Tag: ordinary

The mundane side of awakening

moe Leave a comment

When what I am first noticed itself, it was amazing and wondrous. Especially because it was sudden, strong, and contrasted with previously mostly knowing separation consciousness and taking myself to just be a small part of my field of experience.

As I get more familiar with it, the awe and wondrousness of it is still here. It’s amazing that anything is at all. And the beauty, perfection, and immense diversity of existence is beyond words.

At the same time, there is an ordinariness in awakening. It has a mundane side. And that’s a relief.

EXAMPLES OF THE MUNDANE SIDE OF AWAKENING

In what way can it be seen as mundane?

Awakening is noticing what we already are. First, there may be a sense of “I” noticing it, and then it’s noticing itself as all there is. It’s not about anything “other” or particularly mysterious or unfamiliar. It’s what we are most intimately familiar with, although we may not have recognized it for what it is.

It can be understood in a psychological context. All our experiences happen within consciousness. To ourselves, in our first-person experience, we are that consciousness. So we are capacity for all our experiences, and all our experiences happen within and as what we are.

It’s not wrong that we are this human self in the world. Although in our first-person experience, we more fundamentally are something else. We are capacity the world, and what our field of experience happens within and as. We are what our human self and the wider world happens within and as. We are what our sense fields – sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, mental representations – happen within and as.

Here, we notice that our field of experience is one. Any sense of boundaries comes from our overlay of mental representations. And since it happens within and as what we are, we are that oneness.

This is what mystics from all the main spiritual traditions have talked about, and it doesn’t require any reference to God or Spirit or anything especially mysterious.

There is discipline and work involved in this. Noticing what we are can happen easily and relatively quickly. But to keep noticing requires intention, as does living from this noticing. This discipline and work is unglamorous.

This process of noticing and living from it tends to invite in a transformation of our human self. To the extent our human self has wounds, hangups, identifications, traumas, and so on, this is a challenging and messy process. It can be overwhelming, confusing, and bring us to our knees. It’s a deeply human process.

As we mature in this process, and as our human self transforms and heals, we tend to both become more authentically and uniquely who we are, and more ordinary. To others, we are just an ordinary human being. In most cases, and to the extent we have found healing and some maturity, it doesn’t look like anything special.

We find that the world is our mirror.

What I see in the wider world is also something I have here as a human self. I can take any story I have about anything or anyone in the wider world, turn it to myself, and find specific examples of how it’s true.

I also recognize that the way I make sense of anything in the world is through an overlay of mental representations – labels, mental images, stories, and so on. That’s how I am able to navigate and orient in the world. The world as it appears to me is created through my own interpretations and stories.

To the extent I recognize and have worked with this, it tends to equalize anything and everything between the wider world and this human self.

AMAZING AND ORDINARY

There is something inherently amazing and awe-inspiring in noticing what we are.

And as we get more familiar with it, we see it’s also quite ordinary and even mundane.

What we notice is what we always have been. We can understand awakening in a psychological sense. Noticing and living from it requires discipline and work, as anything else. The human transformation is messy in a deeply human way. As we heal and mature within this, we tend to look very ordinary to others and ourselves. And as we explore the world as our mirror, we find that it tends to equalize everything between the wider world and our human self.

tagged: awakening, awakening process, ordinary, ordinary human, who and what we are  

If investigated, ordinary insights can lead us to notice what we are

moe Leave a comment

There are some ordinary and essential insights that can lead us to notice what we are.

A FEW ORDINARY INSIGHTS

In some situations, we all recognize some essential things about life and our perception.

Words are created by humans. Someone makes up a new word, and then others start using it as well, and all words are like that.

Our ideas about something is different from what they are about. We may have an idea about someone, and then realize it was wrong.

Things change. We can most easily notice this when we look at change over time. The world is not the same as ten years ago. We are not the same person as ten years ago.

I experience myself differently from how others experience me. They may have ideas about me that don’t fit how I see myself. And they see me as an object in the world, and my immediate experience of myself is different.

If we don’t explore this further, it can seem casually interesting. It may be limited to some situations and areas of life, and it doesn’t mean that much to us.

And if we take these glimmers of insights more seriously and explore them further, it can lead us to notice what we are.

MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS

Someone makes up a new word, and it reminds me that all words are created. Someone made each of them up at some point, and others re-created them in slightly different forms. They are not fixed. They are not what they point to.

I have an idea about someone or something and realize it was wrong. This reminds me that my mental images and words are created by my own mind. They are, literally, imaginations and fantasies. They are not inherent in what they appear to be about.

