Beyond the Peak Experience
Question: I once woke up in the middle of the night and understood all. I was all. I knew like I have never known before or since, that everyone in my life was an aspect of me. There was only I. My mind was totally quiet and yet I knew. It lasted but a couple of hours. How can I be in this state always? Is this what being present is or enlightened? Does this happen when the mind is totally quiet for a long period of time?
Another time in the middle of the afternoon after meditating, I felt a joy that was not so intense and for no reason at all! It was bigger than love. I couldn’t help but smile. It too, passed a couple of hours later. Was this being present? I love your teachings. They speak to my heart and quiet my mind. I would like to permanently live in this state of joy. I never felt like that even when I was most in love. It was free and for no reason.
Leonard’s Answer: The experiences you describe are awakening experiences. They are peak experiences. You awakened into the truth of life, and the truth of who you are. It is the enlightened or awakened state of consciousness. It is a blessing beyond imagining. It is what is revealed at the deepest levels of Presence when your mind is silent and you are fully present and available to what is here now. It is transcendent of your mind and ego. And it is natural that joy would arise out of the silence. But the moment you ask how to be in this state always, you are taking yourself into the future. You are bringing the mind and ego back into play, which will disconnect you from the very experience you are trying to hold onto. From the perspective of one who is awake, there is no always. There is only now. To remain fully present and awake, we have to release our involvement in the past, including peak experiences, and be available to what is present now, even if it is ordinary.
I usually tell people who have had experiences similar to yours to regard it as a blessing to be grateful for. It is as if God had said to you, “I am going to give you a taste of the truth of life. I am going to give you a taste of the truth of who you are. I am going to give you a taste of the Eternal. It will last several hours, and then it will go away, because I then want you to do the work. I want you to bring consciousness to all the ways you are pulled out of Presence and truth. I want you to discover how to function in the world of time, and yet remain fundamentally present. I want you to become a Master of your mind and ego. Otherwise you are not truly free.”
Being present is always instant. You cannot be present a moment from now. Arising in Mastery of your mind and ego is a process that occurs over time. It is a process of integration of the awakened state. I reveal how this is accomplished in my latest book, Journey into Now. It involves coming into right relationship with every aspect of yourself, including your ego. It involves transcending judgment. It involves releasing emotions repressed within you from the past. It involves bringing the human dimension of you that participates in the world of time into alignment with the Godly or Eternal dimension of you, which is your true nature. I describe it in my book as a two step dance of awakening.
~Leonard Jacobson
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July 2nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
I’ve had a couple of parallel but very different experiences to the above, the most recent leading me to write a blog on disidentifying from the mind. Having recently experienced the ego and mind’s world view simply disolve, leaving “I” to observe that the entire previous view was an abject falsehood (albeit as I was quite content as I sat down to enjoy a movie when it happened). The experience only lasted a few seconds, but in those seconds was timelessness, and I was totally liberated and unburdened. Life was nothing but Pure Potential – and “I” am Life. I could write much more on it than that, but suffice to say it was a peak experience that even the mind is in awe of what I call the ‘As Above, So Below ramifications’. However, not yet being free of the burden of my emotional body (aka pain body), it wasn’t long before I was lost in time again as I had to ask myself what is actually a practical question.
Here’s my perception: I’m 58 (or my planetary body is). Around age 14 I first became interested in the inner world when my intuition became hooked on the idea that there really was such a thing as Wisdom. A few years later I was reading ‘inner world’ stuff, and although a teen atheist in revolt against daft dogma, aged 19 I had a peak experience of ‘God’: I was in the wings of a Totally Unified Nature – All was One. That changed the emphasis of my Life quest – living and learning followed (ie: self-knowledge grew) – and by the time I met a real living master-human at age 36 I already knew most of what I was listening to. That Teacher, plus many before, during and after via media, aided me to continue to become more and more conscious which continues now – and I’ve not been long acquainted with the wonderful words and works of revered Leonard. When writing I can go still inside and communicate about virtually any inner world subject under the sun – and I only ever speak from my gnosis – but I could never do it in public as I’m still burdened by my emotional body. I would lose Presence very easily. Thus I always state that I’m not a teacher – and I’ve been called it – just a communicator. However, the above brief but peak experience of Being in the enlightened state, later led me to a question I’ve been asking myself for freakin’ yonks! Why in the e-body’s realm of hellfire haven’t I yet been able to embody that as a permanent state (though I have no expectation of permanently being on a peak). The answer is in the question – I’m still in the e-body’s thrall. However, pursuing my question, I found myself Googling Leonard, and on the Wikepedia page I found the short paragraph regarding those like myself who have been on the Conscious Way for way too long and even now walk with one foot in the here-and-now Presence of Being, Love and Life, the other foot still on the road (and of course one has to get off the road as they’re links not places to stay at). Simplifying, the cause was said to be rooted in early traumas, these giving the emotional body an extra-potent grip. But as I read it, a harsh realisation hit me: although I’ve had traumatic times – from childhood life was never easy – there’s been no single major trauma, but rather a life long pattern of what is essentially experienced as ‘acausal interference’, as if there’s a higher power continually saying “Thou shalt not.” IE: unexpected ‘against the odds’ events occur (outer world and/or inner) which thwart plans and deeds on utterly every level of my life. My mind has at times even labelled me jinx to myself. I obviously can’t go into multilevel details, but in all my well spiritually read life I’ve only ever come across one piece of writing which appears to relate to my unique life situation (I’ve never read or heard masters like Barry Long and Eckhart Tolle address this). It’s from the Taoist text, “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, translated by Wilhelm (from memory):
When the right person uses the wrong means, the wrong means work in the right way.
When the wrong person uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.
IE: the only way I can define my lifelong experiences of ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong’ – and this multitude of multilevel experiences represent the multiple mini-traumas which feed my e-body keeping me from liberation – is to say to myself, I’ve always been the wrong person. Even if most of the means I’ve used have been the right means, the only thing which can explain the continuous multilevel failures is that my being the ‘wrong man’ ‘acausally’ (karmically) hexes even the best laid plan. A mundane eg: I can pass a driving theory test with a 100% score, but I can’t pass a practical test as the unexpected happens such as the car I learned in has been switched for a new one which continuously stalls (probably a con of the driving school to get one to pay for more lessons). I pass with high scores in various areas – and I work for it – but it always seems that it’s only ‘allowed’ as those successes will never lead anywhere – and they haven’t.
I’ve written about the Creation of the Cosmos (inner world primary) from two very different perspectives – and with Authority from gnosis – I’ve written about Love and Logos and Being (not to mention that I’ve had many mega inner world experiences, including being given the Pneuma by the Holy Spirit / Power of God), and I can usefully answer virtually any inner world question put to me, yet I can’t even begin to answer the following: What is a “wrong man”? And why do I appear to manifest that on so many levels of my life?
Crikey – it seems I had to write that!
Love is All (you see: I AM a ‘true gnostic’, even though I’m still burdened – and “I” Know that even that is a part of the Love).
My great gratitude from Love, Leonard.
June 9th, 2011 at 5:03 am
Thanks for the insight. It brings light into the dark!