WOOOOOOAH!
IT CAME ABSOLUTELY OUT OF NOWHERE!
Nirvana!
For those who are not familiar with the term Nirvana, it is the final goal in Buddhism. I am not, and do not consider myself in the least bit, a “Buddhist” according to the traditional term and meaning.
However, I know that when Nirvana came over me, there was absolutely NO QUESTION what Nirvana is and how it feels.
Here are some synonyms or words that mean the same thing.
Prior to that feeling, my interest was devoted religiously to becoming the best person I could possibly be. I dedicated myself to every Personal Growth/Development and Self-Help book I could get my hands on.
At the age of 19, when I read my first Personal Growth book, I felt that everything in that book was precisely what I needed to hear at that time.
As I continued to study Personal Development, I had questioned myself why it had not been THE focal point of education systems.
So, I decided to dedicate myself to building a brand to see to it that the world would make their primary focus on dedicating to Self-Help material, just as I had!
I felt that it was the key to the universe, that all my hopes and dreams of watching the world get better while also becoming financially rich in the process.
UNTIL….
That was until I had realized Nirvana, or perfect bliss when I knew that absolute infinite peace was what I truly wanted.
It later also occurred to me that Personal Growth and Development has essentially already been happening from the beginning of the human race.
As human beings, we are naturally seeking to grow in a way that prolongs our lifespan on this planet as well as to procreate.
Personal Growth means, in a nutshell, that there is something potentially either wrong at this moment with me that can improve, or that there is a strength that I can take to the next level.
Both require the past, the present, and the future, or linear time. Before now, now, and after now is another way to think of linear time.
Where I was, where I am, and where I want to be regarding ANY aspect that’s measured by the human mind.
In fact, the human mind can only measure where I was, where I am, and a projection of where I will be. This is the human mechanism for survival.
However, there is something that does not require linear time, as we understand it, in the LEAST sense.
And that is a Spiritual Awakening. Rather than point-blank tell you what a Spiritual Awakening is, I’m going to give 3 metaphors that drive home the point that Spiritual Awakening is not linear, and CANNOT require linear time.
#1. Blindside offensive tackle
What?
How could football possibly relate to a Spiritual Awakening?
Well, for starters, everything is in relation to the next thing, and nothing is left out.
Secondly here is how….
My first love and passion was football which I played all the way back to the 5th grade, starting in Pop Warner.
Anywho…
In traditional terms, on the offensive line, which is what protects the quarterback, you have the left tackle and the right tackle, which are the two offensive linemen on the outside of the offensive line.
This is how it looks, from left to right.
Left Tackle, Left Guard, Center, Right Guard, Right Tackle.
However, it goes deeper than that.
One of the Left tackle or the Right tackle acts as a “Blindside” tackle. What does this mean?
It means that depending on which hand the quarterback throws with, the opposite tackle will be his Blindside tackle.
The reason why is when the quarterback hikes the ball, he will do his drop back and NOT be able to see behind him, hence the blind side.
So, if he is a right-handed quarterback, then his left tackle will be his blindside, and if he is a left-handed quarterback, then his right tackle will be his blindside tackle.
This means that if a right-handed quarterback hikes the ball, and the left defensive end gets around the left tackle and hits the quarterback, he will have had NO idea that he was about to get hit.
Obviously, QBs are ready to get hit regardless. It’s that they will not always be able to see where it’s coming from.
As an ex-quarterback, it’s one thing to get tackled, and it’s a WHOLE other ballgame to get tackled hard when you have no idea that it’s coming.
It’s a whole lot more jarring to your body and nervous system.
How does this apply to awakening?
Consider that your blindside is that you take yourself to be the thinking-mind and that you are trapped in thought as a result.
And then BOOM! And out of nowhere!
You woke up, OUT of the identification with the thought, and suddenly you were the witness of your thoughts, BLINDSIDED by PRESENCE.
Except rather than getting tackled by a football player, you have awakened to presence.
#2. Blind side Rear View Mirror
The first car wreck I got into was a few months after I started driving for the first time, and the reason was, I thought that I could trust my rear view mirror COMPLETELY.
What I did not realize is that when a car is coming up from behind in the next lane, there is a split second where the rear view mirror does not capture that car.
This split second where the rear view mirror cannot see that car is also known as your blind side.
Well, long story short, WHAM!
I hit them. Luckily it wasn’t too bad for either of us, except for my monthly insurance bill. -_-
The point is, just as with that blind side mirror, you cannot trust EVERYTHING you think. In fact, perhaps a lot less than you can possibly imagine.
