…the view from the dome car….

I find myself intolerant of fear-based behavior right now. I have this thought that, if I go into agreement with it and descend to that level, I’ll lose my tenuous contact with positivity.

I don’t feel sure enough of my ability to stay in this realm to be around people ruled by it.

I feel very sensitive, very open. I feel the need to rebuild my life from the ground up. My life is in the repair shop for an overhaul, starting today.

The time spent in ecstacy re-established contact with my divine authority. In ecstacy I felt complete freedom, abandon, liberation.

Interestingly at no point did I think in material terms – I’m not free of the body, for instance.  Yet I was unencumbered by bodily consciousness.

It was a totally spiritual experience. My spirit was free. Free from all concerns. Free to just be love.

I am in the space of ecstacy again just by talking about it.

Total satisfaction.  I don’t intend to stay, but I would like to spend a while here. And for that I have to turn off the phone and close down Skype for a bit. No interruptions. I need to wall myself off.

***

In this space, just as the sages say, I have no awareness of my body. (1) I can tune into it if I want, but it fades from my awareness otherwise.

The domain that builds and builds in my awareness is the domain of my consciousness – of my perceptions and conceptions, emotions and reactions. How I feel comes to assume great importance.

What Michael calls the mental and emotional bodies (we use different terminologies) are the focus of my attention as the observer. I operate more at the experiential level than I used to at this moment.

How can I describe ecstacy? First of all there are grades of ecstacy, from the feeling of total satisfaction that I feel right now to what I imagine to be a cosmic orgasm. I know there is more to ecstacy than what I’m feeling at the moment.

Apart from that, ecstacy, like all divine qualities I know of, can’t be described directly. We can only describe its effects. I feel free. I feel satisfied. I feel happy. I feel complete. I feel lifted above all common complaints.

Of course, once one is totally satisfied, there isn’t a great deal of inducement to go further. Further arises naturally but one is not overly moved to seek it out at this point.

Hindus would understand me if I were to say many people choose to stay in sattwa (purity, balance) and don’t finish the journey cause it’s just so pleasant.

Detachment, Stillpoint, Ecstacy, Normal – these are towns on the map. They’re waystations on my journey to Ascension.  I’m not sure our waystations are necessarily the same. But you can certainly watch me unfolding one waystop (“snap”) at a time.

My agreement is to go up with everyone else and write about it.  Because I’ve agreed to write about it, I think the Company of Heaven gives me things to write about. This is the view from the dome car, as we pass the mountains and valleys of spiritual evolution at a good pace.

Footnotes

(1) Sadhu Arunachala tells us that bodily consciousness /identification must altogether go for there to be liberation.

“Actually it is not Self-Realization they experience but Cosmic Consciousness where they see all as one, identify themselves with Nature and the Cosmic Heart. In Hinduism this is called Mahat. Here a trace of ego remains even during the experience and a consciousness of the body belonging to the visionary. This false sense of ‘I’ must go entirely, for it is the limitation which serves as bondage. Liberation is final freedom from this.” (Sadhu Arunachala [A.W. Chadwick], A Sadhu’s Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1961, 23.)

The absence of bodily consciousness that he speaks of is a much deeper experience than me simply forgetting about my body.

Sri Ramakrishna tells us consciousness of the body falls away at seventh-chakra enlightenment, Brahmajnana or God-Realization:

“[When the kundalini reaches the seventh plane and Shakti unites with Shiva] the individual soul and the Supreme Soul become one. The aspirant goes into samadhi. His consciousness of the body disappears. He loses the knowledge of the outer world. He does not see the manifold any more. His reasoning comes to a stop.” (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 245.)

Liberation is of course Ascension or, to use Sri Ramana’s terminology, Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, a permanent and full heart opening.