Here We Are

“In late March my husband scheduled a business trip to San Francisco in an attempt to secure a business contract. Finances being tight, he arranged to stay with a woman he had been spiritually mentoring, someone we had worked and socialized with a few years earlier… When he returned from the trip we enjoyed an affectionate reunion. Life resumed, and as the month went on my fits of anxiety began subsiding. In early May my husband confessed that he was attracted to the woman he was mentoring and felt a heart connection with her. She had experienced a "spiritual awakening," similar to what he had experienced three years earlier. He reported that they connected in deeper ways than we did and that he was confused by the connection and relationship.
The day he told me that news is the day I began dying. I no longer knew who I was or what would happen or what I could base my life on. My reliable counseling practice of fifteen years was changing; my extraordinary marriage was threatened. The inner peace I had felt for years was shattered by the winter of anxiety… Anxiety ceased. Mourning began. Ideas and images about my life arose and died. The myth I had long held about the great love story of our marriage dissolved. It was just a story…
I felt dead. I told myself that "Mary died."… My new anchor was spiritual teacher Adyashanti, a Zen teacher. I listened to his teaching tapes on my daily commute to work. My mind couldn't comprehend his words about spiritual freedom. However my being craved his message about living in the unknown and the promise of spiritual awakening.
During this time, I was in close communication with a fellow yoga teacher who was also in the throes of a marital crisis. A deeply spiritual woman, she was shaken to her roots by the news of her husband's attraction to another woman. We communicated weekly, talking about the death of life as we knew it. One day I timidly emailed this message to her, "I want to be God realized…" A few days prior to leaving for Colorado, I had lunch with my yoga teacher friend. She said her prayer was "God, bring it on, whatever you will, whatever I need for my spiritual growth." She added, "even if it means the death of my body." I swallowed hard, wondering if I was willing to die in order to be united with God.
Armed with twenty-five hours of tapes on spiritual awakening by Zen teacher, Adyashanti and spiritual teacher, A. H. Almaas, my husband and I started our car ride to Colorado on August 14. We talked little, absorbed in talks about opening to true nature. One student of Adyashanti stated "I am so mad. Your other students report these expansive experiences. I feel nothing. I am frustrated and don't want to wait for another life to be self realized." Adya responded, "The fire is burning in you. Stay with the fire…”
In utter vulnerability I screamed silently, "God damn it, do what you have to do. I want to be awakened. I don't care if I die." The light was still on, Rick was still working and I drifted off, mercifully, into the world of sleep. Sometime early morning, before dawn, all there was in awareness was velvet blackness. Words cannot describe but merely and vaguely point to this experience. There was only luminous darkness…
During the morning hike the following day, my internal experience was one of emptiness, nothingness, and "no-body" here. The experience of "going into the void" was one of seeing essential nature, recognizing the real identity of this soul, experiencing oneness. On Tuesday, it slowly dawned in my awareness that the personality of Mary was all manufactured by mind. It is not who I am. I am nobody! As my husband and I walked, I felt strange, like being in a new land, unfamiliar and very alone. There was no Mary there for company. Tears came as, from this place of nobody, I realized profoundly that there literally is no future - no hopes, dreams, expectations, goals, ambitions, things to accomplish - they are all mental constructions. There was nothing but emptiness. I wept more. The implication followed that there was nothing to hold unto - all there is "resting in the unknown." I was all alone, with nothing for security. There was utter aloneness.
In the days that followed, all aloneness became all-is-oneness. The strange vacancy of Tuesday transformed into silent bliss. There was nothing in my mind. All was still, all was silent internally. There was no me. There was no separation from everything. The peace beyond all understanding pervaded… That week began a deep healing between my husband and myself. We connected in new ways and worked through misunderstandings, misconceptions and hurts. We opened up to one another. We talked through our experiences during his spiritual awakening. The walls between us came down and we were able to meet one another emotionally and spiritually. The bonds between us deepened. Something fresh, real and substantial emerged in the relationship.
It has been some time since the miracle of spiritual awakening. Most of the time I experience a deep peace and sense of total stillness internally. At times the experience of "I" is of spaciousness and quiet. Often when I sit with others I see God in their eyes, and am immersed in profound emptiness. I relish time and space to simply be and do nothing. I am utterly grateful and astonished by it all… There is still a Mary, and I experience the re-emergence of a historical sense of self. The difference now is that I recognize ego and I am less energized by its pull. Now the movement is to make space for this realization, to give time for transcendence. The work is to identify ego and allow its hold on this life to be relinquished.
The way, at least as I understand it now, is surrendering to the path of consciousness, "leaving no stone unturned." This is allowing all sensations, thoughts and emotions to come into awareness, so that all habitual and mental activity is seen through… I am grateful for the teaching of Adyashanti who recommends allowing all experience so that awareness can liberate us by coming through, illuminating the experience. By bringing awareness into egoic phenomena, the phenomena dissolve. This is awareness in experience, not witnessing from a distance. Being a witness to experience without being in the experience is not as liberating. It keeps us separate from fullness of being which comes from the dissolution of egoic patterning and the immersion into true nature.
I think often of the dream of dying. Awakening to true nature is indeed a death. We are truly born again. Life this time around is not about becoming somebody. It is about being an expression of true nature. Less is known, defined. Life is more mysterious, unfolding moment to moment. A sense of beingness pervades. We no longer lead nor follow. Here we are, discovering the truth of being alive, in this moment.”
~ Mary NurrieStearns has meditated and practiced yoga since 1991. An advanced level yoga teacher, Mary says, “The yogic path is incredible. It weaves its way through the body, mind and spirit, and leads us into the realization of who we are as spiritual beings.”
Mary has over four decades of professional experience in mental health and maintains a counseling practice in Tulsa Oklahoma. She is author of numerous articles on psycho-spiritual growth, co-author of “Yoga for Anxiety” and “Yoga for Emotional Trauma”, the upcoming “Yoga Mind, Peaceful Mind” and co-editor of “Soulful Living”.
A quiet person at heart, she lives in a wooded area near Tulsa with her husband and pets, amidst the animals of the forest.”