How will you recognize the end of the search?

[dramos]

The search itself is the search of self, self identity. When this was recognized there is no search to be had. It is only the here, the moment IS.
Thanks to all of you for helping to realize this. The experience of the moment will always be that for which it IS.

[Peter]

I think one of the things that's happening with my search is ...

Well, lets liken my mind to a house and what I'm looking for as the TV remote control.

It's very difficult to find anything in an untidy house. So I'm looking at my ornaments and deciding which ones I don't like anymore. And there are clothes that I haven't worn for a while, so they can go to the charity shop. And I can put my name on that list that means you don't get sent so much junk mail, sign up for direct debits rather than having to write cheques every month. And there are magazines on every upward facing horizontal-ish surface that can go for recycling. And then there's a whole load of analogy about what I do in the house.

So I think what I'm doing is making it much easier to find the remote, but even if I don't, I can still enjoy living in a tidy house. You know, somewhere you're not embarrassed to have people come visit.

[zendancer]

Peter: Good point. You know, there are actually many different kinds of enlightenments. The "eureka" moments in scientific inquiry are analogous to existential enlightenment experiences. "Eureka" moments, however, occur inside the field of thought, whereas existential enlightenment experiences occur outside of thought. Suddenly seeing the value of having a tidy environment is another kind of enlightenment.

Then, there are financial enlightement experiences, which can be truly amazing. Ten years ago I had one of those experiences (it was literally like a light bulb flashed in my head) and it was quite astonishing. I suddenly realized why most people live paycheck to paycheck whereas other people accumulate tremendous wealth. After that insight occurred, I could look around and spot the rare people who understood the issue as well as the vast majority who did not. Personally, I never cared about money (and still don't), but at least I then understood the game, (it is very simple but counter-intuitive). One of these days it would be fun to write a book about it. Like other forms of enlightenment, it is very hard to get other people to wake up in a financial sense and see what you're talking about.

I've even had enlightenments related to ballroom dancing. For the longest time I couldn't understand how to make my body move forward while simultaneously making my center of gravity move backward, but one day something clicked and I got it. I suspect that most of us have both small and large enlightenments in many areas of life but don't identify them in that way. One of these days we'll have to start a thread here and explore that idea in more detail.

BTW, if you've never seen the movie, "The Razor's Edge," with Bill Murray, please check it out. It is the number one movie on my list of all-time great spiritual flicks. When you watch the movie, notice how the main character's clothes and apartment changes as he attains greater and greater spiritual understanding. He starts out as a disorganized slob with no understanding, but watch what happens as he goes along. A similar movie (though interesting in a different way) is "Groundhog Day." That is my second favorite spiritual movie, followed by "American Beauty," "Regarding Henry," and so forth. FWIW, I think the Bill Murray version of "Razor's Edge" is far superior to the original that starred Tyrone Power. Check it out.

[Peter]

Oct 9, 2009 9:38:34 GMT -5 zendancer said:

If you've never seen the movie, "The Razor's Edge," with Bill Murray, please check it out. It is the number one movie on my list of all-time great spiritual flicks.
...
FWIW, I think the Bill Murray version of "Razor's Edge" is far superior to the original that starred Tyrone Power. Check it out.

Great call, I love Bill Murray's work. He defines 'dry' humour for me.
£4.88 on Amazon I see. Good, I was looking for something else to put in my basket along with Shawn's book on Celibacy to qualify me for free posting, so I've got both winging their way to me now. Once the postal strike finishes, anyway.

Another film of his that I enjoyed watching with the children was City of Ember. Tim Robbins gets to say the line: "Pay attention, pay attention to everything, everything you see. Notice what no one else notice, and you'll see what no one else knows, What you get is what you get, what you do with what you get, that's more the point. "

[astenny]

On television they love to use Tarot every so often, particularly the "Death" card. But what I really love is that while that card can symbolize death is it also the understanding that when one thing ends another begins. We do not have separate journeys in our life, each one led to the other in some form or another and simply transformed itself into something new. So, to recognize the end of one path is simply to see the beginning of another.

