Mystics Only: Extended Discussion

[Willamena]

In the same way we may be able to paint a picture of a sunset and show it to each other but your sunset is not my sunset and I could not feel the dying sun and the evening breeze that you did and you could not feel mine. Our best attempt is pictures and words. This is your "shared reality" no?

Yes. :yes:

 

[autonomous1one1]

.....Post #98..

To go from simple observation, to verifiable testimony, to rationalization, to the experiential, and finally to the attainment of a perfect awakened state. Is it fair to say that this is the general goal of the mystic? Regardless of any claim of religious affiliation?

Peace,
Mystic

....Post #99

Greetings Mystic and YmirGF. Your posts 98 and 99 are so much in accord with my being. You are so accomplished in this area. The words you put together that are quoted here Mystic would be worth embellishment if you and YmirGF agree. A short paragraph on each might help clarify what we are writing about, and perhaps YmirGF would care to add a word or two, particularly on open mindedness at the beginning.

I wish to raise question on two suggestions in your posts. To 'question religious authority with compassion and fearlessness' seems unnecessary to me. We need only to put forward the 'awakened state' for it will speak for itself. Attacking alienates unnecessarily. Isn't it true that each religion has within it (somewhere) the aim of the awakened state (by some term and symbols); and that when a person is ready they will seek out their own path to It? Also, on another point, offering advice to others on whether or not they should express their experience and what it means to them is not a course that I take. For my mode, It is left totally up to the individual. There is value to many seekers in the early expression of being awakened as well as the completely seasoned expression. Besides, where is the dividing line? It certainly cannot be time for that will vary greatly, and also, didn't someone say 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last?' Nothing negative is meant in my post here, for you make good points for many, but they are just not common ground for us if we are trying to find the common ground.
Best wishes,
a..1

 

[YmirGF]

Yes. :yes:

OK, I understand now, lol. I can be as thick as a fencepost at times. :bonk: In this sense, I do agree but my point remains that to an extent we CAN feel the feelings of others directly and that the seeming barriers are not as solid as we are accustomed to believing. :foryou:

Though it sounds more than a bit invasive, that which resides within the form of the human animal can learn "tricks and techniques" that allow them to look through the "eyes" of other human animals, in a sense to see reality through the apeture of another's understanding.

I was wondering, however if anyone managed to glimpse this portion of my post before the thread sped on past. Don't worry about it if it's off the current train of thought though. We can always come back to it later.

So what I think I understand you to be saying is that most revelations aren't actually revealing anything, but that they can seem as though they are. And I can agree. I don't *trust* a revelation as much as a realisation in that - like I said in the "True to yourself" thread - messages from outside of yourself can get mumbled and jumbled on the way to you or indeed on the way to your understanding. Simply knowing in yourself, either by some kind of reasoning, deduction or meditation process an inner understanding follows and you understand fully all of the parts within that knowledge, thus making it much more powerful for you. And I'm like you Ymir, in that I have so much "stuff" in my mind - images, feelings, knowledge that I can't find the words to express it. And I think also that this is in part the key to letting other people know the same knowledge. You cannot always simply tell them what is and isn't as you understand them, but you can describe the process that they need to undergo and they then (as far as I am aware) should arrive at the same knowing, feeling, imagery as you do. They also may not be able to put that into words, and so you have much less "revealed" something to them, and given them a stronger sense of knowing and a much stronger more powerful feeling and you have in this way let them real-ise it themselves.

You will get no arguments from me on this perspective. The only reason I bring up the need to reflect on so-called "revelations" is that they will often be wrapped in unnecessary religious garb. My thinking is that anyone who has an "angel" appear before them and starts issuing edicts and commands really ought to get a grip on their personal reality. It is highly unlikely that such experiences will be "real" but rather are more akin to elaborate hallucinations unwittingly foisted upon the observer by their belief structures and expectations. In essence I deem them to be more likely the result of psychological meltdowns that trigger exposure to non-ordinary reality that, just by chance, happen to empower the desperate individual with a god-given mission. Deep feelings of unworth are instantly replace by a mission from "on high". It is sort of like taking the idea of a "drama queen" to new heady religious heights.

