoing process that’s always new and fresh and keeps revealing new sides of itself.

I am still baffled that anything exists, and I continue to be fascinated by the intricacies and the ongoing exploration process. (Part of that exploration process is to invite more of my human self and psyche to align with the awakening. This too is an ongoing, and sometimes challenging, process.)

(1) Some misunderstand and say: “It’s because it’s created by God”. But God too is something rather than nothing.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 41

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

THE DARK NIGHT & LOSING WHAT I FOUND SAFETY IN

For the last fifteen years or so, I have been in a dark night.

It started even further back, when I got married the first time. (Late 1990s.) Then, it got much more dramatic with the return of severe CFS. (Mid/late 2000s.) And it went even deeper when I asked the divine to “show me what’s left” which brought up immense survival fear within a week or so. (Early 2010s.)

It seems a pretty classic dark night, judging from what I have heard from others, and especially what’s described in the “Dark night of the soul” chapter in Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism.

During this time, I have repeatedly lost what I earlier found safety in. I lost my health. (Severe CFS.) I lost my marriage. I lost my house and car. I lost just about all my belongings. (Including a library of 2000-3000 books about spirituality from all traditions and outside of traditions.) I lost the possibility to stay in my adopted country. (The US.) I lost my excellent memory. I lost my ability to think clearly. I lost friends. I lost my reputation. And so on.

Through all those losses, I have been invited to shift my center of gravity more fully and thoroughly into my nature. And out of holding onto identities for safety, since these come and go.

I have no idea where in that process my system is. I have no idea where in the dark night process my system is. (My guess is 80% through since it feels lighter now, but who knows.) I have no idea how far and thoroughly into my nature my center of gravity is. I have no idea how much is left.

And that’s completely OK. I prefer it that way. It’s aligned with reality since I don’t know any of this for certain. I can only guess, and guesses are just that, guesses. (And inherently painful if I try to pretend for myself they are more certain than they are.)

IS SOME KIND OF DARK NIGHT NECESSARY IN AN AWAKENING PROCESS?

I don’t know, but here is my guess right now:

No, it’s not necessary.

But the process it comes out of, and what it leads to, is necessary.

It’s necessary for everything in our mind-body that’s out of alignment with awakening – a conscious noticing and living from our nature – to align with this. It’s necessary for every part of our psyche to shift out of separation consciousness and into being aligned with our nature as oneness.

It’s necessary for every bit of thought and identity that our mind holds as true, in order to protect us, to wear off, for the charge in them to dissipate, for the mind to see through it and find what’s already more true for us.

And that may require one or more dark nights and one or more kinds of dark nights.

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Awakening is “permanent”?

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Some talk as if awakening is somehow “permanent”.

I understand why.

When the noticing is here and stable, it seems obvious and unmissable. It seems it will never go away.

Time happens within and as what we are, so how could this go away?

Also, some may go into the thought that it’s permanent to find comfort. They want it to stay, so they tell themselves it will.

And yet, is it true?

Permanence is the story of a future.

I cannot know.

So for me, it’s more peaceful to hold it lightly and keep it open.

Also, I know that there is often an awakening shift, then it goes away (which can be experienced as one kind of dark night), and then it’s refound in a different and more thorough way.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 40

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

IS AWAKENING “PERMANENT”?

Some talk as if awakening is somehow “permanent”.

I understand why.

When the noticing is here and stable, it seems obvious and unmissable. It seems it will never go away.

Time happens within and as what we are, so how could this go away?

Also, some may go into the thought that it’s permanent to find comfort. They want it to stay, so they tell themselves it will.

And yet, is it true?

Permanence is the story of a future.

I cannot know.

So for me, it’s more peaceful to hold it lightly and keep it open.

Also, I know that there is often an awakening shift, then it goes away (which can be experienced as one kind of dark night), and then it’s refound in a different and more thorough way.

[Made into a regular article]

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 39

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

A LIVING REALITY BEFORE HEARING ABOUT IT

One of the things I am most grateful for on my path is that I lived the essence of what I am writing about here before I read or heard about it. The initial oneness shift happened when I was sixteen, an atheist, and just before World Wide Web (the Internet is older), so it took several years for me to find someone talking or writing about it. And when I did, there was a kind of distance there from the culture and times of the people I found. (It wasn’t until I discovered Adyashanti, Byron Katie, and Douglas Harding many years later that I found someone describing what I had discovered and there was less of a cultural barrier between us.) I had those years just to myself, which gave me the opportunity to explore it without any influences from others.

Almost all of what I write about here is what I discovered or what was revealed to me during that time, with the exception of specific terminology, jargon, and practices.

IT’S ALL IMAGINATION

This is pretty obvious, and it can take some exploration to get it viscerally:

It’s all literally imagination.

We imagine the past. We imagine the future. I can only find the past and the future in my imagination, in my mental field.

We even imagine the present. I have things happening in my sense fields, and my mental field creates an overlay of labels, boundaries, stories, and so on. What happens in the sense fields is a kind of imagination. It’s our brain creating a certain experience based on sensory input. And the mental field overlay is also clearly imagination.

We also imagine ourselves. We have images and stories about who and what we are, and our mind combines these with certain physical sensations that lend it a sense of substance, solidity, and reality.

All our content of experience is imagined.

And that’s fine.

This is often a very useful imagination. It helps us orient and function in the world.

If we don’t recognize it as imagination, we tend to get ourselves into trouble. (Stress, discomfort, misjudgment, and so on.)

And when we recognize it as imagination, we can hold it all more lightly. We use it for what it’s here for, which is to help us orient and navigate in the world. And we don’t assume it holds any final, full, or absolute truth.

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If we lived for eons, would awakening be inevitable?

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Through having lived as many lives I have, I notice that all sorts of experiences and states come and go. I have experienced millennia of mostly “ordinary” states with times of profound despair, mind-shattering pain, and amazing bliss. I have noticed that what I am is that which all this happens within and as. Experiences come and go and what I am doesn’t come and go. Of course, I am whatever state is here but it doesn’t last. Only being capacity for all of it runs through it all.

If you want to call that awakening, be my guest. But it’s really very simple. It doesn’t require fancy words, or rituals, or mythology, or even labels.

– from Dialog with someone who has lived innumerable lives in many places in the cosmos

To me, it seems that awakening is inevitable (?) if we just lived long enough, perhaps for centuries or millennia. And it wouldn’t seem like anything special. It would just be a natural part of maturing and having lived for a while.

Over time, we get to see that any and all content of experience comes and goes, including anything we think we are, and any identifications we may have. We dream, and are someone different. We have an identity for ourselves and in the world, and something happens and it goes away. We think we are something in particular, and those thoughts go away for a while and we are still here.

So if we are not fundamentally anything within all this that comes and goes, what are we?

What are we more fundamentally? When I look, I find I more fundamentally am capacity for the experience of all of this. I am what the world, to me, happens within and as.

This is what we may discover through basic meditation, and also what we may – inevitably? – discover if we would be around for a few millennia.

Basic meditation is, in many ways, a condensed micro-version of this. We compress what would happen naturally, over many many years, into minutes, hours, days, and months.

And we can support that process through other explorations, including inquiry.

Here are two dialogs on this topic: Dialog with someone who has lived innumerable lives in many places in the cosmos | Dialog with one who has lived eons and has a mystic streak

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 38

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

WHAT’S THE MEANING OF LIFE?

This is a question that, in a way, comes from the idea that we are different from the rest of existence.

What’s the meaning of a tree? A star? Water? Air? A dandelion?

The meaning of a tree is to be a tree. The meaning of a star is to be a star.

And the meaning of us is to be us.

It can be quite simple.

We can also say that…

Asking for the meaning suggests that we are not fully engaged in our life. We are not fully enlivened. So what would make us come more alive?

We can find a deep sense of meaning by finding our intimate connection with the rest of existence, with the larger whole.

The meaning of life is for each of us to find what’s meaningful to us. What makes you come alive? What feels deeply right to you? If you could not fail, what would you do?

The question itself is worth looking into. What do I find when I examine the question? Or underlying thoughts, like: “My life is not meaningful”, “I am not enough”.

SEEKING AWAKENING?

Seeking awakening is often not (only) about seeking awakening.

What do I hope to get out of awakening? And out of that? And out of that?

It can be helpful to identify what we imagine we’ll get out of it, and look at our strategies for finding that.

Maybe there are other strategies that make as much or more sense?

For instance, we may wish to find love, acceptance, peace, rest, coming home, freedom from discomfort, and so on.

If that’s the case, shifting our relationship with our content of experience, in general, is often a more direct and effective strategy.

Finding healing for our relationship with anything, inviting in healing for our traumas and wounds, and questioning our stressful thoughts, is more likely to get us what we want.

And to deeply do this, it does help to find our more fundamental nature. It creates a different context for these explorations.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 37

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

INNER GUIDANCE VS DIVINE WILL

Is our inner guidance the voice of divine will? Yes and no.

In my experience, my inner guidance shows me what’s right for me, and what’s in alignment with me and my path and life. It’s what’s kind and wise in the moment. It tends to be an easier path, not because it is free of challenges (there may still be challenges), but because it feels deeply right. It’s often aligned with what makes sense to me consciously. And sometimes, it’s different, and if I follow it, it will eventually make sense.

Divine will is different. Divine will is what happens and what is. Whatever is, is the divine will.

Sometimes, the divine will is for me to follow my guidance.

And sometimes, the divine will is for me to not follow my guidance. In my case, typically when I am caught up in unloved fears and unexamined painful beliefs and identities.

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Everyone is already enlightened?

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I was curious about a book and saw a review on Amazon that said: “Everyone is already enlightened”.

As usual, I would say “yes” and “no” and “it depends”.

There may be a few more nuances than what the simple statement suggests.

YES(ISH)

Everyone is Buddha Nature. To ourselves, we are consciousness. The world, to us, happens within and as the consciousness we are. And that consciousness is Buddha Nature.

So yes, we are Buddha Nature, although few would call that “enlightened”.

NO

In most cases, the consciousness we are doesn’t fully recognize its own nature. It tends to assume it’s something within its content, typically this human self and mental representation of an I, me, doer, observer, and so on.

For the oneness we are to recognize itself and its nature typically takes some intention, effort, sincerity, and guidance.

To keep recognizing it is the same.

Learning how to live from it requires the same dedication and engagement.

And allowing our human self and psyche to transform and align within this new context is an even longer process that requires dedication, courage, honesty, sincerity, and work.

IT DEPENDS

So it depends. It mostly depends on what we mean by the words.

For me, the simplest is to say that all beings already are Buddha Nature. To ourselves, we all are most fundamentally consciousness whether we notice or not.

The consciousness we are typically doesn’t fully recognize its nature, and may not perceive it clearly even if there are glimpses.

It typically takes work for the consciousness we are to recognize itself. And it’s a long process to keep recognizing this through situations and states, explore how to live from and as it, and allow this human self to transform within it.

It’s a process that appears to not have any finishing line.

ENLIGHTENMENT?

I don’t really know what’s meant by “enlightenment”.

