The embracing of the present moment is without effort.
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The present moment… brilliant yet gentle, a natural state of being, effortless, eternal while it lasts, wonderful
What to do today? Making a list…
script part two of Spirit and Body, only the outline… saying something interesting in less than 5 minutes always requires some contemplation…
draft 3 of movie script… the story needs to get on paper one of these days…
the kids will need lunch… later… much later…
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Yesterday I was in a bad mood all day. Something happened, an opportunity didn’t materialize. I knew that actually was a good thing, leaves time for more important stuff. But it triggered memories, interpretations. I gave in. Not a good decision…
Well…
This morning the moments of the future were like one-liners in my mind – dark letters in the bright light behind my closed eyes.
I look at them, again… again… options, possibilities, items to be touched or left alone…
The kids came in, wanted to be driven to school.
Ha.
Schools are 5 minutes and 20 minutes away, respectively. They can walk – and there’s a bus.
So what?
The wife then said– my eyes closed– they had been up until 1 AM, shouldn’t expect to be driven just because they are tired now… I agreed… looking at one-liners (see above).
They are in school now… They will need lunch. (The school lunch is disgusting.)
In Presence ideas fall like rain, effortless, giving birth to new ones even as they touch down, even as they drift. The play of love. The Eternal reaching out.
Creation in the spirit is instantaneous, the only effort is a smile.
Yet… in time and space skills need to be learned… things be done – in sequence… to substantiate, manifest…
This is a transcript of a short video of David Hawkins telling his experience. The youtube video is a favorite on my channel TheAzdak. Or click here to load the youtube video directly.
Here is the transcript:
Having surrendered everything there was nothing left. I was in a very high space, very rarified space in which there was no one and very few beings have passed through this space.
That’s when you let go of all the ego, you see?
And in this infinite space of almost nothingness there had been a couple of beings that had passed through this pass. It’s like a high pass.
I saw who had been there. They leave a track, a permanent track.
I saw Jesus Christ had been there. I saw the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was the agony of letting go of… the agony… of one’s own existence, surrendering it to God.
There was nothing left to surrender. And then came the knowingness: ‘Except your life.’ And then I got this too must be surrendered to the Old Lord. And I realized there is the inner belief inside the ego that it is the source of your existence. And I saw that this too had to be surrendered to God.
As I surrendered the source of life itself… I surrendered life itself to God… I had surrendered everything but life itself. And as I surrendered life itself came forth an agony of dying. Severe, a true agony.
The agony lasted in earthly time perhaps a minute or a couple of minutes but it was severe. And I just kept surrendering to it I saw that that which is called ‘I’ would never again exist because the source of life was now being extinguished and surrendered.
So I let go resisting the agony of it. Part of the agony was a deep terror, the terror of non-existence and then came forth the saying from a guru somewhere in the distant past: “All fear is illusion. Surrender it to God.”
So, I surrendered the fear of non-existence and losing life forever, becoming extinguished in other words. I surrendered it out of faith to my teacher. That’s the value of the energy field of the aura of the teacher.
The true teacher is one who has experienced it absolutely through and through and speaks from the authority of having experienced it. Not heard about it, learned about it, but done it.
Therefore the courage came forth, as I say, the fear and the terror was severe. And on the other side of the doorway of death all of life opened up and all of existence opened up and shone forth the glory of God which is what shines forth in this room at this moment.
What shines forth to me at this moment is the glory of God expressing itself as the phenomena which we are now collectively witnessing.
When people talk about enlightenment I see one common denominator in the descriptions of that state and the path toward it: we have to reach it alone and when we do then we’re done. We’ve made it. We can stay here or leave this world, never to return. Nothing makes a difference.
One of my questions:
- What comes next, if anything?
There are a few people that are commonly considered enlightened or who have had intense experiences of divine presence that shaped their lives after that. All of them still function well in the world. They often mention the term ‘illusion’ when talking about their environment but they seem to be dealing well with it. They relate. They are intelligent, alert, sensitive. They don’t look like zombies.
One common thing about all (or most) of them: They live alone.
So few people talk about how to live with each other as enlightened individuals in general and – very important – as husband and wife in particular.
There is the undeniable fact that male and female exists everywhere, even in the realm of lifeless matter where the two aspects are called positive and negative (not in the sense of good and bad.)
