Andrew: Peace and love everyone. I’m here again with David “Davidya” Buckland, an author of one book now. He’s got another one on the way. This one is Our Natural Potential. And he has a blog. He is what I would consider a pioneer in the, within the realm of cognition and description, and someone that I truly appreciate. So I’m grateful to be back with him again and witnessing the unfoldment of these types of discussions.
So thank you, David.
David: Well, thank you very much, Andrew. That’s beautiful.
Yeah, I thought it would be really useful to go into a little more about the topics of Divinity and refined perception, and so on that we’ve touched on previously. We shared that.
But it’s useful, I think, to distinguish the distinction between belief and experience. For me, when I was younger, I was brought up in a Protestant family. Went to church and Sunday school and so on as a child and came to categorize words like God and Divinity and faith and so on in the category of belief. Largely in a negative way.
You know, the idea of this vengeful old man sitting in a chair in the sky just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. And I came to reject such things.
But at a certain point, in my own experience, at a certain point I became interested in Eastern spirituality and I took up meditation. And actually after not all that long, meditation not only connects you with the consciousness within, but similar practices also. But there’s a tendency for perception to refine or to, existing refinement to be revived again.
Sometimes what happens that young children have subtle perceptions and so on and experiences, but that becomes repressed as we become adults because it’s rejected by the the adults around us or it’s made fun of or whatever. And so, you know, for many of us we move into a place of disbelief or, you know, we might have, you know, drift into an agnostic kind of position that we don’t know, you know, we haven’t made up our minds and often because we haven’t really actually spent a lot of time thinking about it. It’s just what we heard when we were kids wasn’t what we liked.
But anyway, so I took up meditation and after a little bit of time, subtle perceptions began to unfold and I started to have experiences of what we would normally call Divine or subtle beings. But because of that background, myself, where I kind of rejected that kind of stuff, It was sort of like, “What the heck is this?” And there was a real, what’s the word, not complete dismissal, because I was experiencing it, but I was pretty circumspect about it, put it that way. It’s like, “Oh, okay, what’s this?”
But, you know, in this case for me, a form of Krishna showed up, and pointed out a feature of the subtle environment that I hadn’t noticed before, which allowed me to go beyond that into a deeper level. And actually that happened several times. Different forms of the Divine would show up and point out some feature of the environment I hadn’t noticed yet, and that allowed me to go still deeper. And I came to see that process as being guided. There was a hand…
And in time I experienced other types of beings and subtle beings.
A: There’s an important distinction here that I think we should make about subtle beings or between subtle beings and Divine beings.
D: Yes, very good point.
A: There is, you know, like an alligator is Divine from a certain perspective in the sense that it’s an expression of Divinity, but not all subtle beings are divine in the way that you’re referring to them.
D: And that’s a very good point. And one of the things is, you know, if you go into the subtle levels, for example, you come to the level of, you know, first we have a physical experience and then we have our emotional experience and then our mental experience and then the intellect and intuition and so on, to more refined levels. And on each of those levels, there are types of beings as I’ve discovered, I discovered from experience, there’s different types of beings that, that reside, humans between lifetimes, and angels, and people who are not cooperating with the process so much, they don’t want to deal with their stuff. And so they become kind of more what I called at one point, rabble, or they’re, you know, troublemakers and sometimes attention seekers. Yeah, they can, they can try and draw our attention. And because they’re subtle, some people make the mistake of assuming that, oh, they’re subtle must be an angel or a guide or some subtle being.
And, you know, the advice I give around that is to pay attention to the feeling value. Cause they can, because it’s sort of on a mental or like what we might consider dreams level, they can take, some of them beings can take whatever form they choose or, or they can, you know, create some appearance or give some fancy name that might appeal to us.
But, but if we pay attention to the feeling value, we can get a better sense of what they’re actually about.
A: Yeah, another helpful pointer along those lines is to expose or check in with another point that has some experience, just to reflect back to see if your seeing is clear.
D: Yes, right. And another value I discovered with the Divine beings, I felt that they had my back as well. Because when, you know, exploring on subtler levels, I mean, not that I spent a huge amount of time doing this, but just here and there it would come up, I would be exploring some level. At one point…
One of the things that’s useful to understand about the subtle world is that it’s what I call nested. So there’s essentially worlds within worlds, spaces within spaces, and so there’s what the Vedic tradition refers to as lokas or worlds. And so you can run into, there’s kind of like the larger global space and then there’s spaces within that. And so certain types of beings will tend to congregate in certain worlds or create a world of their group consciousness and congregate there, anyways.
And so at one point, for example, I wanted into a space that was kind of a, I’m not sure, a pretty sterile kind of plane that was kind of dark and not much going on, no plant life or equivalent. And then I discovered that it was a place where darker beings hung out. And as soon as I discovered this, they discovered me because of the way of consciousness attention works. They’re very aware of a different consciousness in there.
And also what immediately happened was that the Divine beings who were assisting, whatever, were there right away and they knew how to deal with that kind of stuff. I was clueless about what to do, but they were right on it. And so I recognized that they also had my back.
And so for me, very, very slowly, I learned to trust and appreciate and value what they could offer. I mean, I’ve always been a bit circumspect because it’s very easy to fool yourself and have dream ideas about your invisible friend like you were in a child. You can do an adult version of that.
So it’s still, like you mentioned, getting outside verification and so on. I have had the opportunity to get outside verification of some of these, not exactly objective verification, but some of these kinds of experiences.
There tends to be somewhat common ways that they’re experienced, but they don’t always use the same names. They don’t always appear exactly the same way, because of, I call it personalization, because it’s kind of that field of mind and dreams and so on like that. There’s that pliability of appearances. And so beings can appear a certain way because of our expectations from our cultural background or whatever. Our expectations as well.
A classic example for me would be angels. They’re often portrayed in the West as having wings and so on, having flowing robes and so on like that. So a lot of people will tend to experience angels as having wings and flying robes, sort of like you see in those classic paintings.
That’s just a way of seeing them, a way that they may want to present themselves so you can relate to them. But in actual fact, they live on a level, essentially, that they’re intelligent energy. And they’re kind of like, almost could be described as intelligent clouds of colored energy.
And then they could take an appearance in order to relate to someone like ourselves, who expect a face.
A: Yes, yes.
D: And so on. But it’s important to, again, it’s important to recognize that that’s an appearance and it’s convenient for communicating, but it’s that feeling value and the qualities behind that that’s more important.
A: Exactly, yeah.
D: And what they’re communicating is going to tend to be less about words and more about feelings and information.
A: Beautiful point. Yeah, it’s checking in for a qualitative consistency because as you said, the content, you know, tends to sort of shape shift a lot. And when we’re in tune with those fundamental spiritual qualities that more clearly reflect Divinity, then we’re able to test the resonance of that.
And one thing I wanted to go back to just for a little bit of context for the listeners is when you’re speaking about nested spaces and these lokas, worlds within worlds, It’s all right here. It’s not something, other elsewhere. It’s in this field of our own conscious awareness.