Maybe it means what happens when most of our human self and psyche is on board with the awakening?

If so, it’s not something I am familiar with so I can’t say much about it.

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Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 36

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

WHY DO SOME NOT LIKE PSYCHOLOGY OR THERAPY?

A long time ago, I mentioned to my father that I planned to study psychology, and he responded: “People who study psychology or go to therapy often get weird”. He likely meant that they often live a life more free of shoulds and social norms, and are less invested in following shoulds and social norms. And that seemed threatening to him.

To me, weird is wonderful. (As Adya’s mum told him.) And being free of shoulds and social norms seems like a good deal as well. I can be free of them, or more free of them, and still follow my inner guidance, what makes sense, what seems most kind, and so on.

In general, why do some not like psychology or therapy?

I assume there may be many reasons.

They may be familiar with approaches to psychology that reflect a cynical view of humans. In that case, I would be cautious as well. These approaches tend to be outdated.

They may know that they harbor unprocessed psychological material they are not ready to face, and even the thought of psychology or therapy seems scary to them. That’s completely fine. There is a time for everything. And it’s also good to be honest about it.

They may suspect it can bring about major life changes, and they are not prepared to make those changes. They prefer to live their life-lie. Again, this is completely fine. There is a time and place for everything.

They may, as my father, see therapy as a way for people to be freer from shoulds and norms, and if they are invested in shoulds and norms and have made an identity and ideology out of following them, then that can seem threatening.

They may assume that therapy involves the therapist imposing a different way of thinking, feeling, and living on them, and they want to keep their autonomy. Some therapists may try to do this, but good ones don’t. They invite you to find your own way and what works for you. They support you in becoming more you.

Just to be clear, I don’t think therapy is for everyone, and any one approach to therapy is certainly not for everyone. But I do think it’s helpful to clarify these things and be reasonably honest about it.

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The musician and the shaman: Different levels of awakeness in their systems

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I had the good fortune to see my favorite musician – Mari Boine – play tonight, at a book discussion in Oslo about the Sami and Christianity. (Many good stories, including about the Jesus child taking on the form of a cloudberry to hide from his mother but it didn’t work because he was too full of light.)

One of the people asking a question was a shaman, and it made me curious about his energy system. When I checked in, his energy system was a bit unusual although not particularly awake.

I then checked the musician’s energy system (I sat directly behind her when she didn’t sing), and her system was far more awake. Not like Adyashanti or people like that, but close.

It’s not surprising. People who are into spirituality or work in that area don’t necessarily have a very awake system, although many do. And they can still do very good work. (This shaman can still be very skilled and effective.) Conversely, people who are not explicitly into spirituality can have an unusually awake system, often without knowing it or having any inclination to put that label on it. (Thank God!)

I suspect this is a big part of why I love her music. It reflects the awakeness in her system.

Note: This is obviously just my perception, although when I checked with someone else good at sensing these things, she found the same. In general, if I check with others without first telling them what I sense, we sense the same or something very similar. If I check an energy system in person, and if I check the level of awakening in the system, it seems very accurate, and it’s still often accurate although a little less so when it comes to other topics and at a distance. And I am also very aware that my perception is not reality itself – it’s filtered through my system and consciousness.

Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 35

moe Leave a comment

This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.

AGE OR LIFESTYLE?

Since early in life, I have suspected that what many attribute to age is really about lifestyle, whether it’s poor memory, bad physical shape, being set in one’s ways, or similar.

As kids, we learn every day and are physically active every day. (At least most are, biking, running, climbing trees, and so on.) We train ourselves to learn, and we stay physically fit. We try out new things and seek out new experiences.

Later in life, many don’t learn as much and are less physically active, so there is no wonder if this is reflected in our mind and body.

Also, I suspect much of what we think of as typical for older age has to do with the weight of wound-conditioning that’s been with us for decades – traumas, emotional issues, unquestioned painful beliefs, limiting identities, and so on. (These are all names for essentially the same dynamics.)The longer we carry these with us, the more strongly they impact our mind and body.

RURAL VS CITY LIVING AND MY SLEEP & WAKE CYCLE

Since early in life, I have noticed that my sleep patterns are quite different in nature versus in the city.

If I am in nature, for instance at the cabin in Norway or at Finca Milagros, I naturally go to sleep early and wake up early. I tend to wake up around 5am. (This is even more pronounced the times I sleep in nature in a tent or outside.)

If I am in a more urban environment, it’s more tempting for me to stay up late and wake up later. (It’s a tendency, and one I often intentionally counter since I feel better if I wake up early after a good night’s sleep.)

This is not a very profound insight, and it’s probably something many have noticed. But it is interesting.

I imagine our ancestors slowed down and slept when it got dark, and woke up when it got light to make full use of daylight hours. That pattern kicks in when we live in nature, even if we live indoors in nature.

And it gets skewed by city living and a stronger disconnect from nature.

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Awakening as a safety valve

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Why did the awakening shift happen when I was sixteen?

I am not sure. I hadn’t done any of the things that often go before such a shift. I had no interest in spirituality. I had done no spiritual practice.

What was happening was an unusual amount of teenage angst. It may have been strong enough so my system needed another way to deal with it, and that was where my system went most easily.

At my human level, and in my psyche, it got to be too much. So my system shifted from being identified with all of that to releasing identification with it and found itself as its more fundamental nature. As consciousness. As the consciousness all our experiences happen within and as. As the oneness all of it and the world to us happens within and as.

In that particular case, that was the safety value. And the stress and overwhelm at the human level were strong enough to propel my system into the awakening shift in a relatively strong and lasting way.

That’s the simple story, and it’s not quite as simple as that.

One year earlier, there had been another shift. A shift from the usual separation consciousness to a simple observer and observed duality. On January 1st, I experienced a fog coming in, as if I had cotton in my head. It was as if the world, including my human self and anything to do with my human self, was far away. Very far away. And “I” was the one observing it all. I went to my doctor and many specialists, and nobody could find anything wrong. It was quite distressing, and it really did feel as if something had gone very wrong.

And after almost exactly one year, between Christmas and New Year, there was another shift. This time into oneness. Into finding myself and any and all experiences as consciousness. Or, as I thought of it at the time, of God revealed as all without exceptions. God was this human self as it was everything. God was even the impulse to temporarily take itself as this human self, and then suddenly and out of the blue remember itself as all.

It’s not a glorious story. It’s messy and human. There is absolutely nothing there my human self can take credit for. And it seems to be one way our nature notices itself, or the divine remembers itself as all.

Awake without realizing it?

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Is it possible to be awake without realizing it?

Is it possible for the oneness we are to recognize itself without realizing it?

It sounds almost like a contradiction, but I would say yes.

AWAKE WITHOUT KNOWING

Without having any statistics, I assume many who would be considered awake are not aware of it. They may have been born that way and live their lives mostly from it, without realizing it has any labels and without being interested in any labels.

The oneness they are recognizes itself and lives from that noticing.

It recognizes itself as the field that any and all experiences happen within, including of this human self.

It may not be that conscious all of the time. There may not be the realization that this is different from how most other onenesses perceive and life. It may not happen all of the time.

And yet, there is a general awakening without realizing that’s what it is or that it has any name.

To others, and maybe to themselves, they likely just seem like a normal and relatively healthy, sane, and kind human being.

TASTES WITHOUT KNOWING

Similarly, most or all of us have tastes of it without realizing that’s what it is, or what’s going on.

The oneness we are recognizes itself without perhaps being very conscious of it or having any names for it.

It’s just something that happens. It may happen more easily in certain situations, and we may attribute it to those situations. What happens is that we forget about ourselves. We literally forget to identify as this separate self and find ourselves as what’s left – this open field of experience. This can happen any time we are absorbed in what’s happening, for instance reading a book, doing art, being in a flow state, sex, drugs, music, yoga, martial art, sports, or something else.

When the oneness we are recognizes itself, it’s not really a state. It’s the field that any and all experiences happen within and as that recognizes itself. And yet, it may seem like a state since it comes and goes in time. It’s interpreted as a state. (That’s not entirely wrong. In this case, it is a state in that it comes and goes. And it is the state of the oneness we are recognizing itself.)

WHO & WHAT WE ARE

I’ll give a brief background, even if this is included in a lot of other articles here.

In one sense, we are this human being in the world. That’s what the passport tells us, it’s what others tell us, and it’s what our thoughts may tell us. It seems real, and it’s not wrong.

And yet, to ourselves, in our own first-person experience, we may find we are something else. When I look in my own first-person experience, I find I am more fundamentally capacity for the whole field of experience that’s here. I find I am what this whole field of experience happens within and as.

This is what’s often labeled awakening.

It can happen as an intuition or a glimpse. Recognizing it can be a habit. Our metaphorical center of gravity can shift from taking ourselves as this human self (a separate self) to finding ourselves as this field. We can explore to life from this noticing. We can invite the different parts of our psyche, often formed within and operating from separation consciousness, to join this oneness. And so on.

A RANGE

This article points to a range of different things. It can be the oneness we are intuiting itself. Our center of gravity being shifted towards oneness. Mostly living from – and as – oneness. Or any combination of these. And without being very consciously aware of what’s going on or having any labels or theoretical maps for it.

That’s wonderful. It’s just as wonderful and interesting as having maps.

And it’s perhaps simpler and less contrived, which has its own beauty.

The future of awakening

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There are many ways to envision the future of awakening.

We may explore how it fits into maps of the mind and society (integral maps). We can see it as a part of the evolution of the universe. We can explore ideas of collective awakening. And so on.

Here is how I imagine it may look in society, if or when awakening is commonly accepted and is an ordinary part of our collective life.

I’ll write from the perspective of someone living in that world.

ACCEPTED

Awakening is commonly accepted as real and valuable. Since scientists and academia accept it, and many know people who have benefited from exploring it, most people in society also accept it.

Of course, people are interested in it to varying degrees, as with anything else. That’s good since we need people to specialize in different things.

UNDERSTOOD IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

And there are a few different ways to understand it, which is also good.

Some see it in a spiritual context, or in the context of their own religion.

Others understand it in a more secular and psychological way.

And for those interested, there is a lot to learn from each of these perspectives. Each of them contributes something valuable and unique, at least to some extent and in some areas.

DEMYSTIFIED

Awakening is also generally demystified, at least to the extent that anything can be demystified.

Most people understand the general theory behind it.

The general understanding is a variation of this:

We don’t “have” consciousness. If we “have” consciousness, then to ourselves we ARE consciousness. It can’t be any other way.

Similarly, to us the world happens within consciousness. It happens within and as the consciousness we are.

To us, the waking world is similar to night dreams in that it all happens within and as consciousness.

The consciousness we are is one. It’s a seamless whole. So to us, the world and all of our experiences happen within and as oneness. (We may not notice since we get caught up in mental representations of boundaries, but the reality that’s always here for us is oneness.)

The consciousness we are is a no-thing that allows our experience of all things.

