Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

I know you don’t need a daily update on my spiritual journey, but as there is really no one else whom I can talk with about these matters I hope you will indulge me from time to time.

I just wanted to share another thing with you regarding my meditation practice and abidance in the I Am state.

It is so ordinary.

By “ordinary” I mean familiar and as if it were no big deal.  Which is great!  Which is something I never thought I would say.  

For the past two decades I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of amazing visions and experiences similar to those described by Muktananda and Yogananda and Acharya Kedar and other renowned gurus.  Not to say that I haven’t seen lights and heard sounds and whatnot, but these never seemed as magnificent or of as much symbolic import or as magnificent in scope as the extensive, feature-length-film-like experiences about which I had read.   Mostly, I just experienced the various stages you and Rajiv discuss in “Autobiography of a Jnani” — the sense of universal oneness, the Void, the Witness — and a deep sense peace and inner-quietude.

Because of this, I always felt a sense of there being something missing, something lacking in my meditation practice, which, if I could just become somehow good enough or worthy enough or physically/emotionally/mentally pure enough, I would experience.  

I so longed for blue-skinned gods dripping with enough gleaming jewelry and assorted bling to put even the most decorated rapper to shame to descend upon me in a golden chariot and whisk me away along various inter-dimensional wormholes and escort me through myriad celestial adventures before finally detonating the infamous Blue Pearl before my very eyes, an event which would somehow irrevocably establish me in the state of Siddhahood.

Anyway, not to take anything away from such experiences, but I finally realize what a bunch of bullshit, spiritually speaking, all that is.

What I experience now is the eternal quality of the I Am state.  It is the ground of my being no matter what the situation or experience or how I am feeling physically or emotionally or what thoughts are swirling around in the ocean of mind.  

And this is not only true in the context of the waking state, but also the dream and deep-sleep states (though, to be honest, I can’t say that I am mentally conscious when in the state of deep-sleep).  Beyond/surrounding/pervading all three of these states is Turiya, the “perspective” (words just don’t cut it, do they?) of universal, unconditioned awareness.  This simple awareness with which I have been experiencing everything my whole life, and which I erroneously believed was limited to this individual mind-body mechanism that has been masquerading as Ted Schmidt, has at last revealed its true nature as a vast ocean of Consciousness in which everything that is and is not arises and subsides.  Wow!

And beyond that....well, there ain’t even a “wow” for that....which really isn’t a that at all, but....???....the ineffable Absolute?  The invisible blank slate?  The whatever....

It all reminds me of the following lines (perhaps you know them) from the “Little Gidding” section of T. S. Eliot’s poem, “Four Quartets”:
    
        With the drawing of this Love and voice of this Calling
        We shall not cease from exploration
        And the end of all our exploring
        Will be to arrive where we started
        And know that place for the first time.
As ever, thank you for your Grace.

Much love,

T.


RESPONSE:


T.

One experiences the experiences of one's teacher generally. 

The Muktananda experiences comes from practicing Kundalini type practices. Each path has different experiences. 

Your experiences mean that something chose our path for you.

Edji