MY SIMPLE EXPERIENCE FOR TODAY

Okay, so all these experiences of what I’ll call the truth with a capital T sound like just so much hogwash. And probably trying to put the experience into words fails miserably. If I simply try to put my experience in the most basic terms, I think it just might work.

First of all, it is no big deal. It is not something I have that you, or anybody else, doesn’t have. It’s only that I had this experience of sitting with this man, this guy who is called "Adyashanti" who kind of hits you over the head with a "bat of Reality", a "bat of Truth."

The day I sat with him, afterwards, he said to the audience that he’d swung his "big sword" that day, and for me, it felt like he had chopped off my head!

So what does it feel like—this Awakening? What does it "seem" like?

It’s as if somebody came with a bright light, a flashlight let’s say, and shined it into my life so that the light hit everything and nothing was left in the dark. As if there were no shadows remaining. When the light hits everything and there are no shadows left, it sort of takes away any reference points. It’s difficult to tell where one thing stops and another begins—it all becomes just one thing.

That says it pretty well.

Just one thing. No more up and no more down. In a way it is so perfectly, sublimely, simple. And yet it is not what I have been used to. It’s no longer my old way of seeing. There is not the old, "this is what I should do today" or "this is who I am." I am no longer who I was. And yet I am only who I was because the old me just got melted into this huge vat of Space—of Nothingness.

Adya did tell me that day, that when I would walk back to my seat in the audience I was no longer going to be the old me. I was going to be—and he used these words, "the guy formerly known as Tony."

And that has been my experience as well. But "the guy formerly known as Tony" melt into this Total Oblivion all at once. It is happening over time. It is now six months after that day and although, when I think back to that defining moment of the "Train Wreck" it seems like no time has passed at all, I also experience that this melting away of the old me into the new "Non Me" is taking place gradually, over time. I'm guessing it would probably be too big a shock to my body if it happened all at once.

I’ve been back to two "Intensives" to talk with Adya again, and listening to the experience of others I am aware that the body itself transforms after this experience of the light being shined. The light is also shined into the body. And the body, in my experience, twists and turns like it’s doing yoga all on its own, to straighten itself out in order to accept what’s happened.

There is a lot of energy flowing up the spine—more than before anyway—and that seems to have something to do with this shift in consciousness. I notice that others who are going through this use that word a lot—"shift".

So, in essence, my experience of sitting here at my computer is pretty much the same as it always was—me trying to explain my personal experience to myself. To try to make sense of it. But now, there is this added Hugeness sitting right underneath that I cannot deny or take my attention off. I tryto look the other way and for awhile that works. But, more and more, the Hugeness is taking precedence and I am recognizing that I, if I dare to admit it, am nothing but It.

The guy "formerly known as Tony" is becoming more and more "The Guy Formerly Known As Tony".

And, since he’s the new guy in town, new to this experience of the truth with a capital T, this "new guy" will continue to think about it, I guess, until all the thoughts just melt away and into It.

Posted by Tony at June 11, 2005 10:03 AM