Introduction There is a point beyond which physics cannot venture: the event horizon, a region of space-time where phenomena cannot be registered. The event horizon is a bodiless border on the edge of a black hole; anything that the black hole’s gravitational field attracts beyond this border will be unable to come back. All possibility of exploration stops here: no unfortunate astronaut who free-fell into the black hole could ever return. We do not know what lies in the black hole, beyond the event horizon. Science has never reached the other side.
But spiritual seekers who make a leap beyond—yes, they know.
Sri Ramana Maharshi explains this well: if the bucket (the ego) dips into the well (the self), but the cord is not severed, the ego can return, even after years of absence. In sahaja, though, one’s natural state, this cord is finally severed and the ego cannot return. Here, in this book, Avikal takes us down into that well and shows us how to go about severing that rope.
the drop dissolves into the ocean and with it the illusion of existing as a separate entity from the universe.
gate, gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhi svaha… gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, may the Awakening come!
Osho unveiled to us in his years of teaching, meditation, and silence; and how this can be done only by accepting our dark side, transcending opposites and integrating all our resources of Being. Like a bodhisattva, Avikal alerts us to the obstacles used by our mental conditioning to prevent us from unveiling ultimate reality, a reality not divided, not dualistic, but all
embracing: the eternal “I am” beyond the individual, the immovable center of the experience of reality, external and internal.
Chapter 1 The drop
Chapter 2 Dhammam sharanam gacchammi
That, are you sure? Is it the thing for you to do? Is this the place for you to be? The questions leaves not even for a single moment. And this is as deep as anything can be in you, at the very core of your being. This is the agony, that the meaning is not known, that the purpose is not known, that the goal is not known.
I realized with ever-increasing clarity that “the wall” was made up of dense, frozen layers of energy, and these layers corresponded to particular judgments I had of myself, the world around me and specific physical symptoms, mostly tensions and contractions in various parts of my body. In particular, the contractions connected to fear gradually became unmistakable, in my solar plexus, my perineum (between the anus and the genitals), my knees and kidneys, and anger in my jaws, calves, shoulders and solar plexus.
And, after years and years of self-investigation and searching, one thing became crystal clear: there is no freedom as long as the inner judge is in control of my life.
Chapter 4 Benares
Chapter 5 The no that saves
Only later would I hear Osho confirming that the only way to go beyond the personality is to crystallize it, in other words to get to know every inch of it and to polish it as much as possible, not to be “a little ‘selfish” but “totally selfish”, putting oneself at the center of one’s own life because only a personality experienced to the full and recognized without doubts as a limited and partial survival structure - fundamentally false - can be transcended. And it was in “that total self-absorption”, in a no without guilt or shame that I began to discover the true yes.
“For me disobedience is a great revolution. It doesn’t mean saying an absolute no in every situation. It simply means deciding whether or not to do something, if there is a benefit in doing or not doing something. It is taking responsibility…Responsibility isn’t a game. It is one of the most authentic ways to live, and also dangerous” Osho The ability to say no without even having a reason, without logical justification, without depending on the past, the no that comes up from the belly, signifies the discovery of a crucial resource for the soul’s progression toward becoming a free spirit, transforming into an individual who is present and rooted in his own uniqueness.
For many, many years it was like this for me too, despite spontaneously and involuntarily realizing that there was a distance, a rift, between what I felt and how I thought about my feelings, and this distance caused a deep sense of melancholy in me.
In “direct experience” there is no such separation between subject, object and the relationship between the two, borders do not exist, the movement from one to the other does not exist, the one who breathes is one and the same as the breath and the breathing. As soon as the focus shifts to a definition of experience by giving it meaning, a value, a judgment etc. boundaries are instantly created within which the experience itself becomes imprisoned. Moreover, at that point, the mind attaches itself to the interpretation given, proclaiming it to be the truth while in reality it is merely a juxtaposition of concepts, of labels, of definitions that end up depersonalizing and disembodying the experience, in short killing it, flattening it and generalizing it.
within me and consuming me, causing any betrayal of the moment to be even more painful and more conscious. Over the years I have met few people who have chosen to search for the truth in the knowledge that their pain would increase during such a journey; the majority of people aim to reduce their pain, to lessen their suffering, to solve their problems, to feel better. But it doesn’t work like this. The more you delve into your subconscious, the more you end up in corners you have long avoided, the more you ask, the more you come across your wounds and the more you find yourself dealing with the immeasurable, excruciating pain of a life that seems wasted, random, monotonous and meaningless.
And it also began to become clear and evident how the most ecstatic, blissful, peaceful, happy moments were those where there was no commentary, or the control that went with it, there was no straining to define or understand, but just being, mysterious and unlimited. The generic NO turned into a no to the conditioning and constraints of mediocrity that conditioning promoted, and into a yes to risk and to the adventure of being myself, despite not having the slightest idea of what to expect.
Chapter 6 Calm, non-action and whole, not divided
But that was many years later, after a long and often painful journey into and through that dark side of the personality; reactivity. Reactivity: the habitual and compulsive repetition of behavioural patterns based on the past, the involuntary, mechanical responses to the present moment through the filter of accumulated experience.
if I kill you without your love it will be murder. If I kill you with your love it is transformation.
“Being” is monstrous in a world dominated by doing and having because “being” unmasks the shared madness known as normality. And, as I was determined to know myself, to be myself, I was also terrified, faced with a journey that would require me to truly abandon what I believed to be my most valuable resource: being a man of action.
of vital energy, the physical location from which all life occurred, the primary intelligence that guided the body spontaneously and efficiently, as well as being the seat of intuition and non-intellect.
“The more you are aware of the Hara, the less you will become afraid of life and death —because that is the center of life and death. Once you become attuned to the Hara center, you can live courageously. Courage arises out of it: less thinking, more silence, less uncontrolled moments, natural discipline, courage and rootedness, a groundedness.”
Meanwhile, every night Osho called on us to: “Be silent, close your eyes…no movement in the body…be completely frozen. Go in, deeper and deeper, like an arrow. Go through all the layers and hit the center of your existence two inches below the navel, inside the body…”
A few nights later I realized that that “nothing” was what I had been looking for and that there was no center, something recognizable like a center. I realized I was a prisoner of my mental pictures, of spiritual concepts, of other people’s descriptions and of a mind that held its own interpretation of what a “center” could or should be and, in understanding that, I let it all go and just accepted that what I found was this nothing, an emptiness and, a little angry but a little relieved, I decided that if that emptiness was what I had found, oh well, that was that and it was time to acknowledge that truth and that there was nothing else to search for.
Chapter 9 Afh
We began at six in the morning with Dynamic Meditation and finished between eleven o’clock and midnight: the days were long, full and unpredictable, but punctuated by an extremely precise rhythm.
Then there is a third layer known to mystics as “cosmic energy” that is basically limitless, because the individual who experiences it, even when temporarily, charges and discharges it at the same time without dispersion, not in succession as normally happens; so as X energy is discharged X energy is recharged. In the cosmic layer it is even possible for the quantity of energy recharged to constantly exceed that which is discharged, thereby producing a state of continuous expansion.
opening up what, in bioenergetics, is called body armor, namely areas of compression / tension in various parts of the body.
