There were all sorts of things coming up last night (worries about the future and so on, along with a belief in an "I" to worry about it), so I listened to radio for a while, first BBC and then New Dimensions.

Celestine Prophecy

They interviewed James and Sallie Redfield about the movie based on the Celestine Prophecy.

I found it somewhat interesting for a while, then noticed some reactions come up. James peppered most sentence with "magic" and "special", used very broad strokes in talking about what he talked about, and went pretty far into new agey philosophy and terminology.

Content and fall

He is a good example of someone being mesmerized by the apparently "spiritual" content on the path, which happens to most (all?) of us at some point. But he did not seem to have the realization that this is all still content. It is all process, impermanent. It comes and goes, and attaching to it is a surefire recipe for suffering. It leads to high highs and equally low lows. It leads to the dark night of the soul.

It did so even in my case, although I knew - both from immediate realization and what Buddhism and other traditions told me, that content is impermanence, and that what we are looking for is that which does not change, that which content arises from and as, emptiness dancing.

When there is a belief in the thought "I" there is also attachment to content, however subtle and "spiritual" both may seem. We try to create and hold onto some content, and dissolve and get rid of other content. There is an "I" in struggle with "the world".

The ground

When the belief in the thought "I" falls away, any content is free to come and go on its own - as it does naturally anyway. There is no longer any "I" that can be in struggle with any "world". There is just what is, as it is. It is just emptiness dancing, manifesting in all the many ways it does. There is just God's will.

Nothing is lost, apart from the belief in the thought "I" and what that brings with it, in particular a sense of struggle and suffering. There is no longer being caught up in attractions and aversions to content. There is just the free play of what is. And this freedom and disengagement allows for full engagement and aliveness.

A spoonful of sugar

The other side of all this is of course the spoonful of sugar which helps the medicine go down. This sugar usually happens during the early and mid-range path, up until the dark night (withdrawal from the sugar) and nondual awakening.

This sugar comes in many forms. It can be clarity, insights, increased functional capacity and so on. It can be bliss. Or it can be "magic" in the form of special abilities - seeing/engaging with energy, clairvoyance - synchronicities and so on.

Synchronicity

As I wrote of this sweetened part of the path, including synchronicities, there was a synchronicity. I listened to Aerial by Kate Bush, and as I wrote "It can be..." she sang...

Could be honeycomb
In a sea of honey
A sky of honey

Yes, Kate, it can be honeycomb... It can be a sea and sky of honey.

That is the bliss that often comes with the awakenings, the bliss from the release of contractions.

Labels: awakening