Am I enlightened?

Am I enlightened?

Of course!

So are You! 

It seems so obvious that the question is already a thing of the past. I say this because there is no more searching, no more waiting, no more need, and no more grasping. Of course these things all still exist, it is just that they are recognized as they are: Paper Dragons.

What I used to live within, the mind, with all it's definitions and separations, I am now, ecstatically transcended, beyond.In the full recognition that what one’s fundamental nature is: Sat Chit Ananda, there is no more separation. Therefore there is no ‘I’ to experience enlightenment. For me this moment is supremely blissful, for you it may fall like a gentle rain, or as the grace of God, or as the dynamic flow of life. We are all on our own paths. We all experience this differently.

Also this is not a final enlightenment if you will, because in the recognition of who we are, even the idea of acheivement melts away to reveal another game of the ego. Either way it is the same, because there is no attachment to the words as they fall from the mind and are captured on this page. There is no grasping, no tension.

So the tension is yours. Release it!

And so it is.

Down a sweet and soft path we must go. It is an inner journey and so must be done alone and in silence. I don’t mean that you cannot speak or sing. The silence is in the mind. Having transcended mind it is abundantly clear that the mind must serve the will of the Self. Otherwise it is a tyrant at the helm. The Self is whispering in your ear. Can you hear its sweet and melodious voice?

Come with me on a journey to the heart. Feel the soft green grass beneath your feet, the rays of sunlight pouring out into the garden, the sound of laughter; these are all images of purity. Follow them. Follow them down into the heart. Sit still and meditate on the sweet color of green. Wash your entire being in this bright green glow.

Now let it all fall away. Loosen the mind. Let the image fade to a clear sky. There is no image.

Only to let the mind relax and to stop interfering in the natural, ever present, unfolding of what Is. It is a deep and slow song. It must be concentrated on in an effortless pose, both in body and mind. So quiet the mind and then listen in utter stillness. This vast stillness, this limitless ocean of bliss, is who we are.

We are the totality that includes all else.

The aspects of ourselves that are transient come and go. Our transitory body is the Earth and all the people and plants and animals and our personal body is our greatest vehicle to truth. Without it we could not taste the sweet nectar of what is. We are humming birds in God’s garden collecting sweet bliss, reveling in the joyous sanctity. Hari Om.

Infinite Possibility

In the moment that the shattering of the shell occurs, the breaking open of the heart, I emerge. Enveloped in a sweet sublime light. I settle on soft green grass beneath the shade of a sacred oak. I feel light. I feel free.

I am free.

I am timeless spirit.

I am unbounded joy.

In the opening of the heart all things are possible.

In this sacred space I know who I am. I exist in two worlds, yet they are united, there is no separation. One is eternal. The other, the world of form, of name, of body, of mind, passes away, changes, dissapears, and then returns. Again and again I feel the suffering and the joy of earthly life.

The Eternal is pure bliss consciousness. In this I am truly free and limitless. It too appears hidden at times when the manifest world is mistaken as real. The recognition of our timelessness overwhelms any idea of limitation or separation.

I exist in both these worlds. They are united, there is no separation. I accept the limitations of the manifest world, and I let go. I fly free in the limitless ocean of bliss.

Sorrowful Longing

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, "The broken ones are My darlings."
Crush your heart, be broken.

- Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir

God is one

If the last blog about my experience with, The Form, left you a bit confused I will try and explain.

When I was in India in Rishikesh, I lived in an ashram where everyone got up early and did yoga. It was so cool. We lived very simply and washed our clothes with a bucket and soap. We could walk to some small cafes and also to a little village where we could get rice and dahl and vegetable curries. I met some really interesting people there from all over the world, and I would entertain them sometimes with a crazy tune on the sitar.

The ashram was right next to the Ganges River, and all throughout the day you could see people bathing and praying in the swift moving waters. There was the constant sound of chanting mixing with the sound of workers making concrete steps for a big upcoming festival.Women could be seen carrying baskets of gravel down to the construction precariously  balanced on their heads.

So, the headmaster at the ashram, let’s call him Swami Yogadharma, held a meeting every few days where he would lecture about Hindu spirituality and advanced meditation techniques. He was a bit quirky and strange and got really irritated by people asking “stupid” questions. Well, I knew I was only going to be there for a few weeks so I decided to do just that! So after a lecture I came forward, waited for the crowd to leave and asked if I could talk to him.

