Back in my everyday consciousness, I’m attached again to this and that.
Everything is about what I want. I want peace. I want quiet. I want an absence of interruptions and distractions.
In my case, notice that what I want is a divine state – stillness, quiet, meditative solitude. It’s not a trip to Hawaii or a Lamborghini.
Nonetheless the way I’m approaching it is as if it were a commodity. I’m very 3D with it.
Meanwhile, I notice that three weeks spent in a detached state has educated me on what it takes to have a still mind.
A mind totally free – i.e., detached – from 3D distractions is a quiet mind. Later on, when we’re bathed in transformative love, love will do the work for us. Our minds will be absorbed in love and quiet as a result. No need then to do anything more.
But, with detachment, the very basis of mind chatter is removed. No wants. No I. (1) With love, we travel on smooth, black-topped roads; with detachment, we get a bigger engine.
A want by itself arises, endures for a moment, and then passes away. We’re advised to simply observe it, without engaging with it.
The ego (“I”) goes through a process with a desire. Mentally or physically, it tries it on, listens to it, tastes it, or whatever is appropriate. It decides whether it likes it. If it does, it takes it on as a desire worth fulfilling and acts to obtain the object of desire.
The moment the ego merges with a desire, the mind chatter begins. In my experience, stillness of mind becomes almost impossible after that.
Interestingly one can still see to all one’s innate needs for food, shelter, etc., without merging with a desire or even thinking about what one is doing.
Stimulus – Thought – Response becomes more like Stimulus – Response. When hungry I eat; when tired I sleep.
But, in the space that detachment opens up, other things flower to support our actions. I felt confidence, competence, balance, groundedness, self-trust, peacefulness, and a few others once my mind was quiet. That more than made up for the loss of taste, sight, and hearing pleasures and distractions.
I sound like I had to give up everything. No, I did not. I only had to give up my hankering for them.
It seems to me that who I am in that space is what I mean when I use the word “adult.” Or “mature, balanced, grounded.” Yes. A quiet mind due to detachment seems to have us (or me) show up in an adult way. (2) I can appreciate why that would be so, but I cannot understand or explain it.
***
At the same time, our future, as far as I can see, is one of trading up, trading up, trading up. We let go of one “I want” after another and trade up to an inner sense of wholeness and competence. It’s a bargain.
And I have a sense that it’s only a doorway, not a destination. Detachment seems to be a precondition, rather than an attraction unto itself. It’s what happens in the detached state that I find remarkable; chiefly the way I feel.
Here I am at my age, after talking about this since forever, (3) only now making the basic spiritual movement, turning from the world to God – detaching from the world and attaching to God.
Followers of Hinduism will know what I’m referring to, using different words: Discriminate between the Real and the unreal; detach from the unreal; and attach or devote yourself to the Real. Totally the same thing, as the Divine Mother herself corroborated:
“Let’s now look perhaps at what the Divine Mother is doing, as far as I can see. She’s sending us three waves of energy: clarity, purity, and love. Is this not accomplishing the basic spiritual movement of life? Is clarity not discrimination between the Real and the unreal? Is purity not detachment from the unreal? Is love not attachment or devotion to the Real?
“I asked her if I was offbase in this appraisal and she replied:
“’No, dear angel, you are not offbase in the slightest. … You are on track. There are many different pathways, which has been part of the richness of the discovery and the Hindu path of this understanding is very insightful and accurate.’” (4)
Here I am at my age just now appreciating what is being talked about. It is no longer just intellectual learning. It is now dawning awareness.
Detaching oneself from one’s material or worldly or sensory desires – whatever you want to call them – quieting the mind isn’t a moral question. It’s a question of spiritual physics, spiritual noise abatement.
It makes possible, I believe, what comes next.
How often have I tried to predict what comes next? But the fact is I really don’t know. I’m as expectant as you are, hearing about all the wonderful experiences that people are having. (5)
Footnotes
(1) It’s interesting to speculate whether this might be the No-Self state that Bernadette Roberts writes about and whether the No-Self state is the ascended state. The state of Self-Realization she describes is Brahmajnana, seventh-chakra enlightenment and still within the 3D chakra system. Sahaja, Vijnana, or Ascension is next. It alone is mukti or liberation from the 3D wheel of birth and death. The No-Self is next in her view after Brahmajnana. That sounds like Ascension to me:
“I came upon a permanent state in which there was no self, not even a higher self, a true self, or anything that could be called a self. Clearly, I had fallen outside my own, as well as the traditional, frame of reference when I came upon a path that seemed to begin where the writers on the contemplative life had left off.” (Bernadette Roberts, The Experience of No-Self. A Contemplative Journey. Boston and London: Shamballa, 1985, 10.)
“Unfortunately what most Buddhist authors define as the no-self experience is actually the no-ego experience [Steve: Brahmajnana]. The cessation of clinging, desire, the passions, etc., and the ensuing state of imperturbable peace and joy articulates the egoless state of oneness; it does not, however, articulate the no-self experience or the dimension beyond [Ascension?].” (Bernadette Roberts, “The Path to No-Self” in Stephan Bodian, ed. Timeless Visions, Healing Voices. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1991, 136-7.) (Hereafter PNS2.)
“Four years later, however, I came across two lines attributed to Buddha describing his enlightenment experience. Referring to self as a house, he said, ‘All the rafters are broken now, the ridgepole is destroyed.’ And there it was — the disappearance of the center, the ridgepole; without it, there can be no house, no self. When I read these lines, it was as if an arrow launched at the beginning of time had suddenly hit a bull’s-eye. It was a remarkable find.
“These lines are not a piece of philosophy, but an experiential account, and without the experiential account we really have nothing to go on. In the same verse he says, ‘Again a house thou shalt not build,’ clearly distinguishing this experience from the falling away of the ego-center, after which a new, transformed self is built around a ‘true center,” a sturdy, balanced ridgepole.’ (Bernadette Roberts, PNS2, 137.)
That which does not build a new house, that which is a pillar in the temple and goes no more out is the ascended individual. I think Bernadette Roberts just described the ascended state.
(2) I’m even tempted to say “spiritually normal,” but the latter word has become politicized.
(3) “The Basic Spiritual Movement,” Last revised June 12, 2009, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spirituality/back-to-the-basics-2/the-basic-spiritual-movement/.
(4) “Clarity, Purity, and Love: The Basic Spiritual Movement Restated,”
(5) I especially liked Judith Kusel’s account, “Judith Kusel: The 7 Gateways Leading to the Golden Gate,” and her “Judith Kusel: Heart Opening,”