As long as we are satisfied with glass beads....we don't search for diamonds

I read these words this morning and they really hit home to me. So much so that I am going to make them the subject of this blog entry. Complacency is a big threat to the spiritual path. The glass beads of materialism can never assuage the deep inner hunger. The irony is that we ascribe this inner hunger to working for and achieving in many cases more glass beads. There is something very cruel in this from my way of thinking. To recognise an emptiness and then to fill it with something that may satisfy for a while but in the end leaves an even greater emptiness feels a bit like a Divine joke. But then the mystics have always said that this world is the playground of the Divine.

I can't speak enough of the reality of the spiritual path. Knowledge allows us to understand but experience allows us to know. I know because of experience. Until I had the experience all knowledge while interesting didn't shift my consciousness to any great degree. The shift of consciousness came when the path became alive. When I stopped walking the path and became the path. But what do I do with everything I experience besides write a blog. Then I ask myself is there a need for me to do anything else but this. All I need to do is to be honest with myself and others, for there to be no difference between how I feel and what I say. This vigilance over integrity and authenticity never ends. It just becomes a little easier to see as time as goes on and faith and commitment to the path grows.

A couple of days ago I lost it with a work colleague and became uncharacteristically angry. This shocked me to the core because I thought that I had control over all of my self-expression. What I saw from this when I examined it closely is that underlying the aggression was fear. We had been told of changes at work that involved a possible split from my work colleagues. The outburst was the expression of a fear that I wouldn't be good enough. When I saw that I could own it and accept it and let go of both his trigger which caused the outburst and even my own outburst. What was important was to get to the feeling which triggered the outburst and stay with that. Every thought and action has as its source a feeling. When we identify and stay with that feeling then it can move to the next level. (This was first a theory given to me by Manuel Schoch, I have verified it by my own experience therefore I will take it on).

I apologised to my work colleague, took total responsibility for my action and told him the truth that it wasn't personal. I didn't go into any more detail. What triggered it was the universal feeling of fear. But as humans we don't like to feel fear and we cover it up with aggression. That is what I did. I had the feeling, didn't like it and responded with aggression. Without seeing this the aggression once over is then held in place by the mind and a chain of resentment then builds up towards the other person and also oneself. At home that evening that fear because I stayed with it transformed to sadness and I cried. The important thing with sadness is not to turn it into self-pity because there is no power in self-pity.

This was a huge lesson for me. It made real for me the old saying of a finger pointing at the moon. Don't get hung up on the finger, look to the moon - don't get hung up on a reaction look to the source. Don't get hung up on a thought and its content, look to where it has arisen. For this I am very grateful. I also notice something else happening and that is that recently I seem to have a deep ease and connection with people especially strangers. I had a meeting yesterday and usually when it's over I have my laptop packed and am gone, leaving skid marks at the door! Yesterday when the meeting ended I felt no desire to pack up and go like I have done in the past. I just sat there with everyone totally relaxed and happy. I am clear that this is all possible as a result of staying with this path no matter what. It produces a relatedness to people without needing any effort, a natural relatedness where there's no need to rush anything. But achieving this is tough. It's hard and takes work. I am the first to admit that but the fruits when they come and they will come are beyond anything I can write. What I do write is a poor reflection of what is possible......

Today I leave to visit my family in Ireland. My nephew is making his first holy communion. Even though I left Catholicism many years ago there is something about those sacraments, that are powerful. So I will be very quiet and reflective for the time I spend in the cathedral tomorrow. I have often spoken of the tension I feel when I go home. It will interesting this time to see whether that will have shifted. This morning I woke up and I have created the possibility of listening (not talking!) to the members of my family from their greatness and not to listen to the continuous inner voice that is always finding fault. So let's see......

Very restless these days.......

