Robert Saltzman's Blog: Q&A: The Ten Thousand Things

Jenna: One thing I have heard you say (and 'read' you say) is that this moment is so rich, it almost sounds like to you, each moment is perfect in its own way. That you are so appreciative and engaged in each of these moments. I was just wondering, can you share how different that is from when you were not 'awake' yet? I know your experience can never be my experience, but just wondering if there was a marked difference to you- more curiosity than anything.
Manage

Robert: Sure, Jenna. "Awake" is when you don't take this aliveness for granted and so you stop imagining that you have tomorrow.

Awakeness is NOT "spirituality" in which one aims at an imagined "perfect" state that some saint or holy man attained and to which that "great one" has marked the path. Awake means being with whatever is RIGHT NOW, without fantasizing about something better or more evolved.

Q: Good Day Robert!

A little history and then any insight you may have or would like to share.

During meditation in my early twenties on four different occasions, I experienced a sense of being pulled backwards by my britches into a black tunnel that got very small until it disappeared, and instantly in its place was a beautiful white/yellow light which was simultaneously pulsing with what felt and sounded like something was vibrating, like a gentle but powerful electrical current. All this sight, sound, and vibration was also accompanied by an intense and powerful sense of love. I cried tears of joy as it literally took my breathe away leaving me to feel that there was no person called Donna, but rather that I was this light, sound, vibration and love which was everywhere and in everything, although the 'things' where no longer visible, yet there was a knowing that they were there somewhere way in the background of this experience.

Next, in my mid-thirties, I had a four year experience of feeling total peace and joy and gratitude in the midst of this ever changeful life of being a human being on planet earth. It was very clear that though there was a sense of being a person, it was also seen that 'I' was not doing any of this unless involuntarily moved to do so. I felt very much like an instrument or willing puppet and I called the animating power of that instrument God at the time. I had no other word for what was happening. There was a definite sense of 'me' in partnership with an all powerful God and I was a more than willing servant. Through thick or thin, good or bad, I felt like everything was meant to be just as it was and I didn't want to change a thing. I woke up excited and grateful to be alive and couldn't wait to see what God had in store for me that day. I felt like the eye in the hurricane, safe and secure in the love of God.

Looking at this experience today, it sounds so similar to what you speak of, which is this aliveness here and now. Sadly, after some emotional trauma, I have not felt this experience and in the past 16 years, I have done everything I can think of to get that experience back. I had no idea why it happened to me, where it came from, or what to do to get it back!

I retraced all my footsteps prior to that experience, and still nothing. I have spent all these years getting angrier and angrier that I lost this peace and gratitude for being alive. I have kicked and screamed, I hated everyone and everything, I have gotten very depressed and even suicidal. Life without that peace and love was meaningless and I wanted no part of being on earth without it. Being human became a burden and I hated begin here anymore.

In the past four years, non-duality grabbed me faster than anything and I took to it like a dry sponge thrown into a lake. This did give some relief and peace as I could see that 'I' was not the doer of my actions, yet I still could not explain the suffering I felt and mostly I still felt the lack of peace and love and gratitude for this aliveness that we are, and the beauty of compassion for my fellow man.

After reading your book, which I am not quite finished with yet, I feel like I was a locomotive speeding along at warp speed and now I have come to a sudden and abrupt stop AND need turn around, or even easier, just drop everything I learned which is a bit of juggling game at the moment!

I am grateful for this 'smack in the face' or 'pulling the rug out from under me' because I am left sitting here thinking, "All this time, I thought I had all the answers that the non-dualists where feeding me!" I really did feel like a wiseacre and now I feel like I don't know anything. I laughed at this predicament at first, but now, a few days later, I feel a little numb.

In a way, this feels good, no more being fooled and having the carrot of everlasting bliss waved in my face. But I did experience something at one time and now it is not being experienced the way 'I' would like it to or remembered it, and I know I have no influence on that ever happening again. I am not sure what I am feeling most of the time since recently finding you. But there is still the want for that experience to return - to feel and know that I am that aliveness with its freshness, newness and exciting spontaneity. Oh how I miss waking up that way every day.

A: Hi. ☺ Yes, I will give you my thoughts, but you may not like hearing them.

1. You seem entirely attached to a few experiences that you imagine indicate something “spiritual.” When I say “attached,” I mean that you want to “get it back.” But you can never get anything back. Everything is once-upon-a-once. Here today, gone tomorrow.

As long as you are fixated on memories of some “better” time that you want to “re-experience” you are closed off to THIS very moment which is all that actually exists. Your spiritual experiences are fantasies, and the chief fantasy is that experiences last forever. No, they don’t. You feel what you feel when you feel it.

2. A “partnership with an all powerful God” has nothing to do with what I call “aliveness.” Aliveness actually exists and cannot be denied. “God” is only an idea that was injected into your mind at some point by someone else and, for some reason, you bought into it. You have no way of knowing whether such a thing as “God” exists or not. Nor, even if it does exist in some way that I cannot imagine, do you have the foggiest idea what "God" would be like. What you are calling the “LOVE of God,” is a particularly harmful notion. If someone desires to see things as they are, that idea will destroy clear-eyed seeing before it even starts.

Even supposing that some all-powerful entity called “God” actually does exist, what makes you think there is any “love” involved? If “God” is pure love, why is there cancer, or children born blind, or people starving to death, or incessant wars being fought (this list could go on and on)? What kind of "love" is that?

3. “Aliveness with its freshness, newness and exciting spontaneity” is not some lovely feeling from the past to which you can return. Freshness and spontaneity are not memories. Freshness is only RIGHT NOW, not in the past.

Spontaneity is the opposite of what you are wishing for. Spontaneity means that thoughts, feelings, and perceptions simply arise as they do whether you like them or not. Likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it. As long as you keep seeking feelings that you desire to have, while seeking to avoid ones you dislike or fear, you are only deepening the self-hypnotic trance that conjures up a “myself” APART from feelings--a myself that "has" feelings.

If you really want to awaken to life as it is, that requires radical openness to what is, not the pipe dream of continual happiness and peace. I mean openness to feeling whatever may arise for as long as that lasts. Myself does not "have" feelings. Myself IS feelings (and thoughts, and perceptions), peaceful or not, pleasant or not. Feelings ARE “you,” whether you like them or not.

All those supposedly happy memories to which you want to return are as dead and dry as dust. You have what you have RIGHT NOW, and that is all you ever will have. Until you see that, you will always be wanting SOMETHING. There is no end to wanting unless you see that “you” are whatever you see, think, feel, etcetera RIGHT NOW, not some separate “person” who has desires to fulfill and aversions to avoid.

This aliveness may include a great deal of suffering. Until you stop looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (call it “the love of God,” or whatever), you will always be dissatisfied.

I’ve given it to you straight because you are dreaming of something that does not exist, I say, and need to snap out of it.

Q: Thank you! So right! I have been scolded before for hanging onto the past and wanting only the good stuff. I guess I am a professional escape artist at avoiding unpleasantries. I truly appreciate the inspiration to be totally open to whatever appears now! I had no idea that I was terrified of the pain and suffering that that would open me up to. Non-dualism was a wonderful skirt to hide behind. Since reading your book, my mind has been cornered and has no where to go. I sit dazed and a bit numb as I absorb your words. “You are whatever you see, think, feel...right now, not a separate person who has desires to fulfill and aversions to avoid”. I know this, I agree, and yet something still has a hook somewhere in a promise of eternal bliss. Let go, I say. Let go! Freedom! Thank you! Hugs.

A: You are most welcome. Never too late. :)