Last Saturday, I came across an article
– “Nondual Realization and the Personal Self,” by Judith
Blackstone (2010) – that I had bookmarked some time ago. At the
time, I was deeply impressed with the short, two-page description of
the experience of embodied nonduality. It described the realization
in language that reflected my own experiences. She writes,
“Fundamental consciousness is
experienced as luminous stillness, or emptiness. For example, if we
have realized this dimension and we look at a table, we will see the
table with all of its weight, color and texture, and at the same
time, we will be aware that the table is 'transparent.' It appears to
be pervaded by-or made of–luminous space.”
I still remember my first experience of
this many years ago, and taking it to Adya for confirmation. Then,
when I complained that I don't experience people I have issues with
this way, he responded, “That's why it starts with a table. Tables
are easy.”
I don't remember the exact year of that
experience, but I'd guess around 2006. And all the teachers,
including Adya and Blackstone, say something to the effect that
“Eventually the patterns of personality that are in the way fall
away.”
In the fourteen ensuing years, there has been a gradual deepening of the realization, but still, that sense of unease when confronting certain people has not dissipated. What is in the way? Sometimes I think about this
rationally; sometimes I just try to feel into it. When I do the
latter, I suspect that the “personal self” that seems to get in
the way is just, as Adya used to say, this luminous emptiness “in
drag.” No, I know that. But
in the midst of an argument, or fear that something I need will be
taken from me, I never remember.
So
this is what I thought Blackstone might help me with. I searched for
her website – and found she was giving an on-line workshop the very
next day. I signed up.
There were only 16
of us in the workshop, so she had time to observe everyone. I noticed
that she was very perceptive – that she could sense people's subtle
energies even through the internet connection.
She exercises she
led us through were about exploring our experience of nondual reality
in our bodies. When it came time to ask questions, I asked how this
experience and the “personal self” fit together. She said she
didn't use the term “personal self.” But, I objected, you wrote a
paper about this! She didn't argue but she also didn't remember,
which made explaining where my question was coming from pretty much
impossible. I tried asking the question in different ways two other
times and the final time, she asked what I meant by the “personal
self.” I was caught up short – I realized I didn't know.
It goes without
saying that it's pretty much impossible to solve a problem when you
don't define it accurately. When I awoke the next morning, I pondered
my confusion about just what the “personal self” is. According to
Adya's teaching, as I understand it, it is the illusory self
constructed out of thought. But “personal self” in Blackstone's
article seemed to be something different. I re-read the article and
my attention focused on this paragraph:
“At
the very center of one’s body there is a subtle vertical channel,
running from the base of the torso to the top of the head. This
channel (called the central channel in Tibetan Buddhism and sushumna
in Hinduism) is our entranceway into fundamental consciousness. This
means that we can realize nonduality through deep inward contact with
our own individual form.”
So this seems to be
the key. It is, I think, also what Tolle meant when he said spoke of
the “inner-body” as the “doorway into the unmanifested.” It's
probably also the energy channel that I contacted when I was doing
neo-Reichian work back in the 1970s and awoke to nondual reality for
the first time.
So, given that we
all must have this subtle vertical channel, what gets in the way of
living as nondual reality 24/7? I think it is that that channel gets
blocked, or bound up maybe is more accurate, in order to protect our
form when we are children. So doing Reichian energy work would to
liberate this channel.
But then the energy
gets blocked again by habitual patterns of holding fear or other emotions. Clearing this
channel, allowing feeling to flow through and not get stuck, seems to be the key to fully and consciously living the
nondual reality that has been realized.