Our creator must have had something in mind when he/she did this. There must be some angle from which this makes sense and that still considers that supreme human quest for enlightenment.
The angle I’m taking is that the creator him/herself is both masculine and feminine.
Over the millennia wise people have realized this and expressed it in symbols like that of Yin and Yang. Also, in many religions sexuality – masculine and femininity become one – is an important theme and at times a source of thorough confusion.
The Divine Principle of Sun Myung Moon explains it like this: enlightenment is something that should come natural. It should happen to all of us in our young years and be the foundation of our lives together as humans, parents and children, husbands and wives.
The fact that out of all the beings around us we humans are capable of shaping ourselves into enlightened beings that live in the divine presence of the creator is called the ‘First Blessing.’
From that perspective we can have a clue why so many things go wrong – in the world at large and in human relationships: all these are unenlightened relationships. We don’t know the creator. We don’t know how the creator sees this world. We don’t know how he/she would live with a body.
However, once we experience that then our perspective changes. That may not last for long but stability in that state, effortless oneness with the creator should be the beginning of our life together – as humanity as a whole and as couples and families.
The real life begins after we achieve enlightenment.
Many scientific-minded people say there is no evidence for a creator. I am a science fan but, frankly speaking, I have no idea what they are talking about.
If I look at some items on my table – a pencil, a monitor, a cup of coffee, piles of paper – all these things have a creator. I didn’t create them and I don’t know who. But I’ve seen movies about it and there are books that explain how it’s done. There’s the internet.
Okay, I cooked the coffee and put it in the cup.
Humans created these things and they used stuff from nature in the process – metals, minerals, plastic, wood etc.
Where do these materials come from? Metals lie in the ground. People dig them up. It’s similar with oil. And trees – they come from seeds. Where do seeds come from? They grow on trees. Easy.
There was this cartoon series once where they showed another way how to make trees. A druid in a small Gallic village cooked up a seed in his cauldron, something like that. When they threw it on the ground… woops, there stood a massive tree.
All this is hearsay, though. Normally trees take longer to grow.
And all the trees around us they come from other trees, different trees, different plants, different species of plants, all the way back to stuff that came out the ocean a few hundred million years back.
What about life itself? Where does life come from? We don’t know much about it but it usually comes from other life. Trees come from other trees, birds from other birds and coffee beans come from coffee bushes.
However, ultimately, way back then, life comes from non-life. But nobody knows how that happened. And non-life comes from what? A ‘singularity’ (google it) is the best idea science has to offer. A dot with infinite mass.
Way back then the universe had the exact size of a point – no size at all. And infinite mass. Cool. One can’t really be sure because all this is mathematical backward extrapolation but in a way it makes perfect sense.
A few trillionths of a second later the entire universe could fit inside a pinhead. An in it there was one kind of thing: a lot of very high energy gamma photons. Then it became bigger, of course. Much bigger. Today we have stars, planets, plants, animals, people. All this from a bunch of gamma photons that emerged from a dot. And a singularity.
But why does all this have to exist in the first place? Is there a need for it? Not obviously so. The universe doesn’t really have to exist. There’s no reason why it must exist.
There are things that must exist – numbers, for example. There’s no way around numbers. Even if I try to avoid them they pop up and around all the time.
For example, the monitor, the pencil and the coffee cup on my desk, there’s a number there implicitly. It’s a 3. I can call it ‘three’ or ‘drei’ or ‘san’ or ’hubendadngabl’ but it’s always the same number and there’s no way around it. It exists because it exists because it has to because it does.
But the cup and the other things – they don’t have to exist. They exist because someone created them. And I cooked the coffee. Their very existence is evidence of a creator.
Now with all the evidence of a creator of human-made things how could one reasonably assume that things that aren’t made by humans don’t have some other kind of creator? The answer is: one cannot reasonably assume that.
In the same way a cup is evidence of a human creator the universe is evidence of a different kind of creator simply because it exists. It doesn’t have to exist and it wouldn’t if not someone had created it.
This creator then is also the origin of the laws of physics that turned a big bunch of gamma photons in a pinhead sized cosmos into stars, galaxies and planets; and of the mechanism that turned dead matter into living systems; and of the processes of life which underlie the observations quoted as evidence for evolutionary theory.
