Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

TO ME:

Thank you for creating the "its not real" website, fantastic site. I wont bore you with my background, but I would greatly appreciate your advice. After extensive spiritual practices, twice in the last six months I have experienced an awakening experince that only lasted a few hours each time. The only description I can use it that it felt just like becoming aware of the dream state while dreaming. The moment the experience sets in I laugh almost hysterically at the realization, then settle into indescribable joy that cant not be hidden. The second (and last) experience left an after thought lingering in mind. The next morning I couldnt get the following thought out of my mind: "If these brief experiences had not ended, and I had stayed continously in that state my life as I know it would be altered in grave ways". I am sure my fiancee would think I had lost my mind, my employer would send me packing, and I would be left a lonely soul in bliss or in a mental facility.

So, the question is....should I abort the path Im on, realizing that in todays society there is no place left for the enlightened, or is this state much more workable once mastered?

Thank you so very much for taking the time to read my email.

Sincerely,

JP

RESPONSE:

As Robert would say, "So?" The world is illusion and a joke. Awakening takes you out of the joke, not a better player in the joke. You have to decide what you want, awakening or the world.

Ed

TO ME:

Thank you for your response.

I was afraid of getting that answer, yet expected it. I have read many books referring to householders as able to take the spiritual path just as others who renounce all, but after my recent experiences I question the validity of this idea. I no longer feel that I can have both as described. I never had the forsight to consider this years ago when I began the journey....I guess I was more ignorant than I thought.

Sincerely

JP

RESPONSE:

JP, it is not that you can't do both, look at Rajiv.

It’s just that it can't be both the ways you want it.

You can continue to be a householder, but things will change and the trajectory will change, maybe in ways you don't like--completely different than you expected.

There is nothing like a secure, safe, linear road after you begin spirituality.

Robert was a householder, I am too. Nisargadatta was a householder, but things change radically once you begin changing internally radically. The picket fence American dream becomes something else altogether and you have to adopt.

Ed

TO ME:

Ed,

Its good to hear that you are an example yourself of how this can work.

I think the feeling that the pace of progression has changed has brought this issue to the forefront. I honestly believe that the your website has changed this process for me....somehow it has turbocharged my understanding. I stumbled across the site and was instantly drawn into reading a few of the transcripted conversations. Then the next day I read the rest. Then two days later I actually printed them all out and reread them constantly. Somehow a cord was struck, and since then I feel Im being fast-tracked. Very, very strange. Nothing, and I mean nothing has hit me as hard as Roberts talks. Its seems he was able to deliver a potent version of the teachings that skip all nonessentials.

Thanks for everything

JP