In Sacred Attention Teachings we speak of four stages of awakening. The first stage of awakening involves freeing ourselves from past conditioning and outmoded survival strategies. The result is the ability to live in the present moment without recourse to the past or fear of the future. The second stage of awakening is the opening of the heart-nature, realizing true compassion, and living in the authentic state. The third stage of awakening is the dedication and surrender of the individual life to the life of the Divine and the Realization of Love itself. Finally, the fourth stage of awakening is the absolute merging, surrender, and transfiguration of all tendencies toward attachment and all forms of individual clinging into the life of unity and ultimate freedom from all conditions.

In this blog I would like to speak of transitory bliss states or temporary awakening experiences. Although these states are common in third-stage awakening, they may occasionally occur in first- or second-stage awakening, as well as in the lives of those who never enter into any psycho-spiritual practices at all.

What is Happening Now

In Sanskrit terminology such states are described as Savikalpa Samadhi. Modern students of spirituality and the average layperson are unlikely to discern in descriptions of Savikapla Samadhi an event that has occurred in their own lives. Indeed the affect created by Sanskrit terminology through time and culture is one of distancing and the erroneous assumption that spiritual enlightenment may only be granted to other people in other times from other cultures.

In Sacred Attention Teachings we are concerned with what is happening now... in the present day, the modern era. Of course we are not exclusively concerned with ourselves, now, but our standpoint is that once we become clear about who, where, how, and that we are, we may be enabled to deepen into realms of clarity and truth that were previously unavailable to us.

The World is Essentially Divine

In short, the inner rule or law goes something like this:

·         Be where you are now

·         Dig down deep into your inherent resistance to an authentic relationship to life

·         Free yourself of all presumptions and expectations

·         Open to the heart energies

·         Center yourself in your deepest truth

·         Experience the timelessness, the fearlessness, and the eternal nature of your existence

Those of us who experience transitory bliss states or temporary awakening experiences go straight to the timelessness, the fearlessness, and eternity, even if we haven’t moved through the previous steps. The reason for this is that the world is essentially divine. The essence or truth of this fleeting world of appearances is divine. When we fall through the cracks of our everyday lives into eternity itself we have simply penetrated the delusion of ignorance, the spectacle of lights, colors, and mirrors – we have seen the Sun, and entered into the Eternal Presence that is behind and pervading the entire world of experience.

The State of Oneness

This state of bliss, since it is not an event in time and space, is beyond experience. It can only be accurately described as an a-experience and the deep understanding that is inherent in the discovery or illumination may not be perceived but apperceived. Merging together with the timeless source of Existence itself renders all attempts to describe or write about it all but irrelevant.

The Sanskrit word samadhi denotes this blissful state of absorption in the Divine. Samadhi means “joining together” or the state of Oneness or Unity Consciousness. Your individual consciousness dissolves into union with the Divine. The ego drops away as you unite with the sourceless-Source behind all creation. Subject, object, and action become indistinguishable.

The Indivisible Soul

But in the temporary bliss state the individual identity of the soul is retained, since it appears intact following the awakening event. While the temporary bliss state is happening you enter the place of unity where you possess the spiritual understanding of the indivisibility, the non-separation, of all things since they are subsumed in the Divine. You are not usually conscious of the exterior world, but fully absorbed in the inner state of bliss.

This altered state of consciousness may be accompanied by expanded mental and spiritual awareness that can produce visions, euphoria, and trance-like symptoms. Since the state is temporary, the ecstatic and deepened understanding of the spiritual event characteristically fades. However, the individual who experiences transitory bliss states may remain informed and inspired for the entire rest of their life.

Facets of Temporary Awakening

Temporary awakening is usually brief in physical time or it can last several days or more, or recur throughout your lifetime. Your subjective perception of time and space, and self usually disappears during the event. The initial stages of temporary awakening can be accompanied by fear or terror, strong emotions, or simply very ordinary states of mind and feeling.

Temporary bliss states are not necessarily recognized as spiritual or religious by some. They are however universally considered extraordinary, supernal, or otherwise exalted as an expression of the numinous. They can be provoked through prayer, ritual, meditation, breath exercises, physical exercise, sex, music, dancing, fasting, psychotropic drugs, or a combination of these. The advent of the bliss state may be intended or completely unintended. Sometimes the awakening experience is linked to a meeting with an extraordinary human being or other entity and may include revelation or advice on future behavior, beliefs, and attitudes to life.

Shamans and yogis traditionally enter the temporary awakening state. Athletes may experience ecstasy in competition and preparation for competitions. Other examples of ways to temporary awakening experiences include Buddhist practices of absorption or trance, the Greek Mystery schools (using intoxicants, dance, and music), Sufism through bodily movements and dance, Christian oneness with God, ecstatic states in charismatic Christianity, firewalking (derived from ancient Greece), the much-recorded ecstatic states of the Christian saints, and witchcraft.

What is awakening?

What is awakening?

Awakening is the direct apprehension of our natural state. This state is so far removed from the conditions we learned to accept through the indoctrination of our early conditioning that the occurrence of temporary states of bliss seem to be irreconcilable with our sense of ordinary reality. More long-lasting or profound states of natural bliss and ecstasy may be capable of sending us over the edge.

Awakening shifts our awareness or consciousness into a greater alignment with Reality. However, since our usual life experience up to that point is unreal or deluded, the shift seems unfamiliar, exalted, and “other.” We seem to crave the previous conditions of bondage to ego-states, although we are likely to return to them with a deep underlying sadness and feelings of profound loss.

Enslavement to the Ego

Our true nature or authenticity is beyond suffering. Suffering is synonymous with ignorance or enslavement to the ego. And ego is synonymous with mind. We so deeply seek meaning, purpose and passion in our lives, yet the mind will not allow these… truly. Through our authenticity we are awakened to purpose, meaning, and passion as a direct relationship with ourselves, our true nature, our authentic essence.  

The mind cannot allow these because ideas – the mind’s creations – do not sustain us. We must experience the truth of ourselves directly and that is what happens in our awakening experience.

A Glimpse of Bliss

The glimpse of samadhi, enlightenment, or bliss that we attain in our temporary awakening can be the source of spiritual faith, the foundation of our inner conviction in divinity, the basis of our commitment to sadhana or lifelong spiritual discipline.

There are further awakening experiences or bliss states: the mystic awakening of the understanding that all is inner, in which the experience of inward ecstasy is so overwhelming that the outer world is entirely eclipsed; the even higher level awakening to unity consciousness in which the individual awareness is entirely lost in the non-differentiated Divine and the permanently ecstatic state of unity, Truth and understanding in which all barriers are broken down in the state of unconditional freedom and bliss.

In future blogs we will take a look at these too.

BLOG entry #53