Of course, there’s no need to take things at face value. There’s nothing wrong with challenging the obvious and that has been done.
Concerning the development of life a high contender for truth is evolutionary theory. The scientific field of study dealing with the emergence of life from non-life is called ‘abiogenesis.’
Let’s face it head on: there’s plenty of evidence for the existence of a creator. It’s the universe itself.
The term is probably found most often – if not only – in the teachings of the Abrahamic religions.
It is not a pleasant one. The whole concept is very antagonizing and as if to make matters worse it is much too often used like a club rather than to provide a solution.
In his book ‘The Divine Principle’ Sun Myung Moon provides a very systematic approach to the concept of sin. It is a viable approach to explaining the dilemma of humankind which despite tremendous efforts at spiritual evolution has not yet managed to stabilize at a level high enough to ensure its continued existence.
The root problem can be summarized in simple terms: Humans can’t meet God; and if – then only with great difficulty.
If only once we could experience God – or whatever title we may use – in a way as described in the quotes I presented in an earlier post – the problems we have with ourselves and each other would take on a very different, much more constructive dimension.
Why have, in spite of tremendous efforts at spiritual evolution, so few experienced the creator as these experiences describe it? Why hasn’t it been possible to create environments that secure a higher level of consciousness even across generations?
The opposite rather seems to be the case. It appears there’s some kind of spiritual gravitation which pulls mankind as a whole toward the pits of hell, of hate and despair. Why is there no such universal pull toward the highs of heaven?
One way to answer these questions – and provide a solution – is by introducing the concept of ‘sin.’
Sin starts out with something that we might call the ‘fall from Eden.’ Sin somehow begins there, at the beginning of human history. Following that event we began to think, feel and do things in ways that were no longer in accordance with the way the cosmos functions. The result is sickness and disease – spiritually, mentally and physically.
Moon lists four types of sin which will be very familiar for those from Christian backgrounds. These are: original sin, inherited sin, collective sin and personal sin.
I’ll process them back to front. Personal sin results from the discrepancy of our personal lifestyle and actions with the way the universe works.
Collective sin is something like ‘sin by association’. Germans caused the holocaust – a gross violation of universal law – so all Germans somehow share some level of responsibility for those events. (I myself am German so please allow me to state it so bluntly.) It is not really clear, neither in general or in Moon’s teaching, to what extent collective sin influences humanity. I probably won’t mention it again.
Inherited sin comes from the lifestyle of our ancestors whose actions violated the laws of the cosmos. It affects us because such acts and its results contribute to the universal consciousness (a.k.a. the collective unconscious) which is an even bigger mess than that which we as individuals perceive around us.
One might conflate inherited sin with collective sin (oops, again) or disregard collective sin entirely without doing damage to the general concept. Here I consider inherited sin as resulting from the acts of physical ancestors, parents, grandparents and family at large that disrespected cosmic law.
Christians say some nasty stuff about inherited sin. And one can rightfully ask why the mistakes of people in the past should influence my personal spiritual standing in the universe.
The only acceptable answer comes when looking at the solution rather than the problem:
The design of the universe allows us to benefit from every foundation of the past – both from material as well as spiritual accomplishments. Things are supposed get better and easier with each consecutive generation.
Unfortunately, because we messed up so badly, things are getting worse instead. That’s because events don’t just fade into the past. Just as constructive events that elevate humankind become part of the universal human heritage destructive ones also pile up and pull us downward.
That is so because essentially humans, even though not the creators, are the sole owners of the universe. We are responsible for everything in it, good and bad. Thus in order for the human family to finally progress in the upward direction we have to clean up our spiritual heritage.
The concept of inherited sin assumes that the spiritual consequences from actions of people who have a blood relationship with us affect us more than those of other people. Maybe, maybe not. Any way we see this it doesn’t change the essential workings of the concept.
It’s important to understand one thing here: Sin does not lead to punishment from God. God is a universally, unconditionally loving parent. Besides that he doesn’t need to punish us because we are doing such a great job at it ourselves. Sin rather prevents us from getting closer to God or from experiencing him on a continuous basis.
