I just peddled my bike ten miles to get here as its the closest internet connection to the village im living in. There are so many things i want to write about, i have so much content i want to remember to write about but then when i get here my mind goes blank!!! but i will try just the same... lets open up a flow of conciousness...
The power of what i am experiencing simply cannot be put into words, but i feel like i want to shout this from the top of a mountain as loud as i can for everyone to hear and maybe that will plant some kind of seed in them so that we can all come to flower together!!
Part of the challenge in writing about an experience like this are the words. The real power and incredible magnitude of this whole experience is just so great, too great, to be bottled up and packaged into these limiting, narrow words. Words are such a limited medium to try and convey the boundless vastness of truth, experience, knowledge. Part of that comes because when i say a word, like the word "god" or the word "divine" or "knowledge" or "fiction"; when your mind recieves it, it is not a free word or concept full of possibilites and beauty, it is already bogged down and burdened by loads of meanings and thoughts and feelings that you have already applied to the word. When i say the word "knowledge" i believe it is not the same concept or feeling that you recieve, because that word to you is loaded, it carries with it all the meanings and experiences that YOU have had and that have formed YOUR concept of knowledge.When i say knowledge, i mean that which, once learned, cannot be unlearned. It cannot ever be "forgotten" because it becomes part of your being, it becomes such an inseperable part of you that once you understand and truly KNOW something; it changes your being, the very quality of your being changes, it expands, it releases, it lets go of the previous concepts of "knowledge" and it moves into a new plane of understanding, and that cannot be unlearned. If it is possible to "unlearn" something or to "forget" something, then it was never knowledge in the first place, it was simply memory. It was memory, concepts that are devoid of the experiencial aspect and as such do not become part of your being; maybe they become part of your brain or your set of facts that you can regurgitate at will, everything you were taught in college for example, but they do not become knowledge; they remain concepts in the mind. True knowledge is beyond, the very nature of it is transendental. The knowledge i am talking about is beyond all, beyond any form, any thought, concepts or words in the mind, even beyond any feelings or intuitions from the heart.... it comes from beyond mind and even heart, from beyond all forms whatsoever... it is from the eternal, the source, beyond the realm of form, the formless.... Hence the insistance of all the great spiritual teachers, Buddha, Jesus the son of Mary, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Mohammed, Osho, Ekhart Tolle and many more... the very essence of their messege is this .... "know thyself"...... because once you truly, honestly KNOW thyself... you become a Buddha, you become a Jesus, you become an expression of absolute divinity yourself!!! and once that light illuminates the darkness, there is never again darkness; only light.... light that shines like the sun... when it shines it shines for all!!! but that level of knowledge is very difficult to achieve, because it requires an incredible amount of alert awareness, of presence, of mindfullness, silence. (not for one second am i saying that I have attained this level of self knowledge, but i have tasted small bits of it at certain points in my lifetime, and this taste has been the biggest and strongest in flaovr... remember.. this is just my own experience of observing how the mind works in myself, and i can only speak for that) Most of us go our entire lives without a single moment of true silence, so true knowledge is not possible, because real knowledge comes from silence, the inner silence that exists within each one of us. We devise ways to constantly remain engaged outside, to remain engaged with the world of form, of material objects and the aquisition of them, of thought forms and the use and contemplation of them, of feelings and intuitions... all are of the world of form. Not for one second do we stop and actually look at ourselves, i mean truly look, look within. When all activity stops, all thoughts, all feelings and emotions, all effort is gone, when that happens, the mind becomes very still and calm. It becomes calm like a lake in the early morning hours, still, silent, not a single wave or ripple anywhere, like a perfect sheet of glass, a mirror able to reflect the environment perfectly as it is, undistorted... and when that kind of stillness happens, and ONLY when that happens, the mind becomes like that lake that is still, it is able to reflect perfectly in absolute truth its surroundings. And when that reflection is not only seen but experienced, it becomes knowledge, pure and true, undefiled.....
I know it seems like i might be rambling a bit here but stick with me, i am speaking of powerful revelations in my life that i am currently experiencing, so i wish to tell those that matter to me. I am saying this because here, in this village, with this Shaman, studying in depth the Qur'an and its REAL meaning, praying and meditating five times a day with them, i have, for the first time in this life, experienced myself. I am not saying in any way that i have become a realized man or anything even of that nature, for what Ive experienced is but a small taste, just the very first bit, a tiny bite of the appetizer, just a single glimps, a flash of truth. But that taste is enough, it is enough to let me know that it is real, and there is so much more to be experienced. My friends i am speaking from a state of mind unlike any other before in my life. The truth i tasted was the most powerful thing i could ever concieve of, the glimps into the true nature of myself has shaken my being down to the very core; the absolute foundations of who and what i think or thought i am is crumbling.
