A Story of “Double” Awakening
by
Harvey Jackson

I would like to share an experience that occurred to me during the night of April 20, 2016.   I had gone to bed around 11:30 PM and was thinking about lesson plans for one of the philosophy classes that I teach at Howard Community College. Eventually I fell asleep. During the night I began to experience something radically new. It began as an ordinary dream, but it turned into something that went well beyond words.

In the dream, it was evening and I was driving on a main road in New Jersey where there was a lot of traffic. In the dream, I was feeling kind of bored and at one of the traffic lights, I decided to put on a CD to pass the time. On the passenger seat, there were different CD’s and I saw one which somehow had a recording of Fred Davis. I put it in my CD player in the car and continued driving. I was only partly paying attention to Fred since I was navigating through (dream) traffic.

I remember only fragments of what Fred was saying but it was a guided meditation which I had heard Fred do a few months prior. He was guiding participants to imagine that objects were disappearing and there was just space. There were fragments of phrases such as “standing as awareness”, “awakeness”, “oneness speaking” and “seeing through the unit instead of as the unit.”  I continued to half listen in the dream as I was driving.

Let me interject here that the dream was not really a lucid dream or anything unusual. I continued to play the audio of Fred as I was driving through traffic.  Suddenly the dream seemed to turn inside and out (these are just words that come to mind). There was just AWARENESS that IS everything, as everything, and through everything. It had no attributes and was all attributes. There was this knowingness and clarity, and there was a “delighting” as awareness was discovering or experiencing itself in different forms.  The words that I am using are so limited and are just wisps of descriptions. It wasn’t that I, as Harvey, was watching this. It was just awareness…awareness…awareness…delighting in discovery.

Eventually I woke up from the dream, and as I opened my eyes I could see the room–and yet there was this identity AS awareness – knowingness – clarity (just words) that was SO OBVIOUS. There was knowingness that everything that happens, happens perfectly, exactly as it should.  It is an unfolding and it could not be any other way than the way that it is. The reason is the happening – the unfolding – itself. (Fred had used the phrase “waking up is self-confirming” in a Satsang earlier that afternoon and that phrase is a great description.) While “I” was lying on my bed, having awakened from the dream, there was not a “knower” of this. It was just a “knowing.”

At some point, there was a noticing of thoughts and a sort of grasping to become a character, a unit, a Harvey. There was a subtle tension as the unit–“me”–came back. Well, I guess I have to say “came back” is not really accurate. It was like the awareness-clarity-knowingness WAS/IS the body, the thoughts, the feelings, the Harveyness. They are not separate or within the Awareness. They ARE the Awareness. 

The thought process became more prevalent as the experience of delight and joyfulness was presencing. I remember thinking that I had to email Fred and share this experience and this delight. I eventually fell back asleep and when I woke up around 7 AM and I knew that there had been another “waking up” that was not Harvey waking up.

Now there is a knowingness that everything is just happening. Whether there is a feeling of happiness, sadness, being pissed off, bored, or whatever — it is just whatever it is. The “reason” it is that way is that it is that way. The mind or thoughts will attempt to compare it to some experience and “try” to make it into something “better” or “different”. No need to. Every happening IS until it’s NOT. I know this does not make any sense and it is a paltry description at best.

I am very thankful for Fred Davis’ fredness.  I am not a “follower” of Fred, but I enjoy his authenticity and his realness in his communications.  When Fred talks from his own experience or writes about the challenges he has faced in his own life, it is a microcosm of what we all go through in our own ways. His teachings are pointers and I find some of them facilitate a resonance within my character.  Of course, there is a seeing that this oneness or awakeness or awareness is Fred is Harvey is You is Everything and Nothing.

I am smiling as I write this or maybe it is that aware-wakefulness delighting itself AS the character of Harvey.

[From Fred]

Is this a great story, or what? Harvey shared this with us in satsang and it blew us away. I want to offer a couple of insights.

The first thing to notice here is that the awakening occurred while the unit was down, completely off-guard, in dream-state. It occurred when there was very minimal Harveyness present, because it was Harveyness that was always standing in the way of Awakeness recognizing Itself. This is the first report I’ve had of someone first waking up in dream-state only to have it carry over into daytime. I have, however, had several clients “wake up as Awakeness,” which is what Harvey admirably describes here.

My friend and ex-wife, Tammy in Portland, had a lunch with me about three years ago where I laid out enough stuff that I knew she could awaken if she wanted to. Turned out she did–she’s my student now. But she didn’t wake up until two weeks after our lunch, when she was lying on her energy healer’s table, in safety and total relaxation.

This is the same reason I’m so keen on the importance of humor in awakening. A laughing ego is an ego that is off-guard. I can slip things in with humor that an otherwise defensive unit would be able to repel. Of course I also do it because I can’t not do it–that’s the style that arises from the Fredness conditioning.

Secondly, Harvey is a philosophy professor in Maryland. This is not his first rodeo. As he told me, “There were a whole a lot of people who could have been on that CD, but it was you who was actually on it.”

So why Fred?

Because Harvey can hear this teaching. He can hear Truth as it passes through this unit. There is that magical “resonance”! This is actually quite a bit rarer than we might imagine. We can only hear who we can hear. Jesus said, “He who hath ears, let him hear.” This is precisely what Jesus was talking about.

So now Oneness has come to recognize itself through the Harvey unit. Where there was once unconscious awakeness that was blindly being pulled toward awakening, there is now Conscious Awakeness. This is what this teaching is all about. F