Divine Relationship

There seems to be a popular belief in spiritual circles that enlightenment is a singular, individuated path. It is a path which one walks alone, and the need for or attachment towards other people is merely an obstacle on the way. I personally would beg to differ.

I view enlightenment as a collective journey, in which all parts of the Self move to reunite with the whole. If only one aspect of Self reunites with the whole, this is not true enlightenment. Yes, it a step towards total union, but so long as other aspects of the Self have yet to awaken and merge with the Source, the job is not yet complete.

In buddhism, there is a term for a specific type of awakened being known as the bodhisattva. This class of awakened being attains enlightenment and thus reaches nirvana, yet from that space of total oneness, peace and bliss, chooses to come back and reincarnate in order to assist other beings on their journey home. This being knows that all parts of the Self are aspects of him/herself, and through this knowing understands that true enlightenment is not attained by oneself but it is attained collectively.

Nothing in this Universe can exist without relationship. If there is only one point, one singularity of consciousness, there is no relationship. Yet as soon as two points exist, that is the beginning of relationship. Everything in existential/experiential reality is subject to relationship. You have a relationship with your thoughts, your emotions, your body, other people, even with yourself, or at least you temporal, physically incarnated self. The atoms, molecules and cells which make up your body all exist in relationship to each other. Reality is nothing but the dynamic interplay of relationship, all parts relating to the others.

So relationship is not a choice, and it is certainly not an obstacle to enlightenment, it is a divine necessity. We need relationships, we need each other, or nothing could exist at all. The way to enlightenment, really, is through the perfection of our divine relationships. The way in which we relate to everything in our experience. The journey home is a journey of connection, not only connection with the formless and eternal awareness, but connection to the everythingness of manifested existence.

So the greatest practice one can partake in on the journey of awakening is the practice of unconditional love in all of their relationships. Where there is resistance, annoyance, hate, or irritation, this is your sign that there is still work which needs to be done. This does not mean to put up with abuse or to involve yourself in relationships which do not serve you, as this is not practicing unconditional love in the relationship with yourself. It simply means that all which arises in your experience is met with love, acceptance, and understanding, especially the parts which emotionally trigger you the most.

Enlightenment truly is not a separate process, but a unified one. Without total unity, there is no enlightenment, there is no true realization of Self. Awakening occurs through the dynamic process of divine relationship, of divine union with all aspects of Self. It is the recognition of the other as ultimately one with the Self, and through this realization the arising of unconditional love.

Moving Through Emotional Pain

Every human carries an imprint of emotional pain due to the fact that we learn to repress, deny and dissociate from painful emotions as a coping mechanism. This results in an energetic density which holds us in patterns of suffering and ego identification. That is, the density has a gravity just like any other mass within the Universe and this gravity pulls us into identifying with it and creating mental stories that feed it.

The pain-body fractals itself through pulsations in the waveform of your reality experience. This results in your life feeling like a skipping cd, replaying the same old pain and trauma over and over again. It feels as if you can’t escape from these negative holding patterns no matter what you do. No surface level actions or rearranging of things will bring you freedom from these patterns. It requires diving deep into the core density and dissolving it from within.

The key to moving past the obstructions that keep one stuck in suffering is absolute presence with the emotions as they arise and full acceptance of the pain. You will notice the mind attempting to distract you from the pain, as it fears it, the way in which the ego fears death. Just witness the mind’s antics and come back to conscious witnessing of the feeling. Do not let yourself go into stories about the feeling, but rather observe it fully without any mental dialogue.  

Be conscious of any shame you may feel as you go through this process. Shame is a surface level reaction pattern which keeps one from moving fully into the dense and heavy emotions and transmuting them through presence, thereby disidentifying from them and achieving a higher level of enlightenment.

The densities that we hold onto prevent us from feeling truly content in the moment and experiencing the type of life that we really desire. The energetic frequency of our pain reflects itself in our conscious thought processes and causes us to focus on the opposite of what we desire, making us believe that we can’t have the life we truly want. This is merely an illusion however and as soon as you bring presence into these emotional contractions that take place within your field, following them to the root of the core imprint, you will began to think, feel and believe that the life of your dreams is not only possible but is your current, living reality. You merge into the perfection that is the now.