I hear about someone from another culture seeing things differently from me. In Japan, being gay was unremarkable until they encountered western views of homosexuality. This reminds me that our opinions and views are cultural. They are created by humans. They are not inherent in reality.

This can help me notice and investigate any mental representations, recognize them as questions, and hold them more lightly.

IMPERMANENCE

Everything is always changing. The world is different from ten years ago. I am different from how I was ten years ago. Earth changes over decades, centuries, and millennia. Even the universe changes over time.

What I experience always changes. I was in the kitchen, and now I am here in front of the computer. The candle is lit and it wasn’t just a few minutes ago. My back feels warm, and it was cold before I put on something warm. Right now, the birds outside are chirping and I didn’t notice earlier.

If this is always changing, what am I? I can hold onto an idea of what I am, which creates a sense of permanence, but it’s a kind of fake permanence. It’s imposed by me and my ideas.

MY FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE OF MYSELF IS DIFFERENT

The way I experience myself is different from how others see me.

On one level, they have ideas about me I don’t recognize or don’t match how I see myself.

More fundamentally, they see me as an object in the world, and I experience myself very differently.

I experience myself as the one I see in the mirror. As these arms and hands and legs disappearing closer to center into empty space. As mental images and memories of who I am. As the one referred to in my passport and birth certificate. As the one people know by my name.

When I look closer, I see that I experience myself as this field of experience – which contains this body, these ideas about myself, and parts of the room I am in right now.

FINDING WHAT I AM

All of this can lead me to notice what I am.

If I take these seriously, investigate them thoroughly, allow myself to go outside of ideas about what I am, and do all of it with sincerity and honesty, I may notice what I am. I may find my true nature.

I may find myself as capacity for the world, and what my field of experience happens within and as.

When put into words, that too is an idea. That too happens within and as what I am.

So what do I find here and now?

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tagged: essential topic, inquiry, insights, ordinary, who and what we are  

Sparrow: Stein discovered that she enjoyed reading bad books as much as she did masterpieces

moe Leave a comment

Gertrude Stein found late in life that she had read every great book, or nearly every one. She began to fear there was nothing left for her to read. Then a neighbor of hers in the French countryside died, and she bought his library, which contained many mediocre books. Stein discovered that she enjoyed reading bad books as much as she did masterpieces.

– Sparrow in My Book Life, The Sun May 2019

There is a beauty in the mediocre and ordinary.

tagged: mediocre, ordinary, quote  

Interpreting ordinary human experiences as part of awakening process

moe Leave a comment

Seems that constantly being challenged is part of the awakening process

Someone commenting in a Facebook group

Yes, and it’s also how humans in general experience life. It’s universal. It’s part of life.

It’s tempting to interpret anything as being part of my awakening process. It makes it feel more significant and special. It gives it an extra spark.

And yet, so often, what happens in our life is just ordinarily human. We get sick as all do. We have challenges as we all do. We experience synchronicities, as all humans do now and then.

It’s helpful to be honest about this. What happens in our life is mostly ordinarily human. Even the awakening process and everything part of it is ordinary and universal. It happens to a lot and – most likely – eventually all beings, and the content of process itself is quite universal.

There is an upside to seeing anything happening in our life as part of an awakening process. It may help us make use of it in a more constructive way and see it in a more constructive context.

There is also a downside to it. If we see it in contrast to how most people live their life, we use a story to make our own life seem more special and different. In our mind, we may set us aside from others while we, in reality, are not so different. And we may do it avoid feeling and encountering certain feelings and thoughts in ourselves. That’s OK for a while, but at some point it’s easier and more helpful to meet and befriend it, and recognize that too – the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts – as local expressions of the divine. It’s all happening within the One.

As the awakening process matures and becomes more ordinary, it’s all recognized as the divine. And it’s all recognized as a miracle and ordinary.

It’s a miracle that anything exists at all, and all the amazing ways it exists. It’s ordinary in that it’s all the divine. And it’s ordinary in that all our experiences are ordinarily human, and ordinary parts of an awakening process.

The miracle gives it all a spark. The ordinariness allows us to relax trying to be different, special, and better or worse than others.

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tagged: awakening process, miracle, ordinary, ordinary and special, projections  

Healing and awakening: more ordinary, and more ourselves

moe Leave a comment

Over time, with both healing and awakening, we tend to become more ordinary and more ourselves. 

In what ways do we become more ordinary? 

As we heal as human beings, we tend to feel more ordinary and we have less of a need to appear special. We recognize the fuller range of human qualities in ourselves and others, and we are more OK with it. 