Have you ever been in a situation where you have nothing to do? I dont just mean for a couple hours or a day or two, i mean you are looking at the next three months of zero responsibilities, nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing to accomplish, nothing. You just happen to be in the Sahara desert on a bicycle as well. Sounds great right??? well it is great, for a few days or even a week, but then things change a bit. Most people, if left without anything to do, will go insane! People(when i say "people" i am including myself in that!) have become so conditioned to the forms of this world that they have completely, absolutely forgotten about the other world, the inverse of this world, the formless source from which all forms manifest, one can call it the Kingdom of God, Nirvana, Heaven, Allah, Tao, whatsoever you call it makes no difference. You cannot have one without the other, this world of form, thoughts, feelings, emotions, material objects, everything that any of our sense facilties pick up, all of it is in the realm of the formed, well there is also the realm of the formless, it must be so. In this world of time, the other is timeless, eternal.... in this world of life and death, there is the deathless, the eternal... in this world of dualities, good and bad, pretty and ugly, love and hate, the other world is the one of unity, oneness; wholeness, one love....in this world of conditioning the other is of the un-conditioned, pure, innocent...in this world of finite, measurable absolutes, the other is of the infinite, that which is without measure, the vastness, the abyss... Most of us go our entire lives completely engaged in this world and its many forms. We go on thinking and doing, feeling, acting, contemplating, struggleing, everything that belongs to this world of form. It seems that we have totally forgotten about the other world, the one of the deathless, formless, infinite eternal, the source from which concsiouness arises. Here in this world, the ego exists with its many dualities, but in the formless realm there is no ego, it cannot exist there, the concept of "i" and "me" are also of this form world. And that is the exact reason that most of us go our whole lives, not just this life but countless millions of lives we have travelled through, all the while attatching ourselves to these forms and their inertia and never once looking at the other world, the world within. We remain occupied with the world outside, the world of time, because there the ego can exist, it can go on thinking and feeling, planning, worrying, recalling past moments, fantasizing about moments yet to manifest, past and future. But when you turn your energy inside, close your eyes of this world and open your eye of the other world, of the timeless, the now... then you can begin to see the other world. But it is very difficult to open your inner eyes and focus them because the ego knows well that it is not real and it can only exist in time, the world of form. So it fights and struggles to remain engaged with this world, always moving, "doing", thinking, planning, worrying, feeling, always looking to keep your eyes fixed on this world because it only exists there. To do that it remains engaged with "doing", if its occupied then the attention will never come to the inside, back to the source, the formless eternal. I am saying this because perhaps i have just tasted the timeless for the first time, and in a single instant it was revealed to me that everything i think i am, all the memories, the hopes, the dreams, the accomplishments, everything.... has been one huge illusion, a fiction... a lie. This is very difficult to explain and even as i try to i am questioning why i am doing this??... it is so easy to misunderstand.. I came to understand that everything i think i "know", all that i take myself to be; an able bodied man with strong quick witts, a seasoned traveller, a brother, a son, a friend, an enemy, nate muri... all of it is of the world of form and as such is only temporary, because anything that "becomes" or "inigrates" must eventually "un-become" or "dis-intigrate"... All that i have ever felt or thought or experienced, certainly any material possesion ive ever thought i owned... is of this world of temporary form and as such, will all be taken away... when death comes, and it will, it will snatch everything from me... everything i thought was "mine" or "real" is only of this conditioned world of form and therefor temporary. For years i have had a certain level of understanding with this, but i now see even that understanding was narrow and limited, i was thinking it applied more to actual material objects, i see now that it applies to all objects, without discrimination, and that even "my" thoughts and experiences are objects as well... trinkets.... Even in the past when i thought i was "awakening", i wasnt, i was only "doing"... fooling myself... Ive gone to a number of meditation retreats, yoga ashrams, and many of the like... but now i see that even then, even when i thought i was meditating before, praying, whatever you want to call it, it was still a "doing", it was still an "object", a way for my ego to remain engaged in this world. I have taken three serious meditation retreats in my life, and durring them we meditate for more than ten hours a day for ten days strait... I would have so much desire to meditate correctly, so much focus and effort, trying hard to tame the mind and become a more "realized" individual... putting forth effort and desiring results. But i am coming to know that meditation is unlike anything else in this world, because the more you "try" and the more "effort" you give it, the farther you move from the center!!... here I have been thinking i was meditating and "praying" when in reality i was creating another "thing"... turning meditation and sprituality into some kind of a goal, just another "doing", yet another way for my mind to remain engaged in the world of form and keep from facing itself... Because my ego is very strong and it knows well that once the timeless is realized, the ego dies, it drops because it cannot exist without time and form... and it knows that well....