 

[methylatedghosts]

It is highly unlikely that such experiences will be "real" but rather are more akin to elaborate hallucinations unwittingly foisted upon the observer by their belief structures and expectations. In essence I deem them to be more likely the result of psychological meltdowns that trigger exposure to non-ordinary reality that, just by chance, happen to empower the desperate individual with a god-given mission. Deep feelings of unworth are instantly replace by a mission from "on high". It is sort of like taking the idea of a "drama queen" to new heady religious heights.

Yep. I have noticed many revelations are described by people who have had really low points in their lives - drug addicts etc

 

[MysticSang'ha]

I wish to raise question on two suggestions in your posts. To 'question religious authority with compassion and fearlessness' seems unnecessary to me. We need only to put forward the 'awakened state' for it will speak for itself. Attacking alienates unnecessarily. Isn't it true that each religion has within it (somewhere) the aim of the awakened state (by some term and symbols); and that when a person is ready they will seek out their own path to It? Also, on another point, offering advice to others on whether or not they should express their experience and what it means to them is not a course that I take. For my mode, It is left totally up to the individual. There is value to many seekers in the early expression of being awakened as well as the completely seasoned expression. Besides, where is the dividing line? It certainly cannot be time for that will vary greatly, and also, didn't someone say 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last?' Nothing negative is meant in my post here, for you make good points for many, but they are just not common ground for us if we are trying to find the common ground.
Best wishes,
a..1

Perhaps I can clarify my post better if I reiterate the notion that the content is meant to be taken as a permission rather than as an order.




Peace,
Mystic

 

[autonomous1one1]

Perhaps I can clarify my post better if I reiterate the notion that the content is meant to be taken as a permission rather than as an order.

Peace,
Mystic

I see. Believe my comment is based on a misunderstanding which I should have known better in your case. Thanks for that clarification. And certainly, if to be applied inward by the individual your points apply fully for me also.

Regards

 

[YmirGF]

Round Two:

(That is not to say we cannot go back and explore comments in the first part at our leisure, but I have a lot of ground I want to cover over the next few weeks. Hopefully people will remember this tiny thread and check in from time to time. So far the responses have been most heartening.)

One thing I have read (and agree with) is that any person who achieves a radical altered state, such as that of Oneness, Cosmic Consciousness, Dharma-Kaya, Illumination or dare I say, Enlightenment itself can always remember the exact moment their experience happened.

For me, the moment the Light went on was shortly after 8 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time), on Feb. 28, 1974, four days after my 18th birthday.

1.Can each of you pinpoint a "grand induction" experience or was your experience a series of less dazzling, but still evocative experiences?

For me, I have always called this my "grand awakening" as it was certainly dazzling beyond anything I could possibly have imagined prior to the event. How about you? To be honest at the time it was certainly a revelation of a sorts but being fully conscious in a way I had never been before tended to stunt that perception. Thirty years down the road I am leaning towards thinking my current self merely "pushed" my former self past the envelope of my somewhat stunted perceptions. It all made so much sense while it was happening even though I KNEW that I could never explain it to someone seated beside me. (It actually took several decades to distill my experience into words that are a fair approximation while remaining consistent with the event and at the same time being somewhat meaningful to others.)

This should be an easy one to go through and if you like send the time an detail your experience(s) so that others can ohh and ahh too. No sense being greedy, eh, and keeping it to one's self.

2. What was your intial reaction once you were back to your normal perspective? Did you do anything differently?

 

[MysticSang'ha]

2 years ago.......almost to the day right around my 33rd birthday (mine's Oct. 24).

I'd had some, I guess, minor experiences before that where I'd find myself in a certain state of bliss, but nothing like this. I had been sick for a week - SUDDENLY sick - and was going through a period of contemplation where I was facing my own swift death. Not a catastrophic death, but a quick death from a sickness that not even 4 different doctors could help.

I had enough strength one day to take my daughter to the zoo. She's part of a homeschooling consortium that engages in classes strictly for homeschoolers through our local zoo. That day was her final day in the program for that semester. So, I dropped her off and walked slowly around knowing that I had about 90 minutes to spare while she studied. I quickly became exhausted and dizzy, and so I sat down on a bench. That was where my awakening happened.