D: Yeah. As you get to know who you are on those deeper levels. And it’s also valuable to mention that too on this, that a lot of the Eastern spiritual orientation that’s the way it’s presented in current time is a denial of all that stuff.
A:Yeah.
D: A complete emphasis on the detached observer and the denial of the content of experience and so on. And there’s a value in that in the first stage of, towards the first stage of enlightenment, because it is in that quiet silence and detachment that many people find a way to connect to their nature as infinite consciousness, which is the container of all that.
It’s the kind of global consciousness that’s kind of the ultimate space, the ultimate container, the container of all containers, the source of all of it.
So getting to know that first, before you get too much into this other stuff, is very valuable because it’s very easy to get lost in other worlds.
because there’s, you know, I don’t know, I don’t want to say infinite, but there’s gazillions of possibilities of other worlds and that, but you’re in a human body, you’re having a human experience. It’s important to live in a human life and not spend a whole bunch of time off in other kinds of places.
In fact, some of those kinds of techniques where people culture detachment from the body and going off into other places, astrally or so on, tend to actually be detrimental spiritually because the important part of spiritual development is integration of mind, body, spirit, integrating all those parts together and taking a part of it and going off in their direction or other kinds of things. It tends to be contrary to that. We’re wandering off sideways here.
A: That’s fine.
D: That’s important. So, from my perspective, and I’m sure yours also, from your approach, is the importance of a balanced approach to develop that inner consciousness, that inner clarity, provides that stable, unchanging backdrop of our fundamental reality for which we can unfold this other stuff without being tossed and turned around by it.
A: Exactly. Then it’s Self to Self. It’s not within the realm of otherness.
D: Yes.
A: We’re not dealing with, which is really where a lot of the trickiness can come into play when we’re not clear about ourselves.
D: Yeah. And if we’ve got unresolved emotional dynamics going on, it’s very difficult to tune into the finer feeling values because it’s kind of overshadowed by the emotional noise of old dynamics that are unresolved, trying to come to the surface and be experienced. It creates a kind of a fog, but it also creates the hazard of unmet needs that can be appealed to by less savoury beings or imagination and that kind of thing.
So, you know, personal traps, just like in the world we can get misled by, you know, certain kinds of people are happy to take advantage of people and certain types of, certain neighbourhoods are not as desirable.
You know, it’s the same kind of a thing, same kind of rules, you know, don’t talk to strangers. Those kinds of basic principles we learn as kids, they serve a subtle level as well too.
Yeah. And you also have had a similar process, but you’ve also had a process of unfolding yourself that way. Would you like to share that?
A: Sure, yeah. You know, as far as going back to the belief versus experience investigation, I also was not really steeped in a religious environment, but we went to church, you know, every once in a while. And I think I was more encouraged to be involved with the youth, the youth group and those kinds of things. But in terms of childhood tastes or experiences of something greater, there was a lot there, but there wasn’t a context that fit what had been tasted. So the typical Protestant model of God and mankind and everything that seems to be going on in that linear unfoldment just wasn’t supportive of there being any real reflection of the tastes that had been had or had shown forth in some of the earlier years. So being around religion, it wasn’t that there was necessarily a strong aversion or disillusionment with it developed.
But at a certain point, what began to take place after some very transformative experiencing had unfolded was that it became like a shoe that was just a bit too tight. It didn’t fit anymore. And so I was trying to walk around in this shoe that was two sizes too small.
And the experiential reality was something much greater. You know, I was aware of the presence of God and there was a certainty in that.
And it wasn’t a belief, it wasn’t something that was coming or going. It didn’t have anything to do with, you know, conditional environment or anything along those lines. And at a certain point, I remember just being in this place of appearing to have a choice, you know, to either continue to kind of go along with this or to step out of it.
And that step out of it was taken, but it wasn’t taken in a way that was, you know, kind of pushing that off as being false or anything along those lines, but just kind of holding it in a broader, a broader understanding, a broader recognition of reality, and then exploring some of the Eastern traditions. By the time that started to take place here, you know, similar to yourself, it was already what these scriptures were talking about was already blossoming forth as an experiential reality. So I wasn’t reading things and then saying, “Oh, what’s that about?” When I read it, when I read a book like the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads or something along these lines, there was an inner knowing. I knew what it was pointing to because that was what was shining forth here. And I was really, you know, blessed in that respect to, by the time I encountered lots of different sort of cultural perspectives, there was enough flexibility, enough fluidity to kind of move between them and recognize the universal underlying truth that was present in all of these.
D: Yeah, I have myself come back to some of that myself too. I’ve been studying world religions and became ordained as an interfaith minister and so on. But yeah, it was definitely coming from a very different context than originally.
A: Yeah, that’s and it’s, what’s fascinating about it is that even though you know, we seem to come come from two different contexts, we kind of are here together sharing in this unified recognition of the truth of what we are and exploring the same topics, which are very relevant for both of these points of experiencing.
So it just goes to show that no matter where it is that we’re coming from, and no matter how tight we feel our background is, or whatever it is that’s appearing as the content of our history, the possibility or the potentiality is that it can blossom forth into a very full and comprehensive recognition of what reality is.
D: Well put, yes. There’s a book called American Veda that talks about the migration of Eastern thought into the West and the major proponents of that and some of the things that happened with their organizations and so on. And I found it quite insightful because one of the things he pointed out in there was that the Western model was that the priest was the liaison with God, and you had an indirect, your relationship with God was indirect, whereas the Eastern model was where you could have a direct relationship with God.
I think that that… I don’t think that was an original teaching of Christianity, But I think that’s an important thing to recognize, that it is possible to have a direct relationship with the Divine. And it doesn’t need to be about belief.
And I talked about angels and dark beings and so on like that a little bit. I do want to emphasize that that’s not particularly important in a day-to-day context and so on. The reason I mentioned that was probably just because it’s more than possible to experience them over time and an understanding that that’s a possibility is really valuable for, for it but I wouldn’t see them as a goal…
A: Yeah you could exactly, it’s like experiences or anything, it’s…
D: it’s like getting to know that there’s bald eagles that live down by the water over here that like fish and there’s a cedar grove over there. It’s part of the larger environment as you get to know the larger context of yourself.
A: Right, and oftentimes it’s intelligent to become aware if there’s a copperhead nest over in this section of the woods. We don’t want to just go wandering about thinking that everything’s hunky-dory and in for a rude awakening there.
D: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s good to know that there’s great blessings and
value and so on, but there’s also the dark spots too. Yeah, another aspect of this too that we’ve touched on in previous conversations, but in case they haven’t been heard before.
And that is what’s sometimes called the masculine and feminine aspects of the path. And I mean, it’s not really a gender kind of a thing. It’s more just a flavor. When we look at the fundamental nature of consciousness, it has these kind of three aspects. There’s the observer, which tends to be experienced as a detached, uninvolved observer, a witness of the experiences.