I haven't written my blog for a couple of days because I have been in a mini-breakdown. Since finishing Paul Brunton's book and having a photograph of The Maharishee whose eyes seem to follow me everywhere, I have a deep inner restlessness. I go to work and go through the motions but somehow I'm not there. I am with people and yet feel so alone. It's like I am talking to someone but there is someone else talking with me.

The only relief I seem to get is those moments just before I sleep. Last night I really felt like the physical boundaries had dissolved. It wasn't for very long but for the first time I think I experienced the merging that mystics have talked about. I know that there is something shifting and moving and when it settles down it will be great but right now it is uncertain.... I feel strongly that something has been put in motion that I can't stop, the uncertainty is not knowing what is going to develop. My mind is so full of inner turmoil and yet everything out there in the world continues to work for me. The demons are in my own mind, I am well aware of that. The tension is a kind of push/pull. Wanting to stay in one world and being pulled into another if that makes any sense.

I've stopped going out. I made a choice with the guy who was married that to continue to see him given how strong my feelings are and pretending to be just a friend had no integrity. It would rob me of power because I would be selling out on myself. So we decided to allow him to save his marriage not to have any more contact. This was tough and sometimes I get angry with how important I know integrity to be, but yet how it can't be proved scientifically. Integrity which is a state of being whole complete and perfect has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with whether something works or not. For me it is a law that is just as real as gravity. With the law of gravity it doesn't matter whether you are a good person or not, admired or not. If you go up to the top of a high building and jump, you're going down. It's the same way with integrity, whenever we behave in a way which is not in integrity the natural power we have is lessened. Integrity is not the only thing that is necessary to have a life that works but it is the foundation. A life built from integrity as its foundation is wider and more expansive than a life that isn't.

So I could have kept fooling myself and I knew, like we all know when we pretend that we don't and kept up the charade with the married man. But to do this would rob me of my power and that I will never do. But the cost and there is always a cost in operating from integrity is that the human, ego part of me feels empty. However, I know that this is just that part of me that doesn't want to be different or stand out. I wanted to hide from my destiny (doesn't that sound dramatic!) by finally being in a relationship. But what I see now it that perhaps it was a test for me to see if I was strong enough to put integrity before natural human desire. I feel I have emerged from something quite battered and uncertain but also with the ribbons to go to the next stage. Perhaps this is what the restlessness I am feeling is about.....

I am aware that I am living in 2 worlds which is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. But the turmoil is in my mind. Since I made the choice to put integrity before everything I find I have a straightness and directness in my dealings with people that I didn't have before. I also have a clarity about things which I didn't have before......

Once again....I was too quick to judge

I couldn't go to bed last night until I finished this book by Paul Brunton. It's hard to describe the urgency I felt to read and finish that book. After I had finished writing my blog last night I thought about the strong reaction there was in my body when he didn't remain with the Maharishee but returned to stay for a month with Meher Baba with whom I felt nothing. When he failed to see the greatness of the Maharishee something at a deep level in me recognised the power of this sage of Arunachala and I felt unexplained distress. This was very interesting to me and I wondered what it all meant.

But I should not have been so hasty to judge because in the end he did spend time with the Maharishi. However the process Paul went through before he chose the Maharishee in the final pages of the book was interesting and is typical of the path as I have experienced it. First the ego came into play when he had the thought of 'there's no-one here who can give me the realizations I am seeking' and then the quieter inner voice saying 'are you sure, that out of everyone you have met while you have been travelling, there is nobody here who can be the Master you seek'. It was then that the memory of the Maharishee and the power he had felt when he sat with him returned to him.

This is typical of the spiritual path, the ego fearing for its own survival puts the consciousness off at every turn. But if we are strong enough to act on the small inner voice of intuition then the merits and fruits of this path are as real today as they were in Paul Brunton's day. He returned to the Maharishee and the final pages of the book are filled with the profound realizations he had. These experiences are told as though they are being watched by a 3rd party. This makes them very powerful for me.

