“So this theme of ‘How can we stay in the awakened state?’, is one of those tricky questions or let’s say paradoxical questions that have a paradoxical answer, because first of all we need to look at ‘what is the awakened state’. And even calling it a state is not quite true. Perhaps you might have experienced an experience of recognition or an awakening experience where you felt yourself, as you knew yourself, to disappear. Perhaps the experience was a very expansive experience, there were no thoughts in that time.
It could be a short experience, very momentary or it can last for some time. Some people even describe those experiences as blissful, a sense of oneness, wholeness, nothing missing, perfection, peace. Where perhaps you recognise that I’m not this limited me located in this body but in fact I am unlimited, the whole of life and this experience of recognition or awakening it comes, and then at some point it goes. The experience passes, like every experience it must come, and then it must go. This is the nature of experience, every experience without exception.
So what tends to happen for most people is they have this experience of recognition and in that experience there is no thought necessarily but afterwards once that experience starts to pass or fade thoughts come back in trying to grasp hold of it, trying to make it mean something about ‘me’ and my spiritual status, or it implies that whatever I did to generate that experience that must be the right thing to do and so therefore I must keep going with that. Or I did something right and now I’ve done something wrong. I got it, I lost it.
All these kind of thoughts, making a ‘me’ in someway meaningful in relationship to this experience and the experience of it passing also, and then ordinary life, whatever it is for you, being human, whatever messy stuff is going on in your human life seems to come back and for a while it can seem like you’ve crashed down to the ground because if you’ve had an experience of being really high. blissful, blissed out then the contrast of your human experience, your ordinary emotions, thoughts, sensations, interactions with others, that are now seen not to just be in ‘oneness; but as a ‘me and the other’ again, all of that is now believed to mean something is wrong, something is missing and I need to try to get back there to that beautiful state of oneness and wholeness.
So then this chasing of this beautiful state this experience . . “ Unmani
Recorded: Online Webinar – ‘How can we stay in the Awakened State?’ July 2nd 2023
For information about Unmani’s webinars, meetings, retreats and to find out about the Love of Truth Community go to: die-to-love.com