There is one more type that’s more elusive and that’s original sin. I won’t go into detail here but here’s the definition: The original sin is the same for all and it results directly from the ‘fall from Eden,’ the fact that the humankind has left paradise. For some reason we, the owners, gave up our right to enter heaven and don’t belong there anymore. Another way of saying the same is that humans have original sin. It’s the source of all problems.
So concerning original sin it’s not a matter of degree. It’s digital: 0 or 1, TRUE or FALSE, Yes or No. And it’s a yes for everyone. However, we can’t just go and reset our own flag. Someone else has to do it.
Here the concept of messiah comes in. The messiah can forgive original sin. Hence the importance that Christians put into accepting Jesus Christ as our personal savior.
A bonus info which fits here nicely: According to Moon he is the messiah completing the task that Jesus began. In his book ‘The Divine Principle’ he writes that heaven could have happened on earth in Jesus’ time. It didn’t because Jesus died prematurely. As a result original sin remained unresolved, unforgiven.
Now however, Moon conducts Holy Blessing ceremonies through which he – in the position of messiah – forgives original sin. No strings attached. From there on an upward spiritual path all the way into heaven is open, by living according to cosmic law as long as it takes to get there. And then forever.
Most people disagree with that but if you can grasp the wholeness and elegance of Moon’s Divine Principle you might give even this some serious thought.
I mentioned in an earlier post (about Sun Myung Moon’s teaching) that God is looking for us just as hard as we are looking for him – probably harder. God cares for every single human being and loves without exception. As a consequence we are more likely to meet him in genuinely loving action than in meditation.
The approach has a lot of promise. However, in quoting it I didn’t mean to suggest that focus on self-development is futile or egoistic. As a matter of fact, I benefited at least as much from spiritual teachers outside Moon’s Unification Movement who focused on the development of the individual as I did from help within the movement.
At the time of this writing I enjoy watching the meditations of Eckhart Tolle which I got to know after I read his book ‘The Power of Now.’ (If you consider looking into that I recommend reading the book first.)
If Tolle is not your kind of guy other approaches that help with experiencing the spiritual side of the universe will prove just as useful. Just abstain from the use of drugs for that purpose. Ultimately we will realize that we’re all traveling in the same direction. Only the starting points differ and so do the road maps and the things we see on the way.
That said, many spiritual teachers across a wide range of expertise speak of the importance of controlling your thoughts, even shutting them off at will.
Some time back – excuse my ignorance – I actually identified the state of enlightenment with complete absence of thought. As a result I found it hard to warm up to that state. I mean… I am what I think. Right?
Wrong.
In the attempt to define who we are we turn to a lot of things: my age, the shape of my body, the face in the mirror, my educational background, my job, the money I make – or don’t make, the things I own or the lack thereof, the books I read, the languages I speak etc.
It’s kind of normal. Most people do that.
Now, some of us may have already realized that this is what we do and not who we are.
If we take all that away – or if it loses its usefulness, like, for example a skill of repairing black and white TVs – I still have my thoughts. If I think noble thoughts then I’m a good person. Right?
Well… I think all people are essentially good… my point here: We have thoughts but we aren’t our thoughts. They don’t define us.
Much like tools which we decide to use a certain way (or not) – in just the same way we have a mind with the capability to think and feel. We can decide to use it like a hammer, for example. There are times where a hammer is useful and times when it’s not. With the mind it’s is less obvious but it’s essentially the same thing.
Returning to the issue of thought… they are not always useful. Many thoughts are useless at the time they occur. Of course, I can only speak for myself with certainty, but when I watch what my fellow humans say and produce I think most of us make little use of our human potential. So, please let me use the term ‘we’ here.
Back to thoughts. First of all, they don’t seem to be under our control at all. Much less than a hammer at least. They come, they float from one issue to another, following associations, drifting like a feather in the wind.
And often they are futile. More often than not our body is in one place and our mind is somewhere else and then I ask: What in the world is the mind doing there?
For example, we sit down at dinner but we think about work? At work we think about dinner, last or next year’s vacation, you name it. When I drive down a lonely road – why think about work, a TV that needs fixing, the kids’ tuition, the bike with a flat tire, the boss who looked upset today, my teeth that need fixing, grandma’s dog? Even if I had the solution for world hunger… I can’t do anything about it when I’m driving my car.
When there’s nothing I can do about an issue now there is essentially no need to think about it. Why hold a hammer when I have no nail to use it on?