What is admirable is that he then didn't end his days as a devotee but returned to Switzerland to leave the copious amount of writings bridging the gap between east and west which he did. This to me was real service to humankind. He didn't put his own desire for realizations and experiences above what he felt was his duty to bring what he knew to the world. To do this he had to take on a witness mentality. He was an observer of his own experiences rather than getting lost in them. But there is a cost to being a witness. I understand this because this is how I treat the spiritual path.

In the early stages of the experiences it would have been so easy for me to become ungrounded with the immensity of the experience. To become totally absorbed instead of standing apart and watching. It is the witness mentality that gives the realization that we have thoughts but we are not just thoughts. It is watching the thoughts without getting involved, watching them like one would watch a show which gave me the realization that I am more than my thoughts, feelings, habits. I attribute this witnessing to the way I can write about the spiritual path in the way that I do.

Yet I know there is a cost to this witnessing and that is always to watch and never to merge. I yearn to merge and yet I am afraid. This is my main purpose in keeping an eye out for a Master of the calibre of the Maharishee but I don't hold out much hope. The funny thing is that I woke up this morning deeply contented. I meditated for an hour and as my meditations go it wasn't full of the usual conflict. At times during the day at work for no reason I felt waves of peace and happiness well up from deep within me. What is the meaning of all this. I have been looking at the photograph of the Maharishee and his eyes seem to stare intently into mine. Is this the connection with the Master I have been denying myself. Does a Master have to be a living, breathing being or is it enough for me to take his teaching and his method of self-enquiry and go it alone...... ..

More Paul Brunton......

I woke this morning early and my first thought was the book I bought by Paul Brunton yesterday about his search for super spiritual Yogis in India. I was keen though to read about whether any of the Yogis that Paul spoke to would say anything about what lies at the base of the spine. As the rising of this energy lies at the root of my spiritual experiences it is this I want to learn more about. Quite early on in his travels around India Paul met a Yogi called Brahma who was very reserved in speaking with anyone. Gradually Paul gained his trust and eventually Brahma he told him about the Yogic practices of body and mind control. It was what this Yogi said about the spine which I copy from page 96 that stirred my interest.

The Yogi said 'There exists a tiny hole inside the brain of man. Within this hole dwells the soul. There is also a kind of valve which protects the hole. At the bottom of the spine there comes into being the unseeable-life current. The constant loss of this current causes the body to grow old, but its control fills the flesh with new life and perpetuates it. When a man has conquered himself, he can begin to get this control by certain practices known only to advanced Yogis of our school. And when he can withdraw this life-current up his spine, he may then try to concentrate it into the hole in the brain. But unless he finds a master who will assist him to open the protecting valve, he cannot succeed. It is no easy task for ruin waits in ambush for the man who attempts it alone'

This paragraph is fascinating to me. I sense the immense power which is why I don't make any attempt to force the energy. Sometimes just before I sleep my body shakes which I recognise as the movement of this energy but it is never forced by me. It happens naturally. I don't know what triggers it and I never resist it. Afterwards I experience deep calm and relaxation.

In his book he speaks about meeting Sri Ramana Maharshi and the profound effect that meeting him had. He says on page 162 'The hall is becoming pervaded with a subtle, intangible and indefinable power which affects me deeply. I feel without doubt and without hesitation, that the centre of the mysterious power is no other than the Maharishee himself'.

He then goes on to describe strange sensations he experienced when in the presence of the Maharishee. He called it an experience of pure enlightenment. One day -sitting with Ramana Maharishi- Brunton had an experience which Steve Taylor names "an experience of genuine enlightenment which changed him forever". Brunton describes it in the following way:

I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The planet which has so far harboured me disappears. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive. [1] (taken from Wikipedia)

What is amazing to me is that Paul didn't stay with the Maharishee. He had been given the ultimate experience. An experience I yearn for and yet he was still looking for more. I found myself losing interest in the rest of the book after he left the Maharishee. Mind you I haven't finished it and it may be that he ends his journey back with the Maharishee.

