Letter from the Field: Wonder of Wonders
Dear Fred,
I’m writing this after just having watched your shifting practice video. Shazam, I was in stillness and free of language. Even when I write this I am free of language, even when using it. Wonder of wonders.
About 2 years ago I awoke from sleep at about 7am in a completely serene state. No thoughts were arising and it took several minutes to realize this. I knew that there was no place on earth I would rather be at that moment then where I was. And that could have been anywhere not just in bed. There was total stillness and my awareness was bathing in it. All normal feelings of stress and anxiety were gone. I was totally content free of judgement. I got out of bed expecting it to dissolve and be overrun with thought but it did not. On this day I was on vacation in a hotel room with my wife and son with no imminent worries.
I went through the day in this stillness. I could sense thoughts knocking on the door of this stillness, and when I offered no resistance to them they didn’t enter anyway. Everything it seemed came out of this deafening stillness. Sounds can out of stillness and even knowledge of what actions to take and what to say came out of stillness, yet there was no language or thought being entertained, just used with some un-nameless intuition.
There was a powerful sense of “rightness”. The circumstances of my life were perfect, unlike they seemed the day before. I had the powerful insight that all disturbances and past conflict with my wife where the result of emotion and completely untrue and I felt a powerful love for her unlike any I have felt previously. Slowly by evening thoughts filled the emptiness that was the serenity and the unwanted entertainment returned. I wondered if that clarity would ever reveal again. Well it did, just now after watching your video.
Thanks for your teaching,
Andrew
Wonderful! Come to satsang, Andrew, or there’s a close to 100% chance that this peace will also pass away in fairly short order. You’ve gotten the invitation to the dance twice now. Maybe it’s time to accept it.
Fred
October 29, 2016 @ 4:40 pm
Thanks for painting the beauty of that “rightness”. I’ll continue with that melody – that even my typing now is coming out of that stillness. In satsang once, the wording occurred to me, “the degree to which seeming progress (happy dreaming) has been made, is the degree to which I realized ‘I need do nothing'”. So even though there’s still some “action figure” sense left here of, “well, I have to decided to post and think about what i write” – i know the Truth that I’m not that. I choose to be entertained by that Truth! – instead of letting the dream’s entertainment be primary. I reread your post and continued to feel my poor action hero’s tension release, as your words remind me I Am the peace you describe.
Many thanks, Mike
October 29, 2016 @ 5:40 pm
Hey, Mike! When you say “I know the Truth that I’m not that” I’m assuming you mean the Mike character. You’re not that, you’re That! I only mention this so that those who read these comments don’t get confused. 🙂 F
November 9, 2016 @ 10:50 pm
Nice gentle reminder that clarity, the peace, comes and goes, 100% chance of it.
November 10, 2016 @ 12:07 am
Kenton said something I liked today. He mentioned a conversation he’d had with a student in which he asked the question, “Can you recall any experience that was permanent?”
Perfect.