It’s one of many bridges, one of them being Ascension itself. (1)
And, like so much else, for the experience to flower, I have to consciously recognize what’s happening. I have to move from unconscious awareness of the thing in question to conscious awareness.
The bridge I crossed was between focusing on myself and focusing on the moment. I won’t call “focusing” “meditation,” but only because of its duration, not because of its impact.
What I’m seeing is that there comes a time in the processing of our vasanas when, when we take a look and see how we’re doing, no vasanas come up. (That doesn’t mean I don’t have any!)
And smoothly and very subtly, my attention begins to switch from looking for them to simply breathing the air and being in the moment. I’m now focusing on … well, no, I wouldn’t call it focusing any more.
And I’m not focusing any longer on “me,” conceived of as an individual having likes and dislikes, preferences and issues. It isn’t that I don’t have them; I do. But I’m no longer focused on them.
Though he was talking about a much higher experience, (2) Franklin Merrell-Wolff used the term “consciousness without an object.” And that fits with the way I “be” when I’m in the moment. There is no object of awareness at that moment, just the act of breathing. (3)
Being in the moment was already happening, but I wasn’t yet immersed in it, so to speak. Like seeing bliss, recognizing it, and watching it flower inside of me, seeing this one is similar.
So long as it went unrecognized, I experienced it at the level of feeling and not at the level of divine state. It flowered into divine state when I recognize what it was. Oh, that’s bliss! Oh, that’s peace! Oh, that’s abundance!
I have the ability to wrest my attention from the moment, with its divine state, and put it back onto looking for despondency and despair, like a Geiger counter. But the Geiger counter doesn’t click.
I haven’t really fully gotten that yet. But, when I do, I imagine I’ll expand into the moment, cross another bridge, and realize a new land. And then, another bridge….
Footnotes
(1) Moksha or liberation, by means of an enlightenment event which Ramana Maharshi calls Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
“Sahaja is like the river that has linked up with the ocean from which there is no return.” (Ramana Maharshi in S.S. Cohen, Guru Ramana. Memories and Notes. 6th edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1993, 90.)
“This is Self-realization, Mukti, or Sahaja Samadhi, the natural, effortless state.” (Ramana Maharshi, ibid., 82-3.)
Steve Beckow: I’m trying to understand what level of enlightenment Ascension corresponds to. And I think it’s beyond the normal seventh-chakra enlightenment. I think it is what is called — and I’ll make this clear to readers — Sahaja Samadhi. Am I correct?
Divine Mother: Yes, it is beyond what you think of with your seven chakras. … We have emerged from the Third-Dimensional realm, which is that reference point for the chakra system, into the new. So yes, you are correct, in this question and in this statement. (“The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/17/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.)
(2) Michael says that Merrell-Wolff was speaking from a much higher level than 3D when he was inside the body:
Steve: A question about Franklin Merrell-Wolff . What level of enlightenment or dimension did he achieve?
Archangel Michael: He primarily operates in the 7th to the 11th.
Steve: Okay. Because he speaks about the transcendental and I don’t know if he’s pointing to Brahmajnana [7th-Chakra enlightenment, jnana], which was the first taste of the transcendental, or beyond the 12th dimension [to the transcendental realm]?
AAM: No, he did not travel beyond [the 11th].
Steve: So, when I read him, and it’s such a rich book [Pathways through to Space], I don’t know how to map the experiences that he talks about. The high indifference, what dimension was that?
AAM: When you think of high indifference, it is not a matter of not caring but it it is a matter of the clarity of perspective and the clarity of perspective is a trait of mastery so that is the 11th dimension.
Steve: Isn’t that interesting. When did he break away from the third dimension? Which of his experiences was that?
AAM: Actually, he broke away from the restriction, shall we say it that way, of the third dimension long before he ever started to truly practice or write.
Steve: So, he was always doing it as an ascended being?
AAM: That is correct. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Jan. 18, 2020.)
(3) I’m reminded of the death of Narcissus as Da Free John describes it. At this moment, I’m not making the world over in my own image because, without experiencing desires or vasanas (what the Buddha called craving and aversion) right now, no self arises in whose image to make the world over. See “The Death of Narcissus; or, Everything I Do is Trying to Make the World Over in My Own Image,” September 18, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/09/18/the-death-of-narcissus-or-everything-i-do-is-trying-to-make-the-world-over-in-my-own-image/