I feel like I was placing my faith in spiritual teachings and teachers, trusting that they had knowledge or insights that I needed, all the while overlooking my own inner wisdom as to how I should actually live my life.
This far-off idea of awakening, with its promise of everlasting peace and fulfillment, was distracting me from waking up to my life as it is.
I now understand awakening as a process of coming more into reality.
So I sat. And after months and then years, I found that the samskaras started to get quieter. They weren’t so urgent. And when I was able to watch them without being pulled into their content and without dropping down their rabbit hole, they had less hold on me. When they had less hold on me, it was easier to know what to do. Noticing the transience of the samskara made the simple day-to-day reality more rich and available.
Almost any domain or activity in life can be approached as an intentional practice, and the people who specialize in these domains have learned important things about being human. How can we draw this wisdom out? Introducing the Consciousness Explorers Club’s new pluralistic practice paradigm :)
When it comes to meditation, the CEC has a split-focus: we explore meditation as a life skill, and we explore meditation as a transformative path. Although each may use the same technique, they involve two very different approaches and intentions.
I hosted this panel at the 2013 Science and Nonduality conference in Holland. At least two of of the participants – Lisa Cairns and Gary Weber – claimed to be in a permanent state of nondual consciousness. For those who don’t speak the lingo, they are what some Buddhist might call “enlightened” – i.e., their sense of being a separate self has collapsed, and they now apparently reside in a state of open unfixed “oneness” – whatever you take that to mean. Actually, what the hell that actually means is the subject of this panel.