Elizabeth Gilbert's Breakthrough Into Enlightenment

Quoted from Elizabeth Gilbert's #1 New York Times Bestseller-- Eat, Pray, Love. Japa Mala 67

"So now I have found out. And I don't want to say that what I
experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though it
was. I'll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through
the worm-hole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the
workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I
left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was
inside the void, but I also was the void and I was looking at the void, all at
the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom.
The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which
means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way--not like I
was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chunk of God's thigh muscle. I just was
part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of
the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that
the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the
drop," wrote the sage Kabir--and I can personally attest now that this is
true.)

It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic
of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever
experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't
euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion
left in me to create euphoria and excitement. It was just obvious.
Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining
your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and
there--now you can clearly see it!--the two vases are actually two faces.
And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it
again.

"So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you."

The place in which I was standing can't be described like an earthly
location. It was neither dark nor light, neither big nor small. Nor
was it a place, nor was I technically standing there, nor was I exactly "I"
anymore. I still had my thoughts, but they were so modest, quiet and
observatory. Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with
everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder
how anybody could every feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed
by all my old ideas about who I am and what I'm like. I'm a woman, I
come from America, I'm talkative, I'm a writer--all this felt so cute and
obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when
you could experience you infinitude instead.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was
here the entire time?"

I don't know how long I hovered in this magnificent ether of union before I
had a sudden urgent thought: "I want to hold on to this experience
forever!" And that's when I started to tumble out of it. Just those
two little words--I want!---and I began to slide back to earth.
Then my mind started to really protest--No! I don't want to leave
here!--and I slid further still.

I want!
I don't want!
I want!
I don't want!

With each repetition of those desperate thoughts, I could feel myself
falling through layer after layer of illusion, like an action-comedy hero
crashing through a dozen canvas awnings during his fall from a building.
This return of useless longing was bringing me back again into my own small
borders, my own mortal confines, my limited comic-strip world. I watched
my ego return the way you watch a Polaroid photo develop, instant-by-instant
getting clearer--there's the face, there are the lines around the mouth, there
are the eyebrows--yes, now it is finished: there is a picture of regular
old me. I felt a tremor of panic, mildly heartbroken to have lost this
divine experience. But exactly parallel to that panic I could also sense
a witness, a wiser and older me, who just shook her head and smiled, knowing
this: If I believed that this state of bliss was something that could be
taken away from me, then I obviously didn't understand it yet. And
therefore, I was not yet ready to inhabit it completely. I would have to
practice more. At that moment of realization, that's when God let me go,
let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken
message:

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are
always here.

Kundalini And Enlightenment

If one has had his kundalini awakened and risen, does that mean he is
enlightened?

This is quoted from Yoah (aka Jack Wexler) regarding enlightenment and kundalini.

"Good Question.

First of all, one can mistake a kundalini awakening with pranic activity in the body. The Life Force or shakti in the body is called prana. Intense pranic activity or pranatana is often mistaken as kundalini. It is not. When the prana is in the central energy channel, called shusumna, it is called Kundalini.

A kundalini awakening may or may not be an enlightenment experience. Energetically, enlightenment could be described as when the Kundalilne energy pierces through all the grunti's or knots (the lower, middle and upper triads of chakras) and into the sahasrara or thousand petaled lotus flower of the crown. DIRECT CONSCIOUS UNION or SELF REALIZATION OF TRUTH is enlightenment. One's kundalini may energetically pierce into the saharara and one may NOT REALIZE the Truth due to their attention being distracted by the phenomena associated with kundalini. They are caught up in the phenomena that occurs right before or right after the enlightened state. They are caught up in the bodymind's reactions to kundalini..... the heat, the joy, the tears, the laughter, the intensity of mental, physical and psycho sexual phenomena. So they miss it. It is still there. It always is. One needs to just notice the obvious.

Having that awakened kundalini and self realization does not mean one MAINTAINS that awakened state of consciousness. Just as you awake in the morning from a long night of sleep and then go back to sleep again in the evening..... so to does one awakened state of being go back to sleep due to the forces of nature, the levels of impurity in bodymind and what one is committed to.... sleeping or awakening.

As well, the egoistic false pride of awakening may 'hitch a ride' onthe enlightened state and claim ownership for sake of fame and fortune. As a friend of mine likes to say, the mountain top of enlightenment is a slippery slope and one quite easily slides back down."

The Messy Business of Being Human

I was a participant in the eight annual Mt. Baldy Enlightenment Intensive last week. Lovely Cynthia picked Patrick, Jerry and I up at the Ontario airport and drove us up the mountain to the Zen Center. We settled into our cabins and then relaxed in the sun. They fed us Thursday night dinner which was an unexpected treat and eventually we gathered for the opening talk, taking in the other participants and anticipating the wild ride we knew we were all in for. Then it was off to bed with our contemplations. I was working on What Am I?

I froze half the night and couldn't fall asleep. I was in a cabin with 3 other women and everyone else seemed quiet and comfortable, but of course, we never know what's really going on for another unless we are sitting in dyad with them. I finally pulled myself up out of bed and cranked up the heat. Ah, sleep finally arrived although I continued to wake on and off throughout the rest of the night. The 5:55 bell came with the announcement, "Good morning, this is the first day of the Enlightenment Intensive, you have 20 minutes until the morning talk."