The Swami's face and body cringed,“What questions do you have?”, he said obviously irritated.

“Well”, I said, thrown back by his attitude, “The most important question I have is this: What Proof is there that consciousness can exist apart from a body?”

“What proof”, he retorted ,”what proof!”, he was mad and borderline irate by now. His Yogadharmaness on full display! The steam was coming out from behind his ears and smoke was in his eyes. “You people come here and ask about proof! You need to leave! Get out of my ashram!”, Swami said while practically exploding with pent up aggression.

I was amused and confused by his odd behavior, and I almost wanted to laugh, but that would not have helped the situation. So I calmly said, “I think you misunderstand my question. I really want to know. I am not trying to challenge your position or anything.”

Well, I could tell by the look in his eye that the conversation was over, so I got up and left the meditation hall feeling quite confused by the strange encounter. It was several hours before I started to make sense of it.

I realized that probably a lot of people come to him and try to figure out “spirituality” with the rational mind, and that a lot of people probably try and challenge him as some kind of ego game. This would explain why he was so irate. It is probably also true that it is mostly westerners that do this. It was unfortunate for him that he didn’t realize that I was genuinely interested in his opinion.

I learned from this experience that the mind has a definite limitation when it comes to understanding spirituality. The mind is certainly very useful with problem solving and reductionist theories, but when it comes to the paradox of creation and the essence of life it fails. Only the heart can wrap itself around such magnificent and expansive experiences. This is the message that I tried to convey in the last blog: That you cannot approach God with the mind. It is only with the heart that this is possible.

All religions intuitively reflect this knowledge. In Buddhism for instance the nature of the creation is described as “empty”. This does not mean it is actually empty, but that words fall short in describing it, that the energy of life is elusive.

In the Tao Te Ching it says that the Tao that can be written is not the real Tao. This clearly means that words and ideas cannot describe the nature of God.

In Christianity you have a God that is all powerful, all knowing, and all everything. In a similar way this means that he is unknowable. How can we understand what it means to be beyond time and space, unlimited, and all powerful? We can’t. This is why the Christ is needed to be the bridge.

So we have the Gods of emptiness and the Gods of infinity, and from what little I know of the metaphysics of numbers, there seems to be a connection between that which is zero and that which is infinite. You could even say that they are the same. So the linear world of Judeo-Christian religion of the perfect creation and eternal life in heaven, comes together with the cyclical world of Eastern religion, of karma and reincarnation. They come together at a very special place that can only be known by the heart.

So this is what I was trying to explain:

“To understand spiritual experience you have to feel it with the heart. You have to experience it for yourself."

“This is the only way that leads to true understanding of God."

The Form

“No recycling today”, I said to Oz, as I served up some tofu scramble and left over lasagna for breakfast. He was looking at me with the obvious expression that something was up.“Will you cover my shift”, he asked. “No way, I got stuff to do”, I said. His expression shrunk back to his usual friendly smile.

“Oh well… We’ll miss you out there”, he replied.

I didn’t care about recycling just then. I was looking forward to attending some of the workshops, as well as spending a few hours on the beach just enjoying the beautiful day. The schedule was just over flowing with a whirlpool of classes and workshops. At two pm, Bernie Prior was offering a workshop on something called, “The Form”, and later in the afternoon I had my eye on Tantra Yoga.

Feeling refreshed and full, I set off for a contemplative walk through the forest. The small trails wandered through the dunes and through the ferns and tall grasses. I found a quiet spot to enjoy the sight and sounds of the moment. Again, walking on, barefoot, I noticed that the forest spilled out onto the beach in little patches of shrubs, and sand, mixing according to some unknown law of order and chaos. I finally stepped out onto the beach, took a deep breath, sat down, and promptly fell asleep. I guess staying up all night finally caught up with me!

I woke up peacefully, but then jumped to my feet hoping that the workshop by Bernie Prior had not started yet. I arrived late, of course, and was quite surprised when I saw Bernie’s students doing some kind of healing on the participants. I had no idea what “The Form” was so I just took a seat and watched. The leaders of the workshop were standing over the participants and moving slowly through a set of organized movements. They would move their hands slowly, aligning energy or something within the participants. I sat and watched this go on for a while and sooner or later a session would end, kind words exchanged, and the participants would head off to somewhere else. Or should I say they would float off to somewhere else: They looked so peaceful and grateful! Now they had my attention. I was intrigued!

