Self-Realization – Beyond Concepts, Beliefs, Attitudes & Attacks
I got on the spiritual path at age 19. The experience that precipitated my interest in spiritual development, self-realization, God-realization, enlightenment and such was, at that time, just mind boggling. Today, I realize that the experience involved a descent of essence into my consciousness and body, and an awakening of the point.
Like many, I have spent years seeking, searching, making half-assed attempts at meditation (daily practice), attending workshops, retreats and in the course of events spending more than tens of thousands of dollars. In the process of all of that, I matured (to some degree!) physically, emotionally and spiritually. My journey or process deepened. My orientation reoriented. My interests and curiosity started going places I could not have imagined.
Today, I find myself here – not going anywhere, no interest in changing or making something happen. It seems things change on their own and that there is an intelligence guiding it all that is more in touch with what I need to unwind than my mind on it’s best day could offer up. A real weight-lifting experience – so to speak.
I recently attended Byron Brown’s Soul without Shame workshop, a 3 1/2 day teaching on disengaging from the superego / inner critic. The superego / inner critic is one of the places of arrested development in our psyches and souls that constantly attacks and undermines our realization. Interestingly, in the beginning it actually serves us to move toward deeper realization, but then it really gets in the way. Doubt is one of it’s most effective tools. It also works through other people by producing attacks from the outside.
So there I was minding my own business two days after the workshop reading a magazine when I came upon this:
The harder you hit this material, the more powerful it becomes. F. Daniel Tsai, Novana
And that is where and how the words bulletproof and realization crossed paths in my brain and got me to thinking and contemplating bulletproof realization. I haven’t the time, nor inclination to share the breadth and depth of my contemplation, but I will say this – if we want to bulletproof our realization – live our realization, without goals & artifice, penness, curiosity and not-knowing are better supports and servants for orienting us.
Realization is practice. Practice is realization.
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Comments
5 responses to “Bulletproof Realization”
Our true nature must resist
the superego,
almost successfully,
almost to the end,
of diamonds.
Alas, the superego, too, is True Nature
Reminds me of a Wallace Stevens poem,
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
Hi John,
just pondering, after reading your post…what if we invite the inner critic to have tea, so to speak… ? ; )
Great blog!
Jose – what do you think would be accomplished by inviting the superego to tea? The Superego / Inner Critic has been with us 24/7 since about 5 years old – even at every tea party we’ve attended. What would be radically different is to have a tea party without it in attendance – now that would be a breakthrough!