I am giving a chronology of my religious experience and intertwined within that is my experience of working with the ego for spiritual growth. The ego is powerful and cannot just be pushed aside (annihilated) by will because it just pops back some other way, even more powerfully since the pressure for expression will build up. The ego will zap back with even more force catching oneself unawares with an experience of being out of control.
In fact the process of prayer involves embracing the ego, accepting it, working with what comes up, resolving the desires expressed in outward behavior or thought to a single dominant feeling, and then offering that up in prayer for insight, evolving into a better person through the wisdom imbedded in the prayer experience. So now my chronology, which begins in early in the decade of 1970:
I think the importance of faith must be overemphasized in Christian theology because it was my experience that all it takes is enough faith to say to myself, well, there might be something to this experience of meeting God, even if agnostic or athiestic as I was in my beginning back in 1970. Well why not give it a go since others have tried doing it with success? Besides I can see that I do not have it within myself to be what I should be, a kind and knowing person who does not hurt others. For you see dear reader, back then I had just hurt someone badly I was close to, devastatingly so.
What to do now? Well sit and do any number of things that the intellectual mind gets bored with and shuts down, stops it calculating and constant analysis. Watch a candle, say the rosary, say a bible verse over and over again. What is there to calculate about doing any these things? It just is. Having moved the intellectual mind out of the way, normally for the next hour or a little less a lot of feelings and propensities will come up in prayer or meditation (what ever you want to call this effort) for resolution into a point, the central ego issue needing guidance from that Wisdom found therein. For me there was a definite decision to take up this practice. So I put aside my intellectual mind by a process mentioned above and just let my mind be blank to see what would come, a kind of offering up. Maybe more directly I could say "let God's will be done".
Now here I was blindsided by this POWERFUL experience that in no way came from my own personality or mind or propensities because it was so much beyond anything I thought myself to be. In fact it was most difficult to hold that enlightenment for more than a few seconds because my nature was so different from that Wisdom. Others may experience this beginner’s experience differently, but I was at such a low state of evolution, that this was my particular experience of it. There is no speculation possible as to why I received that gift, but just that it was time for me in my place in life. And it was a gift given without reserve because I cannot say that I earned it in any way, it just happened.
Blind faith without prayer or meditation leaves a person open to the whims of those who claim to be teachers, who could have their own agenda. I had just gotten ran over by enlightenment by accident and had no idea what to do with the experience. Never the less, it gave me direct access to that Wisdom and so I was my own person, independent if you will. I must say. There were quite a variety of approaches to choose from. There are books about this process and that helped a lot, and as I said, did get some valuable advice in the very beginning for a friend who said, well just keep at it, your experience is as it should be.
There is a cleansing process that takes place during those first 22 years that involved a daily inspection of the chaos of that day. The thing is that a person wants, wants, wants something, a kind of desire and grasping, but it would always resolve to a single thought, or maybe it can be called a feeling. The inspection was initiated by concentration of mind, maybe by watching the breath, looking a candle like the have in some church services, saying a phrase over and over, any number of things, the intellectual mind takes a breather from the sameness of it and the feelings are left to bubble up for inspection. Now what does one do with the thought-feeling that resolves to one point for that day, because guidance is needed on what to do, else exactly the same thing comes back again and again with no evolution, what direction can be known, to find and undertake the path.
Well, with the intellect out to lunch and a though-feeling identified, the next step is to make the mind blank and then to see the light. There is actually a kind of sensation of seeing light, but that is a small point of reference compared to the practically overwhelming experience of feeling a Being that is vastly different from my own place of thought-feeling. Now that was what I offered my thought-feeling, the wanting to grasp something, to just letting It give an answer. Well, what I was supposed to do about my thought-feeling, a wanting, was all that I could barely do, but by following what I was supposed to do, life got slowly better, the answer was always consistent, it did not jump around first this idea and that one as the intellectual mind wants to do. Also, I found that the answer would not hurt others.
The evolution was like a spiral, I would go around and find myself at the same place I was before, but with the Guidance, the compulsion would be less and eventually the wanting would just go away. It is remarkable that what is so important would just eventually go away. It is a very rigorous process, takes a lot of dedication and effort, and a person would probably not want to take up the yoke, the load of it all, unless they were fundamentally dissatisfied with how they experience living their life. I have never though I could go up to someone and say, hey, try this, you will like it. OK, I admit I tried it with my wife, but to no avail. It is too much to ask even if they are suffering a lot, as everyone seems to have their own pace along the path.
Eventually all the grasping stopped and that fundamental shift took place. There is now a tapping into that Wisdom on the fly as occasion requires. In the past, the Wisdom, the love that it contains, kept me from hurting others. Now in prayer and meditation I find I actually am able to love others and know what is best for them directly.
Saint John of the Cross-wrote a book called the Dark Night of the Soul (dark night means the ego is extinguished, nothing there) that describes the next step, and some to of the first step of working on the ego. He was a Spanish Christian mystic that lived before the Protestant reformation, who took Jewish mysticism and introduced it to Christianity and is now a classic for those who want to understand the method for seeking God.