Then there’s the field of experience, the objects of experience, and there’s the process between them. And generally speaking, earlier on in the process, that observer and observed dynamic it’s like a masculine-feminine duality. And eventually in the process, we go into what I refer to as Unity consciousness, those two become one and merge into one wholeness.
But prior to that, there tend to be experienced as a duality. And as we touched on briefly earlier, there’s some of the Eastern teachings that are kind of, the way they’re interpreted these days is there’s an emphasis on the renunciate side, which tends to be more a masculine, dispassionate observer, and a world as illusion kind of approach. So the feminine or the field of the world is dismissed as illusion and to be ignored. And certainly if you’re on a renunciate path, which the vast majority of us are not, then you know you want to be detached from the world, then yes, it’s certainly understandable. But that’s been a bit overemphasized for historical reasons.
A: And that correlates with the darker age, yeah?
D: Yeah, exactly.
A: And in the context of the cycles of the planetary emergence.
D: Yes, and most of us are householders and we’re here to living in the world as I mentioned earlier. And so it’s a matter of touching into that source and then bringing it forward into our experience. Not living our life off in subtle realms or just in pure consciousness in a cave somewhere, but touching into that and then bringing it out into the world.
And so a balance, from my perspective, a balanced path is one that integrates both sides of the equation. And in the stages of Enlightenment model I use, there is a kind of an alternating process that can happen if there’s a more balanced process where there’s a unfolding of stages in consciousness that are more matched inside of the process. But there’s also an unfolding of refined perception and the awakening heart and so on like that.
Some people also talk about the duality as a heart-mind kind of thing. There’s this dispassionate intellect on the one level and and then the heart on another. And some of the approaches, the spiritual approaches these days, because there’s a denial of the experiential side, there’s a de-emphasis on healing and resolving emotional stuff and so on as well.
So sometimes you get into issues around bypassing where people try to avoid all their stuff and just go off into their spiritual practices and try to avoid the world, which isn’t a very integrated process and actually doesn’t lead to a, even to an initial detached awakening, ’cause you’re not dealing with your stuff that’s in the way of that.
But even more so with the refined side and the awakening heart, as I mentioned, it’s difficult to open the heart to the bigger universal values of love when you have a tangle of emotions and anger and fear and whatever unresolved past.
One way to think about it that I often use is that we can have these big experiences, positive or negative, and it takes, we then have to process it, the mind, the body, the emotions have to be processed afterwards.
And that happens a lot in dreams and so on after big experiences.
But sometimes there’s pieces of the, there’s so much of it that we have to kind of put it off a little bit, come back to it later. But then we may not, we may repress that and go into a stress response instead and, you know, avoidance or, or, you know, fight, flight, freeze dynamics, or we try to respond to it, different people respond to it in different ways.
But in essence, some kind of avoidance or repression of the, of the, we don’t want to deal with yet. And so it tends to build up over time. But because that energy is seeking its resolution, it tends to leak out in different ways in our experience and also in events in our lives. And so we have what people call karma appearing and events and irrational or overreactive dynamics and so on like that, all over symptoms of stuff to be healed. So if we’re going to integrate the heart side and that way then we also not just needing a technique of transcending and going beyond but also healing and learning to be not just to be with the silence but but also to be with what’s here in all its facets, to be what’s here in our experience as well, and to heal that.
A: Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, you wrote a beautiful article on that, I think in the last day or so. So for all the listeners, I would check that out. It’s very helpful.
I just wanna kind of bring in a couple, a twist on perspective here, just going back to where we were talking about kind of the traditional Western approach to spirituality and everything and it kind of ties into this masculine feminine understanding which is so, I find just to be so supportive and really vital for for full unfoldment. What I’ve observed in the past I don’t know I’m, this isn’t the oldest body around but in the past you know five or six years is that there has been a shift collectively even within the realm of Christianity you know when I look out there’s these grace-based churches that are springing up all over, particularly here in the South, and it’s kind of this new approach that lets go of the rules and the regulations and even lets go of hell sometimes, you know, the idea of being punished or put away or anything like that, and starts stepping into this kind of more feminine approach to the whole presentation of that particular religious flavor.
So it’s really fascinating and I know that it correlates with what’s taking place collectively, you know. And it also…
D: I was seeing a similar thing at the Science and Nonduality Conference where they’re talking a lot about more about the heart and about embodiment and it’s still not, you know, fully flowered yet, but there’s a lot more about actually living it in the world and about, you know, being real and similar. Yeah.
A: Beautiful. Yeah. And that that has its limitations, too, which I want to come back to in just the, what I was going to kind of bring it around to is in terms of masculine and feminine development. You know, even when someone has a lot of refined perception, I don’t necessarily consider that that’s feminine development in a field status, you know, in the status of the of recognizing one’s reality to be the field.
So I think it’s important to kind of make a little bit of a distinction there in the sense that we could be working on a lot of kind of emotional healing or different areas, but in terms of actual shifting into a new recognition of what our identity is, the masculine feminine actually refers to the aspects of the field. Yeah, you would agree with that?
D: Yes, you make a good point because for example what I was talking about with with my inner debate and those early experiences of the Divine and that kind of stuff, all that happened quite a long time before I woke up spiritually. So it was on a level of experiences, experiential. So it was a value and it was much superior to just belief. It was a direct experience so you know, what I used to say at the time was if somebody asked me if I believed in God, I would ask them if they believed in strawberries.
A: Right.
D: It’s obvious. I mean, it’s not a question of belief if it’s your direct experience. But for some people, they understood that and some did not.
But there’s a very big difference between that and it being the masculine and feminine. We’re talking about that on a much more fundamental level.
A: Yes, yes, exactly. And
D: It’s part of that process, but yeah, but it’s
A: Yes, of course. Yeah, it’s a part, but it doesn’t necessarily spell kind of the expansiveness to which we’re pointing towards, yeah, or we’re sort of sharing it. And one thing that’s fascinating also, and that’s what I love talking to you, because you’re really one of the only ones that I can kind of, you know, deeply talk to these things about, is that what What I’ve noticed recently in some of the shifts that I’m observing is that there’s more of a feminine qualitative dominance to the shift, yeah?
So this means that there’s actually the recognition of like the vibrant fullness of the field of self-observing or self-consciousness. And then the awareness, the seer aspect is recognized after that. So the sap aspect, what’s been called the colorless sap, actually oftentimes is being recognized first and sometimes an actual shift into the recognition of that as Self is shining forth prior to any recognition of one’s Self as awareness.
Now, of course, they’re not two, they’re not separate, so it’s always there, but it doesn’t click in until after this. So it’s almost like, Divinity is really pulsing forth this new qualitative presentation within the field.
And I think it kind of ties into what I was saying about Christianity on some level and just our collective…
D: That’s actually quite significant because we’ve been rising out of a darker age into a higher age of light. There has been that renunciate emphasis we talked about before, because it was necessary to withdraw from the world to make any real progress spiritually. That’s no longer the case.
