The Waking

  Introduction In this blog I try to integrate a few of the themes that I’ve described in previous blogs about spiritual awakening – themes such as the wide range of experiences that people report in the context of awakening, the many and varied paths to awakening, and then combine those with my fascination with recent research and observations about the possibility of an afterlife, as contained in such sources as the essays submitted to the competition organised by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) to research the survival of human consciousness after bodily death. For those who have not seen these essays, they take a broad, non-sectarian approach to the afterlife and they suggest, not just continuity of consciousness, but also continuity of something resembling our current personalities and also the idea that how we conduct our lives now has implications for our experience of the afterlife. I’ve broadly divided this into sections on:    ...

    In previous blogs I have written an introduction to the jhana meditations and why the Buddha considered them important, and also a brief note on a change in my subjective experience of them (see ‘Sources’ below for links). The change didn’t last by the way... In this blog I share some ideas on how jhana meditations could be deepened and extended for those who have some experience of them, including the experiences of reaching access concentration and of entering one or more of the jhanic states. For practitioners who feel comfortable about accessing the four material and four immaterial jhanas, deepening your practice might involve:     • Refining your mastery of holding, exploring and then moving between states     • Extending the application of these states, and     • Integrating them into broader spiritual goals, such as insight in Buddhist traditions or deeper awareness of God in Christian traditions. Here are some suggestio...

  Words by Rabindranath Tagore Many people claim to have achieved a degree of awakening, however that state is understood, or other people claim it on their behalf. One of the most striking things about the way such people describe their subjective experiences is its enormous variety.   These descriptions are interesting in themselves and they also have interesting implications. For example:     • If the experiences vary so much, are they talking about the same thing? Might it be that there are several different phenomena that are given the name ‘awakening,’ ‘theosis,’ ‘divine union’ or some such, rather than one phenomenon being described in different ways?     • If they are talking about the same thing and you are also experiencing some of these things, does that mean that you are awake or enlightened but simply hadn’t considered that possibility?   I thought it might be both useful and interesting to pull together some of these many experi...

  Image: Ram Dass and Chogyam Trungpa Here are some indications:     • Lack of Personal Growth If you feel you are no longer learning or growing under the guidance of your current teacher and what they say no longer helps, this might indicate that you've outgrown the teachings or that the methods are no longer effective for you.     • Misalignment of Values or Beliefs Sometimes, as you evolve, your values, beliefs, or the direction of your spiritual journey might diverge from those of your teacher. If this happens, it might also be time to seek guidance elsewhere.            • Ethical Concerns If you witness or experience unethical behaviour, such as manipulation, exploitation, or abuse (emotional, financial, or physical), this is a clear sign to reassess your relationship with the teacher. Spiritual guidance should never harm or exploit. This can take many forms. You might want to look up the history of Chogyam ...

      I have included the jhanas as part of my meditation practice for over three years, in part because I was researching meditation practices and experiences, and also because the Buddha described them as an important part of awakening or realising enlightenment. I wrote a bit about this in an earlier blog, which you can find at https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-are-jhanas-and-how-can-they-help.html I wanted to write this updating note because of a recent change in my experience of jhana meditation, in case it is helpful to others who also include it as part of their practice. For the past three years I have ‘followed the book’ when it comes to the procedure for jhana meditations, the book being ‘Right Concentration’ by Leigh Brasington (citation in Sources below). By this I mean following each step Brasington describes to get to each stage, from access concentration, to the first jhana and so on through to the eighth, or as far as I felt was possible in t...

    (As with my previous blog from 11th November 2024, this first appeared as a book review that I contributed at goodreads.com on 19th November. I didn’t think the previous book by Jed McKenna was helpful and only gave it 2/5, whereas this one is helpful and I gave it 5/5.) ‘Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment’ is a very good (despite missing the ‘s’ from ‘Math’ 😊 ), very useful book on one man’s journey to enlightenment, which includes advice to all who have an interest in this journey. The title refers to the subtraction of that which is not true, as the path to the discovery of that which is true. It’s a popular way of describing this journey, although Nevins himself, like his main teacher Richard Rose, is not that well known yet. I found much to like in this book. I paused in many places to reflect on something I just read – a good sign. Even better, I sometimes felt compelled to write notes to myself to consider later! Early in the book, Nevins writes: Years l...

   (This blog first appeared as a book review that I contributed at goodreads.com on 10th November, 2024. There is a small amount of overlap between some of my comments there and previous blogs here. Hopefully the repetition is useful! I also ‘tidied up’ the text of the GoodReads review a bit.)   As far as I know, ‘Jed McKenna’ is a pseudonym and people in a position to know say that the spiritual centre and cast of characters described in this book are all made up. However, the ideas given in the book are worth commenting on anyway, whoever the author is. Rather than keep referring to the author as ‘the pseudonymous Jed McKenna’ I’ll refer to him / them as JM.  For those wondering about buying the book, I’ll mention a few of the points JM made in the book and add a few observations of my own. As the title suggests, the book is about spiritual enlightenment, which JM defines as “abiding, non-dual awareness.” JM also describes a simple technique for realising enligh...

    I’ve had a couple of goes at this topic before – first back in April 2023 in https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-is-awakening.html where I was mainly encouraging people away from the idea that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for ordinary people to awaken. The next time was in https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2024/05/what-is-enlightenment-and-how-do-we.html where I wrote a bit about taking the process further and mentioned shifts in self-identity and a tiny bit on the nature of awareness. In this blog I look at some of the many and varied definitions of awakening and enlightenment, and suggest that they may be drawn together through a unifying experience. I have tried to keep it relatively brief so that it is hopefully an accessible suggestion that people could explore and try for themselves. There are many ways of defining awakening and enlightenment. Below I have summarised a few of the main ones. In addition, although I have sometime...

      1. A couple of words about the philosophy of consciousness: Following on from the previous blog ( https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2024/07/ground-of-all-being-exploring-deep.html ), my research into the ‘ground of all being’ continued... I looked around for theories of mind and consciousness that are consistent with those meditation experiences as I think it might help advance the field if we do more to bring practice and experience together with theory. I ruled out models of materialism some years ago as being too limited for a whole range of phenomena. I’ve also written about some of the alternatives to materialism in previous blogs so I won’t repeat myself here. One option that I still like the look of though is the theory of cosmopsychism, about which Itay Shani 2015 (full citation below in Sources), writes in depth, including the following brief quote: “... the first postulate of cosmopsychism is that the cosmos as a whole is the only ontological ultimate the...

    Recent meditation experiences had me researching descriptions of the experience of ultimate reality. They were the kind of rare (for me) experiences that left me struggling to say anything about, except by using such vague phrases as “beyond the beyond”. I found myself clutching at such expressions because I wasn’t aware at that point of others who had had experiences like them. To try and give a better idea of what I mean, here are my meditation notes from a recent sitting which began with going through the jhanas and reaching the immaterial jhanas: Beyond words Beyond profound Beyond everything No words will do. I am not usually so stuck for words! When I later looked back on the experience I wondered if the Hindu description of ultimate reality, ‘Sat Chit Ananda’ (beingness, conscious awareness, bliss or joy), might apply, and my researches suggested that some aspects of that phrase could apply to my ‘beyondness’ meditation, but some, such as joy, could not. Just as a s...