All the time facing my own death, my mind was tumultuous. I went from being terrified to being at peace, and there were no lukewarm moments in my meditations. But for some reason, I decided at that moment on the bench at the zoo that I was ready to die. Right there. I was ready to slump over and let this body of mine go into it's decay. And at that moment, EXACTLY at that moment, everything changed.

There was nothing really picturesque about that afternoon at the zoo. The sun wasn't in an angle creating beautiful hues in the sky. It was actually quite dreary by ordinary standards. But the moment of my awakening made all sentient beings at the zoo - human, animal, insect, bacteria - and all sentient beings in the varying realms that I could and could not see, and all the material world............I saw everything in all it's glory. It was all so beautiful - so beautiful. The movie with Robin Williams What Dreams May Come didn't even do my vision justice. Everything was so vibrant and alive and simply too beautiful that I can't speak about it without becoming tearful even to this day.

This moment of bliss lasted well into the night and on to the next week. Although, it admittedly waned bit by bit from that moment on. Obviously, I somehow got better. Nobody had any answers for me regarding the causes for this except for a visiting lama this past weekend. The point, though, is that even though I have this moment only in memory now............to never give up. I have had varying experiences that are nothing like this awakening, but nonetheless they had been illuminating in their own ways.

*big breath*

I still have difficulties relaying this experience. It's incredibly intimate and personal, and I feel yet again a huge level of vulnerability with all of you.




Peace,
Mystic

 

[Willamena]

1.Can each of you pinpoint a "grand induction" experience or was your experience a series of less dazzling, but still evocative experiences?

2. What was your intial reaction once you were back to your normal perspective? Did you do anything differently?

No dazzle for me. Just a new understanding.

 

[autonomous1one1]

Round Two:

1.Can each of you pinpoint a "grand induction" experience or was your experience a series of less dazzling, but still evocative experiences?

Greetings. Agree that the emotion often associated with the breakthrough into the 'awakened state' is such that the exact moment is burnt into memory forever. My words could resemble yours closely, YmirGF, and the exact situation is vividly remembered. That moment came in 1965 when I was 28. Most close, personal, surrounding circumstances were happy ones for me at the time and I had been studying (the path of knowledge) intensely for a couple of years in evenings and weekends just to understand what people were talking about in this area. It came in a flash while in contemplation after reading at my desk one evening. It might be said, as you did, that my current Self pushed me through the threshold, for at the time I knew that something outside my conscious control had made it happen.

2. What was your intial reaction once you were back to your normal perspective? Did you do anything differently?

Not sure what you mean by 'back to normal perspective.' The perspective is changed so one never gets back to the conventional - do they? Initially, some activities were shifted toward the 'experience' (like adding discussion with professors of theology and philosophy at Christian seminaries, auditing courses, and presenting to youth groups) but soon were shifted again into living as an awakened Being in a 'normal' life. This was different from before awakening. In this normal life, responses and actions centered in the New Being are hidden in normalcy but sometimes are surprising to 'others' because they come from love and are aimed at the others' fulfillment.

 

[methylatedghosts]

2 years ago.......almost to the day right around my 33rd birthday (mine's Oct. 24).

I'd had some, I guess, minor experiences before that where I'd find myself in a certain state of bliss, but nothing like this. I had been sick for a week - SUDDENLY sick - and was going through a period of contemplation where I was facing my own swift death. Not a catastrophic death, but a quick death from a sickness that not even 4 different doctors could help.

I had enough strength one day to take my daughter to the zoo. She's part of a homeschooling consortium that engages in classes strictly for homeschoolers through our local zoo. That day was her final day in the program for that semester. So, I dropped her off and walked slowly around knowing that I had about 90 minutes to spare while she studied. I quickly became exhausted and dizzy, and so I sat down on a bench. That was where my awakening happened.

All the time facing my own death, my mind was tumultuous. I went from being terrified to being at peace, and there were no lukewarm moments in my meditations. But for some reason, I decided at that moment on the bench at the zoo that I was ready to die. Right there. I was ready to slump over and let this body of mine go into it's decay. And at that moment, EXACTLY at that moment, everything changed.