‘Why not?’ I hear you say.
Often enough our thoughts aren’t pleasant, causing us discomfort, anguish, fear. It’s like hitting ourselves on the head with that hammer because there’s nothing else to use it on.
You wouldn’t do that, right? You’d put that hammer away when you’re done hammering.
Did you ever try to stop thinking?
The first time I tried I was surprised at the apparent impossibility of the task. I actually felt like sitting in my car on a steep slope, trying to use my feet as a brake to keep it from rolling downward. Whenever I thought I managed, the car started moving again. This image was stuck in my mind for quite some time when I tried to stop the thinking process – no matter how useless the thoughts verifiably were.
Thoughts appeared to be even less avoidable than death and taxes. That may be the reason why we identify with them. I can stop eating for a week, not drink for a day or two, not breathe for minute – but to stop thinking for just a few moments… impossible.
Apparently so.
It gets easier with practice. There are distinct advantages to having your thoughts under control – and many resulting feelings in the process.
Fears, for example, that derive from worries, can be put aside, watched from a distance, outside of my body. My actions and reaction will not suffer from it. They actually improve as a result. That’s my experience.
Given the fact that Moon teaches that each and every human being is destined for enlightenment in our times one might wonder why his Unification Movement never put more emphasis on the spiritual growth of its members.
Hundreds of spiritual teachers the world over offer all kinds of spiritual advancement packages. So why doe he who came to lead humankind into the age of universal enlightenment not provide help and guidance toward this very goal? Why isn’t there a First Blessing Department for that purpose? (The fulfillment of the ‘first blessing’ is Moon’s synonym for enlightenment.)
I believe Moon has two answers to this question:
1. We don’t have time for this.
2. It’s not necessary.
Let me expand.
1. We don’t have time for this
From day one of his path Moon has been working tirelessly to spread his message. He understands there is limited time to accomplish a formidable task.
Hence the majority of the movement’s time – 60 years and counting – has been spent in emergency situations with one campaign following another.
In such situations meditation courses and retreats for self-development seem out of place. You don’t meditate when the bullets are flying. Maybe you pray… while you shoot back. Don’t take me literally.
I would dare to disagree if it weren’t for the second answer:
2. It’s not necessary
If you ever met the man or heard him talk you understand that his singular focus is on God and providence. I remember him describing his mindset: When in the midst of persecution he and the members had nothing to eat, only a shack to sleep, in the freezing cold, sick and exhausted, he would focus completely on God and spirit world. He would do that to such a degree that hunger, pain and persecution – even the entire physical world – would appear like an illusion to him. It blew my mind. This kind of spirit tastes heaven, I thought.
He has his own particular way to teach how to experience such realms.
I remember in the early 80s we had a special kind of campaign, or project, or providence… whatever. Moon called it the ‘immunization shot’.
He said we put too much focus on the mind, on concepts, theories. We study the teaching – Divine Principle – but we don’t understand it. We talk about God but we don’t know him. Because of that we are susceptible to the influence of the world which blurs our perception of the spirit world and confuses even the little understanding we do have. He also said a great blessing is coming but if we’re not prepared the blessing will destroy us.
PULEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASE… Get real, I thought. Nobody has ever been harmed by a blessing. Right? Bless me God. I’m ready.
And then the blessing came – a 40 day pioneering condition.
What is that?
40 days are a little bit less than 6 weeks – 5 weeks and 5 days to be exact. And nights.
Pioneering means you’re somewhere alone. Not externally but alone on a mission from God.
Condition means – take it in one piece or fail.
So that year, hundreds of members, all members in the country went out – in two waves – into small and mid-sized cities. In their pockets they had a few pennies and all the clothes that would fit in a duffle bag.
Goal: meet God by focusing on His will and spreading the message. There was no other goal attached.
Rationale: The only way you can do this is with God’s help. As this is God’s will he will come. Hold on to him – the immunization shot.
Yes, I prayed. I had time alone, for meditation and contemplation. Christians I met explained to me that God isn’t that way. I slept in the woods. I had concepts what to do. They didn’t work. I had expectations – they didn’t happen.
After three weeks, the night before a major rainfall, I found a person that let me sleep in her house – in exchange for cleaning up after 25 dogs, 20 cats and a parrot. She ran a hotel for animals.