The consciousness we are may take itself to be an object within its field of experience, and as a separate self in the world. Or it can recognize itself and metaphorically “wake up” to itself as consciousness and oneness, and what the world – to itself – happens within and as. And its metaphorical center of gravity can shift from the first to the second, often over time and through intentional exploration and living from this noticing.

Of course, most may not be interested or familiar with all of the intricacies here, but they have a very general and rough understanding of it.

THE ESSENCE OF WHAT MYSTICS DESCRIBE

It’s also generally understood that awakening is what mystics across times and cultures have described.

The essence of awakening is the same, and the way it’s talked about varies across traditions and cultures.

AVAILABLE TO ANYONE

Awakening is available to anyone. As much as playing the piano or learning any skill is available to anyone.

It’s something we can explore. It’s something we can have a taste of for ourselves. And having a taste is not necessarily very difficult or something that takes a lot of time. It can happen easily and within minutes, if guided by someone familiar with the terrain and effective techniques.

And as with anything else, getting proficient with it takes dedication and time. Those drawn to it can get very familiar with the ins and outs of the awakening process.

COACHES

In the past, awakening was typically the domain of certain religions and spiritual traditions.

These days, it’s treated more as learning anything else. Depending on how we approach it and what our intention with it is, it’s treated similarly to learning a sport, painting or drawing, playing an instrument, or even learning a profession.

We approach it with a combination of theory and practice, typically with the guidance of a coach, someone familiar with the terrain and how to guide others. And exactly how that looks depends on how much in-depth we wish to go, and if it’s for our own sake, to use as an element in our profession (therapy, education, etc.), or if it’s part of training to become a coach.

We have a collective exploration of which approaches and techniques are most effective and appropriate to different groups and individuals. Coaches are generally expected to keep up with this and to learn and apply current best practices. There are, of course, individual differences and flavors, and some specialize in some aspects of awakening, in working with particular groups, or in using and developing some particular approaches.

This process is also, to a large extent, demystified and secularized.

The traditional approaches are still around and available, although just as the secular approach is informed by the traditions, the traditions are now often informed by the secular approach. They often include some of the approaches and techniques developed by the secular approach.

RESEARCH AND ACADEMIA

Awakening is generally studied by a few different branches of academia, including psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, and religious studies. Most universities have also created departments specifically to study awakening, and these are typically interdisciplinary and use an integral approach.

They study any and all aspects of awakening: Psychology. (Mechanisms and dynamics, common phases and aspects, challenges, benefits, how it can transform people’s perception and lives, and so on.) Biology. (Changes to the brain and nervous system, changes to any part of the body.) How do most effectively coach and support people in the process. And so on.

EDUCATION AND ECOLOGY

Meditation and approaches to give students a taste of awakening is incorporated in many schools. For most schools, it’s one of many topics the students explore, and other schools specialize in it and make it more central. Students who want to go deeper have electives or can find classes and coaches in the community.

Awakening is also often used as an aspect of sustainability and understanding of ecology. It helps people have a direct taste of oneness, which tends to transform how we perceive and relate to the wider world.

THE BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF DEMYSTIFYING

There is also an ongoing discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of demystifying awakening and approaching it in a more secularized way.

The benefits are obvious: It makes awakening available to more people. It removes some of the old misconceptions about awakening. It grounds our understanding and approach.

And it does have some drawbacks. The traditions do have valuable insights and ways of doing things (praxis) that may not be picked up by the secular approach. Some assume that secular understanding is accurate and sufficient and limit their perception and explorations.

That’s why there is a smaller movement to revive and support the traditional approaches, and this is very helpful in the bigger picture. The traditional approaches are (in)valuable aspects of the larger exploration of awakening.

ABOUT THIS VISION

What are some of the limitations and benefits to envision these kinds of futures?

One of the limitations is that we cannot predict the future. This particular vision is an extrapolation of what we are already seeing in some western cultures, especially on the west coast of the US. (Where I lived for a while and was involved in these types of communities.) It assumes a kind of linear progression, and what unfolds is rarely linear.

If one thing is (mostly) certain, it’s that the future won’t be like this. Reality is far more messy. For instance, we may see this in some subcultures and some areas of the world, while other subcultures and other areas of the world may be completely different. That’s the diversity we have seen so far through history so we can assume it will be like that in the future as well.

This is not about predicting the future. This is about envisioning itself. It’s about bringing up in me what I would like to see in the world. It’s a way to inspire me to help bring it about, even if it’s in very small ways.

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Why do many scientists and psychologists ignore our nature?

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To me, there is something that seems clear, both from direct noticing and logic.

And that is what we are to ourselves, and what the world is to us. It’s our own nature, and the nature of the world as it appears to us.

WHAT I AM IN MY OWN NOTICING

In one sense, I am a human being in the world. That’s not wrong, and it’s an assumption that helps this human self orient and function in the world.

And yet, in my own direct noticing, it is what I most fundamentally am?

When I look, I find I am something else.

I find I am more fundamentally capacity for any and all experience. I am what allows and takes the form of any and all of my experiences. I am what allows and takes the form of what happens in all of my sense fields, in sight, sound, sensation, smell, taste, and the mental field. (And any other sense fields we can differentiate out through our mental overlays.)

I am what the world, to me, happens within and as.

I am the oneness the world, to me happens within and as.

We can call this different things. For instance, consciousness.

And that brings us to the logic side of this.

WHAT I AM LOGICALLY

In our culture, most say that “we have consciousness” as if it’s a kind of appendix we happen to have. There is an assumption here that we are primarily a physical object and this physical object somehow has consciousness as it happens to have arms, legs, and physical organs.

This is a third-person view, and it doesn’t really matter in this context how accurate it is.

The more interesting question for me is: What are we to ourselves, in our own immediate experience?

Logically, if we “have” consciousness, we have to BE consciousness. There is nothing outside of consciousness somehow experiencing consciousness. What experiences and has the idea of consciousness is consciousness itself. Not anything outside of it.

Any experience happens within and as consciousness. It’s consciousness taking the form of that experience.

So to us, the world happens within and as consciousness.

The world, and any experience, happens within and as what we are.

We ARE consciousness and the world and any content of experience happens within and as consciousness, within and as what we are.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHAT WE ARE

Both direct noticing and (this particular) logic arrives at the same answer for what we are to ourselves, and it also arrives at the same answer for the characteristics of what we are.

What are some of the characteristics of what we are to ourselves?

What are some of the characteristics of consciousness?

To me, what I am has no beginning or end in space. It also has no beginning or end in time. Any experience of space and time happens within and as what I am.

To me, I am one. I am the oneness the world happens within and as. I am what my field of experience, which my mental field differentiates in many different ways, happens within and as.

To me, I am the world and the world is me. The world happens within and as what I am.

To me, the world happens within and as consciousness. It’s like a dream in that way.

To me, any and all content of experience comes and goes. And this includes any ideas of what I may be within the content of experience (this human self) and what these ideas refer to. In some cases, I may not take myself to be this particular human self, for instance in a dream, and what I more fundamentally am is still here. What any and all experiences happens within and as is still here. (Including shifting ideas of what I am as an object in the world.)

When what I am notices itself, I find that my nature is what can be called love. It’s a love that’s not dependent on shifting states or emotions. It’s the love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right. And this love is often obscured by separation consciousness, by dynamics and patterns created from when I took myself most fundamentally as a separate object in the world.

IS THIS WHAT I “REALLY” AM?

So is this what I really am?

Yes, it is. It’s what I am in my own direct noticing.

Outside of that, I don’t know. I don’t know what my nature more fundamentally happens to be from some kind of outside third-person view. And that’s also less important, at least in my daily life.

WHY DON’T WE ALWAYS NOTICE?

If this is so obvious both in terms of noticing and logic, why don’t we always notice or take this into account?

Most likely, because we live in a culture and world where most don’t. When we grow up, we do as others do. We learn to take on and operate from separation consciousness. And that can be very convincing, at least until we start examining our assumptions – about what we are and what the world is to us – a little more closely.

IS IT IMPORTANT?

Yes and no. We humans obviously get by without noticing or examining our nature.

And yet, when the oneness we are notices itself, keeps noticing itself, and explores how to live from this noticing, it can be profoundly transforming.

It can be profoundly transforming for our perception, sense of fundamental identity, life in the world, and our human psychology.

WHY DO MANY OVERLOOK OR DENY THIS?

If this is so obvious, both in terms of noticing and logic, why do so many ignore or deny this?

Most people are not so interested in the question of what they more fundamentally are in their own immediate experience. That’s fine. They get by anyway. They have more immediate concerns to focus on and take care of.

And yet, for some people, this is their job. For scientists and especially psychologists, this is essential to their job and (I assume) interests.

So why don’t more of them explore this? Why don’t more of them take it seriously?

I am not sure.

The essential answer may be the same as above: We live in a world where we are trained in separation consciousness from we are born. It becomes the norm, so we don’t even consider questioning it. And if we do, we feel we are somehow transgressing and entering dangerous waters so we don’t take it very far or speak about it.

To elaborate a bit:

Exploring these things is a kind of taboo in our culture, especially in academic circles. It goes against our shared worldview. It goes against standard norms. (Although all of that is changing.)

Our western culture, and especially our scientific culture, value the more “objective” third-person view over first-person explorations. Again, this has been different in the past and will very likely be different in the future.

If you work as a scientist in academia or as a psychologist, you typically cannot stray too far from the mainstream. As a scientist, you risk losing (or not getting) funding. You even risk losing your job if you get too weird. And as a psychologist, you risk losing your license. (In Norway, psychologists have lost their license for exploring the possibility of past lives in therapy sessions, even if these explorations obviously deal with projections and don’t say whether or not the past lives were real or not.)

In short, cultures are systems and systems want to stay mostly stable. There are many mechanisms operating to preserve some kind of stability. There are many incentives to not explore this, and not so many opportunities or invitations to do so. (Which, again, is fortunately changing.)

At a more personal level, many people may not have the curiosity or passion for exploring this. They are happy exploring other things, and that’s fine. Not everyone needs to explore these things.

WILL THIS CHANGE?

Will this change?

It is already changing. More and more people, including in science and psychology, are interested in a more transpersonal approach and understanding.

I envision a future where the third-person and first-person approaches exist side-by-side and even hand-in-hand, including in science and psychology.

It will be a far more rich exploration of our human experience, and one that reflects a little more of the bigger picture.

ACKNOWLEDGING THE VALIDITY OF WHAT MYSTICS DESCRIBE

If or when this shift happens, something else will happen as well.

And that is an acknowledgment – in science and our culture – of the validity in what mystics across times and cultures have described.

If we look at the essence of what mystics describe, it’s exactly this.

We are consciousness, and the world to us is consciousness.

We are the oneness the world, to us, happens within and as.

Image: Created by me and Midjourney (AI image)

Awakening and self-esteem

moe Leave a comment

In a social media group, someone asked if awakening helps with low self-esteem.

My answer – as usual – would be yes, no, and it depends.

NO – ISSUES DON’T NECESSARILY GO AWAY

Low self-esteem comes from emotional issues. They come from beliefs creating an identity and emotional issues. Those may not go away even if our nature notices itself.

