This correspondence is adapted from an exchange I had recently with a student of the Sacred Attention Therapy Online Training Course Level 1, called Sonia. Character Strategies and the Central Character Dynamic are two of the seven core elements in the training that is aimed at dismantling the early childhood defenses and strategies for self-protection.

Dear Richard

I started to dive into the Character Strategies and it helped me a lot to identify and understand what is going on inside me. However, I don't see or understand what is the way to go beyond them? What can I do to get in touch with my needs and emotions, for example? How can I get from the 'I can't' to the 'I can'?

Dear Sonia

Although a simple awareness of any of the seven core elements in SAT may result in changes, the presiding principle for transformation is awareness... and deepening awareness of them all. As a sincere seeker after transformation you must bear the character defenses until your Central Character Dynamic appears. This is the point of lasting change or choice, because the Central Character Dynamic brings you to the axis of your defensive strategies. This is when you become empowered to get from ‘I can't’ to ‘I can.’

Dear Richard

Thank you for the answer. Right now it feels very difficult to bear. Now that I see that it is everywhere, I just don't want it to be present anymore... the little girl in me was hoping for a magic trick. And to just to check -- revealing the Central Character Dynamic is not something I can decide and then do? I have to be patient that it will be revealed when it is time? Can you give me something to hold on?

Dear Sonia

More than anything I would ask you to consider this: the business of transcending the contracting ego-forces based on early childhood conditioning takes great courage and consistent effort. It is unusual to even hear about this truth, let alone act on it. This means that out of seven and a half billion people on the planet you are among the rare ones who just may transcend your conditioned self and in time -- who knows? -- go even further in realizing yourself as a human being... and later perhaps as a spiritual-Divine being. For this situation you should cultivate humility and gratitude. These are most important. Once you practice these -- humility and gratitude -- you can hand over the progress to the Divine.

Dear Richard

Thank you very much for these words. I do hear them! I’m considering them... on every level.

I wrote to you, because I reached a point where I felt it to be very painful to experience and be aware of how much I’m restricted by my patterns, how all my decisions are rooted in them, even those ones I considered were truly mine -- it is literally painful. And I can't bear pain too much; there is an immediate 'flight response’ to it, hence my desperate question, if there is hope for ending it. Also, the more I’m aware, the more I see it in others who are not aware at all and it increases my feeling of loneliness. But I will look at it as you said. It is just hard and I needed to express it. I can feel humility, I'm familiar with it, but I tend to forget and need the reminder from time to time. Gratitude I need much more practice with. Thank you for your help.

(For information about the Sacred Attention Therapy Online Training Course Level 1 see http://www.sacredattentiontherapy.com/SAT-Online-Training-Level-1.html)

BLOG entry #55

Over the years, certain common questions have been asked of me. I thought I would take this opportunity to answer them all together in this short blog. The questions in italics are followed by my responses.

What do you teach?

A way to yourself, a way through the mire of un-reality to a direct meeting with the soul and with the spirit.

Is there any contradiction in being a psychotherapist and a spiritual teacher?

For me, no. The way I see it spirituality has really been a matter of human psychology for thousands of years. Very few have taken their enquiry higher than their personal psychology would allow. By working efficiently, thoroughly, and accurately with human psychology, the individual is released into the freedom of authentic spiritual practice. So, if you are of a genuinely spiritual bent, deal with your psychology first.

So, is that what you do—work with human psychology to release people into freedom and authentic spiritual life?

Exactly. I work with people to the end of personality, where it begins to get interesting!

What is the end of personality?

When the character, the ego-processes, and defensive personality are dismantled and we can see how we really operate, how things truly are, we may choose to let go of our attachment to our personality. It was only really a sham anyway, an egoic shell to enable our survival. It has done its job and it is now usually costing us much more than it is giving back.

What would you say to a person who is interested, but doesn’t really want to put the effort into the psycho-spiritual journey to their inner self?