But it’s still been the case that the best way to wake up was to transcend the world and into the silence and discover consciousness within. And that’s been the case for many people in my generation and so on like that. But if people are now beginning to wake up to the consciousness in the world, that speaks to a much, much higher level of clarity in the world than may be apparent yet. It’s a really, really good sign.
A: Yeah, it is. This is like, you know, groundbreaking, I think, at least to be talking about it on a computer, know and it’s really, yeah we’re just we’re in a really amazing period you know kind of witnessing all this
D: and to speak to this a little bit more to one of the things about when you when you have a masculine detached dominant process then you’re much more likely to be talking in terms of emptiness and world as illusion and quite a flat kind of process, even if there’s a very clear awakening, it can be quite a flat process. Where when there’s more of that, the feminine side, that’s where the fullness is. That open space of consciousness is a big space, but it’s not an empty space. It’s just rich and full and alive and it’s lit up.
It turns out, I used to think that was the liveliness of consciousness that made it lit up, but it actually turns out to be essentially Divinity beyond that that’s leaking through it.
A: Yeah, that’s what’s so funny is that it’s almost like when that reveals itself, it’s like, duh, that was it. So it makes perfect sense, but you don’t see it until it’s revealed by grace.
D: What’s interesting too, because in the tradition that I’m in too, that they talk about, there’s these stages of enlightenment and there’s a certain number of stages and then that part of the process is complete. But the feminine side, the refinement and the degree of ability to awaken the heart and embody more and more is effectively infinite because there’s just so much to expand into and learn and discover and open to.
It’s far, it may, if, and that’s the real disadvantage of not developing that side. You get to a certain point and your development’s going to stall out because there is no further, you reach the peak of how far you can go. You’ve gone beyond consciousness. There’s no more, there’s no more of that development to happen. So then, you know, then it’s, to go any further, it has to be refinement.
And you know, at the stages, there’s kind of a Self-Realization, then what’s known as God consciousness with the initially awakening heart.
And then, you know, this is kind of an idealized format.
And then there’s the Unity stage where those two sides of consciousness come together.
And then there’s Refined Unity where that development before is now in the context of Unity and it fills out much more. You become intimate with everything in the world.
And then there’s the transcending of consciousness itself into what they call Brahman in the Vedic tradition or Adyashanti calls the no “capital S” Self, (no-Self) beyond Atman.
A: Yes.
D: That stage of development and that’s kind of that becomes the completion of that process. And then you’ve got a quality of Refined Brahman, which it’s kind of a bit obscure because how can you have refinement of a no thing or that’s a whole other topic we’ve talked about
before and then those two sides come together into what’s called Parabrahman or pure Divinity where you come to divinity itself without, just as we come in the transcendent in Samadhi or Turiya, we come to that pure value of consciousness, consciousness without content, consciousness without modification whatever, in the same way we can go beyond consciousness and Brahman and come to pure Divinity and, but again that requires the feminine side to come to it and you know there’s some of the old texts you know when they talk about masculine and feminine, they use they talk about expressions like Shiva and Shakti, you know there’s often an emphasis on Shiva but Shiva is dead without Shakti because Shakti is the power of life and the power in general and the the movement and the flow. Shiva is just stillness, silent observing. He brings alertness to the game, but that’s it.
A: Beautiful. Yeah, I’m reading a pretty kind of interesting, a rare book I would say on some levels called the Radha Tantra. And in it, there’s a similar line to what you said, but instead it says, without Shakti or without this particular form that it’s referring to of the Divine Mother, Brahman is like a dead corpse. So instead of saying Shiva, it even says that Brahman is like a dead corpse without the activation of that which presents the Self, you know, the Atman, as the contrast to the nothing or nothingness of Brahman.
And yeah, that’s what becomes clear when there’s clearing that’s taking place, you know.
D: That’s essentially what Tantra is all about, is that Shakti side, a part of it. And it’s interesting, you know, in studying the tradition that I studied in, which is in the Shankara lineage, which a lot of the time appears to have emphasized the renunciate. He revived the monastic tradition in India and was a monk himself, but he revived the whole thing. And there’s a point in his life where he goes through the more detached, you know, “consciousness is everything” kind of period and then he has this, there’s a story that’s told where he’s walking along a river and his shoe gets stuck and he can’t get his foot out, unstuck and he sees a washer woman crossing the nearby bridge and calls out to her and she responds that it’s all illusion and he realizes it’s the Divine Mother and he writes this beautiful poem about the Divine Feminine and so on and realizes, in the second part of his teaching, he realizes that he brings out the Divinity part, the feminine side of it. But a lot of what’s been taught of his teaching in the West these days, the neo Advaita teaching emphasizes an aspect of his earlier teaching and doesn’t bring out his later part. He also talked about, they have a thing, they talk about, another version is from the Sankhya tradition, they have the duality is known as Purusha and Prakriti, kind of equivalent to the Shiva value and Shakti, Prakriti means nature and nature is composed of three fundamental qualities of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, essentially kind of purity and clarity, movement or fire and inertia. And what he observed was when inertia is dominant in our physiology, we experience the world around us as solid and real.
When Rajas becomes dominant, which is quite common with spiritual practice, because Rajas is transformation also, is that the world comes to be seen as illusory and that’s often taught as the truth but it’s actually a transitional experience and then when Sattva becomes dominant, which comes from that refinement and also Soma which is a whole other topic, but an essentially a purely feminine kind of thing, then with Sattva dominant we experience the world as divine play. So we kind of come to recognize that the world isn’t an illusion, it’s an appearance which has a deeper flow that’s going on. So the surface is illusory, but what’s underlying that is not. There’s a reality to it that’s intimate to who we are, and the nature of Divinity, which unfolds over a period of time, the direct experience of that.
And so this complete dismissal of the world, philosophically or whatever like that, is not actually particularly useful, especially if it’s not your experience. It’s useful to recognize that it’s a stage we can go through, but it’s not a philosophy to adopt, if it’s not our direct experience and so on. It’s a part of the process.
A: Yeah, and even in those stages to have a broader context is so supportive because it kind of moves us out of the realm of falling into that self-laid trap of feeling like this is you know “this is it.” And making decisions based on that or whatever the case may be.
D: Teaching
A: teaching would be one.
D: People get into that sometimes, because each stage, when you have a major shift, it’s a major shift in our sense of self and our sense of the world, what’s real. Even within the Unity stage, it’s a progressive stage where we unify with more and more over time. It can cause a whole series of shifts in our sense of what’s real. We get very used to that kind of changing. But the idea that there’s, each of those changes can be very profound and we can feel a great completeness with that.
We can feel done and somewhere or the other we’ll have read that that’s the truth or whatever. And it’s certainly true, it’s your experience, it’s true in that moment, but to ever think that we’re done is really a folly.
A: Yeah.
D: Yeah, that’s, that’s, it’s like another bit of identity in there that’s wanting to control and, know that I know the ultimate truth and it’s so easy to buy into that.
A: I like to look at it as a a flower that just keeps blooming. You know, you think the petals are, and then more petals are coming out from the center and it’s just this perpetual blossoming. The flower doesn’t have an ending, you know. It’s complete, but it’s in process. It’s in process, but it’s complete.