It was a powerful Intensive for me. Lots of stuff kept coming up about living in the moment and acceptance. What else is there to do? I exist in the moment and if I'm intending to experience the truth of myself directly, the moment is probably the best set up for that experience.

I started looking for the obvious in what I am. I exist. I intend. I desire. I make choices. I notice. I have set up my whole life around connecting with others. This seems to be my foremost path, what I desire and yearn for. I kept recalling my most recent experiences with ego--various opportunities for connection with another and ego getting in my way. It has an agenda other than my own. Ego is always busy with its "to do" list. It always has something important to give to another, or to get from another, some information or this or that or another thing. Sometimes it's busy working to impress another. Always one thing or another, things that don't interest me, that I have no investment in. I get so bored, so weary with ego's running around. I find myself functioning on automatic, ego in control. I'll be there, engaging without really engaging and then I wake up and find myself doing ego's bidding. "Hey, wait a minute" I say to ego, "this is my show, my life, my agenda here, so back off", and then I go about my business of connecting, being present, being available to another. Ego's pattern is insidious and difficult to change.

I know ego is doing it's best to take care of me and frankly, it does a fairly decent job most of the time. But it's too uppity and a control freak. It's nervous about it's survival, anxious and impatient. I've been too lenient with it, extended its leash too long and given it free run over my affairs. It's time to reign it in. Sorry ego, you gotta back off now, you've been stealing the show for too long and this is my debut. I'm the star in this drama.

Erik and Edrid were co-mastering this Intensive and the perfect masters they were. At one point, Eric was talking about the messiness of life. He used the analogy that we are all made of clay and poop and how we just sling pieces of ourselves, clay and poop all over each other. I got a picture of a potter at work, sitting at her wheel forming a beautiful bowl which to me, symbolized the building of relationship. Pieces of clay where splattering all over. Relating with another and creating intimacy is a messy business. We humans are messy, with another we lose ourselves and find ourselves and make a big splattering mess in the process. We do our work. We witness another's work. This is love. This is the dyad process.

At the Enlightenment Intensive it's not about working on a specific relationship with another but rather about intending to directly experience the truth of the moment and opening ourselves to receive that truth. It's also about opening ourselves to another, being nakedly open to receiving whatever they have to offer. Opening ourselves to another's splattering messiness and accepting it without opinion or judgment. And the amazing with this is that we don't get dirty. The poop flies, the clay flies, and we are so open, so totally non-resistant to this stuff, it just dissipates into it's native nothingness. All we do is get it and let it go. We give the gift of understanding. Another's messiness does not sully us.

Eric also offered the analogy of taking out the trash...that's a lot of what is going on when the active partner is contemplating and communicating. So much of what we are holding on to and identifying with is just simply garbage and it needs to be released, kind of like a big stinky fart or belch. We are helping another take our their trash and we don't even have to wash our hands in the process. At other times what comes out of another are these incredibly beautiful sparkling gems of truth. And as we sit there openly receiving, the light of these truth gems strike us with their brilliance and open us more, filling us with the truth of our own selves. We accept it all with understanding and compassion and the process works it's magic on us.

At one point I was experiencing being stuck. I had all these ideas, perhaps correct ones, about what I am but correct ideas are not direct experiences. Edrid told me that maybe I needed to take the leap. I said I would if I had any clue what to leap into. I also told him about the moments when I "show up" and he encouraged me that that's the time to delve deep into my question. What is my experience of Self when I show up? I'll continue to be working on that. One thing I've noticed is that I feel very warm and transparent. I'm also in love. And happy.

As the Intensive drew on I came to understand the leap I need to take. It is of course leaping more into my life. Taking the plunge into a deeper truth. I've put my toes in the water and that's a start. I'm inspecting the truth fabric of my daily life and patching up the areas that have worn thin. I've been letting ego get away with some indulgences and some threads could break if I'm not careful, leaving a hole for me to fall through. And that landing would stir up too much mud in the pond.


Posted by Adrienne

Just Like Your Life

"...the Enlightenment Intensive Retreat is JUST LIKE YOUR LIFE, only intensified. The
barriers, the obstacles, the drama's, your resistances, your
personality are all brought forward at an EI Retreat. It is meant to
do that. It is the nature of contemplating WHO AM I. And when the
Enlightenment Technique is really being done, IT BRINGS UP A CRISIS.
It is meant to do that. And you may feel like shit before the
awakening. And you may want to run away and do all those habitual
things that you or I or your neighbor does to AVOID the HEALING
crisis. The key is to keep doing the contemplation and not run away
or chase after the phenomena or distraction. And at the Retreats,
there is lots of support to get through the CRISIS."

by zYoah (aka Jack Wexler, PhD) Check out his website here.

Edrid's Enlightenment Newsletters

Below are some wonderful links I encourage you to take advantage of. They will take you to Edrid's Enlightenment Newsletter--Self and Other.

Volume 1 Number 1

Volume 1 Number 2

Volume 1 Number 3

Volume 1 Number 4

Volume 2 Number 1

Volume 3 Number 2

Volume 4 Number 1

Volume 4 Number 2

Volume 5 Number 1