Crossing the Threshold of Enlightenment
-- The experience of a non-meditator

Preliminary Note - especially for the disapprovers!

On this page I give an account of how I 'found enlightenment' or 'became enlightened' (neither of those is a very good term to use; I would prefer to say that I gained fundamental clarity). I now have a little flea to lovingly and gently place in the ears of the very many people who get indignant, uptight and judgemental upon somebody who has the simple straightforward honesty to talk of 'what is' in their life, for beneficial purposes and without the affectation, coyness and sense of taboo which many traditions have put upon speaking about one's own enlightenment.

There is a large proportion of people who have come under the influence of such traditions and typically think of themselves as being 'spiritual', who rush into judgement upon anyone who talks or writes openly about their enlightenment or being enlightened. Typically their judgemental onslaughts accuse such people of having an enormous ego, great arrogance, no modesty (as though modesty were anything truly desirable!) and really being the lowest of the low, and all that.

I occasionally get such garbage from people who visit this website (and presumably read this page, among others). What those people demonstrate is their own serious problems with issues of personal status and their unwillingness to open to the reality of enlightenment and self realization for themselves or indeed anyone else. They also demonstrate a strong judgemental tendency and indeed an enormous 'ego' (according to their own definition, because actually the whole concept of the ego is an illusion) in that they are setting themselves up as arbiters of what is supposedly correct outlook and behaviour for other people. That is the sort of distortion which a taboo places upon a person. I wonder how many of those people have done any serious deep self scrutiny to establish what their true motivations are in their various behaviours towards people and indeed towards the likes of me! 

There is a very major difference between somebody who goes on and on about their being enlightened for the purpose of asserting some sort of supposedly superior status (clearly not healthy) and the person who regards their enlightenment as being just a natural thing like having a nose, and who mentions it simply where it serves beneficial purposes like assisting others towards enlightenment and self realization.

However, regardless of that difference, for anyone to go around slagging off other people because of their supposedly having big egos and being arrogant etc actually tells one most about the abuser. Such latter people have become distorted by the so-called spirituality which they have taken on - a sort of 'spiritual reality', sourced from the astral ('dark') forces, which is based on beliefs, rules, taboos, judgements and power / control agendas, with true, undistorted love nowhere to be seen. Whose business is it if a person is unhealthily flaunting his enlightenment (or anything else about him) in public? -- It's that person's business, and his alone (except of course where the person is actually interfering with people in some material way)!

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be discerning and aware of the problems and issues of particular people around them - but if they feel driven to go further and judgementally criticize / abuse such a person, then what they really need to do is to clear their own emotional problem which makes them want to behave in that way and mind anyone else's business but their own.

I commend to all such people the true self realization methods given in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way, which would enable them to get in touch with their deeper, accepting but discriminating and clear-minded selves, and to become, at their appropriate points, enlightened themselves.

Introduction

Crossing the threshold of enlightenment is for most people something extremely elusive to achieve*. At the same time it is very difficult for those who have crossed this important threshold to effectively describe their discovery of the fundamental mind-essence and their then continuously experiencing this as their own true nature and identity, in meaningful terms to others. I am therefore offering my own experience in the hope that it will give some additional pointers for those people aspiring to enlightenment or self realization and clear out some wellnigh universal confusions on the subject.

* Later note (January 2008) - Actually the whole notion of achieving that is a major part of the problem. Enlightenment would occur naturally and effortlessly in its own time for anyone who uses effective genuine self realization methods in an aware and ongoing manner. Striving for enlightenment rather than overall self realization distorts the whole self realization process and leads to an unbalanced or distorted enlightened state. That is one of the great errors in various Eastern-sourced religious or spiritual traditions - particularly notably in Buddhism.

If you are looking for an effective and balanced self realization methodology, you need look no further than Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

One great advantage of this particular account for many people will be its freedom from a religious viewpoint or belief system and from esotericism. There is nothing esoteric, nor indeed 'spiritual' about enlightenment - though you'd hardly think so from the tomes upon tomes of esoterica that have been written about and around enlightenment. Enlightenment isn't about 'spirituality' but about simply being fully open to 'What Is'.

No one person's experience is the same, and indeed the context of my own recognition of my innermost nature could be seen as highly anomalous. However, I caution against all the standard Buddhist and other teachings and tracts on the subject because pretty well all of them, however widely accepted and highly regarded, relate to a very unbalanced view of the significance of enlightenment for us and how it needs to be achieved.