D: Yeah. I saw a rose the other day, on a single stem and one of the roses that was, had opened was a beautiful yellow rose and on this other branch was a beautiful pale red rose and then there was another there was also a bud on that same, of another red rose coming up… wow which was really interesting to see
A: that is very fascinating
D: yeah it’s very curious to see but it’s um but even with on the same branch there’s different expressions and at different stages of expression. So it’s, nature is like that. And to ever think that we’re done is, done is inertia, it’s preparing for dissolution.
A: Yeah, in that sense, we never really started to be done in the first place.
(laughing)
Yeah, it’s interesting how it all ties into what we were talking about with the collective and how things are kind of really shifting. And I think more and more what we’re gonna see and what I’m observing is these, even tastes of radiance are starting to shine forth in early stages or even pre, in a regular taste of radiance are starting to shine forth even pre initial shift sometimes. So it’s really miraculous.
And there tends to be here in this teaching there’s an emphasis on devotion, and the flow of devotion, and devotion to truth, not necessarily anything in particular, although it can direct itself in certain ways.
But that level of devotional flow, also I see becoming more regular in the field of activity as we’re witnessing this enlivening within conscious awareness.
And when we look at some of the models of the different, or at least what is present in writing that kind of describes different ages, we see that often times human beings were just naturally devotional towards each other. You know, it was an expression of devotional relationship.
D: The heart was open
A: The heart was open to touch the feet, to acknowledge according to the Dharma and the structure and everything that was in place was just, that was just the way that life was, you know?
And that’s definitely, I’m starting to see that, at least in the, you know, it’s kind of interesting when we hang around a certain group because, you know, (laughs) we’re kind of seeing a certain unfoldment and not that I’m not out there, you know, at the grocery store and those kinds of things, but it’s different when you’re interacting regularly.
And that’s definitely happening, at least in smaller groups I know for sure.
D: Yeah and it’s really beautiful to see also where many in my generation took up meditation in their late teens, early 20s and meditated for decades and many essentially gave up on the possibility of enlightenment in this lifetime just because it was taking so long in spite of all these promises they might have heard when they were younger and our hopes and yet then then the shifts started happening around 2006 or 7 meditating for a very long time, started shifting but what’s happening now I’m seeing more of is more younger people. They didn’t have to go through those decades of practice.
A: Well, not in this lifetime.
D: It depends on how you want to approach it. There is the idea that people say that some of the souls coming in now are coming in because there is that possibility of experiencing life from the… because there is that… when we talk about masculine and feminine, another way of framing that is from an Ayurvedic perspective is Atman and Sattva, consciousness and clarity or purity. And from an Ayurvedic perspective, those are carried forward from prior lives. Prior life development, spiritual development is carried forward. It doesn’t always kick in right away.
Some people start off being spiritual right away with their kids, but some people they have a karmic debt or something like that to take care of first and then at a certain point suddenly, they suddenly discover a teacher or whatever like that and then they wake up and the whole life shifts and the emphasis changes and so on like that because whatever that was is finished.
A: Another interesting phenomena which you know is what it is there they’re actually a significant, you know, I mean, relatively significant portion of incarnations now that actually they, in order to incarnate out of sort of a call and response situation, they’ve taken on a portion of collective karma. So they didn’t, they weren’t bound to this planetary cycle karmically, but they took on a portion in, in order to incarnate.
D: Yeah, it’s actually interesting. I hadn’t recognized this before my own process. The dynamics were such that I did end up discovering some aspects of, the karma in my life didn’t make any sense from the nature of my life and so I ended up discovering some prior lives and that made a lot of sense. It’s certainly not a necessary part of the spiritual path, but for me it was an important clarification of what was going on and what this life was about. But there was less attention on ancestral kinds of things. I was certainly aware of some of that, but it wasn’t as important.
But what’s been happening for me more recently is some of those ancestral dynamics became much more clear, and it became clear to me that to get this particular life, birth that I got, there was an exchange that I took on some ancestral karma in exchange for which I got the life. And of course, the object then is to work out some of that karma, but oftentimes we’re not all that successful.
And it took me into my 60s before I finally was able to complete some of that stuff. And it kind of came to the surface that I could. It’s been one of those, you know, lifetime desires that I’ve had for a long time. It’s been there in the background and kind of pops to the surface every so often, but never seemed to go anywhere.
And I was finally able to complete that and resolve this trauma for, you know, going back several generations in my family. So it’s interesting.
So there’s all kinds of layers of, there’s our own stuff from our own history. The collective stuff and then there’s ancestral stuff coming in through the bloodline of our birth.
We’re kind of, from an Ayurvedic perspective, it’s kind of half and half. Our soul’s development and our, and the development of this, the bloodline and the body-mind we can get for the, and of course there’s a whole timing thing too is getting the optimum birth time to come in and so we can work out that stuff and make spiritual progress and so on. And then of course we forget it all and get distracted and stumble towards ecstasy as I used to say.
A: Yeah that’s a great point you make about the ancestral karma. I didn’t have any real context for any of that either or maybe you did but you said you just didn’t give too much attention to it early on but this, the same was true here, the same was present here as far as not really giving too much attention to that.
I always kind of generalized you know whatever was surfacing and I think that, that’s helpful. I think it’s also helpful to have some you know discernment to be able to see this is, you know, kind of linked to this and, you know, as something is becoming conscious and being brought into the light to be able to recognize the structure of it and, you know, where the, you know, the link, the links of residue and everything along those lines.
And I hear recently along with what you said, within the sphere of some resolution of ancestral karma. It also seems to be linked to male-female dynamics too, at least surfacing here. There’s been a lot of different, what seems to be collective, but also on an ancestral level. The dynamism between the male and the female, there’s a lot of unresolved material there collectively. And I speak about this concept called the sacred marriage, which is basically talking about masculine and feminine aspects of subjectivity being resolved into what you would refer to as Unity or Refined Unity and what I refer to as dynamic subjectivity.
But that sacred marriage also does translate into the field of form and activity. And so there is something that is sort of healing, we might say, collectively within the sphere of the experiencing between men and women and how that relates to archetypal family structures and you know all of those all of those various things.
D: Right, right, because if we think of, if we think of the context of consciousness being the source and expressing forward through us as vehicles to express that, then our own inner healing and resolving some of those dynamics is going to express forward into more loving relationships and devotion being able to express right in the practical, in a loving relationship and mutual devotion, you know, the namaste and the divine in me, I see the divine in you, that can be a living reality as part of our life if we’re making that spiritual progress but also healing the barriers to emotional expression and those fine feelings of devotion.
I was raised by academics and a very strong emphasis on the intellect, and my makeup here is also oriented that way, which is handy in terms of the analysis and give expression to some of that. But yeah, there’s not a lot of learning on the heart side. Also being a guy in our culture and that kind of stuff too, I had to learn how to actually experience emotions again, you know, because it’s like real boys don’t cry, boys don’t cry. And yeah, it’s kind of like real men thing.