A serene looking woman motioned for me to take a seat, and just like that it was my turn. She instructed me to just close my eyes and focus on my breath. So I sat back and began to get relaxed. As the session began I became aware of her movements in front of me. I felt nothing unusual and after a while I started feeling a bit self conscious. I thought to myself that it wasn’t working, and that I wouldn’t know what to say when it was over. “Oh well”, I thought, “at least it is relaxing to just sit here. No harm I guess”

I settled into the familiar feeling of peace and non-dual awareness of meditation, and waited to see what would happen. “Oh wow”, I thought as I was surprised by a feeling of expansive bliss. Something just opened up inside like a curtain, being drawn back and a bright light of love shone down on me. The light was visible to my mind’s eye and I danced with it, swirling and vibrating, mixing and melding. I felt like a new born baby, and a perfectly clear awareness of Truth shed wisdom on my life experience as the person known as “Terry”.

Then the tears came…

The presence of Truth was so blissful and so full of compassion for everything and everyone. In this bright fire of Truth all the memories of suffering of the world burned and disintegrated. My heart was purified and I seemed to transcend the fragments of ego and selfishness. All this occurred in the realm of experience: not a single word was spoken, no teaching was given, nothing. Between the tears of joy and compassion and release, I began to laugh. I simply could not contain the joy. I could not hold back the smile that jittered and danced across my soul. The happiness simply overwhelmed me.

Then the peace came...

I too, like the others, slowly came back to reality, shared a few peaceful words of thanksgiving, and then parted ways with the guide. I had experienced something that I had few words to explain, and few experiences to compare to. In my next blog I will step off into the unknown and attempt to share my understanding of this experience and how it relates to spirituality at large. Please stay tuned and post comments or send me an email if you wish. Thanks for reading and sharing with me.

The light of Truth

And now we depart into a new world. We go deeper into the unknown.

I had wandered into a tent where a man named Bernie Prior was giving a talk on spirituality. The many people in the audience were wrapped in attention to his words. He said the world had a plan for us. The world, the entire cosmos was on a path of continual evolution and we are a part of this process. So we have no choice but to evolve with it or suffer in the resistance to this constant process of change. On and on he spoke, lulling us into a sincere belief that the cosmic forces were coming down and shining in through the pine tree branches and tent canvas. Deeper into “The Real” he took us, expanding our vision, expanding our senses.


A serene calm and bliss descended onto us. Looking on the faces of those around me I could see the hint of a warm glow, a vibration of sweet laughter, so high that it could only be felt on the skin. It was the light of truth.

We all know this sweet feeling: that warm glow, that radiant awareness. Our eyes go soft. Our shoulders relax. Our breath goes deep and calm. It comes when our hearts are clear. It comes when we hear a message that resonates deep in our souls and when we let go. It comes when we finally open up to the unknown.

The light of Truth.

down the rabbit-hole...

Whether it is a new twist in a relationship or a new adventure altogether there are times in life when we set out into the Unknown. These times are crucial to who we are. They are what bring in the new and scuttle the old. There is always that unsettling question of: How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? And of course: Do I have what it takes?


When I set out on my trip around the world there was a knot in my stomach, and stars in my eyes. I had imagined this moment in my mind for over 10 years. Yet the feeling of elation and intrigue and fear still surprised me. I floated down that final hallway and was acutely aware of my heart beat and I had to focus to not trip over my own feet as I boarded the plane. Finally, I was leaving! I was setting out on the grand adventure of a lifetime. I squeezed the arm rest on that airplane just to test if it was real, just to test if I was real. I squeezed just as hard on the memory of the goodbyes and promises for the future.

Think about your own life and times, when was the last time that you opened a door that led out into the field of infinite possibilities? I realize now that we have an opportunity to do this every day, in fact we can do it in every moment. I realize now that having jumped down the rabbit-hole that there is no going back. There are only new adventures waiting around every corner.

What is it that changes? Is it simply a matter of being open to the myriad of possibilities? Or does the thin egg shell of who we think we are get a new crack in it, revealing a dazzling and bright light beyond, every time we are willing to take the chance?