But in all of the interviews with the Yogis all are clear that the ultimate realization cannot be achieved without the guidance of a teacher, so my search continues..... I feel a bit cheated because it appears that all the authentic teachers are no longer alive.... It is a shame that I didn't know Paul Brunton when he was alive, particularly when he only died in 1981. It is interesting that he seems to have died a natural death. He never took himself away from conventional life to don robes and live half-way up a mountain. He took on the spiritual path without losing himself and as a result his writings have the same power and resonance today as they did when they were first published....

Your destiny is in your spine.....Hamsa (Yogi)

The title of this blog entry is taken from a video I saw on You Tube after I had finished writing last night. I was restless after writing my blog and wondering for the umpteenth time what is it that lies dormant at the base of the spine. My inner voice which I call intuition was insistent that I go onto You Tube. I typed in the URL and then spirituality in the search box. Up came lots of videos from different spiritual people. I scrolled down and one seemed to practically scream out at me. It was a video on Kriya Yoga by a Yogi called Hamsa. I had never heard of this Yogi. I clicked on play and in a couple of seconds saw a well and healthy looking Yogi sitting on a cushion. The sound quality wasn't good in parts but I sat right up when he said 'your destiny is in your spine'. He smiled, looked around at his audience and said 'you don't want me to be more specific than that'. I immediately felt a shiver go up my spine and I knew without doubt what he meant. Our destiny is in our spine. There is a power at the base of the spine which makes each of us as human a Divine incarnation. In this way we are all a spark of the great energy of creation. This is the great secret which the body holds.

The Yogi didn't go on to say anything about this power. He talked about the dangers of materialism. He had a sense of humour which I found endearing and it confirmed my assertion that this is a path to play with and have fun. He was speaking about seeing a red Ferrari when he was walking around some streets in America. On the back window was the sticker 'She's red, she's hot and she's mine'. He laughed when he said this and he said that materialism was exactly like this, the gathering of things and then the declaration of them as me or mine. What is forgotten is the force that enabled the person to enjoy the Ferrari in the first place. The unmanifest which underlies everything in the manifested world. Taking on a spiritual path is always being aware of the unmanifest or that which is unseen in everything that is seen. Similar to the wave on the ocean, don't focus on the wave, look to merge with the ocean.

I can remember many years ago going to the cinema. At one point I felt an impulse to look around to see where the film was coming from. What I saw was one bright light but the result was to have a multitude of images on a screen. A multitude of images yet all coming from the one bright light. Something about this struck me as very important. I was young then and didn't understand what it was about the light and the images that struck me so forcibly. Now I understand that for me it was a demonstration of the one behind the many.

I was out walking today and I came across a newly opened Yoga shop not far from where I live. I walked in and went straight to the book section. My eyes fell upon a book by Paul Brunton. I have read a lot of the work of Paul Brunton. I find his common sense and sceptical attitude like a breath of fresh air. Like me he didn't have any time for parlour tricks such as clairvoyance or other psychic abilities. He sees them as distractions from the real spiritual path. I am very much with him on this. Occult or psychic gifts are possible on a spiritual path. They are possible because of an ability to manipulate matter. But they are also traps. It is interesting that in the end what convinced him of the reality of the spiritual path wasn't anything he read or heard but his own experience. This is the ultimate proof of the path.

I recognise that I am at a crossroads. I am walking this path very much alone. I'm not a part of any spiritual group. I don't have a guru or spiritual teacher. Yet I am aware that there are people who are more advanced on this path than me and perhaps it is time for me to find one with whom I resonate and who resonates with me. For this reason I found myself buying this book by Paul Brunton. It's called 'A Search In Secret India - The classical work on seeking a Guru. The spiritual arena like every arena has its fair share of fakes and charlatan's and a high degree of spiritual discernment is needed not to fall off the incredibly narrow ledge that is the spiritual path.

