Dryness & Liberation From Content

Awakening through F9

During an initial awakening, if it goes to levels F7-F9 in Ken Wilber's terminology, there is a subtle sense of "I" and thus inevitably an attachment to content.

And this is not so surprising. There is often an amazing content at these levels, an immediate experience of God as everything, immense energies, clarity, amazing insights, maybe unusual abilities (seeing energy, healing) and so on. Compared to the narrow confines of previously being seeing oneself as exclusively this human self, this is pretty good.

So there is a subtle sense of "I" here, as the witness - as the Eye of Spirit, and with it a subtle arrogance, a subtle sense of achievement, and a subtle attachment to content. Even if this is seen, as it was in my case, it is maybe not taken quite seriously enough.

Yes, there is a subtle "I" here, there is obviously a ground beyond this which goes beyond and includes the seer and seen, but that is not so important. Why move on when this is so great and apparently so permanent?

There is no way this can go away.

Famous last words...

Dryness

So here, we have an opportunity to let go of it all and push on - into the completely nondual, the ground beyond and including seer and seen. But the motivation may not be completely there.

Or, we may get pushed into the dark night of the soul, where it all is - apparently - lost. What seemed like it could never go away, because it was so obviously eternal, now does indeed go away. Anything we found comfort in is gone, and much of what we don't want much do to with comes up.

It is an inverse of the previous situation.

High energies yields to exhaustion. Control to being at the mercy of circumstances. Insights to dullness. Blissfulness to despair. Compassion to crankiness. Discipline to wavering. God yields to the purely and utterly human.

And in this, there is a sense of dryness, as many of the Christian mystics called it. Even if that which used to give us comfort is still there, there is no excitement or comfort in it.

For me, I still (literally, physically) saw everything as energy and as Spirit, as God, even in the middle of this dark night. But it gave me no comfort whatsoever.

Even right now, I find no comfort in (literally) seeing everything as God, in synchronicities (which abound), hear about or remembering stories of amazing spiritual experiences and so on. There is nothing there for me. Only dryness.

The blessing of dryness

There is a great blessing in this dryness, because it helps us detach from content and move on, seek what is beyond it. It helps us move beyond to the ground from, within and as the content arises.

It helps us find ourselves as this ground, independent of the particulars of the content, and with no "I" anywhere - not even subtly. This is the ground which includes seer and seen - from, within and as which the seer and seen arises.