[loverofall]

Isn't the search going in and out of ego? It seems when I ask the question to whom do these feelings or thoughts come, I feel light and free but as soon as somthing hits my stuff and I get pulled back into ego and have to use pointers again to be free of it.

It very powerful shift for me to see there is no one here but a collection of memories and thought processes. It makes my ego reactions and everyone else seem ridiculous.

Pointers like that and "This is it" "Right Here, Right Now". I have also found the Big Mind techniques to causes quick shifts in awareness. Could it be the end of the search is when we don't need to use pointers to shift out of ego anymore?

[zendancer]

loverofall: (BTW, great screen name!) When you are totally involved in a task, where is ego? Gone. When you are mentally silent, where is ego? Gone. That's why one Zen Master used to repeat the Nike commercial to his students, "Just do it!" If we become doers rather than reflectors, the structure of ego collapses. Ego becomes ingrained because we are constantly reinforcing it through reflection and our use of language. All day long we say, "I, my, me, and mine." We repetitively think "I want _______, " "I need_______," "I feel __________, "I think________, I like__________, I love___________.........it is almost endless. As we constantly replay these ideas, memories of various events with "us" at the center, and fantasies involving our wishes and desires, we solidify the sense of being a person in here responding to a world out there. We create, edit, and repeat an elaborate story of who we think we are. "I had a bad childhood," "My girlfriend didn't treat me right," "life isn't fair to me," I deserve ____________, and so on. It is all just a bad set of thinking habits, but the habits are so ingrained that we soon take the story of "me" as a separate person to be real.

After shifting our attention to what we can see and hear (or practicing any of several forms of non-conceptual awareness), we create some space between thoughts and get a clearer sense of what's really happening. In fact, during the day our attention shifts back and forth between thoughts and the direct perception of reality, but we're not usually aware of the shifts. If we become highly focused on a task, we often stop reflecting, and selfhood disappears into the action. After we finish the task, we return to our usual reflectivity, and our old sense of selfhood reappears. We think so much that we don't catch how our minds fill in the gaps and make us think that selfhood is a continuing condition.

Chilton Pierce calls this gap-filling activity "stable sameness." We have the sense that we are a continuing entity, but this is an illusion. If you want to see a graphic demonstration of stable sameness, try a little experiment. All of us have a blind spot in our eyes at the center of our retinas where the nerve bundle attaches, but stable sameness fills in the blind spot. Our blind spots are slightly off-center to the right and left of each eye. Select a corner of the room you are in. Then, close your left eye, hold out your right thumb in the center of the wall junction on the right side of your right eye and point your eye just to the left of the junction between the two walls. You may have to move your thumb around a bit to locate the blind spot, but while looking slightly to the left of the wall junction with your right eye, there is a point at which your thumb will disappear from sight. Remember, you're not looking directly at your thumb or the wall junction; you're looking slightly to the left of them. Keep your thumb in the blind spot for about thirty seconds and then take it away while continuing to hold your eye on the same spot (slightly left of the wall junction). Watch what happens. You will see the wall junction void (where your thumb was) fill in until the wall junction is seamless! It is an amazing thing to watch because you can see both the upper and lower junctions move toward each other until they form a seamless line. Your mind is filling in what your eye cannot see. This is an example of stable sameness, and the same sort of thing is happening all day long with ego, so that you don;t see the intermittent nature of it.

As we change our mental habit of incessant thought to direct sensory perception, we take away the mental re-inforcement of personal selfhood. If we do it with sufficient intensity and duration, eventually our old sense of selfhood will collapse and we will discover the truth--that who we really are is the totality of what is. The observer and the observed are a unified whole. Cheers.

[loverofall]

Thanks for that post. It really helped me to understand. My personality's flavor of ego is one of over thinking and reflecting. From past advice I have been told the same thing and this really drove it home. No doubt the path for me will involve do do do and then do again because I can so easily live in a world of thought.

[lightmystic]

Recognizing the end of the search goes like this (based off of my own experience and that of others that I know):

1. First there is the searching for something you don't have

2. Then there is the finding it, bit by bit. But things never go as expected. Good things that were never anticipated come to make their home in you, and the bad things that were supposed to go away often don't, or just subtly lessen over time.