And those kind of messages we get from peers and family and so on, to be the tough guy. And that, but it’s actually, you know, we’re all both, you know, we have a dominant gender and so on. But we’re all comprised of both and we’re not going to find peace and happiness if we’re way off base with our own nature and who we are within.
A: I just want to make a correction too when I’m talking about that sacred marriage expressing into the field of activity also includes female to female dynamism and male to male dynamism.
D: Yes, good point.
A: But yeah, it’s really amazing what we witness unfold when we’re willing to give attention to that which hasn’t been given attention. And that’s kind of what you were talking about there. You know, when we have those programs that say, you know, males don’t do this, or they’re not, that’s being weak, or whatever the case may be. It’s basically just a repression, suppression mechanism that’s being put in place, you know, and being willing to open up can be, can appear frightening because we don’t, you know, many haven’t even kind of tasted what that’s like, you know, they’re like, well, what does that even mean?
D: Yeah, well, one of the things for me here that was huge, which took a long time to become conscious of was I had this really strong provider meme, that I needed to be the provider. And that was reinforced by the way, you know, my father died when I was quite young and there was sort of ideas of what a male is supposed to be were more ideas than a direct example in that kind of way. And so I had this really strong thing about being a provider, but I didn’t recognize that. And so at a certain point in my spiritual growth post awakening, it was basically organized to put me in a situation where I couldn’t, you know. And so my work, I left a business scenario and started my own consulting business and tried several versions of that. Nothing ever went anywhere. And he sort of went through this whole dynamic of attempting to make it work and having it not work.
And yet money was never a problem. Money would just show up from wherever. And, but, I kept on wanting it to be a certain way and there was a real strong thing in there about that. And gradually it broke down.
And then finally when it resolved to a sufficient degree, then it just kind broke open and then I was able to do what I was supposed to be doing here and it just worked. But it took a while. There’s a quality of trust that has to be in there, to trust. And when we’ve had experiences that we interpreted to be not being supported or whatever, because we were wanting to do something different than life wanted or thought we were supposed to be something different than life wanted, we can develop a lack of trust in being supported by nature and the world, others. And so there’s a relearning and coming back in tune with who we are and there’s a relearning to trust. Also coming back to the beginning of our conversation, learning to trust what’s showing up in the experience and you, you know, on that level as well.
A: Yeah, that’s a great point. ‘Cause I think many human beings kind of are within the realm of trusting things that really aren’t trustable. So, you know, our trust goes to, can oftentimes go towards things that are subject to fluctuation, change, you know, and they’re really unstable.
And that’s kind of like what we’re seeing, you know, we’ve been tasting collectively, I guess, for this year on some level. And that’s not the trust you’re talking about. You’re talking about a trust in reality in a more essential–
D: Fundamental way, yes.
A: Fundamental, knowing what we are. And that’s, so it’s really in a way, it’s like growing naked. I like to look at it like that. We grow naked, we grow out of those false safety features of feeling like these things are reliable. and if I’m not doing this, it’s not responsible or whatever the case may be. And into this childlike maturity, this nakedness of existence, which is still intelligent. It’s pure, it’s actually pure, you know, it’s pure intelligence, but it isn’t fixed, you know, it isn’t fixed and planned and detailed and laid out necessarily in the way that oftentimes the mind would like for it to be.
D: Yeah, and yet there is a beautiful intelligence to it, but not necessarily an intelligence that we can recognize because it’s an intelligence that isn’t about us as an individual, ’cause that’s somewhat delusional, that we’re separate in any way, but rather an intelligence that’s doing all of it simultaneously.
And as matter of fact, is doing all of it simultaneously in all time, all in the moment, you know? So it’s so vast that some personal value of mind could never…
A: not at all, right?
D: Yeah, and it’s just done, you know, it’s just fine. And there’s a profound intelligence to it and structure and order is in there. I mean, on the surface, it can seem like chaos and so on like that, but it’s perspective. You know, it’s just about perspective. When we step back into our deeper nature, then the deeper levels of reality unfold.
I mentioned earlier on about consciousness having those three aspects, the observer and the process of experience. The process of experience in there is what creates experiences. We don’t create our experiences, it’s that process that’s in there. What happens for us is how we interpret our experiences, how we respond to what happens. That’s where free will plays out, where we can get into trouble or we work well with it. But that quality is in there. And so first we wake up to that observer aspect typically, but as you mentioned that, sorry, but first we wake up… then we wake up to the other side of it, yes, and into one wholeness.
But then, into Refined Unity, we wake up to that intelligence aspect more. And it can come earlier in qualities of intuition and the intellect, which was associated with the mind before, becomes associated with that pure being and stability, and so it becomes much clearer and more discriminating. But what happens is that intelligence aspect, the most subtle aspect of consciousness wakes up. And so when we have an experience, it comes not just the experience, but the intelligence of the experience. What the experience is about, its nature, its qualities, and so on like that. And then, you know, we can gain much more confidence and because we can, you know, we understand what the experience is for, what it’s about.
A: And we see that we are the experiencing. We are on some level, that’s our own intelligence, that’s our own Self. And going back to what you said about trust, with that resolute intellect, these decisions are based in that spontaneous flow of knowing, and really, we can make decisions very cleanly, very precisely, very much in alignment from that space of recognizing ourself as this field.
D: Yeah, and also because it’s based on something that’s stable, we can go down into very, very fine levels of being and clearly experience on that level. Whereas if we’re kind of going like this all the time, it’s really hard to see what’s smooth and just flowing.
A: Yeah, okay, yeah. So that’s those, the currents, the flows that are kind of underneath what we see on the surface level as that. And I also found too that you can actually kind of see a simultaneity of that in the way that it’s coming through and the experiencing you know begins to show up as a lively radiance. The radiance is lively and all of the flows are ourself you know.
D: It’s like physics says that the world around us is constantly being recreated in every moment and we can directly experience that.
A: Yeah.
D: And it is flowing and aliveness and so on like that and it’s just recreating every moment.
I did want to mention one thing though is both of us have been using visual language. Both of us are more visual but it’s important to understand that people don’t aren’t necessarily going to experience it in a visual way. Some people are more oriented towards sound and vibration on that level and some are more oriented towards feeling and a more somatic and bodily sensations and so on like that. And so Divine may initially unfold for us as profound feelings or just a sense of immense presence and so on.
And someone who’s more visual, the visual sense is associated with the mind, just in terms of which levels function, how they interrelate. And so someone who’s visual tends to put things into words more easily than someone who’s maybe in a feeling value, it’s maybe harder to give… So poetry might be a vehicle for that. Or song. It’s hard to put that into words, but it’s not necessarily… but of those three I described, seeing is actually the most surface value. Those flows and fine vibrations are actually much more subtle and more profound. So it’s not that one is more superior or weaker. They each have their own qualities and advantages.
And part of that unfolding is that we can start with our default way and then open up into the others.