He says on page 13 'One heard much of certain so-called holy men who possessed repute of having acquired deep wisdom and strange powers; so one travelled through scorching days and sleepless nights to find them - only to find well-intentioned fools, scriptural slaves, venerable know-nothings, money-seeking conjurers, jugglers with a few tricks, and pious frauds'

I haven't read far into the book but I feel that when I come to the end I will know whether or not a search for a Guru is the next step on my path......

Making a stand as opposed to being self-righteous

I am like a dog with a bone these days pondering on how to get the balance right between being a stand and being self-righteous. I am a stand for everyone to commit to and have faith in the spiritual path. To be a stand for this is not expecting people to go against their true nature, it is to inspire others to know that the spiritual path is real and vibrant. The discovery of the spiritual is our purpose on this earth as a human. To pierce the human covering to experience the inner spiritual essence, to break free from the bonds of maya and human suffering to experience that which lies deep within.

As a human there is so much that is hidden from our view and thus our awareneness. To bring these blind spots into consciousness often requires something other than our own consciousness. I tend to use my friends when I'm struggling to see a way I am being that is hidden from my view. I have a cousin who I think of very highly and I emailed her with my dilemma about being a stand and how it can be seen as being self-righteous. What she sent me back was so powerful that I think it deserves for me to copy it to this blog.

She says : The ego is so subtle in not making itself known. The ego attaches itself to material things and we equate ourselves with this. So what I have is what I am, and the more I have the more I want. This is how the ego survives. When we give up the material and walk a spiritual path we have to be careful that the ego cannot attach itself to what we want to become. Our new identity. It must not be important how we look in the eyes of others. When we walk a spiritual path sometimes it becomes our identity.

The truth contained in these sentences at least how it applies to me is breathtaking. The ego is never truly vanquished it just gets more subtle and attaches itself to the spiritual when the material is given up. But in many ways a spiritual ego is more dangerous than the ego that is associated with materialism. At least the materialistic ego is upfront about wanting more'. The danger with the spiritual is that there is the illusion of the ego wanting spiritual liberation for everyone, but the truth is that it wants the spiritual power for oneself. It is so important to guard against this.

And yet this blog is the result of a couple of real events which resulted in energy rising from the base of my spine and which shifted the entire context for my life. The first happened in an ordinary everyday setting of work, the 2nd which was more profound happened over the course of a week long meditation retreat. I am clear that if I didn't have these experiences this blog would not be in existence. It is there to openly acknowledge a power that lies deep within all of us. How can I not be a stand for this path when I have direct experience of what committing to it will produce in time. Given the nature and power of these experiences and more importantly their lasting and transformative results for me not to be a stand would appear to the biggest insult I could give to the force which enabled it to be possible for me. To sell out on this because I am afraid of what others will think or I don't want to stand out is to be a coward in the extreme. I don't think I would have been given these experiences if I was such a coward. I know what I was before these experiences and I know what I am now and the difference is nothing short of being reborn but not in a religious sense but a spiritual sense......

What lies within.......

The title for this blog entry is confirmation to myself for why I am writing this blog. What is this energy that lies deep within the body and which shifts everything when it rises. I remain convinced that it is the emergence of this energy which heralds the beginning in earnest of a spiritual path. This rising in energy shifts the consciousness from things external to things internal. At least this is the way it was for me. Before this experience which happened in the most ordinary of circumstances - a Saturday morning at work, I was studying Mahayana Buddhism. I was reading, studying, meditating but did not have any idea why I was doing it. All I knew was that there was a strong pull from it to me and I went with it. I was no different to all the other thousands of people who study some form of philosophical doctrine. While I was studying I was also concerned with external material things like my job, getting on well with friends and family; all of that was the same as everyone.