My relationship to God changed from theory to practice.
Which brings me to the point – liberation of God.
Many people believe that God is in some other dimension – far beyond human understanding and without needs whatsoever.
This is not what Sun Myung Moon believes.
For Moon God – while perfect and pure – is interwoven with human affairs. However, he’s not in full control. When shit happens, that isn’t God. We need to find him, bring him into this world.
However, to do that, to experience and walk with him we need to become like him and depend on him completely. As long as it takes. Until He comes.
So according to Moon at the other end of human hopes and prayers there is a God that prays and hopes for humankind. When humans fell from Eden they were in for some serious shit – and God lost a universe. Our universe.
I admit some of these concepts may be a tall order but feel free to disagree. In the end it’s the experience that counts. However, the idea of God reaching out to man, longing to enter human lives, to live with his children, makes a lot of sense to me.
‘Make your bed in hell and I am there,’ he said. In the Bible.
So in a way liberation of humankind is also liberation of God. To accomplish that we need to live like God would live until we become like him.
I guess that’s why Moon doesn’t run meditation retreats. In his mind there’s no point to it.
I hear the term a lot these days: ‘Enlightenment’. With this I don’t mean the Age of Enlightenment, the historical period of intellectual and philosophical endeavor in the 17th and 18th century which culminated in the French Revolution.
No. I mean the spiritual state of oneness with the universe which advanced spiritual teachers have described as the ultimate goal of individual existence. It is a state where we live in complete awareness of the great spirit at the center of the universe, in a state of abundant, unconditional love flowing out from the father – or rather the parent god – to all his children in the universe. Of course, the way of expression varies with the personal experience and understanding. But words should not matter that much.
When I first came to think about spiritual issues the term enlightenment was reserved for Buddhas and advanced yogis from the Far East. Some also applied it to Jesus Christ but that doesn’t appear to be the way how mainstream Christianity approaches the founder of their religion.
Be that as it may, the term has found its way into everyday language – some people’s vocabulary at least. And that’s a good thing because I believe achieving enlightenment is the ultimate purpose and destination of every human being in the universe.
What exactly is an enlightened person and how do we become one?
Let me quote the experience of two people who had an experience of enlightenment.
In the preface of his book ‘Power versus Force’ David Hawkins describes his own experience which lasted for years:
“As my final moment approached, the thought flashed through my mind, What if there is a God? So I called out in prayer, “If there is a God, I ask Him to help me now.” I surrendered to whatever God there might be and went unconscious. When I awoke, a transformation had taken place that I was struck dumb with awe.
The person I had been no longer existed. There was no personal self or ego left – just an Infinite Presence of such unlimited power that it was all that was. This Presence had replaced which had been “me”, and the body and its actions were controlled solely by the Presence’s infinite will. The world was illuminated by the clarity of an Infinite Oneness, which expressed itself as all things revealed in their immeasurable beauty and perfection.
For nine months, this stillness persisted. I had no will of my own; unbidden, the physical entity went about its business under the direction of the infinitely powerful, but extremely gentle, will of the Presence. In that state, there was no need to think about anything. All truth was self-evident; no conceptualization was necessary or even possible. […]
Everything and everyone in the world was luminous and exquisitely beautiful. All living things became radiant, and expressed this radiance in stillness and splendor. It was apparent that all of mankind is actually motivated by inner love, but has simply become unaware; most people live their lives as though they’re sleepers unawakened to the perception who they really are. Everyone looked as if they were asleep, but they were incredibly beautiful – I was in love with everyone. […]
“Power Versus Force”, David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D, Hay House Inc., 2002, p. 12ff
A second such experience comes from Eckhart Tolle. I quote from his book ‘The Power of Now’:
“I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.”
“The Power of Now”, Eckhart Tolle, Namaste Publishing, Canada, 1999, p. 4f
Other people had such experiences, more or less intense. People who were clinically dead but survived report a similar state of peace and tranquility which transformed their lives.
On a less dramatic level many of us had periods or only moments of sudden insight, complete peace and clarity of mind where we suddenly watch our thoughts and emotions rather than identifying with them: “I am a person who has this thought. I am a person who experiences this emotion. Why am I feeling this? Why this way of thinking?”