Nothing really! I’m not interested in proselytizing or convincing anyone of anything. One of the first rules of human psychology must be: people don’t do what they don’t want to do. That’s why I find the ancient Taoist saying, “Who follows pleasure alone is wise,” so important. It means if you don’t find yourself compelled to awaken, don’t bother! The way is so difficult and the challenges are so huge, you are bound to be disappointed. Alternatively, assemble around yourself the three treasures—the teacher, the teaching, and the companionship of like-minded souls who are intent on enlightenment—and you can’t really fail. In a way it’s as simple as that. The psychologist William James said it as well with regard to the effectiveness of sadhana (spiritual practice) when he commented that if you apply the required stimuli you would achieve your desired effect. This means: do it. Start now and practice. It’s really the only way. But if you don’t want to, well don’t even start, because what’s the point?

There’s some story about a drop of honey? I don’t know what tradition it’s from, but it paints the human predicament for us and kind of leaves you to think. I think I’ve heard you tell it.

That’s this story… One day a man was walking in the jungle when he was chased by a fierce tiger. Running to a cliff edge he considered taking his own life by throwing himself over when he saw a thick vine hanging over the side. He seized the vine and climbed down the cliff-face. As he was hanging there two little mice emerge from a hole in the rock and start to gnaw away at the root of the vine. In panic he looked down. From the bottom of the vine he would be able to successfully jump down to the ground. But just at that moment a hungry wolf swaggered out from the undergrowth and stationed himself beneath the end of the rope, its murderous jaws slavering. He looked up in terror to see the face of the tiger peering down at him expectantly from the cliff-top. Just then he spied a single drop of delicious honey. It was about to roll off the branch of a small tree to his right, just out of reach. He leaned over and stretched his body as far as he could and extended his tongue just underneath the drop of wonderful nectar. Just at that moment an angel appeared behind him. Declaring the man’s predicament to be critical, the angel announced he had been sent to save the man. Distracted by the imminent drop of the delicious nectar, the man looked round at the angel with a pleading expression and said, “Could you just wait until I have tasted this drop of honey?”

Is that what we are doing -- postponing being saved for just a little drop of honey?

The one certainty when we are born is that we will die. The tiger is this certainty; we are all living under a death sentence. The vine is the course of our life and unfolding events, all that we cling to. The two mice signify the opposites and they stand for time and deterioration (what the Buddhists might call old age and death from the Four Sights of the Buddha). Panic and the consideration of jumping to the ground is the irrational impulse we have to somehow take control and impossibly be in charge of our life. It is also what Gurdjieff called “the terror of the situation,” a phrase I have always admired because it sums up the human predicament at a certain level of consciousness.

The hungry wolf is of course our own appetite for life and it prevents us taking control or ending our own life. So trapped between the certainty of death, the eroding quality of time, the illusion of control, and our thirst for life or our hunger to become, our consolation is the next momentary event that satiates our desire. That drop of honey becomes so distracting that we ignore even the prospect of salvation even the opportunity to transcendent life via the angel-savior.

And yes this is the case for most people. They postpone transformation. They resist the prompting of life lessons that would lead to their salvation.

What is the way out?

There is only one. Strengthen your faith. Turn inward. Work hard on developing your awareness. Freedom and insight are yours for the taking. The human condition is less one of compromise and misery, more one of joy and rapture. Trust in the Divine Being and one day with all your many virtues developed and with the fount of wisdom revealed to you in your inner world you will triumph over all the odds and discover who you really are.

And what are we really?

Love manifested in Consciousness and Light.

BLOG entry #54

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

Dear Richard,

The only reason I mentioned these traditions was as a reminder that there are different views of the divine consciousness. I agree that in our times the move is beyond religion. I disagree that all the recorded tradition was simply created from the human mind. Sure some of it did, but some of it is not. I am worried that I’m going to get entangled in semantics and I don't want this to continue as an intellectual debate. Like for example you say that what is truly spiritual is beyond experience and I would say that every single thing is spirit -- denser, manifested perhaps but spirit nevertheless, so for me even everyday life is a spiritual experience, now whether we can perceive it as such or not is a matter of attunement.