And so on we went moment by moment supporting each other, screaming, crying, laughing, sweating, sometimes desperate, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes completely focused, sometimes thinking purely about how to escape but carrying on and on and on, having faith in our energy, the longing of our soul, Prabha, and especially Osho who called on us to leave behind our mind, history, the past, fear, the idea of having little energy, not being able to be completely, absolutely alive.
Who? And, at some point everything began to disappear, time, space, the other people, my past, and I was alone, just me, the mattresses, the stick and tremendous pleasure, the primal joy of existing, existing exactly in that moment, without past and without future. And I turned into a flame, a pure life force burning and creating the reality of that moment. Pure energy. I was that cosmic energy my Master had spoken of, and I perceived that truth directly, instantaneously, in a simple and unequivocal fashion and, as I continued to beat the wall with my fists and knees and elbows and my
Awareness reflected in a thousand aspects of the present in a complete manner that is totally pure, endlessly changing, miraculously renewing itself, creating this moment where everything intersects and is shared with everything else, synchronous coexistence of what was, is, and will be. My conditioning is simply revealed, for what it is: just a skin that I can shed and regrow like a serpent. The freedom that I’ve always looked for is here, it is my nature, not something to be conquered, to fight for, for another time. Everything is expanded and in slow motion: every thought, every feeling, every image, every perception appears in the open sky of awareness that is me and is accepted, acknowledged and let go. I remain, immobile in that awareness. I am that awareness. I am that. I am. I.
One was the world based on the survival of the personality where everything was filtered by the conditioning of the past and mental categories centered on duality and the other was that of the spirit where the world
and I were one reality of interdependence and nourishment and every moment was the creative flourishing of the mystery of existence, incarnated in a dance without beginning and without end.
also had the opportunity and honor to support others who, like me, dove with passion and with fear into their own darkness.
Chapter 10 Satori
“Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once, after much piling up of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached a limit of stability and the whole edifice has come tumbling to the ground, when, behold, a new heaven is open to full survey. When the freezing point is reached, water suddenly turns into ice; the liquid has suddenly turned into a solid body and no more flows freely. Satori comes upon a man unawares, when he feels that he has exhausted his whole being. Religiously, it is a new birth; intellectually, it is the acquiring of a new viewpoint. The world now appears as if dressed in a new garment, which seems to cover up all the unsightliness of dualism, which is called delusion in Buddhist phraseology.” D.T. Suzuki
Every koan is a trap for the mind, its specific function being to reveal, uncover and dissolve certain aspects of attachment to mental descriptions of reality, concepts and the past. The method is radical, incredibly powerful, ruthless, sublime and extremely effective. The school that brought it to fame was that of the great master Rinzai in about 1200.
Famous Koans include: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” “What is your original face?” “Where do all the Buddhas come from?” And many, many others. The purpose of a koan is to bring about an internal crisis, to challenge the mind and make one aware of its weakness, its incapacity, the impotence of its accumulated knowledge, at the same time driving you toward intuitive, immediate intelligence that is rooted in the present, through a progressive exhaustion, going beyond the mind, beyond rationality and beyond logic.
The Koan has no set answer, but as we have seen, when there is experience of love or truth or life, the answer is not only unnecessary, it doesn’t even occur to us to ask the question. There is love, truth, life, freedom, there is experience: personal, immediate, spontaneous, perceived and indefinable, felt and not judged, intimate and not possessed… this is what we call DIRECT EXPERIENCE.
As Suzuki says, at that particular moment all the knowledge accumulated by the mind and the past collapses and a new world lights up where the constant duality of doubt and evaluation is no more.
One also discovers that that who, the subject, is aware of something, the object, and therefore cannot be that thing he is experiencing. Therefore a process begins, that becomes more and more distinct, of exclusion, of abandoning one’s identifications like stripping off the clothes that cover us or, as Osho put it, the peeling of an onion.
continues to be present throughout this constant change of objects…thoughts, sensations, images, memories, perceptions, sentiments, all this continues to flow and the subject who is observing, perceiving, understanding… who is he?
Now and then, small clouds would drift slowly by without disrupting the serenity and silence in any way: a thought, a vibration of movement, a sensation, energy…little clouds in that unlimited space that was me. Even feelings of delight, peace and completeness were dissolving into that vast emptiness that contained everything. How sweet is the impossibility to describe that experience now, as I am writing. What a blessing to know that immensity. And that perfection. And whereas everything else that was happening was like this, oh so clear that it was already familiar and known to my soul, childhood memories, moments of love, my father’s hugs, my mother’s smiles, sunsets, waves on the sea, yes, I knew that perfection, I knew that vastness, I discovered deep down inside me that disappearance that was finally life without the filters of the past. Direct experience. Satori. It was everything, the container and the contained, the observer and the observed, and everything was together, an indescribable unity, an intimacy and brilliant synchronicity, pure presence.
I had imagined it would be: I expected tsunami and explosions and instead found an infinity of gentleness, a subtle breeze of love and awareness that filled every corner of reality and me with it. No shocks or intensity, on the contrary, simple pervading light and natural beauty and that was me, my nature and the nature of everything.
To the question, “Tell me who you are” the presence that was me answered with the words of the presence that was the moment that was becoming incarnate, mysteriously creating itself, and in this way, simply by lending my voice, through a language that knows only limitation and duality, to a unity which is intrinsically freedom and love and beauty and goodness and truth and, and, and me, and you, and everything, as tears trickled gently down my face, melting away the fear of separation I had known for so long and which had never really existed… I received a new koan “Tell me what love is”, and with a buoyant and confident stride I returned to my place, absolutely no tension or fatigue in my body, which was now a luminous presence in a luminous universe, vibrating vigorously with awareness and, oh how poor these words are and how sweet is this never-ending impossibility to describe the glorious splendor of reality.
Only Satori. Everywhere Satori. Everything normal, everything sacred and blessed.
Chapter 11 Kali
And Osho, forever the rebellious visionary and lover of truth, certainly did nothing to dodge such a crucial issue for humanity, in fact, he went to town on it.
Kali was performing her dance, and I realized, also thanks to what Barry Long pointed out, that I was not yet Shiva, that my surrender was not yet complete, that my faith in myself and in my ability to be “absolutely present” in the act of love, was still distorted by some tensions, in my body, my mind and my emotions.
The two weeks turned into a month and the month turned into more months. Together we looked under every single stone, communicating eye to eye, sex to sex, whatever we found, under every reluctance, under every attempt to escape, under every need to manipulate, into the pain of isolation, the need to dominate the other, fear of failure, into crystallized images of my masculinity and her femininity, the vulnerability of not having control, the fear of being abandoned, betrayed, the desire to possess and, one step at a time, one date after the other, with the falling of the masks and our defenses, the mistrust and anxiety that had been hiding somewhere turned into an intimacy I’d never before experienced, into a being whose soul was laid bear, in innocent and deep-rooted honesty, in friendship and closeness, in recognition of the divine incarnated, in me, in her, in my penis and her pussy.