3. Then it's recognized more and more that what is being searched for is something that is going to be found if the time is taken to let it arise. It starts to be seen as a natural spiritual process. This is usually after the initial Awakening.

4. The spiritual process is further seen to be simply the next thing coming up to be dealt with - getting it is assured ultimately, if the new challenge is dealt with honestly and openly.

5. The process becomes more and more all encompassing in terms of showing up in every aspect of life. The process is realized to be that which fulfills desires for more.

6. The process is recognized to be all there is. Any idea of search has been replaced with a recognition that it's just a desire.

7. The process is realized to be simply the process of life, and that is why it is all there is. Desires are seen to be simply the recognition of what is coming next.

So one could say the search never ends, but, rather, is seen clearly for what it is.


Disclaimer: This is just a model, but it gives the basic structure. That said, it could happen differently for different people, and these are not discrete "levels." Just one way of talking about it.

[zendancer]

LM: I think that several people on this board would have something to say about the statement, "So one could say the search never ends, but, rather, is seen clearly for what it is." Maybe it depends upon what someone is searching for, but my own search came to a total and complete end. My search was for concrete answers to concrete questions.

My search began with about ten basic questions (Is there a God? What is the meaning of life? Is there a heaven or hell? How could life have arisen in an inanimate universe? etfc.), but it soon expanded to more a hundred other questions. Seven or eight of those questions were instantly answered during my first kensho experience in 1984. Two other important questions were answered on my first three-day silent Zen retreat. During the next fifteen years every one of my remaining questions were definitively answered, but I still did not feel free, and one last new question arose that resulted from all of my unity-conscious experiences.

By 1998 I knew that whether I ever got free was not up to me. I knew that all I could do was stay focused on reality and remain mentally silent because all of the other answers I had found had appeared after periods of sustained silence. As I've mentioned before, my last question was, "How is it possible for me to stay in a unity-conscious state of mind?" The question itself reveals that my sense of selfhood was the core issue. I was still trying to attain a permanent state of unity consciousness or enlightenment for "me". "I" was trying to get this. I had had numerous unity-conscious experiences--periods of time during which "I" disappeared and there was only oneness--but I always seemed to come back to a dualistic perspective afterwards.

In August 1999 I went on a week-long hiking trip into the mountains of Colorado. As soon as I went to the airport to leave my hometown, I put away all of my usual thinking. I left my business problems and everything else behind. In the airport prior to boarding the plane I began walking from one end of the airport to the other simply watching my breathing or my feet moving across the floor or just listening to whatever I could hear. After arriving in Colorado Springs, I immediately checked into a motel, and then left to go hike on the Barr Trail that leads to Pike's Peak. While hiking I listened to the crunch of my boots on the trail; I looked at the trees, the weeds, the grass, the clouds, the sky, boulders, mosses, birds, deer, squirrels, etc. After I came back to my motel, I lay on the bed and listened to "universal sound," the seashell-like background sound that occurs when the mind is relatively silent. I listened to the sounds of a bubbling mountain stream outside the window. I listened to the sounds of a squirrel chattering in the tree outside.

The following morning I got up at about 2:30 AM and went back to the Barr Trail and hiked using a headlight until the sun came up. I climbed the trail about six miles while intensely looking and listening. Later that morning, my mind had become very quiet and it was focusing on isness without any sense that I was making it happen. The body was in a state of deep attending.

I continued doing this every day, and by the third day, weird energy stuff started happening. I no longer needed to sleep very much, and the mind stayed focused on reality by itself.

On my sixth day in Colorado I drove to Boulder to attend a Gangaji satsang. Several strange things happened there, and I got invited to talk to Ganagji on stage for quite some time. Afterwards, I met a lot of people and felt a great deal of love and comaraderie with other seekers.

