I had the privilege and good fortune to attend Adyashanti’s sathsang in Vancouver recently.
And the extra good fortune to be able to ask him a question, one that led to a second, interesting discussion.
He talked about “reconciliation” as the spiritual action that would cause the lifting of duality. (In all cases here, please remember that my memory is not the best; I hope I get what he said right.)
Kathleen, who was there with me, said she would use the word “integration.”
I’d use the words “balance” and “equanimity.” I asked Adya how “reconciliation” related to these other two states of being.
He very adeptly replied that “reconciliation” on the one hand was holding two opposites in one’s mind passively but awaredly and allowing them to coalesce to produce a third non-dual outcome.
“Balance” and “equanimity” on the other hand, he described as a cessation of wanting and avoiding, due to the elimination of stressful factors. He called those factors “resistance” and I called them “core issues” or “vasanas.”
This was interesting enough but it led to an even more interesting discussion – and it’s really that one that I’d like to look at if you’d permit me.
In the course of answering the question, he mentioned how some people can have spiritual experiences and not have done any preliminary spiritual practice (like Ramana Maharshi, for instance) and others could have a deep spiritual experience and not know what just occurred.
That’s a circumstance that lightworkers may themselves face in the future. Or they may face people asking them to tell them what just happened to those people.
The Divine Mother warned us that people in general who had heart openings might not know what had just happened to them and might look around for explanations from – you guessed it – lightworkers and loveholders.
Adya shared his own experience of not knowing what had happened to him in his own enlightenment experience (probably Brahmajnana or seventh-chakra enlightenment).
I reminded him of a woman in his Vancouver sathsang fifteen years ago who said that she had had a deep spiritual experience, I believe while listening to heavy-metal music, and it absolutely altered her life. Not always in pleasant ways. She wanted to know from Adya whether she was psychotic.
I can think of other examples closer to home however.
“Bright Star” emailed me in midst of a spiritual experience which he thought was a heart attack. It turned out to be a heart opening. How would Bright Star have known what was happening to him? These experiences don’t come with a manual.
Another example. Even though I’ve studied enlightenment for many years, even though I know that when the kundalini reaches the fourth chakra, one has a first-stage enlightenment experience (spiritual awakening, stream entering) ……….
………. when it actually happened to me, I had no idea what just happened. (1)
The kundalini reached the fourth chakra and all of a sudden there was this explosion as if a large impediment was blown out of my heart. Then torrential love flowed, an inner tsunami of love. That lasted off and on for the better part of a year.
But at no time when it happened did I put two and two together. At no time did I realize that the kundalini reaching the fourth chakra must bring with it a first-stage enlightenment experience. I totally overlooked the fact.
It wasn’t until a month later that I said to Michael that I had not experienced a fourth-chakra awakening and he said, oh yes, you have. Here’s that discussion:
Archangel Michael: I am suggesting that you are [your kundalini is] probably between the fourth and fifth [chakras].
Steve: But I haven’t had an experience of the fourth chakra that I’m aware of, have I?
AAM: Oh, yes, you have!
SB: What would it have been? The heart opening?
AAM: The heart opening is the blessing in which you became more clearly aware of your infinite, eternal Self. (2)
Not my Self as a brilliant light or as my chosen form of God. But my Self as an inner torrent or tsunami of Love.
So Adya didn’t get it in his seventh-chakra experience. I didn’t get it in my fourth-chakra experience. Bright Star didn’t get it. The “heavy metal” woman didn’t get it. It frequently happens that people don’t get the nature of their experience.
Often there’s no one we or they can turn to for an explanation. And the people we do turn to could steer us in inaccurate and unfortunate directions.
That’s why the more we talk about our spiritual experiences, the better able we’ll be to interpret what happens to us or others when it occurs.
In past years, it hasn’t been fashionable to discuss one’s own or another’s experiences. And certainly we don’t want to invite ridicule from skeptics.
But I assert that we now need to get beyond that way of thinking (but, still, with prudence) because people will be turning to us for information and explanations.
On the awareness path, which Adya follows as well, one routinely shares one’s experiences.
That’s what most of the conversations between two folks on the awareness path turn out to be about. We call it “comparing notes.” This happened to me; here’s what I did with it; and here’s what I got from it.
The conversation about spiritual experiences needs to spread. We need to be conversant in the subject so that when the mass of people turn to us for information or explanations, we can either interpret their experiences ourselves or steer them to useful sources or helpful people.
To be conversant with Ascension as well as Disclosure and Abundance, you may wish to research the First Contact library of quotations, here:
https://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=First_Contact
To be conversant with classical enlightenment studies by terrestrial sages, go to From Darkness Unto Light, here:
https://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=From_Darkness_to_Light
Footnotes
(1) On March 13, 2015. As so often happens, this experience happened hours before I was to have a reading with Archangel Michael through Linda so I was able to ask him what the heck just happened. Otherwise I might have remained in mystery or only figured it out by myself years later.
The woman in question had no one she knew to ask until she discovered Adya. My agony of not knowing lasted three hours; hers lasted much longer.
(2) Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Apr. 24, 2015.