Chapter 12 Shedding skin
For a moment, the fear of being afraid and of losing my friends rushes into my mind and takes over my body. The presence of “not knowing” dissolves this thought and the fear. I accept with easy certainty that everything that is happening is exactly that, “What is happening,” - and there is no way I myself can do anything about that “What is happening”.
From that moment, one thing became crystal clear: I know nothing, absolutely nothing, and every time I forget this, life is waiting around the corner for me to jog my memory, and sometimes it is forced to trip me up, so that I fall on my face and I hit my nose… one more time… lucky me!
Being here/now is everything. In truth there is nothing else. Being here/now is the alpha and omega, the beginning, the path and the end.
Practice presence purely through direct contact with your body and not through memories and conceptual definitions. For example, what is happening in your stomach or in your head or your face at any particular moment is simply and exactly what is happening there, it is neither good nor bad, beautiful nor ugly, not to be refused or manipulated: Don’t attach any elements of the past to what you are feeling. And the sensory impressions are quite simple: temperature, density, direction, luminosity, energy, expansion or contraction, and so on. Every breath then is this breath, and this breath has never happened before and will never happen again. Or this sound, this touch, this light, this smell, this flavor.
revealing the immensity of an endlessly-flowing, continuous change, the richness of thousands and thousands of nuances generally hidden by mental evaluations; the abundance of innumerable possibilities that fear continually rules out in order to survive, forcing us to live in the scarcity of the mind.
There’s no time to think, to pre-plan counter attacks or strategies, the only thing that really works is the natural intelligence of the body / mind organism which reacts to the situation as it happens and unfolds, taking everything in through the senses. The sword that gives life
In sword, there is a saying: “One cut, one life”. Many interpret this phrase to mean that another life is taken with each cut, but this isn’t the case, its meaning is much deeper, and it means that we must have the courage to bet our entire life on a cut, risking everything, and this can only be done if you are absolutely present, no past, no future, present in the Hara, where life and death meet. That was my position. That was me, Samarpan, completely surrendering to the present moment, Avikal, entire, not divided, I was me, I was him, I was my sword, I was the air we were breathing and the tatami under my feet, I was the immensity of the mystery that emanated from my Tanden. We remained immobile for some time, eye to eye, and then the stranger, who had by then become a part of me, lowered his sword, indicating his surrender with a bow and the match ended. Presence is that wonderful thing that knows no separation, only contact, only inclusion, only yes.
Moving attention The second ability is about moving one’s attention, transferring it from the inner dialogue, the almost continuous confrontation between that part of the personality I call the inner judge – the introjected parents - and the child who reacts to attacks and manipulations.
This movement, which I have already explained in previous chapters, is the movement of attachment to our conceptual description of reality and, in my opinion, the most common and powerful cause of our suffering: we live detached from ourselves, locked in an identity that we know in our hearts to be a lie, constrained by the mask that we wear and social contracts, to be and act according to rules that rarely correspond to our deepest feelings, manipulating ourselves in order to be acceptable and accepted, in the knowledge we are not authentic, we are immersed in a sea of compromise and faced by the fear of being caught out.
Are these concepts and definitions really necessary? Certainly, they are at the base of everyday life and essential for human evolution, allowing us to communicate through a language, to carry out scientific research, exchange goods, to express opinions, create poetry and literature, improve almost every aspect of our daily lives, but they also become the walls of your prison whenever you forget they are unavoidably approximate and limited descriptions, all of them, even with the smallest and most basic experience: The name ‘flower’ could never share the color, scent, uniqueness of that flower in your hand, and the words that you might use to describe that flower will never even get close to the reality of that flower, in that moment.
Making love What a trap this phrase is! Love isn’t made, it’s not the product of an act, either YOU ARE LOVE or you’re not. Language tells enormous lies that we all share, it speaks of love as an action, an act, something that is the product of doing by someone… but are we that crazy? Really? It’s exactly for this reason that men become impotent, preoccupying themselves with their performance, and women are unable to have orgasms because opening up means being dominated. It is so, that the terror of merging with another and disappearing into nothing grows.
Love only exists if I am here, if you are here, if we are both present, the here / now, so there is no interchange, because in presence there is only ONE, not two, made up of me and you and everything else.
A love that is continually renewing itself, dying and flourishing once more in thousands and thousands of unpredictable ways, impossible for us to imagine. When you are present and your penis is in her vagina and there are no pre-conceived ideas of how you should be and how she should be, how sex should be, what’s okay and what isn’t, what can be done and what can’t, and the sin of lust and the animal within is released, there is a tenderness so impossibly tender that you find that you dissolve and she fades away until there are no boundaries anymore, just love, presence, awareness, god; these are just names for a unity that is who you and everything are. And if you have never experienced this, if you do not honor this, if you do not bow down to the mystery of one flesh, then you are wasting your time and yet another opportunity that existence has given you for BEING. Remember: practicing presence is the only way to make contact with yourself, it is the only way to make contact with each other and the world you live in.
Inquiry, exploration, searching, investigation In my searching and in my teaching there are three things in particular that support the practice of presence and accelerate the transition from identifying with the personality, to reconnecting oneself with the authentic Self and living in the uniqueness that each one of us is. The first is active, the second is passive, the third is about direction.
Inquiry means becoming intrinsically, absolutely and uniquely interested in knowing oneself and reality, without filters, without veils, without distortions. It means being willing to recognize and feel what is inside and around us, and actively applying ourselves via the most simple thing that exists: I ask myself questions about my experience here / now. And the emphasis is on HERE / NOW. The questions concern what I feel NOW, what is happening to me NOW, what I perceive NOW.
At the base of an exploration that is sincere, I will acknowledge the fact that I do not know, and it is for this reason I wish to explore, and so, if I find myself telling myself all the things I already know, then I’m not doing inquiry, I’m just regurgitating my past (and going round in circles). Inquiry is alive, unpredictable, absolutely IN THE PRESENT, it is
an adventure, not an analysis. The question is a stone that I throw into a pond, observing the waves that are created, rather than telling the story about the time I chucked a pebble into the pond many years ago.
