I would climb any mountain
Sail across the stormy sea
If that what it takes me baby…
I have waited a lifetime
Spent my time so foolishly
Now that I've found you
Together we'll make history
~Foreigner “Feels Like the First Time”
Just kiddin' ~ kinda
I was having a very hard time. I was working with a doctor who was giving me psychedelics and kept talking about g-o-d and Advaita. He was starting to annoy the shit out of me.
I'm an atheist.
So, I was at home trying to figure out – what can I learn beyond secular buddhist thought and Advaita that doesn't keep my mind spinning looking for answers?
After a couple weeks of searching online going down several rabbit holes I stumbled upon Peter Fenner and his Radiant Mind book.
https://www.amazon.com/Radiant-Mind-Awakening-Unconditioned-Awareness/dp/159179577X
I downloaded the book and began to gently take it in. He speaks to you like a wise friend that has been where you are and is not above where you could be at any moment. He explained what he had done, basically what he learned and why he quit being a monk and no longer practices meditation ~ only “just sitting.” I didn't have anything better to do so I followed all he extremely simple suggestions and sat on my couch. And just sat there.
It was about 5am on a cool summer morning. It was quiet, I had done some reading in Radiant Mind, had the stove light on in the kitchen, otherwise it was fairly dark.
I was sitting there when my mind started giving me a problem. I don't remember what the issue was but I suddenly felt I was not in the mood. I felt a shift happen inside me, I felt like I expanded horizontally hovered above this personality structure and I said – NO.
All of a sudden I felt this thought structure pain in the ass lightly explode and then disappear.
My mind shot out in all directions like walls that were there pushed out then dissolved in an ever expansive feeling of infinity. I felt one with the stars and the universe.
The room was alive.
After a while of this all I wanted to do was go sit under some trees. And I hung out under trees for about four days.
Author's note: This is only my experience. I have not taken any of his courses and do not profit from him sharing my experience. I have studied in person with Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, many Advaita "masters" and others...no one's work has ever stopped my questioning before.
Thank you for Sharing this Brenda,
In the last year thanks to my meditation times (for the last 12 years) and thanks for those times from reading books by Thich Nhat Hahn, I have come to realize that I have what seem to me to be 3 parts of my mind. They may be only two parts. The best I can describe it is one part of my mind monitors my thoughts and my behaviors and things I say. A second part of my mind works on its own producing thoughts, ideas and visions which arise from it whether I want them to or not and the third part (which might actually be my first Monitor part taking a more active role than just watching) is the part that takes hold of thoughts and ideas and consciously thinks and reasons them out according to logic or something akin to logic. Before last year, I don't think I became conscious of these different aspects of my own mind except that I was trying to be aware of my thoughts. I'm developing an article for Steemit on this. I believe that Mindfulness and what Peter talks about as the Radiant Awareness is just the Monitor part of our minds but we have started to use it more consciously.
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Once your conditioned mind dissolves all these questions about how many parts do we have in our mind, thoughts, ideas, visions...they just go away. A wisdom begins to permeate your perception and insight begins to arise instead.
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I was just contemplating what you are saying and what came to me is that when the conditioned mind is not clouding the observer you can see things as they really are, without identifications.
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I'm in the part of the book to do the exercise of the 9 areas of life and to write for 5 minutes on each one to get a profile of my conditioned existence. I think this is interesting. Peter talks about doing this before going into how to arrive at unconditioned awareness. Which to be honest I don't think I have ever experienced. I have experienced still times for short periods but thoughts and emotions come back over and over again. :)
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They're not really questions that I have but just how I would describe how I experience it.
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That's awesome I had this same experience on a cliff out on my gpas land.. It's nice to realize we are only awareness
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xoxoxoxo
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