It’s perfectly possible, and very normal, for our nature to notice itself and for us to generally live from and as that noticing, and still have many emotional issues. These will inevitably color our perception and life in the world, even if there is a general kind of awakening here.

YES – IT CAN HELP US RELATE TO IT DIFFERENTLY

Yes, awakening may help.

Awakeness helps us relate to what comes up – including those issues – differently. It’s easier to recognize them as issues and not get so caught up in them.

It’s also easier to recognize their nature, and that they have and are our nature, which also helps us shift how we relate to them. This gives us that interesting experience of oneness (it’s what I am and everything is to me) and distinction (it happens within and as what I am, it’s an emotional issue).

And, as mentioned above, these issues will still inevitably color our perception and life, and we may still get caught up in them.

HEALING AND AWAKENING GO HAND IN HAND

This is why healing and awakening go hand in hand.

Healing makes it easier for the oneness we are to keep noticing itself without getting distracted by issues. The fewer issues, the fewer of these distractions. (And these apparently distractions are really life bringing our attention to something that needs healing.)

Healing helps us operate from fewer issues coloring our perception and life. Any dormant issue will color our perception and life. (As is obvious when you look at the life of many who generally live from awakening.)

And awakening makes it easier for us to relate to our issues more consciously, to recognize them as expressions of the oneness we are, and invite them to reorganize within a conscious noticing of this oneness. This requires intention and skill and doesn’t come on its own.

IT DEPENDS

And that’s where “it depends” comes in.

Whether awakening helps us with our emotional issues, including low self-esteem, depends on how we make use of the awakening. It depends on intention, experience, training, and skill.

It doesn’t come on its own. It doesn’t come for free. It requires work.

And it’s ongoing. It’s not something that’s fixed once and for all.

There is no place where we arrive and where this is not a theme anymore. (At least not in this life.)

Returning to the basics

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I find myself returning to the basics, and in the context of this website, this is the basics of awakening and healing.

A FEW BASICS

When it comes to awakening, what are some of these basics?

Our nature and how to notice and explore it for ourselves.

How to live from this noticing.

The pitfalls on the path, including the misconceptions some have.

The wrinkles that come from our very human messiness.

And also some of the basic structured explorations that support this. In my case, inquiry to notice my nature (Headless experiments, Big Mind process), basic meditation, training more stable attention, sense field explorations, heart-centered practices (tonglen, ho’o), inquiry into beliefs (The Work), and so on.

WHY THE BASICS?

I find that returning to the basics helps me in several ways.

It helps me refine and clarify.

It helps me discover something more essential. (Than I was previously aware of.)

It invites me to explore if there are basics I have left out.

It helps me balance out any tendency to go into complexity. (Which also has its place.)

It helps me ground. (And not get too caught up in intellectualizing and fanciful complexities.)

It helps me prioritize and focus. (And not get too lost in the periphery.)

It helps me communicate a little better with myself and others.

Personally, I also find it helps me stay in contact with the childlike in me, with curiosity, awe, and wonder.

SIMPLICITY AND COMPLEXITY

The basics here mean what’s essential.

Is that the same as simplicity?

Yes and no.

The basics are simple in that the essence of it is often simple. And the basics offer simple pointers and reminders.

At the same time, there is an infinite complexity there as with anything else. There is always more to discover and explore. There are always new perspectives and angles we can take on it. There are always new contexts we can understand it within. And so on.

In this exploration, following the basics typically leads to insights into the complexity. The basics help ground our exploration. And getting lost in the complexity and forgetting the essentials can be fun for a while but is ultimately a distraction.

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Aspects of awakening

moe Leave a comment

I keep revisiting the topic of awakening, and especially the basics since that helps keep it grounded.

So what are some of the basic aspects of awakening?

NOTICING MY NATURE

It is to notice our nature.

In one sense, I am this human self in the world. It’s what people, my passport, and my own thoughts often tell me. And it’s not wrong. It’s an assumption that works relatively well in daily life, although it does come with some inherent stress and discomfort.

Another question is: What am I in my own first-person experience? What am I more fundamentally?

Here, I find I am more fundamentally capacity for the world as it appears to me, for any content of experience, for anything that happens in any of my sense fields. I am what the world, to me, happens within and as.

In the first, I am in the world, and in the second, the world is in me. Both are valid and useful, and the second is more fundamental to what I am in my own experience.

KEEP NOTICING

Noticing our nature is obviously an essential aspect of awakening.

Another is to keep noticing.

If we noticed in the past, it becomes a memory – a mental image and words – and a kind of reference point, which is useful. It can be a reminder to notice it here and now.

And the real juice is in noticing here and now. With time, as we keep noticing, it becomes a new habit. We deepen the groove.

ASPECTS OF WHAT WE ARE

As we keep noticing our nature and live more in that landscape, we tend to discover more aspects of our nature.

I find I am capacity for the world as it appears to me, for any content of experience.

I find I am the oneness the world, to me, happens within and as.

I find I am what a thought may call consciousness, and the world to me happens within and as this consciousness.

Another aspect of oneness is love. It’s the love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right. It’s a love independent of any states or feelings. It’s an unsentimental and practical love. (And it’s easily covered up when I get caught in my very human hangups, issues, and traumas.)

I also find there is a quiet joy in this, a joy also independent of changing states, feelings, and experiences.

And there is more here. Any content of experience is an aspect of what I am. It happens within and as what I am. The world, as it appears to me here and now, is an aspect of what I am. You are an aspect of what I am. Any thought, feeling, sensation, smell, or sight that’s here is an aspect of what I am.

This human self is also an aspect of what I am. It too happens within and as what I am. And I find I have a special connection to this human self since it’s here, in my experience, most of the time, and it serves as a sensory organ for me in the world and I have inside information about this human self.

EXPLORE LIVING FROM IT

As we get more used to noticing our nature, we naturally explore living from it.

How is to live from noticing my nature? How is it to live from noticing oneness?

How is it to live from this noticing in this situation?

How is it to live from this noticing in more and more situations? Including the ones that are difficult for my human self?

How is it to live from this noticing in more and more areas of life?

SEE, LOVE, VISCERAL

When I notice my nature, I metaphorically see it.

I can find love for all as the divine and/or happening within and as what I am.

And I can viscerally get that all is the divine, including that which my personality doesn’t like.

In my experience, all of this is an ongoing and deepening process.

HEALING AND REALIGNMENT OF MY HUMAN SELF

And that process of living from noticing my nature, and seeing, loving, and viscerally getting all as the divine, requires and leads to a transformation of my human self.

Many and most aspects of my psyche were formed within separation consciousness. They operate on the assumption of separation, and that’s also the essence of emotional issues, hangups, traumas, and painful beliefs (all beliefs are ultimately painful since they are out of alignment with reality).

At a human level, I am programmed to largely operate as if separation is my most fundamental nature. So living from a conscious noticing of my nature requires healing and transformation of my human self and how I am in the world.

And that’s not an easy process. It takes time, it’s ongoing, and life will show me where I am still stuck.

It requires facing unprocessed materials (including the Jungian shadow), and that can at times be overwhelming, confusing, and scary.

It’s a very human and messy process, and at the same time beautiful.

NOT COMPLETE

This is obviously a very limited and cursory list of the aspects of awakening.

It’s just what comes to mind to me now, and the aspects I happen to be most drawn to based on my own conditioning and experiences.

Another important aspect is community. If we are lucky, this is a process we share with others. We are our own ultimate authority, and at the same time, it’s something we can explore with others in whatever form that takes.

There are also the side-effects of awakening which can include bliss, a sense of cosmic consciousness (a flavor of the oneness we are), extra-sensory perception, the ability to do distance healing, some level of precognition, and so on. For me, these are fun and interesting but not central – or essential – to awakening.

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The more you know, the more you know how little you know

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The Dunning-Kruger effect has been floating around on social media for a while so I assume many are familiar with it. Knowing a little can make you think you know a lot because you don’t know how little you know. Novices can become over-confident.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

This especially came to the forefront during the recent pandemic. Many conspiracy theorists thought they knew a lot about vaccines and epidemiology. (Topics that take decades of study to become proficient in.) While they, in reality, based their views on random pieces of information from dubious sources, internet echo chambers, generally bad data and bad logic, and a lack of familiarity with the field.

Many also seemed unaware that they were repeating predictable patterns from history. During pandemics, these types of conspiracy theories flourish, likely because people are scared and try to find a sense of certainty. (Often through blame and assigning the cause to a group of people rather than the systems or the unpredictability and randomness of nature, and/or by denying what’s happening.)

AWAKENING, HEALING, AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

This also applies to healing, awakening, and spiritual practices.

I often see people who have been into it for a few years presenting themselves as if they have certain knowledge, while they in reality are just scratching the surface and approaching it in a relatively immature way.

Of course, some get a lot in a relatively short period of time. (I was probably among them.)

And their knowledge may be more than sufficient to help others along the way. We often just need to be one or two steps ahead of someone for our guidance and input to be helpful, especially if we approach it with some groundedness and a sense of our limits.

AS WE GET MORE EXPERIENCE

There is also something that happens as we mature into it.

In a conventional sense, we may know quite a bit and perhaps more than most. And we also learn and discover how much we don’t know.

We may be among the ones who have the most experience with something. And at the same time, we realize that our own experience and knowledge is a drop in the ocean compared to how much there is to discover and learn.

We tend to realize that we don’t know anything for certain.

We tend to be more aware of our biases and how our evolutionary history, our biology and psychology, our place in time and culture, and more all strongly color our perception.

We tend to know, from experience, that our view may be turned upside down and inside out at any time.

We tend to realize there is no finishing line and that there is always further to go.

This helps us hold it all more lightly, and that is often a sign of maturity.

WHY THIS EFFECT?

The peak of “mount stupid” is often marked by a sense of certainty.

We start to feel a sense of mastery of something and we tell ourselves we know and that we are experts.

There may be several reasons for this.

We may not yet have enough experience in that particular area to realize how little we know.

We may not be good enough in any area to have learned that there is always more to learn and that we are always, in a sense, just scratching the surface. We may not have this experience to generalize from.

And we may be motivated by wanting to compensate for a sense of lack. If we have a sense of lack and feel we are not good enough, it’s tempting to jump on a little skill or knowledge and use it to feel better about ourselves, and then overdo it.

WHEN WE AVOID THIS PITFALL

As suggested above, we can avoid or reduce the DK effect in different ways.

As we get more experience, we know how little we know, we know we don’t know anything for certain, and we hold it all more lightly.

If we have expertise in one field, we tend to know how little we know and that there is always further to go. So we find some humility grounded in reality, and can generalize this to other areas of life. If this is how it is in the field I happen to know about, it’s probably the same in other fields.

We may have this more naturally with us. Perhaps because of our upbringing and what we see from others, from our own experiences and insights, or because we don’t have much of a sense of lack or don’t use the DK strategy to compensate for it. We may naturally hold it all more lightly with an inherent knowing that we cannot know for certain.

