Here is a summary of recent slightly obsessive ruminations (!).

Three phases: from I to no I

When there is a belief in the thought "I" and it is placed on my human self, then there is a blind caught-upness in whatever is happening. I am identified with some parts of what's happening, and try to either hold onto or push away other parts, and there is a sense of struggle and suffering. I see myself as an object in the world, at the mercy of an infinite number of other and unpredictable objects. So, naturally I am also caught up in emotions such as fear, desire, aversion, anger and so on.

When there is an an awakening to pure awareness, to the Witness, there is still a belief in the thought "I" but now placed on the seeing. There is a sense of release here. I can work on and learn how to allow anything and everything to come and go as guests, to arise, unfold and fade within space & awareness. Learning this is a process and involves some effort and attention.

When what is awakens to itself as having no "I" anywhere - when no segment of what is revealed as having no inherent "I" - there is a more complete release. There is the same content - awareness and phenomena, seeing and seen - but no "I" as either our human self or awareness or anything else. It is all just happening. And there is an immediate realization of it as emptiness, as emptiness dancing. Again, there may be the same content - pain, anger, confusion, grief and so on - but it is all revealed as emptiness dancing. There is no suffering anymore.

Dazzled and dark night

During the awakening as formless awareness, there may be a good deal of bells and whistles going off. Bliss, miracles, synchronicities, seeing and engaging with energies, experiencing all as God and Spirit, and so on. And since there is a belief in an "I" there is also an attachment to phenomena, however subtle it may seem at the time. We are dazzled by the show - by the content, and since it is subtly experienced as "other" there is also a subtle holding onto it.

Two things can happen here. Either we continue and awaken as the nondual, as no "I" anywhere. Or we continue to hold onto I and other, and as the content moves - as it always does - there is a fall from grace. It seems that one way this can be triggered is through exhaustion of the human self, from the high energies that can be experienced in this awakening.

In Ken Wilber's framework, the awakening to Witness is F9, and it can be accompanied by awakening to F7 and F8 which is nature- and deity-mysticism. At all of these levels, there is a belief in the thought "I", and a subtle sense of I and other. And this can occur even if there is a clear sense, feeling or intuition of God being completely beyond and including any and all polarities. We have an immediate and (apparently) clear realization of this, yet this whole beyond all polarities is subtly "other". "I" am here as pure awareness, experiencing Existence as beyond and including all polarities. There is a oneness of "I" and the whole of Existence, of God.

During the dark night of the soul, there is a sense of loss of connection with God and of "dryness". No content gives comfort anymore. And this is exactly what is needed for the awakening to ground, to the emptiness which content arises within and as. To the context for all content and experiences, to that which never changes and is always right here now. To what is, with no "I" inherent in any segment of it.

No I

The irony is of course that this experience of "no I" seems to be all of ours immediate experience. We just don't trust it, and add a belief to the thought "I" onto it. Somehow, it seems safer that way. We become familiar with that way of operating.

And we have trouble becoming childlike again, to drop what we have been trained to see and experience, so we can realize that there is indeed on "I" anywhere in our immediate experience.

It is what aways is. Indeed, it is that which time unfolds within and as.

Or more accurately, it is that in which the fluid seamless whole of form (time & space) unfolds within and as.

Deepening into the nondual

There may also be a deepening into the nondual (I don't know too much about this). First, it may be a nondual awakening with same content as before. Then, it may deepen to be present to itself during the sleep and waking cycles of our human self (as it seems that it can be at F7-F9 awakenings as well). Then it may expand in space for all I know.

Transcend and include

As the nondual awakening has the same content as before, only with no "I" anywhere, it is another case of transcend and include. Nothing is lost, apart from the belief in the thought "I" and the struggle and suffering that brought with it. There is an effortless inclusion of our human self and human life, in its fullness - and its continuing development and maturation.

Labels: awakening, dark night, fall from grace, process, realized selflessness