A: Beautiful. Yeah. That’s what I was just going to say that they’re not to the exclusion of the others. Right. And the capacity is for all three of those levels that you described to be present to somebody.
D: Yeah. Where for me, feeling level was less, more plugged up. Work was needed on that level. So, you know, the Divine showed up on a visual level to show me things because I wasn’t going to get a feeling level at that point.
A: Beautiful. Yeah. And that goes back to the clearing that you and I are both always talking about, you know, just giving some attention where attention is due and how valuable that is in this unfoldment.
D: Yeah. And everybody has their unique combination of… It’s one of the things that’s important to understand is that we’re not all supposed to be the same. The whole idea of there being separate points of experience in this one wholeness is so all the detail can be brought out. And so each of us are designed in slightly different mixtures of emphasis of laws of nature so that we’re going to experience the world in a different way and we’re going to have a little bit different perspective, we’re a different point in that wholeness. And it’s by all of us together that wholeness becomes greater and more complete. And so each of us has qualities to bring to the whole and ways of experiencing. So there’s our own uniqueness is not a mistake. It’s essentially why we’re here. And yet we have that one common underlying reality as well.
A: Beautiful. Yeah, that is a really great point. And one more thing I wanted to mention while we’re here together is, you know, sometimes you write about cognition and in your book you mentioned it and you have some beautiful descriptions there, explanations of what that term is pointing to. And many read your blog and are able to tune into those cognitions that you’re describing there. And I just wondered if you would just say a few words about that and kind of the spontaneity of it and how it’s not necessarily something, well it’s definitely not something that is done or occurs for everyone in the midst of this process.
D: Right, right sure. Yeah, my teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he said that everybody can realize but not everybody will cognize. Cognize is kind of a different style of experience, the way I’m using the word. When you have that resolute intellect, where the intellect is associated with the unchanging, it becomes quite stable. It creates a platform for experiencing reality, but in a holistic way.
It’s hard to describe exactly, but essentially if I experience this pen, I can look at it and I see it on this side and I can turn it over and see it on that side. If I was to cognize the pen, I would see it on all sides simultaneously, I would see its entire history and everything it’s made of and how it was made, like a totality of experience of that object.
And so the core of the Vedic tradition that I lean towards, is a set of books that, well they’re now books, but they’re a set of cognitions of these ancient seers of the nature of reality. And they were in the impending dark age, a fellow named Vyasa sat down and brought the primary ones together and organized them into these groupings and wrote them down, which was considered unnecessary at that point. It was passed on, well, originally it was passed on just mentally, but then it was passed on orally. And then it’s grosser and grosser.
That was an interesting thing that happened before that we think of writing as an advancement in our in human development, but it’s actually because we’re getting worse, our consciousness is going down. And so he wrote them down so that they would be saved, but they’re actually encoded experiences. So the Vedas exist in kind of like a kind of like the idea of the akashic records, is kind of like this, there’s a more subtle level where there’s these core, it’s kind of like a blueprint of creation and the way I have experienced it is that that at certain points in an apparent time sequence the next stage of evolution of the universe is, its time, and so a being comes forth with certain abilities to have a cognition and that makes it alive in collective consciousness.
And so there’s kind of like these three, is it three? I can’t remember, but I think there’s three styles of cognition. There’s the basic cognition, which is when someone comes along and experiences, remembers the experience someone else has had. It’s like there’s a cognition that’s alive in group consciousness and they have that same cognition. Kind of like a basic style.
And then there’s a person who revives a cognition or an aspect of nature that’s gone dormant. So because nature work moves in cycles. We talked on
that a little bit briefly. We think of the seasons, you know, we have rising and falling seasons in that sense of, you know, in cycles. And so in a, when we go into a darker cycle, collective consciousness becomes more shadowed and some of the laws of nature essentially go to sleep, become dormant. And so those aspects of nature and that cognition goes quiet. And so there’s a type of cognizer that comes along who revives a dormant cognition.
And then the highest type are the original cognizers who have the first experience of that. But when you get to that level, it gets really kind of bizarre because at that level is prior to time and space. And so the idea that it was before anything or that it happened at a certain point in time is meaningless or that there is a, that it didn’t exist prior to their experience, because it was part of the original blueprint.
So there is those names of famous sages who had those original cognitions that awoke those laws of nature in creation, but at that point it sort of gets into, the boundaries are a little obscure and there was actually a point where they did that. Anyways.
A: Thank you for sharing that and it kind of ties back into what we were talking about earlier in terms of certain things becoming more prominent you know we’re referring to the feminine aspect shifts and then also looking at kind of how there is a greater fullness radiance in the field so in terms of concealment and revelation, this is what I’m saying, how it ties together, is that certain things or certain aspects of reality appear to become concealed in what is deemed to be a darker age and then there’s a period of what is perceived to be revelation of the previously concealed, yeah? And look at it from a sequential, temporal viewpoint like that. And now we’re in that, we’re witnessing that the revelation of that which was previously concealed.
This includes certain spiritual understandings and part of that is surfacing on a collective level too of spiritual understandings which no longer are really in alignment. So we could say they’re kind of they’ve served their function and now they’re kind of their shelf life is their expiration date is already… So when we see in particularly, you know and we look at the non-dual kind of community at large and everything that’s going on in the field of awakening and everything that’s being presented there, we’re kind of seeing that purging of some things that were in place and effectively and efficiently in place.
And now through this process of revelation of that which was previously concealed, kind of being pushed out in a certain way. But that means that they’re seeming to have some activity on the surface, kind of bubbling there and
D: or they’re being upgraded in some way
A: or they’re being upgraded, exactly yeah so it’s not necessarily you know, kicking them out or throwing away with, with the expiration date, three months old but, that there’s a new version, yeah totally of course.
The reason I brought up cognitions is you know you, here there was no context for anything like that I didn’t, I wasn’t kind of informed in the way that you were in that sense.
D: Well, this is, nobody taught me about the three stages.
A: Oh, okay, okay.
D: That became clear and interesting.
A: Yeah, but even the term cognition or, you know, in the way things unfolded here, it was kind of like, oh, that doesn’t, that, you know, that’s not it, that those, you know, cognitions don’t happen in certain cases or that’s not, you know. And so I think that it’s helpful to, because in speaking about what we’re speaking about with more brilliancy and light, you know, shining forth in the collective, the likelihood of cognitions becoming a little bit more of a regular affair to a certain degree is present.
Yeah?
D: Yes, very much. Well, one thing I’ve noticed, I’ve written about a few times, is that there are laws of nature waking up, which means someone has cognized them to stir them awake. So I don’t know who that person was, but I recognize that there’s a law of nature waking up. And then there’s a second stage of that I saw that, where the law, the awake law of nature, then integrates with existing laws. The laws don’t work as individuals separate in that kind of way. They work in teams and so on like that.
So there’s kind of like the awakening process and then there is the integration with the group and then it’s a collective synthesis.