LEARNING ABOUT THESE DYNAMICS

Another way to prevent or reduce the DK effect in our own life is to learn about it.

We learn about the effect, examine some typical expressions of it, and look at some specific examples. And that makes it easier to recognize when it happens to us.

We can also use our common sense. There is always more to learn and further to go. We don’t know anything for certain. It makes sense to hold it all more lightly. And it makes sense to have some respect for those who have spent decades in full-time study of something and hear what they have to say and learn from them.

Also, if we don’t know much about something, and our view is different from professionals in the field, then maybe it’s most likely that we are off on a wild goose chase?

A REVERSE DUNNING-KRUGER

A kind of reverse Dunning-Kruger effect can also happen.

We can be painfully aware of how little we know, to the point of not sharing it with the world.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is often rooted in a sense of lack. People compensate for a sense of lack by pretending – to themselves and others – they know and understand more than they do.

And the reverse Dunning-Kruger effect is also rooted in a sense of lack. It just plays itself out differently. We tell ourselves that what we know is not much, or that what we know is not worth much because we are not worth much, so we don’t share it or make much use of it.

This is something that’s familiar to me. And it’s one reason why I am mostly just sharing these things on an anonymous blog that just a few people look at.

Illustration: From Wikimedia Commons

The banality of awakening

moe Leave a comment

There is a certain banality to awakening.

WE ARE CONSCIOUSNESS

To ourselves, we are consciousness.

We can find this in our immediate experience. When I explore my first-person experience, I find my nature is capacity for the world as it appears to me, capacity for any content of experience. And I find I am what the world, to me, happens within and as. I am the oneness the world, to me, happens within and as.

And logically, I find the same. No matter what I more fundamentally am in a conventional sense, to myself I have to be consciousness.

It may well be that I most fundamentally am this physical body and this body somehow produces consciousness.

Any experience happens in consciousness, including the experience of this human self and anything associated with it – thoughts, feelings, emotions, sights, and so on. Any experience happens within and as consciousness, including of anything thoughts may tell me I am.

So to myself, I inevitably and most fundamentally am consciousness.

To me, the world happens within and as what I am. To me, the world happens within and as the consciousness I am. To me, the world happens within and as the oneness I am.

AWAKENING

We are typically trained to take ourselves most fundamentally as something within the field of our experiences, as this human self, as an object in the world, as an I with the rest of the world as Other.

This is not wrong, but it’s not what we more fundamentally are in our own first-person experience.

So this assumption, and living from it, inevitably creates a sense of something being off. We metaphorically throw ourselves out of paradise, the kind of paradise that comes from finding ourselves as the oneness we are.

And in some cases, the oneness we are wakes up out of this separation fantasy and into finding itself as oneness. It finds itself as the oneness the world, in its own experience, happens within and as.

Why? It can happen spontaneously and without any obvious preparation or even conscious surface interest. (As was the case with me.)

It can also happen after some conscious and intentional exploration, especially when its sincere, dedicated, under skillful guidance, and done with receptivity, curiosity, and over some time.

WHO AND WHAT I AM

As who I am, I am this human self in the world. That’s how most others see me, it’s what my passport tells me, and it’s what my thoughts may tell me. It’s an assumption that works reasonably well.

As what I am, I am the oneness the world to me happens within and as. This is what I more fundamentally am in my own first-person experience, whether I notice it or not. Here, I am not most fundamentally a human being.

The first happens within and as the second. And the story of the second also happens within the second.

THE BANALITY OF AWAKENING

Awakening is often presented as something special.

And yet, it’s also very banal.

What we find is, in a certain sense, inevitable. It’s inevitable if we look with some guidance and sincerity. And it’s inevitable logically.

It’s what we already are most familiar with, whether we notice it or not. It’s what we always have been and always are.

And it’s all we have ever known. Any experience happens within and as what we are. It’s most fundamentally, and completely, what we are.

EXTRAORDINARY AND BANAL

Noticing what we really are is extraordinary in that it’s not all that common in the world today. And it certainly may seem extraordinary when the oneness we are shifts from operating from separation consciousness to recognizing itself.

It’s also banal. And to me, sinking into that noticing is a relief. It’s an antidote to stories saying it’s special.

And, of course, those are both labels with very limited validity. As anything else, the reality is more than and different from any labels or stories about it.

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Waking up issues, parts, and subpersonalities

moe Leave a comment

I enjoy using the befriend & awaken process these days, as I have written about in other articles. (It’s a process that draws on elements from a range of approaches, others have come up with similar processes, this one is one I have developed for myself since it seems to work the best for me, and I don’t think anyone else calls it “befriend & awaken”.)

One of the last steps in that process is to awaken issues or parts and subpersonalities.

What does it mean to awaken issues? Or awaken parts and subpersonalities?

THE PROCESS

When I do this part of the process, I go through a few steps.

I connect with the issue or subpersonality through the previous steps, feel the sensation aspect of it, connect with the painful story behind it, and so on.

I notice my own nature and that I am capacity for the world as it appears to me, and that the world as it appears to me happens within and as what I am. (I find myself as what a thought may call consciousness, and that the world to me happens within and as consciousness.)

I notice that the nature of the issue or part is the same as mine. It happens within and as what I am, so it – by necessity – has the same nature as me.

I rest in that noticing.

I invite the issue or part to recognize its own nature and rest in that noticing.

I invite whatever shifts to shift, to reorganize within this conscious noticing of what’s already here.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

How does this work? What is it that happens?

As mentioned, this is all already happening within and as what I am. Any issue, part, and subpersonality – and any content of experience – already happens within and as what I am. It already has the same nature as I do.

When they were formed, they were typically formed within separation consciousness. They were formed when the whole of me, or most of what I am, operated from separation consciousness. And they still function and operate within separation consciousness. That’s why they are issues. That’s why they seek some form of resolution.

By consciously noticing their nature, and resting in and as that noticing, I – as a whole – recognize their nature. This shifts how I relate to them. I recognize them as myself. I recognize them as having the same nature as I do. This is part of the befriending. This helps me shift out of reactivity and reacting to them from habitual patterns, which also come from separation consciousness.

I then invite these parts of me to notice their own nature and rest in that noticing. This shifts how this part of consciousness relates to itself. It wakes up to its own nature. It wakes up to itself having taken the form of the issue or the part and subpersonality. And that sets something in motion. The part tends to reorganize and align with a more conscious noticing of itself as oneness. (AKA healing.)

On the one hand, it all happens here and now, and any ideas of past, future and present happen here and now. And on the other hand, this is a process. The more time I spend resting in this noticing, and resting in inviting these parts of me to notice their nature, the more there is a realignment.

Exactly what happens is always a bit of a surprise. It lives its own life. I – as the whole – just notice it shift, unravel, and realign.

And, as so often, the way this is presented makes it sound like a clean and orderly process. It’s often not. It’s often messy. These parts of us are tied up in knots, and the unknotting process isn’t always so tidy or clean.

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Awakening comes from and is a kind of maturity

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Through an imagined dialog with someone who has lived for eons, it became more clear to me that awakening – noticing our nature – is, in a way, inevitable with enough time and experience. Especially if we have some receptivity and curiosity.

A NATURAL PROCESS OF RECOGNIZING OUR NATURE

Why? Mainly because all content of experience comes and goes, and that includes anything we may take ourselves to be within the content of experience.

Given enough time, we gain a great deal of familiarity with this. With some receptivity, curiosity, and authenticity, we will eventually consciously recognize it. And that leads to the realization that we cannot most fundamentally be anything in particular within the content of our experience.

So what are we, more fundamentally, in our own first-person experience? We may find we are what the world, to us, happens within and as. We are what this human self, others, the wider world, thoughts and ideas, feelings, states, and anything else happens within and as.

Since we don’t live for eons, this natural process tends to not come to fruition in most cases.

And we can compress and support this natural process so it does come to fruition. We can engage in basic meditation, noticing and allowing any content of experience. (And notice it’s already allowed and noticed.) We can explore what we more fundamentally are in our own first-person experience. We can use pointers and practices from a range of different traditions. We can find someone familiar with the terrain to guide us.

AWAKENING COMES FROM AND IS A KIND OF MATURITY

In this way, we can say that awakening comes from a kind of maturity.

It’s a natural process that may be more or less (?) inevitable given enough time.

It’s a natural process that can be compressed and sped up through various practices and intentional explorations.

And it’s a more mature way of noticing and living. It’s the oneness we are finally recognizing itself as any and all experience, as the world as it appears to us.

AWAKENING AND MATURITY IN GENERAL

There are several connections between awakening and maturity.

Awakening itself is a kind of maturity. It seems to come as a natural result of noticing the reality of our experience, which is a kind of maturity.

Awakening is supported by several types of maturity. It’s supported by ordinary life experiences and noticing patterns, including that all content of experience changes. It’s also supported by innate characteristics present when we are more healthy and mature. For instance, receptivity, curiosity, sincerity, and authenticity. And from sincerely wishing to know our nature, or truth, or love, or the divine.

Awakening tends to support this human self to mature further. It can open up for and deepen sincerity, authenticity, and receptivity, and a sincere wish to know our nature, truth, love, or the divine.

Our relationship with our nature matures over time and through familiarity. We deepen into it. We explore how to live from and as it. We may even explore how to share it with others, as travelers shares stories of the places they are familiar with.

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Awakening doesn’t change our life?

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I have been reading The Triune Self: Confessions of a Ruthless Seeker by Mike Snider and love it as I loved the two talks he gave on request from Adyashanti.

He is clear. He follows his own path. He is unfraid to call out what he sees as bullshit often found in nondual and spiritual communities.

In general, I feel a deep resonance with what he talks and writes about and his process, and he has been unfailingly kind and wise in the few interactions I have had with him.

At the same time, there is one thing I am curious about. He says that his nature recognizing itself – AKA awakening – didn’t change who he is in the world. (This is based on memory since it’s a few weeks since I read it, and my memory is not so good these days due to CFS and post-covid brain.)

Why does he emphasize this point? And does awakening lead to a transformation of our human self and life in the world or not?

AWAKENING IS ITS OWN THING

It’s true that awakening doesn’t neccesarily lead to an immediate transformation at the human level.

Oneness recognizing itself doesn’t depend on anything in particular within the content of experience. It doesn’t require our human self or life to be any particular way. (Apart from having the basic psychological makeup to allow for awakening.)

And the noticing itself doesn’t neccesarily transform our human self or life in the world. At least not right away.

AWAKENING AND TRANSFORMATION

And it’s also not the full picture.

In my experience, there is an ongoing and lifelong process of transformation that happens at many levels and in many areas.

One is transformation in perception. This is a shift from oneness viscerally taking itself as something within itself (this human self and ideas about this human self) to noticing itself to viscerally finding itself as oneness to different layers of its nature (oneness, love, capacity etc.) revealing itself to itself in new ways.

An aspect of this is transformation of identity, of what oneness viscerally takes itself to be.

And then there is the transformation of our human self – of our psychology and life in the world.

