My awakening

 

A year ago, I had an experience that I have now come to understand as a spiritual awakening.  Albeit of the non-abiding kind. It didn't turn me into a wise sage, but it show me the true essence of reality in a way that is is as undeniable as sunrise or first person experience of color red. Once you've seen it, you can't un-see it.

It is notoriously difficult to put into words and I'm not very good with words to boot. But I have this feeling that I should share this and I was even asked by a few people to write about how it felt.

Another reason is that when I had this experience, it was almost traumatic and maybe there are others who felt it in the same way I did. For you I say - you are not alone.

What I experienced was no blissful meditation and beatific smiles. No absolute joy and ultimate happiness. It was death of myself and destruction of my entire world and all meaning in it. I was scared as hell and I cried and screamed... 

I have realized/experienced first hand that all is One, that One is empty, equal to zero and dreadfully alone and that all is preordained for it. The One is not an agent but just an observer moving on a trajectory. One is a process of mathematical precision and I am that One. It was a realization that I'm nothing and that I am all and at the same time there never really was any "I" to begin with - just gears in a machine spinning and grinding.

Then came a great surrender. There was no need to fight anything anymore. The battle was over. A total give up to the inevitable. There is no right or wrong or any meaning at all - just the flow of life.

That was the my awakening.

And you know, even though I kinda knew what happened, I didn't really believed it.

I'm not a kind of person you would expect to experience a spiritual awakening in a first place. Everyone I tried to talk about it kinda laughed at me and/or thought that I was crazy. So, I tried to explain it away and tried to suppress it and forget about it...

It took me a lot of time, contemplation and reading - and indeed, a courage - to admit it, to make sense of it and to face it. To accept it. Since then, it is like the shock finally healed.

The experience of awakening changed me in a deep and profound way. 

I have become way calmer and happier. Even more than I previously thought possible. I don't think that there is a way anyone can offend me anymore... but at the same time, I'm still me, with all kinds of flaws and quirks. The illusion is not all gone. It is also not gone all the time. I have just seen what is behind it. I have also realized that the loneliness of One is the reason why the veil of illusion exists in the first place. 

And - I still have a lot of work to do.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

p.s. The book The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment by Adyashanti was an incredible help in this process for me and I can't recommend it high enough.