So before I jump into this subject, let me go back to my original enquiry and try to rephrase it. Do you think that a person’s unfolding can reach a final state? a point beyond which there is no further evolution of their consciousness? Is our end goal individuation?

Warmest regards

Thomas

Hi Thomas

There is so much more in my last message that you didn’t reply to…? As for semantics, I believe that how we express ourselves in words is extremely important. In fact, in recent years I have used the insights I have gained from the written word as a valuable and effective tool to help in my work with therapy clients and spiritual aspirants.

You ask: “Do you think that a person’s unfolding can reach a final state? a point beyond which there is no further evolution of their consciousness? Is our end goal individuation?”

Our end goal is annihilation. That is the point and it is the one that people don’t seem to be interested in, which is why so much “spiritual” work, seeking and practice is superficial. Our end goal cannot be individuation because we are ultimately not separate or individual at all. Our unfolding reaches a state which may be called final or evolving, but it depends on where and how you are looking at it. That is why we have so many religious traditions which are all relatively true. The metaphor I used in my book The Flight of Consciousness is being at the very center of a spinning-top where it is absolutely still and all the action – spinning and evolving – is going on around the central core of profound stillness. Now in a way you could say the center, the axis is generating the spinning, like your friend Dr Brooks in the Tantra Rajanaka school or you could say this non-position position is entirely free of the action, neither participating nor generating.

In my book Human Awakening I have written on this subject extensively, so I don’t think we can do it justice to it with a cursory answer. But in essence the development of a human life consists of three stages. First, the transcending of the conditioned self, or basic ego limitations. Second, the challenges of living humanly, authentically and compassionately – and even selflessly  – in relationship to oneself, others, and the world. Third, to engage in the spiritual processes which we might call the quest for the enlightened state (which entails personal annihilation ultimately) through spiritual, transcendent and divine levels of attainment – the keynotes here are renunciation, liberation and surrender.

Warm wishes

Richard

Hello Richard,

I think we agree though that the only way to see more light is to go through the darkness, death and annihilation. This is where the shadow work I do is rooted and although as you said there are a lot of people not interested in this work, there is an increasing number that are.

Please be patient with me...

Finally, for now, can you say a little about our sense of individuality, the psychic realms, and psychic phenomena?

With love

Thomas

Dear Thomas

Today we have refined our sense of individuality to the degree that we have become unaware of it. This is and has always been a dangerous impasse to fall into. The perils of unawareness, particularly in a stage of transition, are great.

The psychic realms, the realms of personification of the spiritual, of past lives and synchronicity, magic and even events in the temporal-spatial realms have always fascinated me… attracted me and even enticed me. I have seen colors and forms and heard voices and received teachings and been immersed in the atmospheres of other times. Convergence and phenomena echoing or tying in with other phenomena across vast time and space is not a matter of doubt or cynicism for me, because I am aware that everything is connected, that ultimately all arising forms of consciousness are living and dying in the one eternal Consciousness.

The knowledge I was born with, or born into, is that I AM and it includes a knowing, a fundamental knowing. Of course as soon as this knowing is expressed in the spatio-temporal realms it is compromised and impure. My task then has been and remains to overcome -- no, not overcome but harmonize perhaps and at least respond to that in surrender and grace to God, the form of the Divine that pervades all things. My concern or perhaps my purpose is beyond or past or higher or deeper than the relative realms of psychic phenomena and fascination with arising phenomena, further too than the relative spiritual concerns of much religious teaching. I am interested in going further in grounding spiritual truth here in the world without division of any kind.

Love to you

Richard

HUMAN AWAKENING may be purchased at http://www.sacredattentiontherapy.com/Books.html

THE FLIGHT OF CONSCIOUSNESS may be ordered from amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Flight-Consciousness-Contemporary-Spiritual-Journey/dp/1853981419/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466936314&sr=8-1&keywords=flight+of+consciousness

BLOG entry #52

Dear Richard

I saw the synopsis of your book Human Awakening and it looked very interesting to me. I also have an integrative-transpersonal approach and I have followed the Sufi traditions in my personal retreats.