Honor Your Subjective Experience

We live in a reality that is, above all, a subjective experience. Sure, there may be objective truths which we all agree upon, yet still these objective truths are observed through a conglomeration of subjective points of view. You are you, I am me, and though the awareness which is the essence of your experience and my experience may be the same, the experience itself varies greatly. No matter how often spiritual teachers preach about oneness and unity, there is no escaping the relative truth of this Universe; it is, for all intents and purposes, a subjective experience.

Subjectivity is a beautiful thing. It results in uniqueness, nuance and variation. It gives rise to an infinite expanse of experiences for one to behold. Were there only one point of perspective in this Universe, there really couldn’t be any experience at all. The same way that there is really no time, space, or movement until two points arise, if there were only a single point of focus, nothing could really happen. There would be no experience, no contrast, no varying sensations and perceptions: there would simply be the isness of I, the only I there is. The I must fragment itself into multiplicity for experiences to arise.

The problem with subjectivity begins when you believe that everyone is experiencing what you are experiencing, and that everyone should know how you feel and what you are thinking at all times. It’s almost like a covert narcissism. You, being the center of your own Universe, believe that everyone around you should cater to your experience, that they should hold your subjectivity above all else, and that you should be the center of their Universe. But this is not the case. So when people do things that make you feel bad, instead of establishing healthy boundaries and being honest about the way you feel, you just expect them to know that they are making you feel bad and to stop what they are doing.

The divine source of this narcissistic and self-absorbed tendency arises from the truth that, in essence, we are all one. We all share the same basic nature which is the awareness or consciousness that experiences our own subjective reality. This universal awareness is what unites us beyond our apparent surface level differences. Yet we still must honor the subjective nature of this Universe, though true only relatively, and we must be authentic with our thoughts and feelings and establish healthy boundaries.

Too often we can get caught up in catering to someone else’s agenda because we wish to help and we wish to experience the love and belonging that comes along with helping others. But many times helping doesn’t actually feel good to us. It feels like self-hate. This is why you must honor your own subjectivity, you must hold tightly to your own personal truth, and you must even be willing to risk others not liking or accepting you in order to honor your own personal feelings and desires. Because nothing is more important than how you feel.

Everything we do is either consciously or unconsciously intended to make us feel better, so why not go straight to the better feeling instead of beating around the bush? Why sacrifice the way you feel now for some hypothetical better-feeling future that never comes? You must honor your subjective experience and do what is best for you. No one can and no one will do this for you. You must do this for yourself. Do what you know is right, and as Shakespeare once said, always “ To thine own self be true.”

Chasing the Phantom

We all have a phantom that we’re chasing. This phantom could be anything from health, wealth, freedom, romantic love, lasting peace, or even the highest levels of spiritual enlightenment. Any ideal state of being or life situation that we wish we could permanently abide in is the phantom we chase. But we can never seem to really find it. We may have glimpses, brief tastes of our most sought for desire, but it never stays. We are teased to the point of torment. But let me tell you this; the only thing worse than never getting what you want, is actually getting it.

Let me explain why. Before you got what you desired, you at least had hope. But as soon as you get it and you realize that it doesn’t really make you happy, your hope is taken from you. There is nothing left to chase, no idealistic goal to move towards, no tantalizing fantasy of the grass being greener on the other side of life. This is the point at which you have two choices; to either kill yourself, or to kill your idea of self.

The ego self has a great many mechanisms to maintain its own survival. Most of these are deeply habituated and have their roots in the subconscious. But the most powerful of all its survival mechanisms is the idea that things would be better if. If only this were the case, or that were the case, I could be happy. This is an inherent denial of the now, as wanting something else, by default, means that you do not want or accept what is. The problem with this is that all you ever have is what is at this moment. So you create a dynamic of continuous suffering. Yet the ego itself loves this, because it cannot survive without suffering. Resistance is the structural tension which holds the ego in place. Without it, the ego collapses in on itself. Without any suffering, the ego ceases to exist. Because without suffering, there is only complete love and acceptance of what is.

