It was a year ago that I had that “glimpse” that I posted about as “the suck.” I remember it as one of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life—up there with my “born again” experience in my youth, and a powerful experience of Christ that I had six-and-a-half years ago.
Unlike those, this glimpse was largely just that… I glimpsed the Void, almost like I was alone on an empty holodeck as in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yet I only felt it for a few seconds… It was as if I had “bounced” out of it almost immediately. Nevertheless, it was enough to leave me a bit shaken for several days afterwards.
What stayed after that? What changed in me? Why do I consider it that important, when my experience of the world is practically the same as before the experience?
For one thing, it seems to have cured me of my pursuit of enlightenment through study. Since then, it’s as if I know exactly what ideas, beliefs, and so forth really are… nothing but arrangements of thoughts. And I know that thoughts are nothing… just little bubbles in consciousness. Some thoughts seem attracted to some people more than others, but you can’t make yourself have a thought. (Kind of puts “intellectual property” in a whole different light, eh?)
Wanting to “figure out” the Universe is probably a stage that most intellectual mystics have to go through, but if it is, it’s certainly one they also have to give up. Thoughts are not reality.
Also, because I don’t “believe” in beliefs anymore, I think I’ve grown more tolerant of others. I still have a problem with “kind intolerance”—anger at those who don’t seem “kind enough” or “nice enough”… but it’s less now. It has to be, since I know that everyone, definitely including myself, has a head full of junk made out of nothing describing a world that isn’t there. It makes fighting over “who’s right” pretty silly, huh?
That’s the most of it. Yeah, the Void was scary for a second. Now, I’d like to fall into it.
Experience is infinitely more important than intellectual understanding. But if nothing else, the intellectual side of it lets you share your experience with the rest of us – at least minutely. Peace!
And the thought that thoughts are not reality is itself a thought that is not reality. Fun huh? 🙂
Fun, indeed!
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If you want to do this just go to my blog and in one of the comments just write your blog name and the URL and I will add it to my site.
Thanks,
David
So what is reality if nothing is real?
Nothing!
I have had you in my favourites … but have not returned here for sometime … one keeps adding more and more to the list till the sites become obscured by new ones.
It changed me too. The glimpse.
And one searches and realises that the answers are here within you.
They unfold to you as you become more aware.
Thank you for sharing.
Hugs for you. :o)
Jon, I thought your post was really interesting. I was particularly struck by your observation: “Since then, it?s as if I know exactly what ideas, beliefs, and so forth really are? nothing but arrangements of thoughts.”
This chimes very closely with someting I just wrote on abwoon. If you have a moment, I’d love for you to have a look.
Beyond belief.
Yea, same thing happened to “me” once. It was brilliant but brilliant to no one. I wasnt there for it, but it definitely was there are is always there/here. Then soon as ‘I’ tried to grasp what ‘it’ was, ‘it’ disappeared.
Since then there has been a devouring of things; see nondual literature.
And yet at odd times usually solitude times, there is a closeness to that point …or a getting closer to it.
Then I told a friend about it. He didnt get it. So we sat and for 2.5 hours I talked to him until he got it. His jaw dropped to the floor, it was one of the most fundamental shifts ever to him.
Granted, he’s in an out of that as well. Although, “that’ always already ‘is’….so not much more to say.