From my personal experience (but not only) I understand that manifestation as a whole, the divine being, God, the cosmos, or however you would like to call it, is ever-unfolding. With that understanding I can see that there are important stages one can reach on the path but definitely not one state is the ultimate without further development. The nature of everything is ever evolving as far as I can see it. Now for me that doesn’t mean that someone needs a guide, a shaman, or a therapist for all his life, since therapy for me is also giving tools and developing qualities that one can use by themselves at some point in their journey. So I don't consider that because we always unfold we always need a therapist, but rather the will to do the work, which we can also learn to do by ourselves. However, I do acknowledge that in times of great difficulty, we might need support from an expert for a period of time.

Even from reading the summary of your book I feel it is an amazing, comprehensive work of the process of transformation.

Thank you for responding to me and please know that my inquiry is with great respect for your beautiful work.

In gratitude

Thomas

Dear Thomas

Thank you for your kind remarks and interest in my book Human Awakening.

It is important to understand that seeking, searching of any kind fulfills a need for the searcher. It is only when the seeker has let go that he "finds" what he has been looking for. What he has been looking for turns out to be himself, as I think we all know by now. But that self is transcendent and not characterized by searching. To look at it another way: like all external and internal phenomena we arise in Consciousness. We are adapted and derived forms, or reflections, of Consciousness as the Absolute. Ultimately everything is Unity. So the trick is how do we live in the relative world of space and time and remain true to our Divine Nature and individual, psycho-physical form. When we are deep enough into Consciousness prior to form there is no evolution as such. Evolution and change of that kind are the appearance of the Divine from the perspective of the relative world only. So I would not deny it, simply say it is not how it is, but merely how it looks from the limited view of the separated individual. Deep within the sphere of self-sourcing Consciousness, beyond causality, is a peace the Hindus call satchitananda. It is the Source of Being, the Truth, beyond causality, evolution and change.

You really put what I am saying very well yourself when you say: “The nature of everything is ever evolving as far as I can see it.” Only when the “I” in that sentence is surrendered and disappears can you and I see it as it really is. In the meantime, it appears to be evolving. But if you think about it, how or why would or could the Absolute evolve?…. into what?… for what?… It is already all possibilities, all variations and adaptations. In fact, these variants themselves appear out of the Eternal, self-abiding Absolute.

Also I would point out that when you say, “that manifestation as a whole, the divine being, God, the cosmos or however you would like to call it, is ever unfolding”, please remember that “manifestation as a whole” and the “cosmos” are distinct from “the divine being, God” -- one is the Living Presence; the other the modified appearance of that Presence in time and space. 

When you say “The nature of everything is ever evolving” you are referring I think to the Truth applied to the relative world of things, phenomena, time, space, thoughts and feelings, actions and consequences. It is a common mistake to think of the divine and transcendent realities in this way too. But that is not how it is. The spiritual world is not the world of experience; it is the world that pertains to the Absolute. It can be thought of as being closer to the world of intuition for example, where we don’t tend to know where our insight has come from, because for intuition to occur we must connect to the timeless realms.

Finally, I would like to say how inspiring this dialog is for me. You are one of the most enquiring voices I have heard responding to my work for a long time. I am most grateful to you for this stimulating exchange.

Warmly

Richard

Dear Richard,

My heart is ignited with this conversation. Thank you for your kind words.

What I was talking about is that what you call “the absolute” is what I saw as ever-evolving (not static). This was a direct experience I had in long retreats, and I have no way to prove it. I am not talking about the seeker, except if you consider an individuated or enlightened person a seeker.

So I wonder, if everything in the known universe is in movement and constantly expands there is a good chance that even “the absolute” expands, evolves and that is its perfection. Now both your view and mine are supported by different traditions. I asked a good friend of mine and a wonderful Sanskrit professor and tantric scholar (Dr. Douglas Brooks) and he told me that your understanding is closer to the Advaita Vedanta school, whereas mine is to the Tantric Rajanaka school.