Inquiry is the expression of my love for the truth and, at the same time, inviting truth to become clear and reveal itself. Inquiry is about concentrating on asking the right question, without worrying about the answers. Inquiry is made up of curiosity, risk taking, it is an adventure of the soul. It is walking on a tightrope, with no past and no future, with attention and total participation, it is living in a continuous state of falling in love and the wonder of…
You cannot live sheltered forever without being exposed, and at the same time be a spiritual adventurer. Be audacious. Be crazy in your own way, with that madness in the…
Arnaud…
The mystery thickens I had always asked myself questions, then, the moment I met Osho my attention was freed from the stress of finding the answers, how wonderful! The simple realization that every answer is relative (to the present situation and the one who is asking the question) and impermanent (destined to alter over time as the conditions change that once determined it) and since it was both useless and infantile to attach myself to it, over time, the questions have become more direct, focused, precise. Osho urged us to “squeeze all the juice out the present moment” and the inquiry is the “juice extractor”. The wonderful thing (albeit not for the mind…) is that the more I ask, the more I realize that the mystery gets bigger, not smaller. There is a shift from the knowable to the unknowable, and also a taste of traveling well beyond what my little mental, moral and ethical categories can conceive. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” says Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And in this way, the more I open myself to the present moment, the more I ask questions, the more I am curious, the more the universe expands. My questions, your questions, become the fuel of the creative act, the thrust of evolution. The universe is asking us to ask and…
Awareness without choice “If you want to remain totally free, then don’t choose. That’s where the teaching of choiceless awareness comes in. Why the insistence of the great masters just to be aware and not to choose? Because the moment you choose, you have lost your total freedom, you are left with only a part. But if you remain choiceless, your freedom remains total. So there is only…
This is the passive side of practicing presence, what many mystical schools call “mirror awareness”. The ability to “reflect” reality is an intrinsic quality of awareness and thus present in all of us. But that is not where one’s focus should be; it is not about finding or creating this quality, but about recognizing the way in which I distance myself from it, how I create obstacles, and how the mirror is covered by the “dust” of conditioning. Inquiry certainly helps to recognize obstacles in an active way, but there is also this other possibility, based purely on recognizing what is there, without rejecting or become…
What could be more irrefutable and habitual than a cup of morning coffee? I watch, and note the pressure of my fingers on the handle, their intensity, whether they are tense or relaxed, whether I’m in a hurry, whether I’m present or easily distracted, whether I feel the heat from the cup, its form and how heavy it is. If I want, I can expand my observation through the action of then drinking the coffee. I CHANGE NOTHING. This is central to understanding these moments, just watching, sensing what is there without changing anything,…
And this is the miracle of choiceless awareness: not only realizing that you are completely free to be everything that you are at any time but also, in a natural and effortless way, you align yourself with the present and experience it in an intimate way. So the change that takes place in every moment, and the inherent impermanence of reality, instead of being frightening things to be dealt with or to be escaped from, become the very foundations of your presence and your one absolute certainty. I AM HERE!
“The self can experience itself either purely and immediately, or through memories and structures created by past experiences. When it is seeing itself directly, it is aware of itself as primordial purity, without veils, without obscurations. It recognizes this pure condition as its ontological nature. This primordial purity or
ontological nature is recognized as the self’s ultimate truth. So we say that the self has an Essence. The central property of this Essence, or true nature, is that it is an ontological Presence. Presence is the Essence of the self, just as protoplasm is the Essence of the body.” A.H.Almaas
Presence is aware of itself, not because it reflects itself, but because it is itself;
They filled my head and my heart, permeating my days, my drawings and the stories I told. It was a survival mechanism of course, but much more than that, it was the capacity and the longing to go beyond the “official” depiction of reality as offered by the milieu in which I lived.
It was the Martial Arts that became my anchor, and Hara in particular, along with many, many techniques of grounding and centering. In this way, attention to my roots became central in my getting to know myself. It was only later that I heard Osho say: “In your entering to the Center in meditation, you are growing your roots deeper into the Cosmos. And bringing the Buddha out from the hidden center is bringing your fragrance, bringing your grace, bringing your ecstasy, higher, where it can blossom into the sky. Your ecstasy is a movement toward the height, and your meditation is a movement toward the depth, and once you have both, your life becomes a celebration.” Osho
Moving toward heaven by grace, to a certain extent came natural to me, but I was isolated by it and sometimes I lost my way; what I wanted to find, what I was missing, was what was going on in my depths, my darkness, the ability to feel my roots sinking into the earth, in the flesh, on this planet; I needed to go there and completely embrace my humanity. And so I put all my passion into encountering that darkness where the roots grow and strengthen, sensing, as I had often heard Osho say, that if the roots are strong the flowers will blossom on their own. A fundamental part of this journey was in becoming aware of the fear I had in my heart of being hurt, of protection and defense mechanisms I had created in order not to feel the wound and god forbid, show it: a shield over my heart. Only in becoming rooted in myself, would I perhaps find the courage to drop that shield, or so I told myself, and so what I needed were roots, centering, attention to presence, in order to get to know my fears and my darkness. And this has been my journey and this is what I am able to teach and do teach, knowing well from my own direct experience that flowers come on their own when the roots are strong.
The map is not the territory The last thing that’s important to include in this chapter is that, as long as there are maps, or rather, as long as we depend on maps in order to find our way, there can be no life and no freedom. Most probably, maps are inevitable and useful for traveling in our physical body, in matter, but, in the spirit, which is mystery in continuous creative manifestation…
Spiritual maps are the precious fruit of courage of men and women who have gone before us in exploring the unknown: the map of the chakras, that of Lataif, the essential qualities, the Shiatsu map of meridians, acupuncture, Freud’s map of the unconscious and many others, are useful, fundamental, at certain points in our lives. They offer us an approximate idea of what is going on, giving us comfort and direction, but too often we…
Part III…
Chapter 14 I like it, i don’t…
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When Love and Hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The…
This verse taken from Hsin Hsin Ming - the Book of Nothing - by Sosan and Osho’s comment fell into the lake of my belly like a stone, creating ripples that I still feel even now, even after more than twenty-five years. “Living without preferences? What kind of life is that? “ I had asked myself an infinite number of times “And for what? “ And it took years and years and fall after fall before I understood, and above all, was able to feel and to experience directly, beyond thought, the incredible difference between living in a world divided into “this yes, this no ‘”, “this is beautiful, this is bad”, “this is good, this isn’t”, and an integrated world, without the barriers created by duality, without rigid hierarchies of values. Does that mean not preferring coffee to tea or tuna to sole or hot to cold or one color to another? No, absolutely not. I have my preferences and I know what I like best, but they are not exclusive, there’s no comparison or judgment of preferences different to mine. And above all, from experience, I know that my preferences are relative and that they can turn into a prison once entrenched. And I know, as I speak from experience, that love and hate are but two parts of the same energy, and what…
constant need to reaffirm my specialness through MY preferences, MY opinions, MY reasons. And I also know just how tiring it is to keep a structure standing on its feet that needs to be continually defended from what is different, at odds, unacceptable. Thank god, or should I say thank Osho I discovered, not…
This was despite having already gone through the experience of surrendering and discovering it was anything but catastrophic, in fact, quite the opposite. But I lacked true intellectual understanding, and this made my poor mind paranoid and unbalanced. Fortunately, one day I came across some lines written by Osho: “Surrender is not an action, surrender is the flowering of the understanding that you are not” and that phrase, like an electric storm in the night, shed light on dozens of events from my past, and it was not difficult to see how many times I had surrendered myself to music, disappearing into it with ease and ecstasy, or the love for a woman, or the ocean in which I was swimming, or the silence of meditation, or sexual passion, or the voice and presence of Osho; it was not difficult to see how, in the disappearing of that separate me - with its belief of being a separate identity - how intrinsic surrender was. The realization that the act of surrender is impossible struck me like a mighty thunderbolt, literally exploding within me; surrender is not something that can be done, it happens through the assimilation and integration of realization: I do not exist as an entity.