The Buddha said that there are two base causes of suffering. Attachment and desire. Without desire and without attachment, there is no suffering, and one’s true nature is fully realized. So what does it mean to have no attachment and no desire? It means that you do not cling to the fleeting forms and experiences that come and go in this temporal existence, and you also do not desire for things to be a certain way, for them to be other than the way that they are right now. This state of being is the essence of self-realization or enlightenment, as the true self, your true nature, is beyond all that comes and goes. It is untouched by passing sensations and experiences, and it is the only constant in an ever-changing reality.

The reason why we chase our phantom is because we believe on some level that the phantom is us. We believe that the only way to be our true selves is to achieve this certain state or circumstance and that only then can we be free from suffering. But the truth is that we first free ourselves from suffering by realizing that no state of being or circumstance could ever bring us lasting happiness or bring us closer to who we really are, and then our life circumstances fall into place effortlessly. At this point, we know that nothing that comes and goes can bring us happiness, so we don’t really care if things fall into place. There is no desire. And even if we do get what we want, we don’t care if it leaves us. There is no attachment. Therefore, we have found lasting freedom, we have achieved the ultimate liberation, and we have come to find that the destination had been exactly where we were standing all along.

The End of Suffering

"There is the state of being wrapped up in or identified with something, then there is the state of detached witnessing, and then there is the merging with it and the becoming of it; your presence transmutes it into itself. This point is the end of all suffering."

The unwillingness to experience even the worst hell is literally what creates it, as the resistance we have to suffering is what holds it in place. An open willingness to explore all experiences and sensations that could ever be is the essence of enlightenment.

The original polarity was the split between the essence and the experience, or the observed and the observer. This then fractured infinitely into a fractal of polarized reality, the mind being a by-product of such. We, as the eternal underlying essence, then lost ourselves in this fragmented and fractalized reality experience so that we could recognize ourselves once again to gain a higher level of self-awareness. It is a perfect ever-evolving eternal process of expansion and evolution both within and without. Both on the level of experience and the level of awareness, as both are perfect reflections of eachother.

This polarity is what in fact gives rise to all of creation. Nothing could be without it, there would be no matter, no sensation and no experience. It is the original split or division that occurred within the space of consciousness when it first had the desire to know itself. This polarity exists on an energetic spectrum. Everything in experiential reality is the same substance expressed at different frequencies, or imbued with ever-changing information. Hot and cold are really the same thing, just expressed differently. This difference in expression is what gives rise to the conception of duality.

Polarity is what gives birth to the conception of the "self" and the "other", both being mind-based perceptual delusions. The belief in the "other" gives rise to the feeling of separation and fear. We fear that which we feel is outside of our control, that which we feel is separate from us. But how could anything be separate from you if it all arises within your own consciousness, your own awareness? All that could ever be must be within the space of your consciousness, for nothing could exist without a witness for its existence. Your truest self is the space in which all that is arises, and all that arises is an inseparable part of that. So in reality, there is no other. There is only you.

Reality itself is an ever-flowing expression of life-force energy which perpetually emanates from the one. The movement occurs in a toroidal flow pattern, whereas the center point is the singularity of consciousness or awareness. Creation bursts forth, projects itself as an externalized reality experience, and is then perceived and received as the cycle repeats. This occurs at such a rapid rate that we have no conscious awareness of it. It appears to happen instantaneously.

In the picture above, you could think of one half of the sphere as being positive and the other half as being negative. Reality is the interplay of these two polarized forces, and so long as we believe in it and identify with it as being real or "self", we are stuck in this polarized dance of highs and lows, expansions and contractions, joys and sorrows. When we recognize our true Self as the singularity, we integrate polarity into the wholeness of the Self and transcend it all together.

When you surrender to the entire spectrum of happiness and suffering, of pain and joy, you transcend it by experiencing it all simultaneously. The way in which black is not truly a color, but is the absence of color because it absorbs the entire light spectrum, the state you achieve is not so much a feeling or emotion but rather all feelings and none simultaneously; it is the peace that passes all understanding. That which Jesus described as heaven and the Buddha described as nirvana. In other words, it is the end of suffering and the beginning of your liberation as a self-actualized being free to experience the infinite magnitude of creation in whatever way you choose.