As there is an awakening, what we are recognizes itself as all there is (we can call this consciousness). It recognizes itself over there as itself, and although it’s amazing and extraordinary it also becomes ordinary after a while.  

At the same time, we tend to become more ourselves. 

As we heal, we are more familiar with the different parts of ourselves and more comfortable with them. We are freer to be who we are in a relaxed way. (And with an eye on what’s appropriate in the situation, what’s kind and wise.) This means that although we may feel ordinary in our own experience, we may or may not be seen as ordinary by others. 

As we awaken, we know ourselves as what we are, as what the content of our experience happens within and as (aka consciousness). As what we are, we notice we are inevitably ourselves. 

So we feel more ordinary and have less need to appear special. We are more at home in our own skin so we can be more ourselves. We recognize all as ordinary (and amazing) expressions of the divine, and we recognize that as what we are we are always ourselves.

And in the middle of the ordinariness and being more ourselves, there are, of course, actual differences in a conventional sense. 

So, in real life, we are aware of both what’s shared and what’s different about ourselves. We recognize all in us as universally human. We recognize all – everyone and the world – as the divine. We recognize our unique human strengths and weaknesses. We recognize that consciousness hasn’t woken up to itself in all human beings. And yet, the differences happens within and as the universal. And, to the extent we are clear, no value judgment about it is taken as real, inherent, or final. It’s all part of the play of life or the divine. 

There is a lot more to be said about this. 

For instance, early on in the healing or awakening processes, we may feel more special for a while. We use what’s discovered to feed our need to be special, OK, and good enough. And if the healing and clarification continues, that tends to fall away. We tend to find the relief in being ordinary and ourselves as we are, and even the amazing beauty of it. 

Although there is a sameness in all of it, the differences are innumerable. We are different in development in many areas of life. We have different levels of healing and maturing in different areas of life. Most of us are free from one set of thoughts and still get caught in some other thoughts (involuntarily identified with). Each species experience the world in a quite different way from other species. And so on. 

Why do we feel more ordinary as we heal more? As said above “We recognize the fuller range of human qualities in ourselves and others, and we are more OK with it”. We see ourselves in others, and others in ourselves. The whole world becomes a mirror for us in this sense. We see a characteristic out there in the world, and recognize it here, and the other way around. And we are more OK with it. We are able to relate to it in ourselves and others more intentionally, and perhaps with more clarity, kindness, and even wisdom. (We are OK with whatever is here, in us and others, being here as it is. And that doesn’t mean we always act on what’s in us, or allow others to get away with acting on whatever.) 

Why did I write “amazing and extraordinary“? When what we are recognizes itself as all there is, there seems to be an ongoing and always new sense of amazement. Everything is ordinary in the sense that everything is consciousness (or Spirit). And everything is also experienced as amazing and astonishing. It’s amazing that something, anything, is at all. It’s amazing it’s Spirit. It’s amazing it’s in the form it is. 

And as I often write, the most accurate way I have found to talk about what we are is to say that we are that which experience happens within and as. It can be called consciousness, or even Spirit or the divine, and that can be useful but it also can make it sound more solid or substantial than it is, and it can make use feel we get it even if we just get the words and don’t notice it in the moment.

When what we are notices itself, no interpretation is needed. Although curious minds will interpret. We can interpret it in a psychological way, assuming that we – as consciousness – operate within a physical human being in a physical world and that the experience of all as consciousness is a projection. Or we can interpret it as they tend to do in spiritual traditions, and assume that everything – the physical world and so on – is consciousness and something we can rightfully call the divine, Spirit, God, or Brahman.

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tagged: awakening, healing, ordinary, who and what we are  

Awakening and ordinariness

moe Leave a comment

It’s helpful to look at anything that seems solid or real in connection with awakening. How does my mind create its experience of awakening, human self, non-enlightened people, confusion, separation, better than, worse than, deficiency stories, and so on.

The mind can easily use awakening, or more precisely the idea of awakening, to create a sense of safety. It can tell itself it made it, it’s safe, it’s better than others, it knows something that others don’t, it’s found approval from life or Spirit, there is no further to go, and so on. And that’s all ways to find safety. It’s good to look at.

A pointer is that if anything about the awakening seems less than ordinary, then it’s good to look at.

It’s less helpful to just list ways that an awakening is ordinary or less so. It’s mainly just fodder for thoughts, and that nourishment doesn’t go very deep. That said, here is a less than helpful list of how awakening is ordinary 😉

It has happened to – or through – a large number of people through history. Most of whom we have never heard about because they lived quiet lives without writing much or anything, and they may not even have had many or any students.

