TWO ACCOUNTS OF NONDUAL AWAKENING: WHICH IS MORE AUTHENTIC -- AND WHY?

 First Account:

    "I have no descriptive talent, I don't know the words to paint a picture; I can't tell you, so as to make you see it, how grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in its splendor. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the treetops, and the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through a cleft in the heights and it shone like burnished steel. I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I'd never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and traveled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forgo it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstacy of my bliss. When I cam to myself I was exhausted and trembling."

Second Account:

    [The teacher concludes his statement, during satsang, "Just for a moment, allow yourself to directly experience, who are you?"]

    "When he said these last words, the whole world stopped. It was just complete stillness. Then suddenly, the first sound I heard was the ocean crashing against the beach, and I knew immediately, 'I am this ocean out there! I am the ocean.' I looked at the room which was me as well. 'I am the people. I am the chairs. I am the microphone. I am this body.' I wanted to say, 'I'm everything.' As soon as I wanted to utter this, it sort of popped and gave way to limitless transparency, a transparent nothingness that could not be located specifically. Yet everything was made out of that. I couldn't speak anymore."

See the following post for the answer!

"You're ALL of it"

 In the last few weeks or maybe months, the sense that something is changing here comes on. Now it's coming clearer: the resistance to being in form is melting. 

I don't think I would have put it that way before now. I don't think I would have said that that's what needs to happen. But there's been a struggle to accept all of life as it is -- to feel that it was all right to accept it -- to just be the whole thing in all its messiness.

As I was thinking about this this morning, the words of Alan, the spiritual teacher in my novel, ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE FLESH, came to me. He's giving advice to the main character, Jeannie, as she struggles with rejection in love:

"'But I don't understand,' [Jeannie persisted]. 'I mean, I already realized I am the love I was seeking. So why am I still seeking it?'

'You're all of it.'

'Huh?'

'You are the love and you are the seeking.'

'But I don't want to seek what I can't have,' she implored. Yet, just as she spoke, another thought nudged: That's a lie.

'Do you have a choice?'

'But I want to have a choice. I want freedom. Wasn't that the promise?'

'Whose promise? Not mine.'

'So I don't get freedom/'

'Not freedom from desire. And not freedom from need either. Not freedom from anything. You get freedom to be anything. And everything. Meaning, freedom to stop fighting with yourself. That's all you get.'"

Indeed. Freedom to stop fighting with myself. As though I could change the reality of what I am, of what is, by resisting it! 

And when I don't, that mysterious sense of Presence comes.

The Definition of Karma

 A nondual friend of mine doesn't believe in karma, and whenever I mention it, he looks at me like I am caught in a silly superstition.

I think he doesn't define karma the way I do. Probably he thinks of it the way most Westerners were taught: If we do good, we reap good karma in our next lives. If we do bad things, we likewise reap that. So a human being may be born to a higher status or perhaps as an angelic being if he does good, and as a dog or worse if he does bad. This definition requires belief in both reincarnation and moral behavior as the most important virtue. 

My definition is quite different. I'm not sure if it is the standard view among nondualists or if my view is just what makes sense to me. Karma is the result of thoughts believed in. As long as we believe our thoughts (including unconscious ones), our actions are governed by them and we (and others) reap the results. 

After awakening, thoughts are seen to be empty -- having no substance. We may go on believing some of the most persistent ones for a long time, so it's not like the slate is necessarily wiped clean, but the heaviness of karma is nonetheless lifted once we know our beliefs are only just that -- beliefs.