And then now there’s a new thing that’s happening that I’ve been seeing much more recently. Last year I first started noticing, where when someone is able to embody pure Divinity that the, because everything that’s outside is inside. Right. Because our apparent physical individual body is also cosmic. It’s a cosmic body of all bodies and all the bodies of everybody, all beings, all insects and angels and everything that’s all in here. And out there is in here. It’s both ways. So when we start to embody pure Divinity, it’s kind of like the body is filled up with white light kind of a thing.
I mean that happens earlier as well because there’s qualities at earlier levels where that happens as well, different types of that. But it’s like on another whole nother level in the post-Brahman stage.
And essentially what that does is it immerses the laws of nature in our physiology in Divinity. And so they’re having spiritual awakenings as a result of that. So what I saw, that started last year, and then there’s been a whole lot of purification going on since then. Because it’s like, you know, it’s just like when an individual wakes up spiritually, there can be, Adyashanti called the honeymoon. There could be a nice pleasant period, but then you’ve created this big open space, so anything that hasn’t been healed or resolved yet rushes forward to be seen. And it really varies by a person, but sometimes people get into going through a real wave of purification. That’s kind of happening on the collective level at the moment. So there’s a lot of stuff rising to the surface to be seen and cleared. So it’s a good thing, but it’s a lot of people don’t understand that that’s what’s happening and don’t know how to heal or let go. So it’s creating a lot of drama and fear and so on.
Now the other part of that process too is that when those devas are waking up in the local experience, then that awakening falls back into the collective, their collective value. Because it’s sort of like there’s these point values that are expressed forward as this physiology, right? But they’re also collective, the laws of nature are all collective. And so that awakening happens and the apparent local body, which is cosmic, falls back into the cosmic and then expresses forward into all forms.
So it’s a whole other level of waking up the whole that’s started to take place now. So it’s not just individual lighthouses waking up and raising the collective consciousness. And because it’s the same consciousness for everybody, all boats are lifted.
Now there’s another value that’s taking place where laws are not just waking up from slumber, they’re spiritually waking up. And so then they’re going to go through whatever the the deva-version process of what we talk about is. And they’re part of the same group of consciousness also.
And so it’s raising that from a whole other level.
A: Beautiful. Yeah. I would just make the point too, for those listening, that still, going back to what you spoke about earlier in terms of refined perception and the sort of default, you know, as far as visual and those kinds of things, what you’re describing could take place on more of a feeling, you know, it could be on more of a feeling level, even on the level of subtle sound as well, you know, as far as the dominant.
D: Right, exactly. Yeah, so in this case, I’m visual, so I’m watching them, watching it happening and being, well, at the time, it was kind of like, really? You know, because it’s not anything, I’d heard of or it hasn’t happened for a very long time.
So I guess it’s a new thing that’s taking place because, there’s a bunch of people that are in there. And one of the things that happened, in the stages of enlightenment, there’s a pair of three sets [2 sets of 3]. So there’s Self-Realization, God-consciousness and Unity, then the refinement of that, and then there’s the Brahman, refined Brahman and Parabrahman, and they’re kind of similar in certain ways in terms of the process. And Unity has several stages as I mentioned before, and so does Parabrahman. And just as I was finishing the first book, it came out that Parabrahman had seven stages, and which, you know, it’s like, really? Okay. And so I kind of wrote it up and put it in the book, and I fixed that and updated because I realized that was a little bit off, you know, my understanding. There wasn’t enough clarity to get it quite right in the first version. So I refined that a little bit and updated where I have it on the website, as well.
A: Yeah, we just keep updating.
D: So that’s unfolding. My stages of consciousness thing, I’ve written three major articles on that. I replaced the first one because I’d rewritten it so many times. I got more clarity. Because I had these concepts about what it was supposed to be like and so on.
And then as more and more people that I knew spoke to me about it or I saw them going through the shifts or whatever, then I was able to fill out more information. Adyashanti talks about head, heart, gut as a kind of, what I jokingly call the three am-egos.
It’s kind of like these three levels of ego identification. And we lose the first one with Self-Realization or Cosmic Consciousness. The second one is with awakened heart, head, heart, gut. And the third is kind of this core or existential identity in the gut.
And I associated those with Self-Realization, God consciousness, and Unity. I thought, you know, because that’s what happened here. Adyashanti talked about it that way, and so on. But that’s part of the healing process [head, heart, gut] and letting go. And it turns out you can, you can go further in the stages before you’ve actually let those things go.
I know people who like, like Suzanne Marie talked about letting go of the gut contraction with her Brahman shift. And so we had this conversation about it. She’d had a Brahman shift and didn’t quite understand what was going on and it wasn’t part of her tradition. But because she talked about the gut release I assumed she’d had a Unity shift but we weren’t quite synchronizing on that.
But then it became clear to her later on and so she had it with the Brahman shift. But I know people who had their heart opening after Brahman and so haven’t even got to the gut one yet. And I think this is partly why you see spiritual teachers, for example, get into weird identity problems at a certain point, because they may have cleared the first one or two and that kind of stuff, but if that core identity is still in there, there’s still a person, a quality of person, that’s running aspects of the boat and also can be basically giving a kind of shadow on the experience.
A: Yeah. In terms of what you were or going back to what you were saying about the embodiment of pure Divinity in the context of this head, heart, and gut, we can also recognize the clear reflection or situating of pure Divinity on all three of these levels as well, which of course would on some level require there being the limited identification cleared from that. Yeah, yeah.
D: And of course there can be, you know, whatever individual variations on that. You know…
A: Of course, and it’s not that everyone is going to, it’s not that everyone’s going to, you know, see it or contextualize it according to those concepts, you know.
D: Right, right, yeah, like Aydashanti talks about having a two-week, what Loch Kelly called a barbecue. Just because the gut is the fire center, the solar plexus chakra. And so it was for him, it can be experienced as a real roasting. And it was a real big thing.
I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t just recently read about it or heard about it when in his discussion with Loch Kelly. And then so when it happened, it was like, oh, ’cause it was for me, it was relatively brief.
A: Yeah.
D: It depends on what clearing has already been done. However, in saying that, I can also note that there’s been a considerable amount of clearing since then in the lower chakras. That’s where a lot of the old garbage is carried in, those first three chakras.
A: This year has been pretty significant within that sphere here.
D: Yeah, if you follow the Jyotish or Vedic astrology, the cycles of the dynamics of what’s going on in the sky, it’s kind of a reflection of the cycles of time going on. It’s been quite a, well, a really good time for purification.
A: Yeah, that’s right.
D: But yeah, it’s been an interesting period.
A: Beautiful. Well, we’ve covered quite a bit, as usual.
D: Went places I didn’t expect to go.
A: That’s right. I think we definitely set the stage for our next talk. Hint, hint. Exploring more together. Really appreciate the apparent time spent.
D: I really value the conversations too. It’s always really interesting what comes out of this and it meets a different audience as well.
A: Yes, beautiful.
D: Who need to hear this.
A: So maybe we’ll just acknowledge the glory of pure Divinity.
D: Yes. All glory.
A: All glory. Thank you.