exist. Hallelujah! What delight! I didn’t need to do anything to surrender myself! I need only remember that the personality is just a concept and identity is just an idea. That this entity I call ME doesn’t exist. So that’s why those blessed mystics kept on insisting on remembrance over the centuries!
personal commitment to renouncing the reactivity of the Ego, inevitably constrained to separate personal will from that of the universe and thereby live in isolation, mistrust and paranoia. If surrender is the natural flowering of awareness of true nature and thus independent of any action, submission is the practical approach, conscious action which induces that comprehension and flourishing. Submitting myself is the everyday practical experience of comprehending the prison in which I already live as a slave and part of a tribe of slaves; of letting go of control, step by step, as well as the egoic reactivity and its automatic defenses, while dissolving myself in the great ocean of Being through my dedication to the Master, the Truth and the Commune.
Chapter 15 Karma and the masters we meet
Karma is a simple law: the universe literally works as an ecosystem. Whatever I put into the existential field will be reflected back at me exactly as it is, just like an echo and the sounds it produces: if I put in anger, be it overt or hidden, that is what I will find on my path, if I put in jealousy I will encounter jealousy, joy and I will encounter joy, escape and I will encounter escape, serenity and I will encounter serenity. The world is a mirror.
The masters we meet on our path are such only because, and if, we allow them to represent that which, in each one of us, is aspiring toward totality, that which refuses to shrink itself to fit the mediocrity of society’s terms. Our master, be it a friend, a loved one, an idea, an animal, a situation, an event, a mystic, a story or whatever else, constitutes a ray of light from within us that has found something or someone to reflect itself upon for a certain period of time, and thereby making itself perceptible to us.
How come I’m ignored, meeting people who want to dominate me, women who try to control me, criticism and competition, situations in which I am betrayed, difficulties in communicating, the same problems that keep repeating themselves, with money, sex, work, loved ones, family and so on, in a never-ending circle of exasperating repetition? It is here that the law of Karma can be of great help to us because, in understanding how it works makes it clear that anything I tend to reject in myself, hiding it, pretending it doesn’t exist and avoiding its presence, will sooner or later reveal itself anyway through my actions and unconscious thoughts.
might direct my anger toward myself without even realizing, by not taking care of my body, by working until I drop, cutting myself while I shave… the possibilities are endless.
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” Eckhart Tolle
Yes, I’m saying, as in the previous chapters, that we are fully responsible for the world we live in, but, in fact, that’s not all, we are continuously creating the reality in which we live.
To love means to respond with care to that which is in at-one-ment with oneself.” Y.G.Kimura
We can also see how certain situations keep turning up in our lives, and the suffering they bring obliges us to re-establish contact with ourselves, to look back over and verify certain interpretations from the past, to feel things once again that we hoped had gone away, perhaps I may realize that there is still something that needs to be understood, absorbed, digested. I might also notice that over time many experiences don’t seem to be happening anymore and realize that there has been a complete understanding, leaving no trail, no residue, that everything that was digested and learned has stayed with me, and everything that needed to be expelled has dissolved, leaving me clean. I may perhaps notice that existence keeps offering me what I need to realize deep down, to metabolize and integrate it, and notice how, whenever this natural process is complete, I feel greater, all-embracing, open, intelligent, and connected with me and with existence itself. I will discover how the people I have loved have played a specific role for me in reflecting what I did not see, did not want to feel and honestly come to terms with, whether I had had the intelligence and the courage to look in the mirror or whether I fled, whether I hid, whether I carry resentment on my shoulders rather than gratitude. The masters take form, then as I myself take form.
my faith in the magical, incredible intelligence of life that wants to reveal itself to me and my awareness shines ever more brightly and serenely. Each bow, each acknowledgement given, dissolves aspects of my ego identity, opening the flow of gratitude in a natural way, without me having to do anything, and when one meets the Master, the mirror with no dust, then gratitude transforms itself into a blessing and you are ready to see in him or her the totality of presence that is you.
Ramesh had been the CEO of the Bank of India and he lived in a very spacious house, but the room where we went was no bigger than twenty square meters.
At that time Ramesh was nearly eighty years old, he had fine, white hair and twinkling eyes full of humor. As soon as he sat down he asked me and Amira if we were a couple, to which we replied no. Looking back, that question must have foreseen the future, given that we were to become lovers in May of that same year and we are still together now.
came down like a sword, piercing the illusion of identity, and there was only emptiness and peace. Perhaps a minute passed as we silently looked into each other’s eyes, before Ramesh spoke again. After about an hour the satsang ended and we left.
After the initial greetings Ramesh turned to me and said: “ So Avikal, what happened yesterday?” And with joyous certainty I answered “I wasn’t there, you weren’t there and in this way we met.” Ramesh nodded, smiling.
Chapter 16 Contact
This need for contact is something that comes from the soul. It is contact, in all its many forms, more than anything else, that directs us and helps us to discover our own uniqueness, through physical contact, mental, emotional, spiritual, internal and external. Instinctively and naturally, our body knows that it needs it and seeks it out.
Whether this energy is positive or negative is immaterial to them because, from the point of view of animalistic survival, it is the presence of energy itself that matters and which influences the charging and discharging of the infant’s energy. The fact that the mother comes over and gives him a slap, to him, is a part of love.
Rather than receive nothing, I’ll do anything I have to in order to entice my mother to come over, even if it’s to give me a slap, at least at that moment she is there, there is a contact, there is something I can relate to, something I can feel. The worst thing you can do to a child is to leave it completely on its own, so that the child has nothing, no one to give it attention and thereby nourish it.
Contact is central to the way I experience myself, others and the environment in which I live. The same goes for the need to be seen. For this reason, it is imperative that you recognize and honor these needs, because they are precious doors to understanding and the embodiment of your humanity. The desire for contact is natural, we can also call it by other names such as recognition, approval or attention, but fundamentally it is contact, a quality of Being. A being exists and knows itself and reality through contact, which is the vehicle of love.
You are love Let’s first get things straight, love is not a feeling, love is who you are: You are Love. When you are present and fully yourself, one of the qualities through which being manifests is what we call love. We are sometimes in contact with this being, sometimes not, and when we are, it sustains us, inviting us to manifest the aspect of our nature that we call love.