Many parts of our psyche were formed within and still operate from separation consciousness and these will inevitably color our perception and life in the world. If they are not actively triggered, they still color our perception and life. And if they are triggered, oneness may get more strongly caught up in them and more obviously perceive and live from them.

That’s inherently uncomfortable. And it gets even more uncomfortable when the oneness we are recognizes itself.

And it seems that awakening sets in motion a process of transforming our human self so more of it is gradually more aligned with oneness recognizing itself.

Some of that transformation may happen through various practices before our nature recognizes itself. Some may happen in the moment the recognition happens. And in many or most cases (?), most of that transformation happens after and within oneness recognizing itself.

We may intentionally support that process through various practices and our attention, receptivity, and sincerity.

And, in my experience, most of it happens through unprocessed psychological material surfacing on its own. Often, as a trickle. And sometimes, uninvited and to an extent that can be overwhelming, disorienting, and scary to our human self. (When that happens, we may label it as a kind of dark night.) This may be triggered or amplified by life events and loss – of willpower, health, friends, family, belongings, status, reputation, and so on.

This process happens whether we consciously want it or not, and it often happens in ways that our personality doesn’t like. It’s happens by necessity in that way since it’s a process of our old patterns and conditioning wearing off and something different and more authentic emerging instead. And then that may be worn off so something new and more authentic can emerge. And so on.

WHY THE EMPHASIS ON THE FIRST?

So why did Mike Snider emphasize that his human life didn’t change?

There may be several reasons.

One is that his life didn’t change to any significant degree. Perhaps his life already is relatively authentic and loving? (It seems that way.)

Another may be that he wants to emphasize that awakening is not about getting anything or getting anything from it. It’s about our nature noticing itself, not really about any secondary transformations. If it happens, fine. But it’s secondary and a side-effect.

THE VALIDITY IN BOTH

That’s true. And it’s especially true, in my experience, that a too strong focus on getting something out of it distracts from a simple noticing of our nature and living from that noticing.

At the same time, the transformation does happen and it’s important. Our human life is important. How we live our life is important. It’s important for our human self. And it’s important for others.

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Quote: Maybe you are searching among the branches

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Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.

– attributed to Rumi on the internet

This obviously applies to many things in life, including psychological healing and awakening.

In terms of healing, we may try to find resolution through focusing on surface manifestations and single issues.

And for any real healing to take place, we often need to go deeper. We may need to find the essential story behind the issue. We may need to address a whole network of issues supporting a particular issue. We may need to address underlying issues and assumptions supporting the issue. And we may need to address the whole life situation of the person as well.

In terms of awakening, it’s common early in the process to get caught up in and search among the content of experience. We may look for states and particular experiences. We assume that what we are looking for is “out there” somewhere.

And as we find more maturity in the process, we recognize that what we are looking for – our nature – is here across and independent of changing states and experiences. It’s something that can be found and noticed here and now. We don’t need to go looking for any particular states or experiences.

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Awakening is in the sweet spot of what can be described and studied, what cannot be proven to our satisfaction by others, and what we have to find for ourselves

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I love the sweet spot where we find awakening. It can be talked about and studied. It cannot be proven to our satisfaction by others. And we ultimately have to find it for ourselves if we want to check it out and get a taste of it.

And that is, of course, how it is with most things in the world. It’s not unique to awakening.

IT CAN BE TALKED ABOUT AND STUDIED

We can talk about awakening and we can study it through science.

We can talk about our own experiences with it. We can talk about others’ reports on it and their lives. We can philosophize about it. We can talk about fantasies and misconceptions about it.

And we can study it through science. We can examine the reports of individuals. We can examine groups of reports for themes and patterns. We can examine biological correlates to what people report. We can try out methods for awakening and see how apparently effective they are. And so on.

And that’s how it is with most things. We can talk about it and we can do different kinds of research on it.

IT CAN NOT BE PROVEN TO OUR SATISFACTION BY OTHERS

There are many things we assume exist based on second and third-hand reports.

I assume Australia is an actual place even if I haven’t been there. I assume there are bears even if I haven’t encountered any. And so on.

And yet, if we want to be sure we cannot completely rely on the reports from others. We have to check it out for ourselves.

That especially applies to awakening since it’s not something we can take photos of and measure. And it’s not widely accepted in our culture so most people are less likely to accept second- or third-hand accounts.

WE HAVE TO FIND IT FOR OURSELVES

In terms of awakening, we can listen to what people have to say about it. We can pretend it’s true. And that, in itself, is ultimately not very satisfying.

To find satisfaction, we need to use effective pointers and find it for ourselves. That’s the only way for us to know for certain if what people talk about exists or not.

And to find deeper satisfaction, in terms of the transformation that comes with awakening, we need to keep noticing and finding it and make that noticing into a new habit. And to allow the noticing to transform our perception, identity, and live in the world and to keep working on us.

A GOOD MIX

This is a good – or even perfect – mix.

If we couldn’t talk about it at all, it would be difficult to share our experiences, learn from each other, and ignite our interest through the sharing of others.

If we couldn’t study aspects of it through science, it would mean it didn’t really touch the world that can be studied and measured which, in turn, would mean it didn’t touch our lives in this world and a significant part of its relevance would be missing.

If we couldn’t find it for ourselves, it would just remain something distant and irrelevant at – at most – something others talked about.

AWAKENING IS NOT UNIQUE IN THIS WAY

Awakening is not unique in this way. It’s similar to many or most other things.

To be certain, we have to find it for ourselves.

And for something to really do something with us, it has to be a firsthand experience and it requires a wholehearted engagement and willingness to be transformed.

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Reactions to noticing our nature / finding ourselves as our nature

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When the oneness we are notices its nature, what are some of the typical reactions?

In my experience, it depends partly on how and in what context we notice our nature.

NOTICING OUR NATURE

We can notice our nature in a relatively undramatic fashion, for instance through guided inquiry. (Headless experiments and the Big Mind process among other approaches.)

Oneness notices itself.

And because of assumptions and emotional needs, may see it as too simple, too familiar, and not exotic or dramatic enough. It’s not what it thought it would be, so it keeps on looking somewhere else.

Or it may find itself intrigued and fascinated by it and keep exploring its nature. It keeps returning to noticing its nature. It keeps exploring how to live from it. And so on.

The upside of a simple noticing is that it’s often undramatic and simple and we are less likely to be distracted by dramatic experiences. It’s a little easier to notice the essence of our nature – capacity, oneness, love, and so on. And that it’s not about any particular content of experience. Oneness can notice its nature here and now through shifting states and experiences.

The downside is that we may see it as too simple. We expect something more dramatic or exotic, so dismiss it and continue to look somewhere else. Eventually, after some wild goose chases, we may realize that our nature never went anywhere and by neccesity is simple and familiar to us, and we may return to this simple noticing.

FINDING OURSELVES AS OUR NATURE

The oneness we are may also find itself as itself in a more wholesale way, with or without any particular preparation or intention.

This is often a sudden shift, although some seem to experience it as a gradual shift.

The upside of this is that our nature is undeniable. It’s strongly in the foreground of our noticing and experience, and it’s impossible to miss or explain it away.

Even the most dense atheist, like me when this happened, can’t dismiss it.

The downside is that we can easily get caught up in the associated states and side-effects of these more dramatic shifts with fireworks and bells and whistles. We may end up chasing states for a while and miss the simplicity of our nature that’s here across changing states.

MY EXPERIENCE

In my case, the shift happened without conscious preparation and intention and was dramatic, wholesale, and lasting.

Although my nature did notice itself relatively clearly, the drama of the initial shift and the side-effects and states (which my personality found very enjoyable) made me also chase experiences and states for a while. At some level, I was a little confused.

Later, I came to appreciate the simplicity of a simple noticing of my nature – especially guided by the Headless experiments and the Big Mind process.

The simple noticing helped me clarify the essence of my nature and what this is really about.

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The 80-20 rule in spiritual practice: Most of it is about transformation, and only a bit is about awakening

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The 80-20 rule says that 80% of the work is done in 20% of the time, and the remaining 20% takes 80% of the time.

That’s often roughtly accurate in my experience. I often find that most of the work is done relatively quickly, and it’s the final bits that take a lot of time to finish up and get right.

And so also when it comes to spiritual practice.

NOTICING OUR NATURE

Contrary to popular misconceptions, it’s not that difficult for most of us to notice our nature. If we have a guide familiar with the terrain, who is using an effective series of pointers, most of us can get it – the essence of it – in a relatively short time. And that means minutes, not hours, days, months, years, or decades. In these cases, the noticing itself can be 1% of the work or less.

We can get it, although many won’t see the value in it. It may seem interesting. A fun party game. But of little or no practical value. So we let it go and move on to something else.

Or we may value awakening, but what we find when guided doesn’t fit our ideas so we keep looking for it somewhere else. We may be looking for something exotic, distant, and mind-blowing in a crude way. And what we are shown is deeply familiar, never left, and without any fanfare or fireworks. It seems just too simple, so we move on and keep looking for the exotic and unusual.

RETURNING TO NOTICING OUR NATURE

If we find it and value it, then that’s where the work starts. It takes a deep and visceral interest – enough to prioritize and return to it – to keep noticing it through daily life. This is 10 or 20% of the work.

TRANSFORMATION

And then there is the transformation of our human self and psychology and life in the world. This too takes a deep and sustained visceral interest and passion.

This transformation can happen, to some extent, through different types of sincere and dedicated spiritual practice even if we don’t notice our nature.

And it can happen within the context of oneness noticing itself as all there is, and aligning our human self with this conscious noticing.

In my experience, this is the majority of the work and the 80% from the 80-20 rule.

NOT ABOUT THE NUMBERS

When I give numbers to the different aspects of the process, it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek. Each case is individual and it will vary a lot. And it’s not really possible – and easily misleading and a bit absurd – to assign numbers in this way.

So why am I doing it? Just to highlight that, in my experience, the noticing costs very little. Sustained noticing requires more of us. And the transformation requires a lot more – and really everything – from us.

Finally, what are some of the structured pointers that can help most of us notice our nature so quickly? Two approaches I personally enjoy are the Headless experiments and the Big Mind process.

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Perception of causality when I notice my nature

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How do we perceive causality when we notice our nature?

CONVENTIONAL PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY

In a conventional sense, we assume causality in daily life. I stub my toe, experience pain, and stubbing my toe caused or led to the pain. I step on the gas pedal, the car goes faster, so stepping on the gas pedal made the car go faster.

As with our thoughts and assumptions in general, these assumptions of causality help us orient and function in the world. They work often enough and well enough to help us function.

They are often relatively accurate in a conventional sense. They are often layperson level understanding of causality, which means they are simplistic and work reasonably often and well. And they sometimes miss the mark and are not accurate in a conventional sense, and if we receive feedback we have a chance to learn from it and modify our assumptions.

NOTICING MY NATURE

It’s not wrong that I am this human self in the world. It’s how others tend to see me, it’s what my passport says, and it’s how it appears to me when I take on that role. It’s an assumption that mostly works well in daily life.

