It's probably not important that I start this story off with history, but a little might help it make sense.
This past year has been among the most stressful of my life. Major job changes. A cross-country move that is still wobbly. Two close family members needing major surgery, both sudden, both unexpected. I could go on, but imagine some unseen hand throwing darts at your forehead almost daily and you get the idea.
With this type of living, the pressure can build to an experience that is almost impossible to describe. It's as if you're going to spontaneously explode, but you're not sure how to do that. I was there earlier this week and something happened I've been reluctant to share, but decided to for my sake more than anything else. Take or leave what you will....
Driving down the highway, Minneapolis in view, I hit my explode point. But instead of the crushing stress and concerns, I felt something in me give way. The damn broke, and I "awoke" for five minutes. Yes, the enlightenment kind, only not the permanent kind.
Suddenly, and I mean that, without any clue or hint it was coming, the pace broke. Total collapse of meaning, compartments, schedules, tasks, needs, wants, etc. Time stopped. There I was driving and I felt like a child fully exposed and one with the present moment, on its terms. The awareness came that I've been way overcomplicating the whole business of meditation and seeking enlightenment. There was not one thing I had to do, nowhere to go, it was all "here." I felt warm, very similar to what it feels like after having a good cry--cathartic. In fact, I began laughing and crying at the same time. It was so easy! I've been making it all so impossibly hard just by thinking about awakening as a journey when there's just not much to it. It was peace. It was grounded in the present alone and not one thing around me could rightly be seen as separate from me. I was this. I was that. And not "I" as in myself, but I as in an eternal fabric, a configuration of energy and intelligence in an eternal mesh. I understood what the Buddha meant by the middle way at last: no embracing the moment as good or bad, no duality, no labels, for to do, think, or act so would immediately erect one thing's opposite and end the experience.
All simply was.
In this state I felt profoundly aware of just how much change was going on at once. Every single particle of the universe in flux. Every moment saw creation anew. There was no beginning. Creation, the whole of it, was popping faster than my feeble mind could grasp, and that's where the whole thing began to fade out. "I" became aware that I could not comprehend or keep up with the pace of the vibration that makes up reality, but I wanted to. "I" wanted to hold that moment forever so my handy little mind went about devising how to lock it in place, and so in trying to formulate a way to stay in that moment, I lost it all. I still felt at peace, but back to unreality.
The cell rang. I answered, why I don't know. But I was firmly back in samsara again.
But I'll say it here and now. I've seen it, and it flirted with me big-time, and I am that and will realize it.
Soul
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Originally Posted by Korpo
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