Thinking is born out of what you think you know from the past, but because the present moment is forever new, forever fresh and alive, then when the thoughts come to a complete stop, and you see that which does not change (you), then WHAM, blindsided yet again by presence.
#3. Excerpt from “What’s Wrong With Right Now, Unless You Think About It.” – Sailor Bob Adamson
“It will dawn on you. Just like when you walk out of the house and you get a mile down the road and it dawns on you that you have left the keys at home. It will just dawn on you. Why did you leave your keys at home? Just a little bit of inattentiveness to what is, at the time. It will just dawn on you.”
When you suddenly recognized that you forgot something, how long did it take to hit you? No time at all, it hit you all of a sudden.
Now, let’s take that excerpt a bit further. Let’s say your daily routine is to leave your house and go for a walk for two miles a day every day.
You have been doing this now for 3 years straight, it’s automatic. It’s also automatic that you bring your keys with you. But one day, for whatever reason, you leave your keys at home.
While you’re walking, something doesn’t quite seem right, something feels off, but you’re not quite sure what it is.
You feel a bit uncomfortable for some reason because you can’t wrap your head around that feeling.
That’s what it was, you forgot your keys.
And then you continue to walk, and then completely out of nowhere, OH!!
And suddenly, you were released from that underlying agitation of feeling that something was off.
Suddenly you no longer wonder, you just knew without a doubt what it was that was missing.
That’s no different than a spontaneous awakening.
Until you have awakened, instantly, suddenly out of the false thought-created sense of self, there will be a little bit of agitation in the background of all of your experience.
But you won’t be able to wrap your head around it because you cannot. It is perfectly perfect that you cannot, by the way.
Let’s rewind firstly, though.
What do the three metaphors all have in common?
That in all three scenarios, you did NOT see it coming. The QB could not see behind him, thus he did not see the sack coming.
The driver (me in this case) relied too heavily on the rear view mirror and could not see this coming.
And lastly, you originally did not know when you left your house you forgot your keys, so when you remembered, you did not see that coming.
A spontaneous awakening, just as I realized when Nirvana HIT me, I did NOT, in my WILDEST DREAMS and IMAGINATION, see that coming.
It’s because presence was FAR too simple to notice, thus, the thinking-mind had overlooked it. (Usually in the search for pleasure or away from pain)
The thing about Nirvana, however, is that it’s less important than the actual liberation of breaking free from the false identification of the mind.
When you forgot your keys from home and felt comfortable because you had been so used to grabbing them that you knew something was missing, but you couldn’t grasp why, UNTIL it dawned on you.
This is the same in a lot of your experiences. There will be this sense of agitation, this sense that something is missing until it dawns on you that you are not the thinking-mind.
Why?
The thinking-mind itself is the search.
The thinking-mind can only understand the world experience in regards to going towards pleasure or moving away from pain.
The thinking-mind calls pleasure the feeling of being happy, satisfied or content.
And in the external world, there is nothing but pleasure and pain.
The reason why the external world is nothing but pleasure and pain is because of the transitoriness of ALL experience.
EVERYTHING is coming and going. As you read these words, things are changing. Not a single thing will be exactly the same with each passing letter of these words.
This is why pleasure does not equal peace, which is what every human being is looking for.
What the thinking-mind does not understand truly is the deepest essence of peace.
The mind can only understand what it means to search. Even the search for truth because the truth is already here, thus the ending of the search.
Absolute peace is your natural state, and it’s a result of knowing who you are, prior to a single thought, thus no thought at all.
So, rather than thinking that you can use the mind just as you would to figure out the answer to a math problem, increase your IQ or develop yourself, this is actually about completely quitting the use of your mind for just right now.
“USE YOUR MIND” that’s what you will be told in life if you’re not doing the “right” thing.
Meanwhile, the greatest human experience happens right here and right now, when the mind finally stops, completely, for just now, without grasping or understanding anything.
Awakening is timeless, and when I say it happens out of nowhere, what I mean is, it happens now-here.
Not the present moment that the mind can think about. Not the now (awakening) that the mind can contemplate, anticipate, expect, or hope for. BUT the now, that already “is” YOUR natural state on a deep cellular level.
The light that dawns on you is the LIGHT that is you, and that light is infinitely free, infinitely vast, infinitely ungraspable, but infinitely and eternally KNOWN.