But is it what I more fundamentally am in my own first-person experience?

When I look, I find I am more fundamentally something else.

I find my nature as capacity for the world as it appears to me. It’s what allows any and all content of experience.

And I find myself as what the world, to me, happens within and as.

Said another way: To myself, I am inevitably consciousness, and any content of experience – of this human self, others, the wider world, and so on – happen within and as what I am.

PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY WHEN I NOTICE MY NATURE

When I notice my nature, my perception of causality is much the same as described above, although the conscious context is different.

Here, the world happens. It’s what it is in immediacy. Any content of experience lives its own life.

And any sense of time and space and causality is created by a mental field overlay. It’s created by mental representations.

Mental representations says what happened, what’s happening (always a little behind), and what may happen in the near and possibly distant future.

This is where causality lives. There are mental representations of having walked, stubbed my toe against a rock, that this experience is called “pain”, and that walking and stubbing my toe is the cause of pain. Similarly, there are mental representations of driving, of having pushed the foot down on the gas pedal, and the car going faster as shown on the speedometer when images of how it was just seconds ago is compared with images of how it is now.

It doesn’t mean ideas of causality are inherently wrong. It just means that I recognize where causality, for me, comes from. It’s created within my mental representations.

I appreciate the gifts in it. It helps this human self function and live in the world.

And I can more easily recognize the limitations inherent in these assumptions. They are assumptions. They are often roughly accurate. I am aware that they are rough approximations and simplifications. And I also recognize that since they are assumptions, they are sometimes wrong – either in details or more completely.

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The experience of my human self when I notice my nature 

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I had lunch with family today (father’s day) and experimented a bit with shifting identification and where my center of gravity is in terms of identification.

THE FREEDOM OF FINDING THIS HUMAN SELF WITHIN WHAT I AM

Normally, I notice that the whole landscape – of this human self, others, and the wider world – happens within and as what I am. The field of sight, sound, smell, taste, sensations, and thoughts happen within and as what I am. It’s all happening within and as consciousness. It’s happening as a dream in that it’s created by consciousness and its nature, to me, is consciousness. To me, my world and all I am is consciousness.

This is freeing. It allows a noticing of this human self as he listens, speaks, feels, thinks, does, and so on. It allows a noticing of this human self as he lives his own life.

THE CLAUSTROPHOBIA OF BEING INSIDE THIS HUMAN SELF

I then tried to consciously shift identification more exclusively to this human self. How is it to imagine me as only this human self? Inside this skull? Looking out of these two openings in the skull onto others and the world.

For me, that immediately feels claustrophobic. I feel locked in. Looking out. The world feels more threatening. My social anxiety goes up several levels. I more easily become self-conscious in an uncomfortable way.

Note: I have written similar articles on distance, movement, time, the physical, and doership.

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Drama queen spirituality

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There is a lot of drama queen spirituality.

Overly dramatic ideas about spirituality and what it is about.

Some of it has some validity.

And yet, and at least when it comes to awakening, the essence of it is inherently undramatic.

UNDRAMATIC ESSENCE

In what way is it undramatic?

It’s what we already are noticing itself. Nothing is created. Nothing is added.

It’s what we already are most familiar with. We have never experienced anything other than our nature.

We “just” need to notice. Our nature needs to notice itself as everything it experiences and all it has ever known. What’s required is for the oneness we are to notice itself.

THE APPARENT DRAMA

And there is also some apparent drama in an awakening process.

When oneness takes itself as a separate self within itself, it tends to create drama around a range of things including awakening. It has ideas about awakening. It may yearn for awakening. It may struggle to find awakening. It may discard and reject awakening. And so on.

And it may also struggle with the process itself as it unfolds. It may tell itself it “got it” and then “lost it”. It may tell itself something has gone wrong. It may go through phases that don’t look the way it thinks it should look. It may recognize most experiences as itself and “forget” that other experiences – typically the ones the personality doesn’t like – also are itself and struggle with it. And so on.

All this is a kind of drama. Its drama the oneness we are creates for itself within itself.

The irony is that all of this drama is made up of our nature. What we seek is what makes itself into all of this drama and any other experience we have. All of it is inherently what we are.

Oneness takes itself to be a separate self within itself. Seeks some idea of awakening. Creates drama for itself. And what it really seeks is what makes itself into all this drama. It seeks the nature of this drama.

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Perception of doership when we notice our nature

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I find myself writing a short series of articles on how our perception of different things – distance, movement, time, and so on – may change when we notice our nature.

Here is one on our perception of doership.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

In the world, it’s important for me to take responsibility for my actions, words, and choices.

It helps me live in a slightly more mature way. It’s more in integrity. And it helps me see things about myself more accurately which may lead to changes. (There is a lot of room for improvement.)

If I don’t take responsibility, I can notice it through some of the telltale signs (blame, victimhood, etc.) and I can use it to find the fear behind it. What’s the scary story? What am I afraid would happen if I took responsibility for my own words, choices, and actions in this situation? What’s the identity that’s threatened?

THIS HUMAN SELF IS LIVING ITS OWN LIFE

I can then find myself as capacity for the world as it appears to me. I can find myself as that which the world, to me, happens within and as. This is what I more fundamentally am to myself.

Here, I notice that all content of my experience lives its own life – this human self, thoughts, feelings, choices, actions, other people, ecosystems, the wider world. It’s all living its own life. It’s all happening on its own.

Within stories, I can tell myself that everything has infinite causes stretching back to the beginning of time (if there is any) and the widest extent of space (if there is any).

And in my immediate noticing, it’s all living its own life.

IN DAILY LIFE

In daily life, there are both.

I aim at taking responsibility for my own choices, actions, and life – and don’t always succeed. (Any time I go into a stressful story, it’s a sign I am not taking responsibility as much as I could.) This helps me live with a bit more integrity and it helps me mature a bit more.

And I notice that this human self is happening on its own like anything else. This takes some of the stress out of it and there is less interference from the idea of fundamentally being a doer.

SHIFTS HIGHLIGHTING THIS

As I have written about elsewhere, in an awakening process, there are often shifts that highlight certain aspects of what we are.

In this case, I experienced several shifts around fifteen years ago that brought the “this human self is living its own life” aspect to the foreground. These were shifts into a stronger disidentification with any content of experience, and they made it blindingly clear that this human self is happening on its own. (There were many similar types of shifts during that period.)

And these shifts have helped me notice it later on, even when this aspect is less obviously in the foreground.

Note: I have written similar articles on distance, movement, time, the physical, and this human self.

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Perception of time when we notice our nature

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This is another article in a mini-series on how we tend to perceive when we notice our nature. I have written about our perception of distance and movement so far, and here is one on time. (Since I have written about our perception of time in several other articles so I will only touch on it briefly here.)

CONVENTIONAL TIME

In one sense, I perceive time as anyone else. I know how to use our ideas of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and so on. And my sense of time stretches and compresses depending on what I am doing and whatever states are moving through me, as it seems to do for most people.

TIME HAPPENS WITHIN ME

At the same time, I am aware that my sense of time happens within and as what I am.

Any ideas of past, future, and present – and what I imagine in each one – happen within my sense fields.

They happen within and as what I am. They happen within and as what a thought may call consciousness.

It’s all happening in the now that’s all I know and have ever known.

MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS

I am aware of my mental representations of time – of a timeline with a future, kind-of-present, and past, and that my mental field places certain events on this timeline and in one or more of these three times.

I have examined these through more thorough inquiry several times, which helps me recognize them in daily life. And it helps me recognize them as mental representations happening now.

These mental representations are essential for helping this human self function in the world.

TIMELESSNESS

Another aspect of all this is timelessness.

Since time happens within and as what I am, I find my nature is timeless.

My nature is no-time allowing time and different experiences of time, including the three times and the stretchiness of time.

SHIFTS HIGHLIGHTING CERTAIN FEATURES

When we are in a process of exploring our nature, it’s not uncommon to have experiences that highlight certain features of what we are.

One of these for me happened fifteen or more years ago. I was training a more stable attention (focus on sensations of the breath in the nose) while music was playing in the background. Suddenly, there was a shift where any sense of continuity of time fell away. There was no continuity in the music, only the shifting sounds here now.

This helped me see how my mind, and especially the mental field, creates not only a sense of past, future, and present, but also of continuity of time. Without it, there is only an always shifting now with no continuity. Without it, we couldn’t function as human beings in the world.

IN DAILY LIFE

In daily life, all of these are here and attention may highlight some aspects of this more than others.

I operate with time in a conventional sense, and with my cultural influences. (I like to be on time since I am from Norway, and I like to stick to schedules that involve others for the same reason.)

I notice my mental field creating and operating with representations of time – a timeline, three times, events on this timeline and in the three times, and so on.

I notice my timeless nature, either in the background or more intentionally.

And I am aware that without my mental field, there would be no sense of continuity in time.

Note: I have written similar articles on distance, movement, doership, the physical, and this human self.

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Perception of movement when we notice our nature

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I thought I would write a mini-series of articles on how our perception changes when we notice our nature. I have written about our perception of distance, so what about movement?

MOVING THROUGH THE WORLD

As a human being in the world, when I move I move through the world. I travel from A to B.

This is how others see it, and how I often talk about it since it’s how most people talk about it. And it has some use. It’s not wrong, even if it’s not the full picture.

THE WORLD MOVING THROUGH WHAT I AM

When I look in my first-person experience, I find I am something more fundamental than this human self in the world. I find I am capacity for the world (what allows my experience of the world to happen). I find that the world, to me, happens within and as my sense fields. And I find that the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as what I am. Any content of experience – this human self, others, the wider world, and anything at all – happens within and as what I am.

Here, I also find that when this human self moves in the world, what’s actually happening is that the world, to me, moves through me. It moves through this field of experience. It moves through and as what I am.

What I am forms itself into the appearance of the world moving through me.

STILL ESSENCE

When I look more closely, I find that my nature forms itself into the world as it appears to me.

And this means this moving world is moving. And it’s also all happening as my nature, as (what a thought may call) consciousness.

So there are three things happening at once.

This human self moves through the world.

The world moves through me. It moves through my sense fields and what I am.

And the essence of it is not moving since the moving world, to me, happens as what I am. It happens as consciousness. Its essence is always the same.

IN DAILY LIFE

For me, this makes daily life more interesting.

Yes, this human self moves through the world and that’s how I talk about it with others.

For myself, I notice that the world moves through me. It’s fascinating and gives me a quiet joy to notice it.

And I also notice how it’s all happening as what I am, and the essence of it all is – in that sense – still.

Note: I have written similar articles on distance, time, doership, the physical, and this human self.

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Our nature: From conceptual understanding to noticing to finding ourselves as it, and living from it 

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This is a variation on an often revisited topic for me, in these writings and in my life since my teens.

When it comes to exploring our own nature – and what we are to ourselves, in our own first-person experience –there are several shifts that can happen. 

The main ones are from conceptual understanding, to direct noticing, to finding ourselves as it. And through it all, we have living from all of this as best we can and inviting our human self and psyche to transform within it.

CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING

We can have a conceptual understanding of our nature and what we are to ourselves, in our own first-person experience.

If presented in a down-to-earth way, it can make logical sense to many if not most.

Some may find it fascinating but of no practical value and nothing to keep exploring. Some may find it fascinating and continue to explore it conceptually, and that won’t bring any real or thorough transformation. Some may use it as a starting point for a more immediate exploration. And some may first notice or find themselves as their nature, and then explore and express it more conceptually.

And any conceptual understanding is refined through our own familiarity with the terrain, and that’s also what grounds it and keeps it real.

DIRECT NOTICING

Then we may directly notice our nature. We notice it in immediacy.

We may notice our nature as capacity. Our nature is capacity for the world as it appears to us. It’s what allows any and all of our experiences to happen. It’s the nothing that allows all things.

We may notice that the world, to us, happens within and as what we are. Any experience – of this human self, others, the wider world, and anything else – happens within and as (what a thought may call) consciousness.

We may notice we are oneness and the world, to us, happens within and as this oneness.

We may find that another word for oneness is love. This is the love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right. And it comes from noticing and finding ourselves as our more fundamental nature, and it’s not dependent on states and feelings.

With some structured pointers, many if not most can notice this, and it can happen relatively quickly. Some will think it’s too simple and look for something else that fits their preconceived ideas. Some will find it interesting but not be drawn to explore it further or explore how to live from it. And some will get t and continue to notice and clarify and explore how to live from it in daily life.

In my experience, Headless experiments, the Big Mind process, and exploring my sense fields are practices that most effectively help me find and notice my nature, along with basic meditation.

FINDING OURSELVES AS IT

Following this, there may be a shift into finding ourselves as capacity, oneness, and so on.

Our metaphorical center of gravity shifts into being our nature. This is what we already and always are, and now our conscious experience of ourselves is more aligned with our more fundamental nature.

These shifts are always grace. We cannot make it happen, although we can prepare the ground through noticing and clarifying and through our sincerity and receptivity. We can also prepare the ground through simple practices like inquiry and basic meditation.

It seems that there is always more to clarify and more to be revealed. Life keeps revealing more of itself to itself through and as us.

LIVING FROM IT

And through it all, we have living from what we notice or what we find ourselves as.

How is it to live from noticing my nature as capacity and oneness?

How is it to live as capacity? As oneness? As love?

How is that expressed here and now in this situation?

What in my human self needs to heal and mature so I can live more fully from and as this?

Living from and as our nature is greatly supported by inquiry and heart-centered practices, and also following some basic ethical guidelines which help us notice when we are out of alignment.

In general, the more our human self is psychologically healed and mature, the easier it is to live from what we notice – or find ourselves as – in more situations and areas of life.

HAPPENING WITHIN AND AS ONENESS

All of this is happening within and as oneness.

In a purely conceptual understanding, oneness takes itself as primarily this human self and doesn’t notice itself or its nature. It may have an intuition or sense of what it is, which fuels an intellectual curiosity.

When there is a direct noticing, oneness still operates from identification as a separate self and the center of gravity is in this identification, while it also notices its own nature.

Finally, oneness rests in finding itself as oneness. Love rests in finding itself as love. Capacity rests in finding itself as capacity. The center of gravity has shifted more into its more fundamental nature.

INDIVIDUAL PROCESS

How this looks is different in each case. This process is as individual as each of us.

Sometimes, the conceptual understanding is first and sometimes it comes after some of the other shifts.

Sometimes, we explore living from and as this through different spiritual practices before there is any direct noticing or taste.

Sometimes, the noticing or being is far ahead of living from it. While others may live from love and clarity based on a good heart and maturity, and perhaps only an intuitive sense of their nature. 

ONGOING PROCESS

There is always further to go in all of this. There is no finishing line.

We may intentionally explore all of this and put effort into it. And anything that happens – any interest, fascination, exploration, guidance, and anything else including apparent setbacks – is ultimately grace. 

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The logic of awakening & the inevitability of what we are and how it plays itself out

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This is another topic I feel drawn to revisit.

What are we in our own first-person experience? What are we to ourselves? What is the world to us?

We can explore this in our own direct experience, and that can be profoundly transforming for our perception, life in the world, and our human self.

And we can also explore it logically, which can lead to and possibly support a more immediate exploration.

When I explore it logically, arriving at what we are – our nature – seems inevitable. And perhaps it looks that way since I have explored it in my immediate noticing since my teens. I shape the steps to fit what I notice in immediacy.

THE INEVITABILITY OF WHAT WE ARE

What are these logical steps apparently arriving at the inevitability of what we are?

Here is one version:

  1. There is consciousness.
    • This is indisputable, as far as I can tell.
  2. This consciousness has content.
    • We label this content this human self, others, the wider world, and so on.
    • All our experiences – of this human self, the wider world, and anything else – are content of consciousness.
  3. To ourselves, we are consciousness.
    • All the content of our experience comes and goes. Nothing stays.
    • This also applies to our human self and any ideas we have about our human self.
      • This human self is more ephemeral than we may tell ourselves. This human self comes and goes. For instance, in a dream we may be someone else or not present at all. Our experience of this human self, including our ideas about it, is always changing.
    • To ourselves, we are more fundamentally consciousness.
  4. The world, to us, happens within and as what we are.
    • To us, the world happens within and as consciousness, what we are to ourselves.
    • Our nature forms itself into the world as we experience it here and now.
  5. We are capacity.
    • One characteristic of consciousness is capacity.
    • Consciousness is capacity for any and all of the content of its experience.
    • We are capacity for the world, as it appears to us.
  6. We are oneness.
    • Any content of experience happens within and as consciousness.
    • This consciousness forms itself into any and all content of experience, including this human self, others, the world, and so on.
    • Consciousness is one, no matter what experience it forms itself into.
    • To ourselves, we are oneness.
  7. Separation consciousness
    • Consciousness can take itself to primarily be one particular part of its content.
    • Consciousness can take itself to be this human self, a doer, an observer, and any concept.
    • This is how separation consciousness is created.
  8. Awakening
    • Consciousness can notice itself as consciousness.
    • This is what some spiritual traditions call awakening.
    • It can happen through intention, practice, or without any conscious work or desire.
    • The noticing happens here and now, and learning to keep noticing, clarifying, deepening, and living from it is a process.
    • This process is ongoing and has no finishing line.
  9. Universality
    • The essence of this has been described by people across time and cultures, it seems universal.
    • Mystics from all the major spiritual traditions, and outside of any tradition, talk about finding themselves as capacity (“God-head”), oneness, and so on. And they speak in very similar ways about the process leading up to noticing, and the process of living from this noticing.
  10. A psychological understanding of awakening
    • This is a more psychological understanding of awakening.
    • It doesn’t rely on spirituality or spiritual terminology, although what it describes is the same.
    • It says something about what we are in our own first-person experience.
    • It doesn’t say anything about the nature of reality. It doesn’t rely or depend on words like Spirit, God, or Brahman.
    • That makes it more accessible to people independent on their existing worldviews.
    • And it can also provide common ground for people who are exploring and finding this, independent on whatever spiritual tradition or religion – if any – they belong to.

I realize that some may have arguments with some or all of these steps. That’s the job of the mind.

For instance, someone may agree that to ourselves, we are consciousness, oneness, etc. And yet, they may not see it as possible for consciousness to “wake up” to itself in this way because it’s outside of their current experience and the worldview they are familiar with.

I also realize that this can seem abstract and intellectual if we haven’t tasted it for ourselves, in our immediate noticing. (In my case, the noticing came before finding this apparent logic.)

And I am sure there are other ways of phrasing this that are more to the point and make more sense.

SEPARATION CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWAKENING

I thought I would say a few more words about separation consciousness and awakening since that’s of particular interest to me.

For me, the essence of how separation consciousness and awakening plays itself out also has a logic in it. Although there is a wild diversity in how each is expressed and lived out, there is also an apparent inevitability in its essence.

SEPARATION CONSCIOUSNESS

The oneness we are can take itself as fundamentally something in particular within the content of experience. Typically, this human self, a doer, an observer, and so on.

This happens, at least partially, through social learning. We are taught to take ourselves to be, most fundamentally, this human self. So we are good boys and girls and play the game so well we overlook our nature.

The specific ways separation consciousness unfolds is individual and always different.

And yet, there are some universals that inevitably come with separation consciousness.

This game of separation consciousness comes with inherent struggle and stress. Seeing ourselves as most fundamentally an object in the world, at the mercy of innumerable other objects, creates struggle and is stressful. And operating from a view out of alignment with reality does the same.

We also tend to operate from several blind projections. We see characteristics in others and the world and not in ourselves, and the other way around. This comes from and reinforces a sense of fundamentally being an I with an Other.

THE AWAKENING PROCESS

We don’t completely forget. Our nature is, inevitably, what’s most familiar to us. It’s all we ever know.

Here are some typical phases of the awakening process, and with the benefit of hindsight, the process looks relatively logical.

Initial interest

We may have a longing for finding ourselves again as oneness. At the surface, it may take the form of a longing for love, truth, reality, Spirit, or God. For me, it was a profound longing for coming home.

We may hear about awakening and it resonates with us.

We may have glimpses or shifts that drive us to explore further. (I had a profound sense of being one with the universe when I was around ten years old, sleeping under an open sky filled with stars in the Norwegian mountains.)

Practice

We may engage in spiritual practice and explore maps from others more familiar with the terrain.

In the best case, this helps reorient us so it’s easier to notice our nature and live from this noticing.

Noticing

We then notice our nature. Oneness notices itself.

If it’s without bells and whistles, it’s possible we’ll tell ourselves it’s too simple and obvious and keep looking for something else.

If it’s with bells and whistles, we may get distracted by these, assume that’s what it’s about, and try to experience those particular bells and whistles again. We may end up chasing a state that’s by nature ephemeral, and overlook the much simpler essentials of our nature.

Keep noticing

We then realize this is about keeping noticing our nature. We can learn to notice it independent of and through changing states and experiences. Oneness notices itself independent of what content of experience it changes itself into.

Living from it

Here, we explore how to live from this noticing. How do I live from a conscious noticing of oneness in this situation?

Transformation

This process involves a transformation of our fundamental identity, our perception, our life in the world, and our human self and psyche.

Many parts of our human self and psyche were formed within separation consciousness and still operate from separation consciousness. These will color our perception and life even if we consciously notice our nature.

An essential part of learning how to live from noticing our nature is to invite in healing for these parts of us.

Dark nights

Many go through one or more dark nights in this process. These are periods where we more strongly rub up against parts of the old separation consciousness so it can wear off and be seen through.

We may wonder if something has gone wrong. It will often bring us to our knees. Some dark nights may be intensely uncomfortable and overwhelming. And, in hindsight, we may see them as an essential part of the process.

Always individual

This process is always individual. Oneness winds itself up in separation consciousness in an individual way and unwinds in an individual way.

This is just an idealized and generalized outline. For instance, I have gone through or lived each of these steps or aspects, but not in the order outlined here.

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