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Originally Posted by John Freestone  If I do try, it will suddenly become very mundane really. I have had some lovely experiences in meditation, but that no-mind one was very mundane. Really, it seems I only knew about it after the event. I was trying to quiet my mind, let thoughts come and go, then - - - it was like "oh, I just stopped having any object of consciousness then for a moment". I am now much more sceptical about all these 'religious experiences' and see quite clearly that this, at least, could be thought of as having a moment of unconsciousness - a complete forgetting, like a little moment of sleep. One of my Zen books describes samadhi as being unknowable and says that when it happens you can't be aware of it; you are only aware of it the moment you wake up from it. I don't know whether than means it is utterly without deep spiritual significance, or just unknowable in experiencing it - and anyway, other meditators say that they have very different, radiant experiences when they are conscious of nothing except - - - everything. Can't say I've really had such an experience. I do think there is a great pressure we put upon ourselves, however, to interpret such things in the ways we have read about - beautiful promises of glorious spiritual awareness. I cringe to think how arrogantly I proclaimed to have had kensho experiences or whatever, but when I REALLY consider what they were TO ME, without all the promises of gurus in books, they really haven't been that amazing. |
I was raised in a form of meditation where a person went within and through these various planes of consciousness until they reached God. It excited me to think there were these worlds within me that I could access. Ironically, it wasn't until I dropped the idea of there being these higher planes that I could experience them.
I'll have to reply in more depth later because I have to get to work. I wanted to say this, though:
Many of my experiences in life have led me to understand that I can't control anyone or anything. Attempts to do so just come right back at me. So it's best to just accept whatever people are doing and wherever they are at.
The only thing I can really change is myself and I'm not even very good at that. The reason I have found through meditation is that I am not this self... I am just the awareness of self. By being awareness, that is, just being conscious or mindful... the self changes. There's no method, no procedure.
Spiritual experiences, the expansion of consciousness, are the ways a self tries to interpret what it means to be awareness. It generally fails miserably at this because awareness is 'beyond exegesis'.
You brought up alcoholics. My dad has been in recovery for 7 years. There is a prayer the drunks have. I'm sure you are familiar with it and it says (in their terms) what I just said:
God (awareness)
Grant me the serenity (experience of expanded consciousness)
To accept the things I cannot change (others, the world)
The courage to change the things I can (the self)
The wisdom to know the difference (beyond exegesis).
Have a good one John... I'll hit you up in about 12 hours.