The following day I climbed a trail toward the summit of Mt. Audubon, west of Longmont. After hiking about two miles, I began to feel emotional, and I walked off the trail and sat on a rock looking out at the plains on the west side of the front range. I knew that I was looking at my True Self, and I had a strange and very deep experience of gratitude. I gave thanks for my life and everything that had ever happened to me. I was thankful for the people I had met and all of the experiences I had had (both good and bad). I asked God to let me be of service. After sitting there for a while and eating a sandwich, I got up and continued hiking up the mountain. I met a lot more interesting people and felt very happy and content. At some point I decided I no longer cared about getting to the summit. I turned around and came back down the mountain. Several hours later I was astonished to realize that my long search for understanding had come to an end without my knowing it. I realized that who I had always thought I was had never existed and that there had only been oneness at all times. Oneness had imagined that it was a separate person. Oneness had become consumed with a wide range of existential questions, and oneness had gone on a long search for answers to those questions. I realized that my ordinary everyday life experiences were part of a contiuum that included all of my amazing kensho experiences--it was all part of one seamless fabric. Prior to that day I had thought that the blissful unity-conscious experiences were glimpses of an ultimate reality--the absolute--, but on that day I realized that everything, even the most mundane experiences, were all part of the same unified isness, and that I was the isness. With that realization, my spiritual search came to a complete end. I finally understood everything I wanted to understand. I knew who I was, who I am, and who I always will be. My old identity became a kind of joke. I like to think of it as one of my many disguises. Anyone who wants to know who I am only needs to look around. Everything he/she sees is me. If he/she looks in a mirror, that's me, too.

I'm relating this story because it's a fairly good story and because who I am likes stories, but I'm also relating it to let people know that the search for understanding, or God, or enlightenment, can come to a complete and final end. I/IT was very intense in the need to understand, and finding the answers to I/IT's questions had become the most important thing in life. I was willing to do whatever it took and give up anything and everything in order to understand. That kind of intensity almost always yields results (judging from many people I know who have had the same kinds of experience).

The desire to wake up or find the truth is not like any other desire. It is the only desire that has the capability of freeing us from the usual dream of personal selfhood. My advice to people is to be persistent. Stay focused on reality. Pay attention as much as possible. When going for a walk in the woods, look at things intensely. Leave thoughts behind.

Eric, Anonji, Somenothing, and others on this board have apparently had something similar happen in their lives, and they can share their stories if they want to. Cheers.

[lightmystic]

ZenDancer,

Fulfillment is a process, not a discrete "place." I didn't want to do the process, but rather wanted to skip to the end, to the understanding. When the understanding came, it was a recognition that the process was all there was. It was life. It was the same process as when I was searching, except that it was simultaneous growth and fulfillment. So it's not that it wasn't drastically different, but it was the same process, seen more clearly. That's how the search could come to an end without you realizing it. And that process, when seen clearly, IS fulfillment.

I am growing just as much as when there was searching. More even. Faster even. AND there is fulfillment. Go figure. The end is really just the beginning of a whole other world, a whole other way of functioning, a whole other way of existing.

Do you see what I'm saying?

[zendancer]

LM: Do I see what you're saying? Hmmmm, not really, but that may just be the difference in the kinds of experiences we're had and the fact that I'm primarily a thinker and you're primarily a feeler (judging from the way you write about your experiences). I was simply curious about your statement that the search never ends, but is seen and accepted for what it is. From my experiences this statement just didn't compute. When my search ended, it ended. I felt free for the first time in thirty-five years, so I don't relate to the idea of a search that doesn't end, but is somehow accepted in a way that provides fullfillment. I certainly accepted the possibility that my search might not end in this lifetime, but all that mattered to me was finding what I was looking for. I would never have felt fulfilled until that happened. Once it did happen, I was at peace. I was free. I was no longer a seeker. The search was over. Finis. Kaput. The joke had been on me, so I had a big laugh, and then went back to living an ordinary kind of life, but knowing what the ground of that life is and no longer deluded that I had ever been a separate entity. Zen distinguishes the word "kensho" as experiences of direct seeing into one's true nature, but uses the word "satori" to signify an experience wherein the illusion of selfhood is seen through completely. I had had many kensho experiences prior to 1999, but I was never satisfied until after the experience I had in 1999 that ended the search.