I use in places in this article the concepts and terminology from the Dzogchen teachings of Buddhism, because they actually introduced me to enlightenment, but I have actually distanced myself from that, and for example nowadays I do not use their expression 'recognition of the nature of mind', because I'm normally talking with non-Buddhists, and 'recognition of one's innermost nature', 'recognition of the innermost level of consciousness', or simply 'crossing the threshold of enlightenment' sit more comfortably in my conversations with such people, and indeed with myself.

I give below a certain amount of personal information about myself. This is simply to put the real subject of this article into a meaningful living context, primarily to enable the reader to understand how anomalous my own experience is and to make allowances in their using my experience to direct themselves towards that inner recognition that marks the beginning of their overt enlightened state. This text isn't intended as an autobiography and thus omits many, many things that you'd reasonably expect to find in one. I don't want people falling into the trap of getting fascinated with me or my personal details. These are best set aside and forgotten once the important points are taken on board - think of my story simply as a demonstration model. The importance of this article, if any, for you the reader is any information you manage to extract which may help you in your process of self realization; anything else is sheer distraction.

Part 1: The Background

My early life

I was born in 1942 in Harrow Weald, Middlesex, in the North-West London suburban area. That was in the Second World War. I have few war-related memories. My prime memories remaining from those early years - up to the age of six - are of the tormenting and often electrifyingly frightening inner world which I lived in whenever my eyes were closed or I was in the dark. This was no ordinary fantasy world, however, not least because, as in a dream, it was not directed by my own willpower.

In that world I was incessantly on the move, desperately searching for I knew not what, though warmth, love and peaceful stability were undoubtedly a major part of the object of that quest, which was never in any way fulfilled. With devilish constancy I was pursued by a weird variety of animated versions of normally inanimate objects that filled me with an unspeakable terror, even though none of the various 'things' ever did anything more than hiss at me or perhaps make a slight hum or ticking noise, or in one case, came heavily up the stairs. One particular such experience is recorded in a poem of mine - There's Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

I don't remember ever feeling physical pain in that 'world', but the emotions of fear - indeed abject terror - and intense blends of grief, loneliness and various longings, were always with me, often overpoweringly so. There was a drabness of colours: a general impression of greyness, often tinged with a dull rather dark green when the loneliness and longings were uppermost.

Although in this tormented world I could effortlessly fly (despite having no wings), my ability to do so seemed to be dictated by something other than my own will, so it often gave me no escape just when I most needed it, as I frantically put my back to the wall, facing one of the variety of sproses and sprouses that were after me, or the doot that was coming down from the ceiling and hissing at me...

I would frequently find myself in great dark pits like lift shafts which I called thunder holes, in which I would rise up or down like a lift, in dread of coming to rest at a level where there were things ready to 'get' me. Another common element, when terror wasn't uppermost, was the running water which I often encountered, like very dirty washing-up water but with a horrifying sense of sliminess, decomposition and corruption. But above all, in whatever context, I had a longish greyish muzzle like a wolf. This was absolutely consistent, and at no time in that world did I consider myself to be a human. By the time I was five and started at school (I didn't go to nursery prior to that), I'd become a little bit puzzled as I realized that in that world of the night I was clearly an animal, yet clearly I was a human in 'ordinary' life.

Despite the tremendous terror and anguish I suffered, I never could tell anyone about these experiences, though towards the end of that period I think I did talk to my younger brother fleetingly of some of the things that chased me, though without giving any hint of the power, magnitude and unremittingness of the experiences, and in junior school the one 'gold star' I ever earned was in an English lesson for writing a fairly light-hearted and partly fictitious account of a dream involving sproses and sprouses, two of the objects of my early dread. I never had any impression that I could find emotional support in my family or surroundings generally, so it was all an extremely lonely situation.

I think it highly significant that at that time there was no family pet, and in the 'other world' I never thought of myself as a dog or any particular type of animal, so it's extremely unlikely that in my first, say, three years of life I'd already acquainted myself with a dog and identified myself with it. In any case, even if I had identified with a dog, how would an infant so young translate that experience into that of actually having a dog- or wolf-like head and constantly seeing the front of its muzzle through the inner corner of its eyes? That would take quite a lot of brain processing for one so young!

These 'other-world' experiences were definitely not dreams. Dreams, when I remembered them, were themselves troubled, and could contain elements of that tormented world, but were less consequential and didn't have that tremendous and unremitting power. This 'other world' emerged pretty well the moment my eyes were closed or I was in the dark, and crystallized out of the visual 'noise' of the seething mass of minor flickerings and somewhat luminous clouds of dancing images that I or presumably anyone would see in the dark or indeed against any dark background.

Even that background seething mass of images was a source of terror for me in those early years. Indeed in fact I now know it was really the primary terror, but it was so overpowering that I did my best to shut it out of my mind (whereas most children actually block it out completely and in waking life are unaware of the hell they've been going through at night).