Here is what he wrote when I asked him when I quoted from your email:

“Deep within the sphere of self-sourcing Consciousness, beyond causality, is a peace the Hindus call satchitananda. It is the Source of Being, the Truth, beyond causality, evolution and change.”

I wanted to understand what tradition reflects those teachings

His reply:

‘This quotation sounds rather like the school of Advaita Vedanta. In this teaching, the original state of our being is without any action or process since any unfoldment would compromise the changeless nature of the Absolute. Once one re-arrives at this place of original realization there is a "beyond causality" and neither "evolution" nor "change" since such qualities are contrary to their view that the One (which is our true nature) is without any change by definition.

In contrast, most Tantric non-dualism sees the One as the agent of awareness that can (as you put it) be part of an unfolding without compromising the fullness of its state. Now in my own Rajanaka school, there is no final state of realization anymore than there is a beginning, there is only a continuous process, one where we talk about participation in the unfoldment (and re-enfoldment, back and forth) as an on-going reality. For the majority, be it like the static view of Advaita (here in the quotation) or in the realization of a knower, there is a conclusion that is the same as the origin. In Rajanaka, all beginnings, like all endings, are always movements and processes. Helpful? '

Blessings

Thomas

Dear Thomas

What we have to consider here, I suggest, first, is how we will respond to religio-spiritual traditions and what function they serve now. Second, what is the role and limitation of words to express the ineffable?

Considering the great traditions of religious and spiritual philosophy, one part of me stands in awe of the body of work – oral tradition, recorded tradition and spiritual practices – that has been created from the mind of man. But, on the down side, I notice that humankind as a whole has ignored, denied, and misunderstood largely the great insights that stem from these traditions. Bearing in mind that the great avatars – for example, Jesus and Buddha – were clearly invested in communicating their wisdom and enlightenment to others, we can only conclude that they failed mostly to convey their messages. Obviously the function of spiritual teacher is a hazardous one and should we be called to teach, comment on, or even observe what is truly going on we would do well to be clear at the outset. While respecting religious traditions I feel strongly that the only significant move we can make now is to go beyond them, using them perhaps as a stepping-stone, but also not being afraid to criticize them constructively, particularly when they don’t make sense of our own direct experience or findings.

There are in my model five levels of truth (or Truth). The first involves the personality, which is essentially defensive and concerned with personal survival. The second involves the core of an individual and reflects the deep inner truth of a person as a limited individual form of consciousness. The third is the spiritual realm of truth which may be considered relative but aiming towards the Absolute. The comparison of such paths is a distraction to the serious spiritual student. He or she should get on one and persist. This is why spiritual paths often conflict in advice and even philosophy. It is not necessary that they agree any more than if you and I are on different roads to the same destination that the scenery should be the same. The fourth level then is the level of Truth in which there is finally no opposites, and last, the fifth level is beyond awareness itself and we are no longer concerned with concepts at all.

This is merely a brief summary of my observations which I am currently putting into print in a more detailed form.

Your remark, “'the absolute'  is what I saw as ever evolving (not a static)...this was a direct experience I had in long retreats…”, is typical of many of us who have had some spiritual insight during retreats or simply in ordinary life. My measure of such experiences is whether or not the observer remains, i.e. is the “I” still present and when it is then it is a transitive spiritual experience rather than a full one, an invitation to surrender, rather than the invitation accepted. I would add to this the fact that, strictly speaking, there is no spiritual experience, since what is truly spiritual is beyond experience (something that St John of the Cross writes about well).

Which brings me to my final point: you write “… if everything in the known universe is in movement and constantly expands there is a good chance that even the 'absolute' expands, evolves and that is its perfection.” Well, no, for the reason that you rightly point out, albeit unknowingly I think – “everything in the known universe” and here you unwittingly define the spiritual, transcendent, Divine Truth by stating what it is not. Clearly the Divine Unity or Consciousness is beyond the separation of things or everything or anything, all of which are merely temporary modifications arising and subsiding and therefore not in themselves the Absolute, the Truth, or God.

With love

Richard

BLOG entry #51