Awakening Oneness II

What happens with flow-states? It seems like researchers are better able to answer that question from a neurological perspective, so I'll leave that to those more capable. One thing that obviously happens is that the sense of self-identity either opens, disappears for a time, or is blown away. Different feeling-qualities occur depending on what sort of state one is in just previous to flow and what sort of psychological trajectory one is on. In other words, it can make a difference whether one has been working on a koan or problem (even problems or challenges like trying to dunk left-handed) with determination or if one is simply releasing one's focus into an easy sense of fluidity. While both approaches may achieve flow states, the results may be different. Whether there is a difference between flow states and samadhi may be an important topic; whether there is a difference between satori and nirvana may be another important topic. But something becomes very clear even to those of us who don't pretend to be experts in all this.

When one realizes that it is possible to set the context in order to "cause" flow states to occur more than randomly in one's life, the feeling and definition of self and human life change. It becomes increasingly impossible to think of oneself as conventionally limited and increasingly impossible to work with a mundane or less-than-extraordinary definition of human potential. In fact, the words human and potential end up almost seeming like synonyms. One shifts one's conceptions away from human history to define us and towards potential along with the feeling-qualities of awareness. We get a taste of what it is like to be buddha--awake. Moving beyond conventional conceptions of self tends to be inspirational and sometimes terrifying. Folks tend to feel somewhat confused as well as grandiose, like there is no ceiling or limit. Sometimes the feeling is quieter, though, as if one's problems melt away in the light of awareness like morning sun burns off an early fog.

Hakuin, a 17th century Zen reformist, particularly worried that his students would be satisfied with just a taste. Jesus warned his disciples about arguing over who amongst them was highest (because they all had farther to go). This sort of grandiosity, inflated contentiousness, and also feeling that a taste alone is enough is also commented on in the book of James (my favorite among them). This is where it can be incredibly important to be in contact with a realized teacher, a tradition, and a community. At this point in one's experience, it is perhaps more likely that getting only a taste will have the negative effect of satisfying or inflating one's ego.

The benefit of a teacher, tradition, and healthy community cannot be emphasized enough, so I will not try. As a psychologist, another aspect stands out for me. Self-identity is forced to change. While in many circumstances, we can identify ourselves fairly easily as a combination of our temperament and the social roles we play, a taste of spiritual awakening and alertness forces a shift in how we understand ourselves. The roles we can define no longer seem all that important, and in most cases, our own impulses and temperament (what many would call "personality") also no longer seem to define us. Not only have we desired for something more, but we have felt it, tasted it, touched it firsthand.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe this difference in self-identity is to say that no container ever seems to truly fit again. Rather than being the shape of the lamp, we are the light within. So along with Ramana, we can say and know true that: I have a body but I am not this body, I have emotions but I am not emotions, thoughts, perceptions, sensations, history, etc. And we most often feel compelled to ask: then, who am I? We step from a place where we want and need to define ourselves as something concrete to a place where we need to include openness, fluidity, freedom. There is the feeling that these things need to be included because we have direct experience of their validity, their reality. Whereas we used to be able to avoid these aspects of ourselves, this is no longer the case. We are awakening and we are the awakening.

Enlightening is a verb and a self-sense as well. I am enlightening and it doesn't matter (in a pinpoint way) to say whether or not I am "enlightened". The solidity of that sort of comment is not so much right or wrong as inapplicable at this time. From one perspective it is right enough, and from other perspectives it is wrong enough, but while I have perspectives, I am not perspectives. We seem to take a step away from overly rigid thought-structures, but we still look to interpret our experience here in communicable thought-structures. Really, the desire to communicate goes two ways: we want to keep this inspiring experience pristine (so we don't want to share it in contexts where it will be demeaned), and we want to give what we can of this feeling of abundance and brightness to anyone who will share it.

In comparison to our conventional selves (the way we used to be), then, we are enlightened; it feels like being born anew. In comparison to complete realization, though, we are journeying. Before this sort of opening, it's like we haven't begun the spiritual journey. After this opening, we aren't at an end. This opening is only the beginning. From this point on, it becomes nearly impossible to put aside the desire for continued, and shared, inspiration.