Instead of saying I feel love, saying “At this moment I am Love”. Then there is certainty, absolute certainty, and a sense of truth and completeness, because this is your nature and you’re recognizing, remembering and honoring it. On the other hand, when we look at our nature as if it were something external, something that comes and goes, then there is uncertainty, because any object, any emotion that comes and goes, is impermanent, and this separation generates insecurity, uncertainty and a lack of roots. When you are in contact with your being you will…
There is a term to describe this; reification, which comes from the Latin “res-rei”, which means taking a quality of Being and transforming it into an object, a thing that…
you live in a state of complete subjectivity, if you have realized the ultimate truth of “I am”, if you live in what William Blake describes as “Infinity in the palm of your hand” and that the Zen master Ryozan called “Profound intimacy,” you don’t experience…
And as an organism that is beginning to show the quality of being, I start to separate myself from my true nature, obliged to do so by the need to survive, I am dependent, forced to move away from who I really am and to hide behind the mask of the personality until the point that I completely forget what my true nature is and I’m convinced I exist only as a set of survival tools. This moment occurs at around the age of seven and is called “The Great Betrayal”, and it is the period when the child finds himself being forced to forget he exists as an individual; he is forced into being how he should be, and to adapt…
Chapter 17…
For most of my life, at least until I was about forty, I was defensive about being vulnerable, just as I had been taught to be and how most people are. I had certainly never regarded vulnerability to be a resource. Quite the contrary, with a personality like mine; a…
Over time, reflecting on and reaching an understanding of many of my own personal experiences, it became clear to me that existence does not give us anything that we do not need; everything we have has a function, its own intelligence, its own reason. To be hurt is a capacity, not a loss. Try to imagine a world in which no one is vulnerable, where the capacity to experience or to feel one’s wounds doesn’t exist. What would this world be like? It would be terrible, a desert. Our capacity to feel wounded provides us with something fundamental, empathy: Empathy for everyone around us, we can feel the wounds of others. There is an incredible intelligence in the capacity to recognize one’s own wounds, to feel one’s own wounds and to stop trying to heal them.
So, the ability to recognize our own wounds, to experience our wounds and to live with our wounds, lies at the basis of, and is essential for, Compassion. As long as we are attempting to heal our wounds, we are doing something that goes against the natural intelligence of our body.
Vulnerability is the ability to exist through an intelligence that also comes from our wounds, and this intelligence, paradoxically, makes it possible for us to become stronger, the more vulnerable we are. And this is not hard to put to the test: try to put yourself in a situation where you’re completely invulnerable, physically and emotionally. Sooner or later, your invulnerability will get shattered, because wherever there is rigidity it can be broken. On the other hand, vulnerability is a system of fluidity, it is more like water than rock, it adapts itself and incorporates, and so it is much more difficult for vulnerability to be attacked.
There is complete fluidity and vulnerability in the present moment, there is no projection into the future, there is no expectation, there is no strategy. Invulnerability is based on the rigidity…
The more complex a defense system is, and the more you aim for invulnerability, the more vulnerable it will be. Therefore, true vulnerability is the intelligence of non-defense. And this is a thing…
At the same time, it is also very important not to drop the ego’s defenses in a random fashion. One should learn to gradually lay down one’s defenses in situations where there are elements of support; people or situations we can trust, with a friend, a loved one or retreats with other like-minded people. Our natural intelligence senses the situation and deliberately strips off our defenses, practicing…
This takes us back to presence as a necessary condition for any type of concrete, non-conceptual reality. In my own case, I learned almost everything I know about…
And orgasm, what is that? I’m talking about something that we can all relate to, what is an orgasm if not a moment of complete vulnerability in which our defenses crumble? The fundamental separation between inside and out caves in, the separation between me and the other gives way. The moment of orgasm is a moment of complete vulnerability, lack of boundaries, absence of time, no separation between one and the other; in fact, for most people, orgasm is the only, often brief, moment in time,…
The fact of also recognizing a whole series of elements that make up vulnerability, such as the willingness and capacity to exist with ever-increasing levels of energy, is essential for growth because only…
This means it is an open system. Therefore, our responsibility, if we want to grow, embodying our potential and our uniqueness, is to let the borders of our body become increasingly fluid, which means becoming more…
So we should begin by verifying whether or not a certain defense is needed at any particular time. This is the intelligence of an adult and the proof of his freedom. It is all about Truth and Love: loving yourself, recognizing your truth and honoring it. In this way, the relationship between vulnerability, love, and truth is completely dynamic; they sustain each other and when you put them in motion the True Nature of your Being begins to circulate on its own, reactivating itself, and reconnecting itself with a whole series of resources, protections, openings, defenses, depending on what is required at that moment based on presence, and not on mental choice or the past.
Chapter 18 Dropping ashes on the buddha
In that gap the insight, in that gap you see and you see for the first time. In that gap thinking is not there but knowing happens. And that is the point of transformation, when thinking stops and knowing happens. When thoughts disappear and clarity comes.”…”Truth is not something to be thought
about, truth has to be seen. That’s why we call those people who attain the truth SEE-ERS not thinkers.” Osho
Koans challenge the logic of the rational mind until it is rendered completely impotent, paving the way for another, more profound intelligence that is based on intuition and the ability to know reality without the need for concepts and definitions. Every koan creates an artificial crisis that is incredibly powerful, provoking such turmoil in the mind that a veritable earthquake erupts, sometimes affecting the entire body. The rational and logic mind is based on linearity and the law of cause and effect; what a koan does is to demonstrate the limits inherent in this line of thinking in a practical and absolutely unequivocal fashion, giving one access to resources of intuitive intelligence, spatial rather than linear, multidimensional, and thereby leading to paradoxical understanding that is free from the law of causality. This movement, from thinking/imagination and
accumulated knowledge to feeling/attention and direct experience, gradually empowers the individual to regain the ability to recognize reality in an original way and not through one’s culture. The process is exhilarating, explosive, highly amusing, de-structuring and incredibly gratifying, and I completely immersed myself in it for about five months under Nissim’s guidance who, being a teacher of Dharma, was authorized to initiate people in the use of koans.
Nissim fired questions at me which, on the face of it, seemed to be really easy, and somewhat banal, but my mind kept getting tangled up in them like a fly caught in a web, desperately trying to unravel itself and thereby causing itself even greater agony; it was also immediately clear to both of us that there was something in me that was already familiar with what was going on:
Moreover, my experience with existential koans and the years spent sitting at Osho’s feet had made my mind supple, flexible and open, my attention acute and agile, and my ability to detach myself from concepts, stabilized. To my surprise, and especially so to Nissim, after only three or four days I was able to hold myself up, take my first steps and master the basics of a new, non-rational language, one that is based on presence, seeing and feeling rather than logic; I would wolf down two, five, sometimes ten or twelve questions a day in a crescendo of involvement and of innocent exaltation.
After a couple of weeks, I was told that I was ready to start with the actual koans themselves and the three pillars of Zen were passed on to me: Right Understanding, Right Functioning and Right Relationship. It was also explained to me that every koan is designed to undermine a specific part of the mind that is conditioned to hold control, and experience reality through logic, at the same time deconstructing habits deeply-rooted in mistrust. And so the match began. I realized there was no respite and no safety nets, no handholds I could grasp on to, and the fighting would not be to first blood, but to death, mine.
