What is Spiritual Awakening?

The only sure way to step out of all the stories and all the nonsense is to really see with great clarity that this ‘me’ that we are so fond of referring everything to, simply doesn’t exist. Once you see it doesn’t exist then the whole thing falls away. Everything just falls away and you’re left with your essence. Often there is a tremendous release of energy.

In the ‘normal’ situation of life where we are identified with ‘me’, then the conditioned mind acts like a lid on a pressure cooker, always pushing our energy down, holding our natural energy in a reasonable, controlled flow. When an awakening happens the lid of the pressure cooker is removed and very often this happens in an explosive way, because the realisation is usually happening very suddenly. You can see this in our film, Satori, where a resident in the community,had a spontaneous and powerful awakening while sitting in her office. Some residents were actually on hand and filmed it. It is also possible that it happens over time, in an imperceptible way. 

It is quite common, and I also experienced this, that the physical body doesn’t function for some time, perhaps for a few hours or a few days. With this greater flow of energy the body doesn’t function, but very quickly the energy – or you could say the vibration or the frequency – is absorbed and rises up. Then the amazing thing is that you can function extremely well afterwards, even better than before because there isn’t the constant filter and static of the mind. 

This is all not something to understand with the mind. If you try to understand it from ‘me’ you can project some sort of understanding, but unless you have had a glimpse then it really has no reality. When you are limited by a strong attachment to a separate me it is almost impossible to imagine how that would be. It is very difficult therefore to talk about because the person is listening from a certain reference point. You are listening from ‘me’, which you perceive as separate, It takes some time to understand this and when you do, it just happens. 

There is no formula, there is no practice. I know a lot of people who have had such an opening, even if it was only for a short moment. It is tremendously life-changing because once this small moment has happened then you know something that you didn’t know before. If you like, you know yourself in a new way, but then the Self we’re talking about is no longer this rather small illusionary self. It is suddenly another Self, the Self, the authentic Self, vast, a feeling of oneness, tremendous love, tremendous connectedness.

Once this is experienced you can never really be the same again. After a few seconds the normal self, normal ‘me’, usually comes back very quickly because the glimpse in that moment is frightening, shocking, completely unexpected, magnificent.  

When you look back on your old false self, which you’ve been believing for many years, you can only really laugh. Five minutes before you completely believed in this false self and five minutes later it is just ridiculous. It is extremely difficult to talk about, to give a sense of that change. You can read about it, but reading about it doesn’t really help to prepare you for when it happens. When it does happen it is completely fresh, something that you just didn’t know. Also couldn’t imagine.

A glimpse is indescribably beautiful. It is the best moment of your life. Even so, there is often fear and the fear closes down the glimpse. In the beginning it will just be a glimpse, a flash where the clouds (the structures of the mind) in the blue sky part, and you get a glimpse of the blueness. You feel this very deeply. It is very deeply touching but it is not something you can do, it just happens. In that instance the whole sense of self disappears. 

This is what is really important. The sense of self – this ‘me’ that we are so attached to – disappears. It is a completely shocking moment. As a spiritual seeker you probably expect an awakening to be amazingly special, but when you have awakened it is completely ordinary.

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