Then in the office on that Saturday morning, everything changed. In response to something a colleague said to me I experienced the most amazing rush of energy that seemed to surge up from deep within me. From my years of Buddhism I knew that there is nothing in the inner life to be afraid of so I connected completely with this experience without any fear. I was totally absorbed in what was happening. This marked that point where the consciousness shifts from the external to the internal. From that day on I no longer have the same interest in external things material things. My consciousness has shifted to the inner spiritual. But this took an event. A real event in time and place to shift the consciousness.

Why did it come about. I could say that it came about because of the many years I spent studying Buddhism, trying to live a life according to the 5 Buddhist precepts. I could say that it came about through the brain being at a certain level of development and being ready to shift. The truth is that I don't know. All I know is that the spiritual path which results in shifts in consciousness is real and as present today as it was in the days of the great sages and yogis. But materialism has made the stirrings of this path in the heart more difficult. This is why I believe that there is scepticism about this path in the world.

But I have direct experience of this energy and of what emerges when the rising of this energy shifts consciousness. It is this rising energy which has given me such an easy understanding of the 3 stages of the spiritual path that I speak about. I am clear that without the experience of this energy I would not have this. Without this experience I would not have the ease of understanding I have with any spiritual literature. It doesn't matter what book I pick up and read I understand naturally and intuitively what is being said. But who I am to have had this experience that has resulted in a love or life a harmony and balance that I never dreamed possible.

This is the purpose of my blog to demonstrate through all the ways I get it wrong that the spiritual path is kind and gentle. I can beat myself up and do on a regular basis for those times when I don't act from an enlightened state and yet the universe is always its kind and benevolent self. I can't stress strongly enough how much the spiritual path is a path for everyone not those who consider themselves to be born spiritual. I didn't consider myself to be born spiritual. Nobody identified me when I was a child as spiritual or saw anything different in me. In fact the opposite was the case I was thought to be difficult and determined (maybe the latter was the spiritual quality which wasn't picked up!). In my experience all this path needs to become alive and vibrant in everyone's lives is faith that the path with its fruits exists and some form of practice. Some practice it doesn't matter how small is necessary. It doesn't need to be hours of meditation.

My practice began when I was a teenager in a boarding school. Each morning we had mass which we were expected to attend. I always remember one priest coming to say mass who was young and trendy. What he said formed the basis for my practice now and still does. He said 'you boarders I bet every morning when you wake up you say 'good God it's morning, why don't you say 'good morning God'. There was something about this that resonated with me at the deepest level and I took it on. It is something that I say every morning. I am aware at how childlike this may sound especially as I am a grown up woman but the consciousness for living life from an enlightened state is the consciousness of the innocent. First thing in the morning, there is nothing. To remember this higher power and make that the first thing to come from nothing is extremely powerful. I don't know for sure but I am sure that the shifts of consciousness which have followed have had as their foundation those few simple words.

I remember reading in some book that when the beloved turns its face towards you, you will turn your face to the beloved. For me this rising of energy represents for me my voluntary turning towards the beloved. I'm still in a dilemma as to whether this turning is a function of the brain or if there is something more. The lack of any kind of visions of spiritual deities or passed on sages or masters leads me to trust in some kind of brain development but I honestly don't know. All I know for certain is that if there is a deep willingness to develop spiritually and self-discipline which doesn't have to mean severe austerities. I never put myself through any kind of severe austerities, although one could argue that the difficulty with which I find it to meditate could be defined as a strict austerity. For me what seemed to be more important was the faith that the state which has been written about through the ages does exist and to treat the path as a game. This is by far the most important. Being significant about it only gets one stuck.

I treated the spiritual path as a game in that I didn't know that there was anything real in it but after the experience of this rising energy I became focussed in a way I never thought. My quest now is to understand what is this energy that lies deep within us and more importantly what is the access to it so that it rises safely and naturally. It is the rising of energy that will herald our entry into the next kingdom - the kingdom of the Soul. The rising of energy shifts the consciousness from things of matter to things of the Soul..........