Crazy for Enlightenment

"I was crazed for enlightenment... My teacher used to say, “Only the crazy ones stay.” One way my craziness worked was that before I went to sit with my teacher’s group for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings, I would get up early, at 5:00 or 5:30 a.m., and do extra sittings...

Sitting there on one of those particular mornings, two things happened, one after another, and they seemed very paradoxical. The first one was a spontaneous seeing that everything was one. For me that manifested as hearing a birdcall, a chirp, in the front yard, and from somewhere inside me the question arose, “What is it that hears the sound?” I had never asked this question before. I suddenly realized I was as much the sound and the bird as the one hearing the bird, that the hearing and sound and bird were all manifestations of one thing. I cannot say what that one thing is, except to say one thing.

I opened my eyes, and I found the same thing was happening in the room—the wall and the one seeing the wall were the same thing. I thought that was very strange, and I realized that the one thinking this was another manifestation of that. I got up and began to move around the house looking for something that wasn’t part of the One. But everything was a reflection of that One thing.

Everything was the divine. I wandered into the living room. In the middle of a step, consciousness, or awareness, suddenly left everything, whether it was a physical thing or body thing or world thing.

All in the step of a foot, everything disappeared. What arose was an image of what seemed like an infinite number of past incarnations, as if heads were lined up one behind another as far back as I could see. Awareness realized something like, “My God, I’ve been identified with various forms for umpteen lifetimes.” At that moment, consciousness—spirit—realized it had been so identified with all these forms that it really thought it was a form right up to this lifetime.

All of a sudden, consciousness was unconfined to the form and existed independently. It was no longer defining itself by any form, whether that form was a body, a mind, a lifetime, a single thought, or a memory. I saw this, but I almost couldn’t believe it. It was like someone just stuck a million dollars in my pocket, and I kept pulling it out as if I didn’t believe I had it. But it couldn’t be denied either. Even though I am using the word “I,” there was no “I,” only the One. was write my wife this odd note. It said something like, “Happy birthday. Today is my birthday. I’ve just been born.” I left it for her, and when I drove past our house to go to my meditation group, I saw her standing there waving the note in her hand. I don’t know how, but she knew exactly what it meant.

I didn’t tell my teacher anything about the experience for about three months because it seemed pointless. Why would anyone need to know this? I felt no need to tell anyone or be congratulated. It seemed totally sufficient in and of itself. It was only later that I learned that my experience corresponded to what my teacher had been talking about all along. I realized that this awakening was what all the teachings were about. In a very real way, that experience, which continues and is still the same today, is the foundation of everything I talk about..."

- from the book Emptiness Dancing.
Copyright © 2004, 2006 Adyashanti.