Fred’s Journal: New Questions for Self-inquiry

1.
New Questions

A new line of inquiry has opened up in Clarity Sessions that I want to share with those of you who’ve previously had an awakening experience, even if it was just a flash or glimpse. I’ve had a lot of success walking people through this, but you can walk yourself through it as well. Those of you who haven’t had such an experience yet might want to print this out, or bookmark it for the day after you finally have one.

Why the day after? Because on the first day some really core truths will finally be seen clearly. However, on the second day you will begin to question your experience, or wonder if you really had it, and most importantly, “Where the hell did it GO?”

For you veteran awakeners, begin by allowing attention to drift back to the time of your longest or strongest awakening experience. Reflect back to the very first moment, to the moment when something “became clear,” as though you’d been looking through a haze that had suddenly disappeared, or perhaps you caught yourself recognizing that for all of your life leading up to that moment you’d been looking at the world and everything in it backwards, and now suddenly you were seeing the newly, glaringly, perfectly obvious reverse. Close your eyes and feel into it.

Then quietly ask yourself this question: “Who ‘woke up’?”

Stay with only the part of that experience that was full bore. When it moved into “weakening” – meaning when question, doubt, or ownership of the experience arose – withdraw attention. Go back to the beginning and run through this loop several times, or until you can get as close to it as you possibly can.

Once again ask yourself, “What ‘woke up’?”

Those two questions alone may be enough to at least move you, and I have seen them actually bring unconscious Awakeness back into brightness. Try it.

~

Here’s a second little method to try.

Go back to the experience and try to recall what was the single most important takeaway that arose from the experience? What was the awakening really about? Was it really about the spiritual experience that you so vividly remember and now desperately want to experience again, or can you see that such things are actually very pleasant distractions to a much deeper, much more meaningful happening? Surely it must have been about more than a  period of goo-goo, ga-ga personal bliss. Does that sound at all like what mystics have been chasing and finding for six thousand years?

A buzz? A rush? A thrill? Is that what this is all about? I’m not saying that spiritual experiences aren’t fun – they are terrific! Who could possibly not adore them? But it was the rocket that delivered the priceless payload. The payload is what it’s all about. What did you really see? What did you feel? And who or what felt it?

~

I can tell you what my takeaways were. In 1992 it was, “I’m God!” which the mind quickly converted into, “I’m a part of God.” And then it became, “Wow, Fred you’re part of God! You’ve seen it! Well, doesn’t that make you special?!”

I was completely blind to the fact that if I were the thing that had just declared itself to be “God,” whatever that was, then such an insight precluded any notion that I could be a “Fred,” whatever that was! Ego had co-opted the awakening, which in truth was never for a second about any individual.

In 2006 I saw the same thing I saw in 1992, so to speak, but in an entirely different way.  I saw, “Wow! There’s NO FRED!”

Fred Davis had been trying to wake up to the truth of God for 24 years. The truth of God woke up to the fiction of Fred Davis instead. The first time around I had failed to see that since “I”, whatever that was, was apparently God-Oneness-Consciousness, that didn’t leave any room for the existence of a Fred! As I often say, “The funny thing about Oneness is that there’s only ONE of them! (This conscious recognition is what I call “the math of One.” It’s easy to see, and impossible to grasp.)

So I twice experienced the same end result, but in two different ways. The first was about divine presence, and the second was about relative absence. Which leads us back to our original line of inquiry: Who or what experienced them?

I know the answer. Do you?

2.

Clarity Cabin

Betsy and I just had the cabin repaired and repainted (plus put a ceiling in the porch roof),
so that it’s in better-than-new condition. We hope to one day turn this into a guest cabin.
The backyard, which is large, has a real mountain-like feel to it as well.
Personal/couple retreat, anybody?