It’s what we are noticing itself. It’s presence (aka awakeness, consciousness, Spirit) noticing itself as all there is. It’s what we already are noticing itself, and it’s what everything already is noticing itself. In that sense, it’s ordinary all around.

The essential realizations that go along with an awakening are universal and ordinary in that context.

There is a flavoring to how this is lived and expressed, and that’s to be expected and ordinary. It’s colored by culture, tradition, and individual experiences and inclinations.

There are usually more peripheral or supporting realizations and pointers, and these too are colored by culture, tradition, and individual experiences and tendencies. How this is expressed may or may not appear ordinary, and that something like that is happening is to be expected and ordinary.

And a couple of ways awakenings are not so ordinary.

What’s awakening to itself is all there is. Still, that awakening or noticing is not happening in a widespread way in society. It’s not ordinary in a statistical sense.

The flavors of the realizations and how they are expressed are unique. (Even if that uniqueness is to be expected and is ordinary in that sense.)

In the best case, these statements can be used as a starting point for inquiry and our own exploration. What do I find when I look for myself? What do I find when I look in a more finely grained way, with specific examples? (That’s how it can sink in a bit deeper.)

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tagged: awakening, ordinary  

Adyashanti: Enlightenment is very ordinary

moe Leave a comment

Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special, it’s not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred.

I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe. The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it.

Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and innocence.

Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time; not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment.

– Adyashanti

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tagged: adyashanti, awakening, enlightenment, ordinary  

Feels completely ordinary

moe Leave a comment

What happens here really feels completely ordinary.

The world is a mirror. What I see in the world is right here. It mirrors what’s right here, and this field of awareness it’s all happening within is right here. And what’s here is also a mirror for each other being. It goes both ways.

It’s also a process of healing, maturing and aligning with reality as a human being in the world, and a process of clarifying and identifications releasing. And that too is completely ordinary. It’s universally human.

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tagged: currently, ordinary, world as a mirror  

Ordinary as who and what we are

moe Leave a comment

We can experience ourselves as ordinary at the levels of who (this human self) and what (that which experience happens within, to and as) we are.

If what we are notices itself, we see all as the dance of Ground, the play of nothingness appearing as something. All becomes ordinary in that sense, of being the play of awareness itself.

If what we are does not notice itself, there is a sense of a separate I which then inevitably appear as special one way or another, better than some others in some ways, worse in other ways.

If who we are is split, divided against itself, this sense of being special is amplified. We cling to an identity which splits us, making some aspects of who we are OK and other aspects not OK.

If who we are is whole, there is a sense of everything happening here being universally human, shared, the wider world becomes a mirror for qualities and dynamics happening right here. There is a sense of this human self being ordinary in that everything here is also seen in the wider world, and the other way around. There is of course still distinctions and differences in a conventional sense, but within the context of shared life and the world as a mirror.

So the sense of ordinariness comes from what we are noticing itself, and more consciously embracing the wholeness of who we are. And a sense of being special comes from what we are not noticing itself, and our human self being split by a limited and rigid conscious identity.

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tagged: ground awakening, ordinary, projections, unremarkable, who and what we are  

From special to ordinary

moe Leave a comment

It seems that an awakening goes from special to ordinary in a few different ways.

In the beginning, it may be special in one’s own experience. Partly because it is unfamiliar, and partly because there may still be a trace of I-Other, or residue patterns of wanting to be special.

It may also be special in other’s experience, because the awakening may bring about a marked shift in behavior, and it may be expressed in flashy ways.

Later on, it becomes ordinary in one’s own experience. Partly because there is more familiarity with it, partly because we know that whatever happened is a common and shared pattern, and partly because all – no matter what it is – so clearly is the play of awareness itself.

The content of the play – including awakening and delusion – is secondary to it all being a play of awareness. The human self has also had more time to reorganize and mature within this new context, including a full and heartfelt embrace of all that it is.

And it also becomes ordinary in other’s views, because they see someone who appears quite ordinary, living an ordinary life, and taking themselves as quite ordinary too.

tagged: awakening, ordinary, process, unremarkable  

Being nobody

moe Leave a comment

We can be nobody in a few different ways.

First, if we take ourselves to be this human self, we can be a nobody in the sense of nothing special. Usually, this is accompanied with a desire to be special, and an attempt to compensate for the belief that we are nothing special.

Then, if what we are notices itself, we are nobody in that the sense of I-Other falls away. There is nobody here.