I have known people who got tired of searching and eventually quit. They quit reading and thinking about non-duality, and went back to living their lives in the same way they did before hearing about non-duality. They are still incessantly jerked around by their thinking, they still have a strong sense of personal selfhood, and they still don't understand what's going on, but they're no longer trying to escape that state of mind. I can understand that.

I have a harder time understanding what you wrote about. Maybe what you mean is that there is no longer any overt searching for anything, but there are progressively deeper realizations, and there is an acceptance of that process that is sufficiently satisfying. As a thinker I had concrete questions that I needed answers to. As a feeler, you may not have had issues that took such a concrete form. Out of curiosity, do you have any questions about reality that you feel remain unresolved? Are there things you want to know but don't know? If so, do any of those things bother you, or do you simply accept them as part of a continuing process of self-realization?

Oh well, it's probably just a language and/or personality thing. For all I know we may be writing about the same process from different perspectives. I have often speculated that people who relate to the world more through thoughts than feelings may create thought-structures in the brain that collapse more violently than people who don't build up such strong thought-structures. Who knows? As a scientist, it makes me wonder if we could create a survey of experiences that would show some clear differences between thinkers and feelers concerning their non-dual paths. Maybe we'll learn more about this in the future. Cheers.

BTW: Have you read the book, "Everyday Enlightenment"? It contains the stories of seven people from many different walks of life. None of them are teachers, and the cumulative effect of the book is very interesting. It captures something that underlies all of the individual stories that I haven't found in other books. It is something that is felt rather than comprehended. Maybe that means I'm becoming more of a feeler.....LOL.

[dramos]

It's is neither a thought or feeling.....It's "Knowing"

[zendancer]

LM: Okay, I just finished a long conversation with my buddy who teaches in the Adyashanti tradition. He's a big-time feeler and he said that he would describe his situation much as you describe yours. He said that his search ended two years ago, but he still feels a poignant longing for deeper and deeper realization. For him it is like endlessly falling in love with what is. I'm cool with that. Apparently, the way we thinkers and feelers describe and think about our experiences are quite different, which is pretty fascinating.

When you wrote that you were continuing to "grow," I recoiled at that statement. In my world it didn't compute. I would have said that this body/mind continues to see more and more, but I sense no personal component to that seeing. My buddy, however, totally identified with the word "grow," and said that he would describe his experiences the same way you did. I remember that many years ago he described his existential anguish as something that caused an internal "hurting," a kind of pain that he needed freedom from. Those words struck me as virtually meaningless. I would have described that stage in my search as facing an impersonal and abstract puzzle that demanded a concrete resolution.

Dramos: What I am writing about here is based upon the Meiers Briggs Personality Test. Some people relate primarily to the world through thoughts and other people relate primarily through feelings. Both thinkers and feelers "know," but their knowing occurs in different ways. Thinkers relate more through impersonal abstract ideas whereas feelers relate more through personal visceral body sensing. From what my friend tells me, a feeler almost has a set of invisible antennae delicately sensing what's going on around them. Their "knowledge" is more global, more diffuse, and more internal whereas a thinker's knowledge is more hard-edged, one-pointed, and externalized. Some people take the MB test and find out that they are equal parts thinker and feeler; other people are off the end of the spectrum in one direction or the other. When I took the test, I was 100% a thinker whereas my wife was 100% a feeler. If the Buddha had taken the test, he would have been a strong T. Jesus would have been a strong F. Both men "knew" (gnossis) the absolute, but their "knowing" apparently came through their body/minds in different ways.

[lightmystic]

Hey ZD,

Yeah, I'm not actually saying what you think I'm saying. Let me try again:

It's not that the search never ends, it's that the process of having more never ends. There is a discrete difference as far as I can tell (there was for me). And so "done" is not an inappropriate label. But then there is more. And if I look back on the process of getting clearer prior to Enlightenment, it is seen to be the same process of evolution. My relationship to it is completely different, so the experience is completely different, but it's the same thing. The looking for an "end" is the actual resisting what is. And what is is a process, not a static state. I have heard you say as much, so I know you relate to that at least.