Did you ever wonder who is this ‘I’ that watches your thoughts and feelings?
Face it… in these moments you’re on the threshold of the Divine, the Divine Self within you, the real you, the cosmic I. The experience is – even if short-lived and volatile – of the same quality as those of the great masters and spiritual teachers.
Interestingly most spiritual teachers and guides consider the attainment of such state of mind the final goal of human existence after which we can leave this realm, never to return. Many say this state can only be achieved through a life – or several lives – of solitude, asceticism and meditation.
Interestingly too, most spiritual teachers consider this journey an individual one. While both men and women can take it, they essentially walk a solitary path. Hawkins, to stay with the quotes, recommends sexual abstinence, abstaining from engaging the lower chakras. Also Tolle, while occasionally touching on the role of the opposite sex, essentially focuses on the path of the individual and its role in the world.
This is not meant to be a critique of these spiritual teachers neither do I aspire to be one myself. However, I find that this approach stops short of embracing the full promise and potential of the universe.
Why do men and women exist, as different as they are, when in the end their path is meant to be a solitary one? Is attraction and interaction between the sexes really so harmful to spiritual growth? As mankind can only survive when individuals interact, mate and reproduce why must humans abstain from this interaction if they want to fulfill our human potential? The answer is they don’t need to.
Everything in nature has a purpose that supports both the whole and the individual in a way that both purposes are fulfilled and the needs of all participants are met. Purpose of the whole and the individual, natural law and physical matter. All these complement each other – a fact that is so beautifully expressed in the symbol of Yin and Yang.
Now what about enlightenment? Can it be attained best in a solitary fashion focusing on the internal mind? Or, once attained, does it lead to a solitary life, no matter how fulfilled that life may be?
I don’t mean to say that the great spiritual teachers and master have no answers for these questions. They have.
However, the best, most comprehensive answer, encompassing the wholeness of cosmic existence and interactions I found in the Divine Principle which is a spiritual teaching written by Sun Myung Moon.
According to this Principle – rather than being the final goal of human struggle and strife – individual enlightenment is meant to be attained at the very beginning of our individual human existence. In his explanation of ‘The Three Great Blessings’ Moon describes three fundamental relationships – aptly called the First Blessing, the Second Blessing and the Third Blessing.
The first blessing describes a complete and permanent God-centered oneness of mind and body.
God here is not the angry and vengeful God of most religions but an omnipresent, unconditionally loving and embracing, personal entity who exists beyond time and space or ‘in the Now’, as Tolle might call it. Hawkins uses the word ‘Presence’ for this entity but in spite of the attached historical and conceptual burdens I prefer the term God because it best implies a personality. Words shouldn’t matter that much though.
The complete oneness of mind and body and resulting entrance into a realm which Moon calls ‘Direct Dominion’ was meant to occur at a young age. According to Moon, by the way, it ultimately will in future generations. Universal oneness, direct dominion, enlightenment – these are synonyms for a spiritual state that was (and is) to provide the defining experience underlying all our thoughts and actions.
Its attainment was to be the foundation for the Second Blessing, the unity of man and woman, including sexual. O-tone Moon: “Husband and wife unite through sexual relationship.”
Imagine it. Enlightened men and women who experience the oneness of all things in the universe and the love so powerfully described above by Hawkins and Tolle, such people stand at the center of families, societies and nations. This should have been the beginning of human history and to the degree that it happens it will be the end of the world as we know it.
Humans beings growing parental love through experiencing the First and Second Blessing would automatically love the creation as parents. This represents the accomplishment of the Third Blessing – the oneness between humankind and the rest of the cosmos settled in the unconditional, omnipresent love that flows from its center.
When I first heard this, back in those days, it was considered so far out that one would normally be called non-Christian. The word Anti-Christ also fell. The worst that could happen was to be considered completely nuts – especially if one wanted to live by it. Nowadays, with enlightenment encroaching on more and more people, it doesn’t seem that far out there anymore.
No doubt about it – our world appears to be far from reflecting such a state. On the other hand, people who are sensitive to the spirit – and these appear to be growing in number – see that changing. Many speak of a universal awaking during the years 2011 – 2013.
Some expect disasters – natural and otherwise but let’s keep an open mind. If the development is driven by the love that we feel when we touch the finger of God then in the end all should be well.
