The rest of the world is perhaps watching the arrival of Pope Francis in America and I should be too. (1)
But instead I’m in the midst of a profound spiritual experience brought about by working with a color alchemist and clairsentient.
The individual, who prefers not to be named, worked with me in a complementary fashion. She could feel how I was feeling. And I could feel how I was feeling. So I reported my feelings to her and she checked for alignment and authenticity, adding anything that I might not be aware of.
At one point I related every feeling I was having, and felt each feeling deeply. The impact of doing so landed me in a space of total openness and love. As I marvelled at the state of being I was in, I recognized it as complete emptiness, what Pope Innocent in Brother Sun, Sister Moon called our “original innocence” and what Buddhists call our “original face.”
I’d never experienced such a state before.
I’m in it now and doing my best to describe it. I’m empty of thoughts and emotions but there’s a feeling of substantiality. How paradoxical that being empty I should feel more substantial!
Being without thoughts and feelings means there’s nothing arising in me. The something that used to arise came from my mind or, if you include sensations, my mind-body complex. But I’m not operating in my mind at this moment.
While love used to arise irregularly, this space is redolent with love. Love is an integral part of it, not an infrequent visitor.
We think of it as empty – empty of thoughts and feelings, to be sure. But it’s not empty of love.
I don’t regard this as an experience of enlightenment. It’s a peak moment and will most likely be transient. However I do want to compare one feature of it with the Buddha’s enlightenment, without implying that this pleasant visit to the realm of emptiness is in any way comparable to his; it is not.
The Buddha left the ashram of his Hindu instructor having achieved Brahmajnana or seventh-chakra enlightenment. He was by then what Buddhists call an arahant. He was not however satisfied that he had completed his enlightenment.
Nonetheless even after six more years of austerity in the forest, he could see that there was still movement in the mind – waves of sensations which Easterners call vrittis. These sensations on the body were arising and passing away, arising and passing away.
As he sat by the bank of a river, pondering what to do next, he heard a man in a boat explaining the use of the vina to his student. If the strings of the vina were too tight, they would break. If they were too loose, the instrument would not play.
There arose in his mind the insight of the Middle Way, the way of moderation, leaning neither to the left nor the right, neither in craving nor in aversion but instead in complete equanimity.
At that moment a passing girl gave him a bowl of the rice pudding she was carrying and, with that sustenance, the first meal of its kind he had had as an austere forest sage, he sat down to meditate under a bodhi tree with the firm resolve that he would not get up until he had reached complete enlightenment.
He used Vipassana meditation to observe the movement in his mind until he reached the stage where there were no more vrittis or waves arising and passing away in the mind. That state he called “Nirvana.”
It’s now perhaps eight hours since I initially entered this state of complete openness, emptiness, and stillness. Still it remains stable. Be that as it may, my instructions from Archangel Michael are that I can visit states like these but I cannot remain here. (2) Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do my work.
As I see it, for a lightworker, as opposed to a lightholder, the mission to build Nova Earth is more important than reaching exalted states of enlightenment. It’s OK to reach these states. It’s just not the mission of a lightworker. That’s all.
“Touch ultimate emptiness,” Lao Tzu said. “Hold steady and still.” (3)
I’m sure it’s the energies that have allowed me this glimpse into the realm of the empty mind.
I’m going to have to leave it to others to cover the visit of Pope Francis. In these rising energies, I’m at this moment briefly on the inward journey, with the help of other lightworker colleagues, whom I thank.
Footnotes
(1) This article is out of sequence with some that follow, which were written before this experience.
(2) Archangel Michael: You cannot be fully conscious and in service, in action, if that [Nirvana] is where you are.
So, it is a toning down, if anything. It really is the middle ground. It is the intersection. It is the place where the Third is not a memory, but it is not a burden. And you see the clarity of the old dis-illusions, and you see with clarity the sense of oneness. You know that enlightenment is right there in front of you. It is yours to access. But if you are in service, you will not choose to live there.
SB: That’s the kind of very difficult distinction that I’ve been trying to make, that something will be happening spiritually, yes, but it won’t be happening in a way that ends our ability to serve.
AAM: That is exactly correct.
SB: All right.
AAM: You can think of it as keeping two feet firmly on the ground.
SB: All right.
AAM: Now, while your being is expanding, while you are having a greater sense of unity, of connectedness, of the understanding and being of the cosmos, you will also feel your human self, your physical and your fields, so that you can continue on in service, in what we would call human service.
Because if you fully enter into the bliss, into the One, you will not be interested in returning and serving. It will be a different experience, and it is not the experience that you have selected and chosen for yourself at this time. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Feb. 14, 2012. Used with permission.)
(3) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 68.