Today is my birthday, so it makes sense to post about the “me” that was supposedly born 61 years ago.
Here’s more from the Tapestry of Being about how I got here.
How It Began for Me
When I was quite young, I experienced something that I could not share with anyone else. The experience repeated itself, and each time I did not speak of it to anyone.
I would be listening to another child describing something, telling me about their favorite toy or a game or some event; and as they were speaking, their words no longer had any meaning, and I became entranced. I became unable to follow their words. I’d found myself in a very, very, peaceful state, calm and filled with wellbeing.
As I slipped into this state, there was a relaxed listening, a delight in the sound of their voice, and then no recognition of the meaning of what they were saying. The room became filled with and transformed in, white light. The people and objects became covered in the shine of the light, and then everything was outshone and dissolved in its brilliance.
At this point there was a kind of gap, there was something that I can’t speak about because I, as the speaker, wasn’t there, but there was somehow a knowing of the “Nothingness.”
There was no thinker. There was nothing I can describe except to say that there was only a total absence. I wasn’t aware of it while it was happening. Just before it, I was conscious of the light. I was mindful of everything dissolving, but then there was no awareness of anything at all.
On coming out of this state, I did not return to the natural world. Instead, I found myself in a vast expansive cloud of conscious feeling, a realm of profound harmony. I was aware of being a part of an immeasurable unified field of energies. Although I experienced nothing but an ocean of bliss, I somehow knew that everyone and everything—every single person, every single thing—was that endless realm of expansive feeling. We were all a field of love. And in that field, there was absolutely nothing but a sense of completeness and at-home-ness and certainty that “all is right.” There was not even a smidgen of anything “off” in it.
This dimension was beyond anything separate or troublesome. There, everything was complete perfection and satisfaction. It felt more real than the realm of everyday living.
When I became aware of returning to the normal state of life, it was self-evident that this field of love is what we always are, despite our appearance in the ordinary world. I remember thinking—just as I was again aware of the world of separateness—“Oh, mommy’s wrong,” because I knew that everything was actually love.
My mother, despite her caring and lovingness, would (without realizing it) sometimes transmit a message of anxiety about life, but I knew then that there was no reason to be afraid. I intuited much in those moments. I remember very clearly having a sense of knowing that this Completeness is who we really are and that this place is most likely where we go when we die. Perhaps we don’t stay there permanently, but it is a place where we go to rest, and that is our real home. Being very young, I didn’t have many words, but I sensed that I could not share this knowledge, and didn’t even try. This experience repeated itself later, and each time—when I came back to normal reality—I would recall the other times and put the experience away. It was not something I could talk about, and it didn’t fit in with anything that was taught by my parents.
So I filed away this experience. Later on, I realized it was subtly driving me beneath the appearance of things all the time. I always knew there was more than what was shown, but I couldn’t understand how to get to it.
When I began reading spiritual literature in my young adulthood, I recognized that in India these experiences would be classified as yogic states of Samadhi (or absorption). But at the time, as a child, I had no words for it, and it was outside of the shared reality for somebody growing up in a New York housing project.
When I was in elementary school, I would think about it every once in a while, asking myself, “What was that?” I felt that I knew a secret; because nobody was talking about this, and there was no way I could explain it to my parents.
At some level, this experience was continually working on me, and nothing that was on offer in the world that I saw was satisfying. I longed for more meaning than what I saw around me, and this led to many years of spiritual exploration using whatever means were available.
Spurred on by a desire to get to the heart of things, I immersed myself in various spiritual paths, benefiting much from each one—even if I also found limits in them as well.
Where I Went with It
As a boy of 14, I looked for what was on hand to quench my spiritual thirst in the 1970’s New Jersey neighborhood into which we had moved. So, I gave myself to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and a strict form of evangelical Christianity despite my parents being nominal, lapsed Catholics.
Later on, in my late teens, I became involved in eclectic eastern new age spirituality and experimental lifestyles. By my mid 20’s, I was meditating daily and working with a powerful teacher who was trained in psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation. I later became attracted to traditional forms of Buddhism, mainly Tibetan practices.
In 1992, almost by accident, I came across the teacher HWL Poonja, who was one of the last living disciples of the great Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi. My times spent with Poonjaji were the most powerful and clarifying encounters I ever had. He was at once an intensely devout man in the Hindu Bhakti Devotional tradition as well as being a staunch proponent of non-dual Advaita Teachings. My experience of myself and the nature of reality was changed forever in the presence of Poonja. With him, there was an awakening recognition of Consciousness as being what I always already am.
After Poonja’s passing, I found myself a attracted to a community of spiritual teachers who were actively bringing non-dual teachings into a more relational, embodied, emotional and practical sphere. In association with what later became the Trillium Awakening community, I found myself developing in ways that I did not expect, with my identity as an all-pervading energetic presence awakened into a transformed life. I then became a teacher and spiritual counselor as part of an alliance of like-minded teachers, assisting people in awakened living.
(From “The Tapestry of Being” Introduction)