The more I struggled, the more I was overwhelmed by the current and my own fatigue, until something stopped straining and let the current take me with it, propelling me downwards into the depths, and it was here that my last resistance was revealed: the fear of dying.
Nissim also explained to me how koans were grouped into ten families, each family was responsible for deconstructing a particular aspect of the illusion of separation and, at the head of the family, there was a koan called the gates and very soon it would be my turn to face the gates, one at the time. He also urged me to explore my ability to respond in a poetic way, considered to be the highest level of talent in the art of koans. Some gates were easy, others less so, each one of them a small death. Until, one day, I reached the tenth gate.
and “Go back and meditate,” and meanwhile my mind’s last defenses, my final attempts to control what was going on and to cling on desperately to what was known, crumbled away. The most wonderful thing about an answer when it arrives, is that it is never surrounded by doubt, its certainty is absolute, primitive and primary. Going and checking with the teacher becomes a formality, an act of respect and gratitude that is part of Right Relationship.
Chapter 19 Essence
The path of Essence didn’t emerge again until the spring of 1997. Vasumati, a friend and therapist, had recently returned to Pune from the United States where she had met and done some individual sessions with Faisal Muqaddam who, together with Almaas (pen name of A. Hameed Ali), had founded the Diamond Approach.
By spring of the following year, I had already begun teaching the Lataif on Faisal’s request, and continued to participate in other advanced courses that Faisal held on an annual basis. In the years that followed, I went on to create a series of courses specifically devoted to experiential comprehension and transformation of the relationship with the inner judge, now a fundamental part of the programs we hold at the Integral Being Institute. After nearly twenty years of teaching Essence, the map and the comprehension it contains have become a key component in my
work. But to an even greater extent, this comprehension is now an integral part of my daily life and the experience of myself and the world I live in.
And this is the way it had to be, because the map is the description of our true nature, of what we ALREADY are, and so it is but a door that opens into a territory which, through exploration and love, becomes more familiar as each day passes, more intimate and more exhilarating. Essence actually describes what is, the way in which the Spirit manifests itself in a universal and impersonal way, and at the same time, in a way that is absolutely unique, in me, in you and in everything. Recognizing the essential qualities in everyday life, sensing their perfume, seeing their energy in action and being present as their beauty unfolds is a miracle, both ordinary and moving in its simplicity and naturalness. The map itself is based on an understanding that we can find in many mystical traditions, in this specific case, that of the Lataif by the Sufis of the middle-east. Lataif means subtle and it describes the qualities through which Essence, our true nature, is manifested, the specific ways of how they are presented physically, mentally and emotionally, their various densities, hues of color and corresponding centers in the body.
“Essence is not an object we find within ourselves; it is the true nature of who we are when we are relaxed and authentic, when we are not pretending to be one way or another, consciously or unconsciously. Essence is the truth of our very presence, the purity of our consciousness and awareness. It is what we are in our original and undefiled beingness, the ultimate core reality of our soul. Essence is the authentic presence of our Being; it is, in fact, Being in its thatness. Different spiritual traditions have given it different names: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam called it Spirit; Buddhism calls it Buddha nature; Taoism calls it the Tao; Hinduism calls it Atman or Brahman. The various traditions differ in how they conceptualize Essence and how much they emphasize it in their teaching, but essence is…
recognizable and perceptible qualities, qualities which we can experience and which, at the same time, are both universal and present in each one of us in a unique way; in an…
These qualities are subtle forms of our consciousness, the sense organs of our spiritual perception and…
white essence is the fundamental ground of Zen, red of Tantra, green of Tibetan Buddhism as embodied by the Dalai Lama and of Sufism, black of the Advaita tradition and…
and it takes us back to the image of the bridge between the…
Central to this map is the realization that the personality is an imitation of true nature, in the sense that in losing connection with who we truly are and the different aspects of our essential nature as instigated in childhood from parental conditioning, it is absolutely vital that the body/mind organism finds a way of coping with two…
- The first is our need to find a way to defend ourselves from the incredible pain generated by that separation from our true nature. 2. The second is the impossibility of completely repressing the unconscious memory of our essential qualities, regarded as a threat by our conditioning and, at the same time, our…
In order to not feel the pain of repression brought about by our parents and self betrayal, a control structure is established to maintain the status quo, moving the agency of repression inwards and preventing repressed materials from rising to the surface, but thereby causing emotional upheavals which threaten our survival: the agency responsible for this repression is known as the inner judge or superego. Now and then, our true nature, which can never be abandoned but only repressed and hidden, tends to re-emerge through the unfolding of issues that stir in…
At the same time, the separation from our true nature is never actually complete and so the personality structures itself as an aggregation of distorted forms of being: Essential Will which is our clear intention, support, inner solidity and groundedness, in the personality, turns into efforting and conflict with the world around us whenever it does not respond the way we want it to; Essential Strength which is our vitality, courage and ability to separate ourselves from the past, turns into anger, aggression, fanaticism and dependencies; Essential Compassion which is accepting ourselves as we really are and human empathy, turns into absolute narcissism, me above all else; Essential Peace which is our sense of unity with existence and personal power,…
This comprehension makes us see the personality, not as something to be destroyed, but as a dimension of being with distorted features based on survival and social covenants and, at the same time, as a set of gateways determined by personal themes, indicating the way toward the quality of being from which we originally separated. Therefore, through exploring our anger instead of condemning it, not hiding it but rather approaching it with curiosity and participation, we can discover its energetic and emotional origin, and access an inexhaustible source of fiery vitality (like anger) that is Essential Strength. If we inquire into the never-ending and overpowering presence of effort in our daily lives, we will realize that we are living in a state of constant conflict between what…
not aligned with that of existence, and perhaps we will understand what it is that is producing this dysfunction and causing us to lose that sense of flow we have sometimes…
The Essential bridge helps us then, step by step, to replace the personality’s habitual perception of reality based on separation, with one based on the unity of all dimensions, the expression of our True Nature;…
“The unfolding of Essence becomes the process of living. Life is no longer a string of disconnected experiences of pleasure and pain…
Chapter 20 Eat, sleep and secrete A disciple goes to his master and asks: “Master, what is enlightenment?” “Eat, sleep
The natural way is natural because it is complete and intelligent. Zen and Tantra, more than any other mystical tradition, are natural ways, they reject nothing; all that exists is welcomed and recognized as a manifestation of Being. They impeccably practice “choiceless awareness”. This inclusiveness is not a philosophical idea or ideology, but rather the result of clear understanding of the ineffable completeness and intelligence of nature, a natural process that nourishes, supports through transforming and manifests and lets go.