And finally, when that matures, we may be nobody also in that our life tends to be lived in a quite ordinary way. We are nobody, because our life is not neccesarily anything special in our own experience, and the view of others.

tagged: ordinary  

Some effects of the dark night

moe Leave a comment

In a loose sense, we experience a dark night any time there is a sense of loss, any time we believe that something should be here – either what was or what could be – but is not.

And in a more narrow sense, the dark night (of the soul) is a loss of God. Of an alive presence of the divine, of seeing/realizing all as God, of awake empty luminosity, or in whatever form it came up. It is of course not a real “loss”, just an experience of loss, or maybe the loss of an experience.

I seems to have gone through a quite typical dark night of the soul. And it may not be the only one. They seem to come at different times, at different levels of intensity, and with different flavors. (I didn’t realize how typical and ordinary my experience of it was until I read Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, where the chapter on the dark night describes, often in detail, what I also went through.)

Some of the effects I notice, now more of the tail end of it, are…

A burning away of identities, or rather identification with identities (although there are certainly some left.) In the dark night, there is a loss not only of God, but often of lots of other things in our life. For me, anything that gave me comfort was lost, either externally or internally, and with this went any identities that gave me comfort. My experience of myself and my life was so completely at odds with these identities, so the identification with them (as a good Zen student, as someone awakened to all as God, as someone who could deal with difficult situations and experiences, as someone good at you name it) gradually wore off, although in my case with a lot of reluctance, resistance and kicking and screaming (which only made it more difficult for me). I should say that they are not really burnt away, just lessened in intensity and solidity.

A fearlessness. Again, not a 100% fearlessness, just more of it from a sense of transparency of fears. In the dark night, everything worthwhile and valuable seems lost, and it lasts for a while. There is plenty of time to get used to it. So what is there to fear? I am already used to loss, even of what was at the center of my life and gave my life meaning, so what more is there to fear? This is a reduction or loss of the existential fear, so there is still the more mundane fears here, but even those are more transparent, space.

A sense of it all, whatever happens, no matter how amazing or terrible, as unremarkable. We have gone through the highest ecstasies before the dark night, and the darkest loss and despair in the dark night, so anything that happens now have a sense of ordinariness and of being unremarkable, including the most unusual states and awakenings. Or more accurately, they may be experienced as remarkable and surprising for a little while, but somehow against the background of it all being unremarkable. As space, transparent to it as unremarkable.

A surrender. This is the thread that runs through any of the other outcomes of the dark night. Surrender… to what is, to whatever may come. The loss of identification with identities is a surrender of the identification, but also a surrender of wanting things to be a certain way. Now, whatever happens is more OK. Before, whatever happened was OK as long as I didn’t loose God (the apparently stable awakening to all as God.) Now, whatever happens is more OK, including exactly that.

For all of these – identities, fear, a sense of it being remarkable, resistance – there is not a complete burning through. They are still there, only lessened in intensity, not so substantial, more transparent, more as just space.

And finally Ground awakening. The dark night paves the way for a Ground awakening. An awakening independent of any content, any state, any experience, and allowing them all.

tagged: dark night, ordinary, unremarkable  

Profoundly ordinary

moe Leave a comment

During the initial awakening (in my teens) where many of the things happening now happened in a more dramatic way, there was both a realization that all is God, and also a sense of how remarkable it was… which seems to indicate that the final veils of a sense of I had not been seen through.

Now, there is just a profound sense of ordinariness about it, of how unremarkable it is, and also a deeply felt sense that this is just the middle ground, an early middle ground… There is infinitely further to go in the areas I write about here, and obviously much further to go in all of the other areas of life.

Seeing this brings a more genuine humility at all levels… A humility that comes from seeing things more realistically, and not only see it, but also deeply feel it in the body, and love it.

And some of the things to see, feel, and love is that…

  • All already is God, so in the absence of Other there is not much room for pride or arrogance, nor for a sense of inferiority.
  • At my individual level, there is infinitely further to go in maturing, developing, exploring, discovering, in all areas of life.
  • There are many, many areas I, as an individual, am not very well developed in, compared to where many are at today.
  • And everything I see in here is also out there, and the other way around, at my individual level. They are there at least as seeds, possibilities, and often far more fully bloomed.

Today is one of those days where I feel firmly held so I can see this, take it in more fully, allow my whole being to more thoroughly organize within this… All as God, and at my individual level, there is infinitely further to go, there are many areas I am not well developed in compared to many others today, and the outer and the inner mirror each other perfectly.

It is deeply sobering, and even shakes me to the core… shakes up everything not aligned with this… everything formed within a context of separation and ideas of better and worse.

tagged: humility, maturity, ordinary, unremarkable