Man, theres just so much right now, so much of my own falsities that i can see through now, all of this i came to know within a single moment... there was no "process" or "path" i was on... just existing for days and days with absolutely NOTHING to do and NOWHERE to go, the occupation with the outside had to stop. I had no book to read besides the Qur'an, no electricity so no music or light after dark, no running water so no showers or laundry, nobody speaks a single word of english so i cannot have a conversation where i am actually understood. i think that is incredibly powerful, to be surrounded by a village of people that have come to know and love me yet we cannot share our deeper thoughts and feelings, so i am feeling a bit alienated here...Muslims do not drink so there is NO alcohol, not even a glass of wine in the evening, zero... On top of all of this, a few things cost a bit more than i expected them to so i am almost completely broke, i cant really go anywhere or do anything even if i wanted to!! So here i am with a very unique opportunity in my life, a simple fishing village in Morocco filled with simple, kind and beautiful people. A fantastic mud hut with a mud floor that i am allowed to stay in "forever and ever" if i so desire! Nowhere to go and nothing to do, nobody to have in depth conversations with in my mother tongue, nobody to understand what sort of culture shock i might be going through because every single person here is from this culture....There came a point when i was going to leave because i thought my time here had run its course, I was getting very bored and anxious, and that is when the Shaman came to me and told me "o young one, you have so much left to learn, do not run anymore, come, sit, its time to pray"
When i say that the Shaman "told" me things, I am talking of a small group of select individuals here in the village that are simply on a different plane of existance than anyone else i have ever known...i mean that we spent hours upon hours with eachother in communion, sharing time and space in a dimension i have never known, because we cannot speak to eachother, so we must communicate through other means... Lots of story telling with the hands, using the whole body to tell a story without any words, just lots of sounds... a single look in the eyes and a thousand words become useless...communication WAY beyond language.... So when i say that he told me something, i mean that we spent hours pounding out the meaning of what they are trying to convey to me, and i will try to bottle it up and put it into words here...
Shaman; come, its time to pray, you have been postponing for many lifetimes...
Me; i see you.... show me the way...
Shaman; close the eyes of this world my friend, and open the eye of the other world, see the source...
Me; it is difficult for i am blind
Shaman; Just as when you enter a dark room after coming from the sunlight outside, you cannot see immediately, the eyes need time to adjust, it is the same with the inner eyes... you have never used them before, open them and soon you will come to see...
Me; I trust ...
And like this, in small, meaningful fragments, I have been learning to see... to see the inner world, to see and come to know the vastness and the uncomparable beauty and bliss of the formless eternal, the Kingdom of Heaven... Not for a moment am i claiming to be enlightened or realized in any kind of way, nor am i saying that my whole existance on the oustide is going to change, nor am i saying that i have attained anything at all... the only thing im doing is writing down exactly what i experienced, unbiased and raw... what i just wrote was a flow of my conciousness, it was all done in one clean go and i have not even re-read over this nor am i going to, this is my personal, first hand experience and i feel like i want to share this knowledge with anyone who wants to read it because any one of us can know this and so,SO much more.. each one of us can become perfectly enlightened, we can become a Buddha, a Jesus, they were men as we are men and therefor if they attained the Kingdom of Heaven than so can any one of us.... I have a long, long way to go but in this experience i believe there has been a transformation in my understanding of existance and what it means to be alive, what it means to love, what it means to have inate divinity within... what it means to understand that within each of us is that which is beyond all forms; it is not subject to life and death, love or hate, good or bad, any limitation of time at all... It is eternal, formless, undying, unchanging, unwavering... it is the one eternal life from which all life flows and it is inside of each and every one of us!!! together!!! oneness!!! it is the Kingdom of Heaven!!!!!!!