There was nothing really picturesque about that afternoon at the zoo. The sun wasn't in an angle creating beautiful hues in the sky. It was actually quite dreary by ordinary standards. But the moment of my awakening made all sentient beings at the zoo - human, animal, insect, bacteria - and all sentient beings in the varying realms that I could and could not see, and all the material world............I saw everything in all it's glory. It was all so beautiful - so beautiful. The movie with Robin Williams What Dreams May Come didn't even do my vision justice. Everything was so vibrant and alive and simply too beautiful that I can't speak about it without becoming tearful even to this day.

This moment of bliss lasted well into the night and on to the next week. Although, it admittedly waned bit by bit from that moment on. Obviously, I somehow got better. Nobody had any answers for me regarding the causes for this except for a visiting lama this past weekend. The point, though, is that even though I have this moment only in memory now............to never give up. I have had varying experiences that are nothing like this awakening, but nonetheless they had been illuminating in their own ways.

*big breath*

I still have difficulties relaying this experience. It's incredibly intimate and personal, and I feel yet again a huge level of vulnerability with all of you.

Thank you very much for sharing it with us! It is a wonderful story

Unfortunately I haven't had a sudden perspective change at all. My understanding was slow and internal. It mostly came from reading a book (Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch) and the second in that series. Slowly my understanding of many things took form in my mind as I tried to reason my way through it. I tried looking at the book in the opposite light to see any flaws.

But all of my understanding was born in that book and since then I have had "mini-realisations" as I think about it. I first picked up this book 4 years ago when I was 17

 

[Ozzie]

Yep, I second that thanks to mystic, particularly for describing that experience as death. Mine was similarly the death of me. It happened when I was around 22, almost 20 years ago. I remember the experience very clearly, though of course the immediacy has faded. I regarded it then and now as a dip into something.

I was practicing some deep meditation. My mind slid off its perch and started spinning at an incredible rate accompanied with a syncronous electical storm throughout my body. That's the best way I could describe it. Even though it was moving at pace I was aware of each frame, like watching a film and being able to see each frame. So the experience was of images, accompanied by sensations, emotions and language. The language part was really interesting, like streams of words peeling effortlessly into my awareness.

That experience was like death because the central point of all this was that I was observing it. Any semblance of a normal conscious state or other meditative states I had experienced was wiped off. I saw what my mind is, how it is connected to my body. Attachment was impossible to that phenomena, it was the death of any sense of "ownership" of my personal consciousness.

 

[methylatedghosts]

Yep, I second that thanks to mystic, particularly for describing that experience as death. Mine was similarly the death of me. It happened when I was around 22, almost 20 years ago. I remember the experience very clearly, though of course the immediacy has faded. I regarded it then and now as a dip into something.

I was practicing some deep meditation. My mind slid off its perch and started spinning at an incredible rate accompanied with a syncronous electical storm throughout my body. That's the best way I could describe it. Even though it was moving at pace I was aware of each frame, like watching a film and being able to see each frame. So the experience was of images, accompanied by sensations, emotions and language. The language part was really interesting, like streams of words peeling effortlessly into my awareness.

That experience was like death because the central point of all this was that I was observing it. Any semblance of a normal conscious state or other meditative states I had experienced was wiped off. I saw what my mind is, how it is connected to my body. Attachment was impossible to that phenomena, it was the death of my personal consciousness.

Was the falling and spinning frightening? Or was it accompanied by a feeling of calm?

 

[Ozzie]

Was the falling and spinning frightening? Or was it accompanied by a feeling of calm?

The feeling of spinning is disconcerting but bear with it because the letting go is inevitable. After that because the entire content of the mind and body is one display, it is impossible to adequately describe that experience in any words. Calmness would be one way to approximate it but calm with respect to what? There is nothing else.

 

[methylatedghosts]

I've heard people talk of purposely going off that ledge and falling into... something (some people call it God). And it actually is frightening to take that step off the edge (I assume, the ego holding on).