So, like the body, the spiritual path also has actual “phases”, that exist in themselves and which are in a constant intersection and interdependence with each other, and these…
Realization has to do with intuition, direct experience of truth, its revelation before our eyes, our hearts, our minds, that moment of AH! Where elements, up to that point, appear to be disconnected, or related in a somewhat haphazard fashion, they become one and…
Realization is the initial note of a symphony composed by mental comprehension, revelation in the heart and action, but it is almost always idealized and separated from the rest of the notes, becoming a utopia for most seekers; the Holy Grail; that momentous event that will change everything, in me, in the world around me, in my relationships, dissolving all my problems and suffering. It is also the event that the searcher so often becomes attached to, because it is so incredibly beautiful and nurturing, bright, loving, peace-making,…
The realizations described have been digested, metabolized, integrated. They have become part of my flesh and bones, recognized as being my true nature, not just accidental occurrences or…
Integration, this is perhaps the most difficult and important phase because it implies the ability to be present, knowing only too well that you’re not in control, willing to be passive in some way, and at the same time participating in the often, completely radical upheavals that the truth induces in our bodies, in our sentiments, in our mind and in the way we experience ourselves and the world. In speaking about his own spiritual journey Kabir, a great Indian mystic, said that when he started the rivers flowed from their source in the mountains to the ocean; in the middle of his path the rivers flowed from the ocean toward the mountain, everything was topsy-turvy, and then, at the end of his journey, once again the rivers flowed from the mountains down to the…
This was also my experience, integrating meant giving up control, or more precisely, letting go of the illusion of having any control. In the same way that I can’t control my digestion or the moment I fall asleep, in order to integrate naturally, I have…
And in this way, through realization and integration, the mind that doubts and rejects, manipulates and hopes, will disappear one way or another, either all of a sudden or bit by bit. This was, and sometimes still is, the most difficult aspect of all for me, because the key to giving up control is compassion, the capacity to let myself be exactly as I am and allow others to be exactly as they are. In my case, the…
what’s the use of realizing and integrating my true nature if how I live, relate, talk, love, work, make money and survive is just like before? What’s the point of being myself if my spiritual…
Actualization is about applying what you have realized and integrated to your everyday life, enabling the spirit to reveal itself through the uniqueness that is each one of us. Actualization means making our potential concrete and evident through real, perceptible changes, especially our ability to go beyond separation. It means ridding our behavior of the personality’s reactivity and compulsive actions based on the survival instinct, habits and addictions assimilated through conditioning. Actualization is all about recognizing and understanding, and no longer hiding our shadow. And it is about shifting our attention toward the light that we are and the resources we have. Actualization implies action, and therefore conscious participation in our own evolution, acknowledging and supporting the evolutionary thrust in oneself and the universe. Actualization is the ground on which two of the pillars of Zen stand: right functioning and right relationship. It is about…
Realization, integration and actualization: nourishment, support and…
According to our personality type, we have preferences and talents that make one stage more simple and familiar than another, and this is also one of the reasons why it is important to know and become intimate with one’s own survival structure, and the ways in which we nourish ourselves or otherwise, the ways in which we support ourselves or otherwise, and whether we let go by expressing it or not. For some it is easy to recognize the truth and integrate it, but not act on it; for others realization is the main obstacle, they are reluctant to give themselves or take risks, but when their eyes are finally open, then the rest follows naturally; for others, seeing what is true is immediate, but inwardly accepting the feelings that come with what they see and…
Look at how you function, look carefully, perceive how you come to recognize the truth, how you own it, how you practice it. Observe where you get stuck, where your strengths are, where you get lost. Listen carefully to your body, because it will give you insight into what is easy and natural for you and what is difficult and…
The map of essential qualities from the previous chapter is a valuable aid in the spiritual journey because each Latifa performs a specific role, especially in the dynamics between the…
Facing the demons and darkness of our conditioning takes courage, those we have been cajoled into hiding in the unconscious, and it is here that we can reconnect with Red Essence, Essential Strength, regaining the enthusiasm of vitality, the passion of adventure, the…
Compassion, Green Essence, is the natural flourishing of having found empathy and reverence that helps us day in and day out to feel our heart, affection for ourselves and everything that it is. With White Essence, we can get to know the ground under our feet, with red burns the flame of our individuality and with green, one can recognize and appreciate the fact that an individual is both unique and part of a sacred universe that is mysterious beyond our imagination; vast, unlimited, eternal. Black Essence, Essential Peace, is our gateway into the absolute, the ability to feel and experience beyond time and concepts, the complete dissolution of the need for identity; spiritual orgasm. At that point we will be conversant with the silence that acts as a backdrop to each sound, the peace behind every activity, the void that supports all forms and a power that is clear, obvious, pure, and which sustains life. And so we can live joyfully, in a subtle and delicate flow of contentment. It is not something we strive for and try to find, but our very being. It is not outside us but inside, and it…
Chapter 21 Welcoming your…
I’m dreaming, and I am aware that I’m dreaming. I’m in a small Sicilian village, perched on the mountains in the middle of the island and, as I wander the narrow streets, I know that I have a mission to fulfill; to find a woman and to make love to her. I look around me and the few I can see are hardly attractive, it is a classic, Sicilian, neorealist film: they’re all dressed in black, furtively casting suspicious glances at me from under their shawls, but I have a job to do, even though I have no idea how or why I ended up in this situation. Now I find myself in a room with a woman, she’s neither young nor old and she seems frightened and tense. We are in bed together and something in me is harsh, aggressive, dominant, and she is looking at me with dismay and fear in her eyes. But there is a beast in me that wants to hurt, to tear, to possess. While I am sensing all this and I am recognizing my darkness, something within me subsides, something melts in my heart, in my gut, in my hands and my jaws soften, and as I observe this fraught, cowering woman before me, I begin to speak to her slowly and tenderly, gently stroking her hair. Little by little, the woman changes before my eyes, her body becomes less angular, opening up, more rounded, almost shimmering. There is a light in her eyes and all around her and, as I lean back, there she is before me, swathed in power and radiance, and finally I can see her, I truly see her, and I recognize her mastery, realizing that it is my guide appearing before me in this form. Her presence is divine and I feel accepted and loved and her words touch my heart. “Welcome your demons”, she simply says to me pointing the way.…
And we also carry this fundamental split embedded within our desire for awakening and enlightenment. We imagine that the moment we wake up will be sublime and also definitive, resolving all our contradictions and dissolving all our shadows, making us pure and luminous once more. Instead, in my own experience, what I myself have learned on my path, is that the word enlightenment is a term that belongs to the ignorant and awakening to the one who is sleeping, and together they go with the illusion of searching. But when you remember yourself they disappear like snow melting in…
The experience that the mind’s dictionary calls awakening, returning home (and who has ever left?) is a great aloneness, but not the loneliness of isolation or the lack of someone or something, but rather the experience of continuously and inevitably coming back to myself, in an absence of answers and disappearing of questions,…
take a moment to read what Osho wrote in the ‘70s, in a letter to one of his disciples: Love. I am one with all things- In beauty, in ugliness, For whatsoever is, there I am. Not only in virtue But in sin too I am a partner, And not only heaven, but hell too is mine. Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu- It is easy to be their heir. But Genghis,…
Whatsoever is man’s is mine- Flowers and thorns, Darkness as well as light. And if nectar is mine, whose is poison? Nectar and poison- both are mine. Whoever experiences this I call religious, For only the…