In fact the process of prayer involves embracing the ego, accepting it, working with what comes up, resolving the desires expressed in outward behavior or thought to a single dominant feeling, and then offering that up in prayer for insight, evolving into a better person through the wisdom imbedded in the prayer experience. So now my chronology, which begins in early in the decade of 1970:
I think the importance of faith must be overemphasized in Christian theology because it was my experience that all it takes is enough faith to say to myself, well, there might be something to this experience of meeting God, even if agnostic or athiestic as I was in my beginning back in 1970. Well why not give it a go since others have tried doing it with success? Besides I can see that I do not have it within myself to be what I should be, a kind and knowing person who does not hurt others. For you see dear reader, back then I had just hurt someone badly I was close to, devastatingly so.
What to do now? Well sit and do any number of things that the intellectual mind gets bored with and shuts down, stops it calculating and constant analysis. Watch a candle, say the rosary, say a bible verse over and over again. What is there to calculate about doing any these things? It just is. Having moved the intellectual mind out of the way, normally for the next hour or a little less a lot of feelings and propensities will come up in prayer or meditation (what ever you want to call this effort) for resolution into a point, the central ego issue needing guidance from that Wisdom found therein. For me there was a definite decision to take up this practice. So I put aside my intellectual mind by a process mentioned above and just let my mind be blank to see what would come, a kind of offering up. Maybe more directly I could say "let God's will be done".
Now here I was blindsided by this POWERFUL experience that in no way came from my own personality or mind or propensities because it was so much beyond anything I thought myself to be. In fact it was most difficult to hold that enlightenment for more than a few seconds because my nature was so different from that Wisdom. Others may experience this beginner’s experience differently, but I was at such a low state of evolution, that this was my particular experience of it. There is no speculation possible as to why I received that gift, but just that it was time for me in my place in life. And it was a gift given without reserve because I cannot say that I earned it in any way, it just happened.
Blind faith without prayer or meditation leaves a person open to the whims of those who claim to be teachers, who could have their own agenda. I had just gotten ran over by enlightenment by accident and had no idea what to do with the experience. Never the less, it gave me direct access to that Wisdom and so I was my own person, independent if you will. I must say. There were quite a variety of approaches to choose from. There are books about this process and that helped a lot, and as I said, did get some valuable advice in the very beginning for a friend who said, well just keep at it, your experience is as it should be.
There is a cleansing process that takes place during those first 22 years that involved a daily inspection of the chaos of that day. The thing is that a person wants, wants, wants something, a kind of desire and grasping, but it would always resolve to a single thought, or maybe it can be called a feeling. The inspection was initiated by concentration of mind, maybe by watching the breath, looking a candle like the have in some church services, saying a phrase over and over, any number of things, the intellectual mind takes a breather from the sameness of it and the feelings are left to bubble up for inspection. Now what does one do with the thought-feeling that resolves to one point for that day, because guidance is needed on what to do, else exactly the same thing comes back again and again with no evolution, what direction can be known, to find and undertake the path.
Well, with the intellect out to lunch and a though-feeling identified, the next step is to make the mind blank and then to see the light. There is actually a kind of sensation of seeing light, but that is a small point of reference compared to the practically overwhelming experience of feeling a Being that is vastly different from my own place of thought-feeling. Now that was what I offered my thought-feeling, the wanting to grasp something, to just letting It give an answer. Well, what I was supposed to do about my thought-feeling, a wanting, was all that I could barely do, but by following what I was supposed to do, life got slowly better, the answer was always consistent, it did not jump around first this idea and that one as the intellectual mind wants to do. Also, I found that the answer would not hurt others.
The evolution was like a spiral, I would go around and find myself at the same place I was before, but with the Guidance, the compulsion would be less and eventually the wanting would just go away. It is remarkable that what is so important would just eventually go away. It is a very rigorous process, takes a lot of dedication and effort, and a person would probably not want to take up the yoke, the load of it all, unless they were fundamentally dissatisfied with how they experience living their life. I have never though I could go up to someone and say, hey, try this, you will like it. OK, I admit I tried it with my wife, but to no avail. It is too much to ask even if they are suffering a lot, as everyone seems to have their own pace along the path.
Eventually all the grasping stopped and that fundamental shift took place. There is now a tapping into that Wisdom on the fly as occasion requires. In the past, the Wisdom, the love that it contains, kept me from hurting others. Now in prayer and meditation I find I actually am able to love others and know what is best for them directly.
Saint John of the Cross-wrote a book called the Dark Night of the Soul (dark night means the ego is extinguished, nothing there) that describes the next step, and some to of the first step of working on the ego. He was a Spanish Christian mystic that lived before the Protestant reformation, who took Jewish mysticism and introduced it to Christianity and is now a classic for those who want to understand the method for seeking God.