For me, the searching process resulted in increasing clarity until the individual disappeared. And that was the end. But, since then, there have been such huge jumps and experiences that it is as if Enlightenment has been discovered all over again, multiple times over. Sometimes it's so overwhelmingly complete that there is even the question of whether I really got it before in light of this new way of existing. But it is, it's just that there is more. And that more does not, in any way, imply a lack of total fulfillment. Because that's something that cannot change even I wanted it to. The growth is exponential. Now, I realize that some people plateau out in there understanding. And I don't know if that is just the way it shakes out, or a function of the personality, or a lack of realization of how much more is really available. All of those probably, or none of them. It's all the same, as cause and effect kind of become meaningless after the shift.

So, for me, the completeness is there, but there is ever more clarity on what that completeness is. And let's be clear: it's not that the process of searching is accepted and that's supposedly it. Far from it. It's that there is the end. 100% done. And then it keeps going: 110% done, 120% done and so forth. Always more, because the infinite is infinite. Greater clarity on what is already there. Deeper experiences of it, more all encompassing (which is hard to describe, because 100% means 100% all encompassing). In the recent experiences post, each number increasing from the disappearance of the individual was every bit as altering as the initial experience. The only difference was that it was more details to the same understanding, rather than the dawning of a new one the revealed the old one to be false.

What do you think? Am I being clearer?

Oct 27, 2009 10:26:48 GMT -5 zendancer said:

LM: Do I see what you're saying? Hmmmm, not really, but that may just be the difference in the kinds of experiences we're had and the fact that I'm primarily a thinker and you're primarily a feeler (judging from the way you write about your experiences). I was simply curious about your statement that the search never ends, but is seen and accepted for what it is. From my experiences this statement just didn't compute. When my search ended, it ended. I felt free for the first time in thirty-five years, so I don't relate to the idea of a search that doesn't end, but is somehow accepted in a way that provides fullfillment. I certainly accepted the possibility that my search might not end in this lifetime, but all that mattered to me was finding what I was looking for. I would never have felt fulfilled until that happened. Once it did happen, I was at peace. I was free. I was no longer a seeker. The search was over. Finis. Kaput. The joke had been on me, so I had a big laugh, and then went back to living an ordinary kind of life, but knowing what the ground of that life is and no longer deluded that I had ever been a separate entity. Zen distinguishes the word "kensho" as experiences of direct seeing into one's true nature, but uses the word "satori" to signify an experience wherein the illusion of selfhood is seen through completely. I had had many kensho experiences prior to 1999, but I was never satisfied until after the experience I had in 1999 that ended the search.

I have known people who got tired of searching and eventually quit. They quit reading and thinking about non-duality, and went back to living their lives in the same way they did before hearing about non-duality. They are still incessantly jerked around by their thinking, they still have a strong sense of personal selfhood, and they still don't understand what's going on, but they're no longer trying to escape that state of mind. I can understand that.

I have a harder time understanding what you wrote about. Maybe what you mean is that there is no longer any overt searching for anything, but there are progressively deeper realizations, and there is an acceptance of that process that is sufficiently satisfying. As a thinker I had concrete questions that I needed answers to. As a feeler, you may not have had issues that took such a concrete form. Out of curiosity, do you have any questions about reality that you feel remain unresolved? Are there things you want to know but don't know? If so, do any of those things bother you, or do you simply accept them as part of a continuing process of self-realization?

Oh well, it's probably just a language and/or personality thing. For all I know we may be writing about the same process from different perspectives. I have often speculated that people who relate to the world more through thoughts than feelings may create thought-structures in the brain that collapse more violently than people who don't build up such strong thought-structures. Who knows? As a scientist, it makes me wonder if we could create a survey of experiences that would show some clear differences between thinkers and feelers concerning their non-dual paths. Maybe we'll learn more about this in the future. Cheers.

BTW: Have you read the book, "Everyday Enlightenment"? It contains the stories of seven people from many different walks of life. None of them are teachers, and the cumulative effect of the book is very interesting. It captures something that underlies all of the individual stories that I haven't found in other books. It is something that is felt rather than comprehended. Maybe that means I'm becoming more of a feeler.....LOL.