Ric Weinman: You are the living expression of the divine’s process of experiencing itself as you

You’re the living expression of the divine’s process of experiencing itself as you.

– paraphrased from Ric Weinman, founder of Vortex Healing

This is phrased in the big or spiritual interpretation of awakening. We can also find it here and now, without any spiritual labels.

When I look, I find that all my experiences happen within and as my sense fields – sight, sound, sensation, smell, taste, mental representations, and so on. This human self happens within these sense fields. The wider world happens within these sense fields.

In the world, and to others, I am this human self. And in my own experience, I am what my sense fields happen within and as. This human self and the wider world happen within and as these sense fields, and all of it happens within and as what I am.

I find myself as…. Capacity for all of this, whatever happens in the sense fields. What it all happens within and as. And what can, imperfectly, be labeled awakeness, awake space, and even consciousness. (And all of those labels are mental representations happening within and as what I am.)

We can also call it life.

So as a human self, I am an expression of life’s process of experiencing itself as me. And as what I am, as what all of this happens within and as, I am also an expression of life’s process of experiencing itself as me.

All my experiences – of this human self and the wider world – are expressions of the creativity of consciousenss. It’s consciousness taking on all of these forms and experiencing itself as it.

I see the value in using spiritual labels for this. The downside of using spiritual labels is that it can give the impression that this is something mystical or magical or something outside of ourselves or “other”. (I know that’s not now Ric means it, I am just talking about how it can be received by some.)

That’s why I prefer to use simpler and more ordinary labels, and point to how all of this shows up in our own experience here and now.

How can I talk about it so it invites us to notice it for ourselves, here and now.

Note: When I say the quote above is paraphrased, it’s because it’s not the original quote. Someone posted it on social media with bad grammar and without a source. I cleaned up the grammar and don’t know how that process changed the quote from the original.

Article: Ric Weinman on Merlin

You say that VortexHealing® is the Merlin lineage. Who is Merlin?

Merlin is what we call an avatar, which is what you have when Divinity incarnates directly into human form.

All such Divine Expressions, or avatars, embody a unique quality. Merlin embodies Transformational Magic — not the stage kind of magic, of course, but the kind that is filled with wonder and grace, the kind you believed in as a child. Merlin incarnated some 5600 years ago in Northern India, but was known there as Mehindra. The name Merlin is the closest name vibrationally, in English, to the Transformational Magic that was brought in by Mehindra.

Read more in The Magic of Merlin, an Interview with Ric Weinman by More to Life Magazine, UK, edition 43, August 1, 2018

A brief and good interview with Ric Weinman about Merlin in the Vortex Healing lineage.

Brief update

I just returned from Core Veil in London, a Vortex Healing course with Ric Weinman. I feel it helped clear, stabilize, and perhaps deepen a lot of the haphazard openings and awakenings from my pre-Vortex Healing days. And the course seems to also have strengthened my system considerably.

Over a couple of tea-breaks, Ric took a look at my chronic fatigue (CFS) and brain fog. He said it seems that a CFS (inducing) virus is still hiding out in my system (which would explain a great deal), and did a couple of brief treatments to clear it out. It will take some time for my system to adjust to a potentially virus-free existence. We’ll see how it unfolds.

A few words about viruses and CFS: There are probably many things that fall under the CFS label, including undiagnosed known illnesses and various subgroups of “true” CFS. Sometimes, CFS is called Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome which is fitting since it often comes after a viral infection. (For me, mononucleosis in my teens.) Many of the symptoms associated with CFS fit a viral infection. For me, it feels like having a flu – sometimes strong and sometimes less so – without the fever, runny nose, or cough. The brain fog and wooziness is there. The fatigue and tiredness. Worsening condition after exertion. Brain fog and inability to focus as before. Unusually sensitive to noise and sometimes light. Wanting to lie down and rest. (Or being unable to do anything but lying down.) And a rest that often doesn’t feel restful or nourishing. All of that is similar to having a flu or a similar infection.

If there is/was still a virus in my system, it also explains why the energetic work seems to actually work – in clearing and energizing pathways and chakras and doing many other things – but it doesn’t significantly change my overall health situation. The virus holds it back. So we’ll see what happens if a hidden virus was the key and the virus now really is gone.

Ric Weinman: What needs to be done?

6) Do good deeds & save the world. This was traditionally called karma yoga. But most people who practice it do so from the wrong understanding and get nowhere with it, in terms of their own awakening. Typically, karma yoga is practiced from the point of view of ‘what can I do?’ Every action is taken based on ‘what can I do?’ and so every action reinforces the position that it was generated from, which has ‘I’ at the center of it. ‘What can I do?’ is centered on the ‘I’. True karma yoga asks, “What needs to be done?” Notice that there is no ‘I’ here at all. One has already surrendered the ‘I’ for the sake of the larger need. This kind of karma yoga becomes a practice of ‘not-I’ and develops the sense of not-I. Done long enough with enough sincerity, the sense of not-I will keep going deeper until it becomes the living reality in the core of that being.

– Ric Weinman in The Nature of Awakening Part 2

Ric Weinman: The Nature of First Awakening (article)

So, if the ego does not awaken, who does? Imagine you are having a dream that you are a cow, and suddenly you wake up and you are back in your bed as yourself. You would not say that the cow woke up and realized it was you. You didn’t turn into a wise cow. You would say that you were always yourself but were lost in the dream of being a cow, and that you awoke out of that dream of being a cow. The moment you stopped pretending/dreaming you were a cow, you were back in your normal experience of yourself. The dream character didn’t wake up; the dreamer did. […]

Often, I will get an email from a student who has had a powerful spiritual experience and the student wants to know if this is awakening. The answer is found by looking at whether there is still a sense of ‘I’ residing in the heart. In fact, this is the only true test of awakening—not external behavior, not symptoms, not subjective experiences of peace or bliss or oneness. The only test of this initial awakening is whether or not the ‘I’ has disappeared from the heart. A student may have a taste of awakening (different from mystical experiences), where they feel they have disappeared, but if I can see that the ‘I’ is still there in the heart, awakening hasn’t happened. Sometimes, as a student gets close to awakening, enough of that sense of ‘I’ has broken down that it is hard for them to sense it. But no matter how subtle it is, if it is still there, awakening has not happened. The other ‘false positive’ that can happen, especially with students of neo-advaita teachers, is that the student truly has gotten that there is no ‘I’, but they have gotten this in their head only, and it has not penetrated to their heart. Getting it in their head does create a change in their consciousness, but it still is not true awakening. It is more like a taste of awakening in the mind, and sometimes neo-advaita students get stuck in that place.

– Ric Weinman in The Nature of Awakening, printed in Paradigm Shift, Issue 43, July 2009, UK

I selected these two sections of his article, the first as a relatively standard (yet clear and insightful) description of awakening, and the second as a hint of how awakening in a Vortex Healing context is understood in a quite precise and differentiated way. Here is Part II of the article and a list of additional Vortex Healing articles.