Most of the time, I write about ideas (or rather transcending ideas). Today I thought I would just talk about my experience from a subjective standpoint about what happened to me a couple of years ago.
For those that don't know, it was like some sort of awakening experience, a really profound shift in consciousness - which I didn't know was even possible until then. Totally unexpected.
A few years prior to this experience, I had sort of been, practicing different philosophies, testing them out, just sniffing around. Even though they had allowed me to see the world in very different and wonderful ways, and had allowed me to be open to possibilities I didn't really previously accepted, there was nothing that utterly shattered me.
Until one day. The experience was more-or-less unprovoked. It was triggered by the words "you're living in the experience of thought". Very simply. Those words would have been fairly meaningless to me, at most mildly thought-provoking, but for some reason, they were kind of like a needle to a balloon. Suddenly my whole reality collapsed.
When it happened, it was much like waking up from a dream. I had been dreaming for years and hadn't realized it. In the instant, literally that moment, I knew my life would never be the same.
In the evaporation of the dream, I touched a space, a state of mind, in me that I had forgotten for what seemed like lifetimes. A solid ground, a foundation, something so solid, more solid than the crust of the Earth. Something timeless.
I immediately knew this space was literally what I had been looking for my whole life, through all sorts of other means in so many different avenues that have proved unfulfilling and led ultimately to disappointment.
I never truly realized that this foundation had been 'here' the whole time. I didn't even know it existed.
The closest way I can describe it is the camping feeling. Whenever I used to go camping, there would be these mornings. I would just wake up to the sound of waves or birds, and it would be the most graceful wake-up ever. There was a sense of profound peace. Tranquility. But not a boring tranquility, a sort of perfect serenity and joy. A moment of perfection. As if I literally took a break from life for a moment and found some silence.
Before this experience, that camping feeling seemed to be quite rare. As if it was reserved for the lucky few that had persevered through the mountains and managed to cross the piranha invested rivers. Those who accomplished that that could (sometimes, with luck) kick their feet up and rest in paradise. But for the rest of us, life was more like a tiresome endeavor with only occasional glimpses of the magnificence, peace, and beauty life has to offer here and there. And when we do find something amazing, we have to 'hold on' to it - so there is always that fear of losing it.
I just remember laughing and laughing, at the whole notion that I could ever think I could be apart from this space, or state of mind - impossible to put into words... energy perhaps... dimension of existence. I remember trying to go about my daily life but just occasionally bursting out in laughter.
I could barely sleep for three nights because my mind was like a waterfall of insights. It was as though a dam had broken and suddenly there was a steady stream of beauty. It just didn't stop.
After a couple weeks, after the kind of a 'honeymoon' phase, the profound epicness of it, the buzzing excitement, sort of fizzled out. But the underlying experience of this solidity, this groundedness, stayed. It became my new home. The new indescribable state of mind from which this expression of life was operating from. Peace was no longer something that happened after a long day of hard work for about 10 minutes of stress and fatigue, but now the default, the very substance of being alive.
The impact had been profoundly transformational. I never would have imagined a human being could undergo such a profound psychological transformation in one instant. It seemed unreal, but I could not deny my own experience. And for the first time in my life, I felt truly at home. At I knew it was a home I couldn't actually fundamentally ever lose.
One hugely important part of all this was a realization of how easy and simple this is. It's something I realized all human beings have access to. We are as entitled to it as we are the air that we breathe. I don't think I was 'chosen' or 'blessed'. I also know I didn't experience it because I worked hard for it and therefore deserved it. I was simply curious, in a state of profound listening (truly listening, not just intellectually listening), and open-minded.