 

[doppelganger]

I was sitting at the back of a bus on my way to the UDistrict from Federal Way, Washington when I was struck by the sudden vision that the entire world around me was composed of symbols I had acquired. It is just like that vision in The Matrix where Neo suddenly sees the Matrix for the code that composes the reality people experience while in it, only it was a blur of images, sounds, and words, most of them familiar and many of them beautiful and many of them grotesque as I saw them as symobols for the first time. Meditating to certain music puts in the frame of mind to have such experiences as regularly as I want them.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

I've always had dissociative experiences where suddenly I feel that I am not connected with my body at all and my memories and sensory interactions are merely recordings and I am the Observer from somewhere else. It's like the feeling of being in a movie theater after the shows over and you walk out. They used to come about through deep meditation (which started for me at a young age thanks to my dad), and pondering my place in a bigger universe. I learned to dissociate on purpose. (College psychology classes allowed me to label the experience as "dissociative." When I attended a lecture on dissociative disorders, it hit me like a brick that that was what I was experiencing.)

College philosophy allowed me to break down my beliefs of both reality and spirituality to the point of existential malaise. I was depressed for a while; the absurdity of living a godless, soulless, everything-less existence was more than I could handle. Luckily, this was also a time I was studying more deeply the dynamics of art and its relation to history. Particularly, I became fascinated with how symbolism and reality mingled, and with a renewed interest in neo-Paganism and a realization of the power of the philosophical tools I had been given, I was able to rebuild (and further destruct--a difference?) my reality.

RF has been a huge help. There are many posters who have affected my spiritual journey significantly. Particularly, Doppelganger's idea of language being our reality has been an extremely powerful landmark in exploring this existence I find myself observing. I have much appreciation for that!

 

[blackout]

I'm enjoying these stories more than you'll ever know.

I've been putting off sharing mine,
cause I can't figure out how to do it effectively.
There was so much involved in it all,
and still the implications of the whole thing
are revealing themselves anew to this very day,
close to 4? years later....

So here's the upshot without all the details....

I entered into a reality altered state on a stormy supernatural night,
as I sat in a meditative state,
when I threw off the final veils of "caution" in my life,
shortly after I realized that the world was based on lies,
and my religion was as fallable as anything else man teaches.

So after the stromy night of supernatural darkness,
I literally AWAKENED to a whole new dawning of reality.
I lived a TOTALLY lifted reality
for what I believe to have been three days,
and then continued on
in a supernaturally heightened state of awareness all summer thereafter.

I will say in this short post here,
that a TOTAL letting go of all my previously held beliefs,
and all of my FEARS as well,
preceeded my "epiphany".

It was TRUTH or Die.

This all followed on the heels of a three year illness,
that would have resulted in the death of me,
if I had not been willing to "re-do" my entire reality,
and outlook on life and God and myself.

What happened in that epiphany,
was the falling away of time,
and the impossible.
Impossible syncronicity,
heightened reality,
the impossible manifested possible,
and
ABSOLUTELY ALL OF CREATION SPOKE TO ME,
in SYMBOLISMS,
all arranged into the most incredible symphony
of circumstance you could ever imagine.

"God" continues to speak to me in all of life to this day.
I love life now,
and live awakened in the limitless possibility
that is mine as a co-creator in a DYNAMIC world
that is God Creating and moving with/in me.

 

[zenzero]

YmirGF,
Since whatever happens, happens for the good.
This platform too, should be good.
Though you started to roll this on 17th but could hook to the net today after a gap of over a week.
Read a few of the posts and most discussions were related to *Revelation* & * Realisation*.
Realisation happens inside and the same is reveled outside. Meaning to state that what one realises is also revealed when viewing the outside world in the context of the realisation.
The above understanding is personal though and could differ as each one here understands that TRUTH is difficult to be communicated and it happens perfectly only through SILENCE, when that realisations takes place.
Rgds the labels of MYSTIC etc.; well personally would not like to label the self as anything and allow others to percieve anyway the like/feel/see. Consider the self as always a part of the whole and never [conciously] as any seperate entity to allow it be even good enough for any label.
More responses as we go along.
Love & rgds

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Consider the self as always a part of the whole and never [conciously] as any seperate entity to allow it be even good enough for any label.

The Self is both a part of the whole and separate (especially consciously). By adopting labels of "whole" and "separate," we become them depending on how we perceive ourselves. Whatever the label, the Self just simply "is" (or appears to be).