During tremendous ordeals given me by astral ('dark') entities in 2004, at one point the entities showed me (allegedly for self-healing purposes - ha-ha-ha!) a re-run of a sequence of those night terrors images which I'd experienced at the tender age of three, and with horror I not only recognised much of it as being authentic from that time but also as being a whole mass of stuff associated with dark practices, with troupes of all manner of bizarre humanoid beings passing by, many of them with a twitchy and almost insect-like quality (some of them apparently being demons of some sort), amongst them being representations of squirming sexual orgies and of the odd happenings which had given me still more intense terror. For an explanation of the early childhood terrors, see Night Terrors and Hearing Voices.

Then, if I remember correctly I was at the age of six when the Eagle comic first appeared. After the second or third issue came out there was a memorable night when my mind was filled with hero fantasies all spilling out from the Dan Dare serial in the comic. End of my tormented world. No phasing out: Dan Dare fantasies had come to the rescue, and that was it! My awareness was grounded in this world.

One nocturnal fantasy that quite often came to me in those years was of my being a king and having many people coming and bowing and prostrating themselves to me; I would keep telling them they needn't do that and wanted them to feel that we were all equals; I wanted my kingdom to be one of universal love - though as a young child I had little detailed idea of what the latter meant or involved.

And why do I mention these things at all here? Well, for one thing all that torment was just the start of a life with a lot of inner suffering which gave me a very strong motivation to free myself. And then, if I came into this life with a strong feeling of loneliness and lack of love in my surroundings, can you be surprised that I moved with strong motivation and great dedication towards the ultimate spiritual homecoming! So those who look at me as extremely virtuous or in some way superior or elitist in having travelled as far as I have in terms of enlightenment and self realization in this life are missing the point!

Trying to make sense of life in my childhood

Oh dear! It was enforced Sunday School, and then, in my early teens, enforced attendance with my mother at church Evensong. It was prayers, hymns and belief mumbo-jumbo at school. They talked of peace and loving kindness and all that, but for the most part in an unkind, moralistic way. I longed for the real thing but saw very little of it anywhere. They tried blackmailing me with all this 'if you don't Believe you won't please God and won't go to heaven', etc. The biblical Jesus said and did the odd things that made powerful sense and filled me with longing, and yet much of the biblical account of him didn't add up and I felt had to be untrue (I've more recently learnt that the balance of historical data show that my intuition was correct). I knew of nobody to inspire me and be a focus of my love and longing for a sense of connectedness. I was left particularly confused because it seemed to me that if I and other people aspired to all the noblest aspects of humanity, that ought to be our true nature. Why, then, were we externally falling so short of that?

Presumably connecting with the early fantasies about being a king, I had lurking at the back of my mind an idea that seemed preposterous, and therefore I never, until a little after I became enlightened, seriously entertained it or spoke of it to anyone, and it always remained quietly, patiently, waiting there in the background, and remained with me undulled over the decades. It was this: my main purpose in this life is to be a spiritual teacher, even leader, to spread the way of universal love. Note particularly that this was not like an ambition ('I want to be a train driver; I want to be Prime Minister'), but rather a simple recognition of who I really was. That for decades I was superficially accepting the ubiquitous worldly messages of denial of that inner sense of reality was one of the many causes of my suffering. I suspect that very many other people have similarly been sitting upon an unexpressed and unrevealed deep aspiration or self-recognition of this sort and thereby denying their true and deeply expansive nature.

Sometime before the age of ten I occasionally agonized about the nature of death, not being able to accept the Christian notion of going to heaven (or hell) afterwards at the whim of a personal God. The very idea of ceasing to exist seemed horrifying and incomprehensible, yet I'd apparently come into this world out of nothing. I looked within my mind trying to understand how mind could possibly come into being out of nothing and disappear into nothing at the end. Looking into the beginning of my life experience like that, I was puzzled, for all I could perceive beyond the earliest memories was not really nothing but rather, naked awareness, which seemed to have no beginning nor, presumably, end. I had nobody about me who could point out to me the immense significance of that observation, so I just had to note it as an apparently insoluble mystery of existence.

A little later I tried to make sense out of all that by privately speculating that perhaps we are born again over and over, reliving the same life! How incredibly boring and pointless - the thought hardly cheered me up! This did link, however, with an important private speculation of mine: that all my life experience had surely arisen out of and was the product of consciousness and thus the notion of an external concrete reality could be incorrect. That certainly kept the door open for the acceptance of a greater reality than what we usually refer to as the material world. Anyway, I'd never heard theories of reincarnation then, and an evolutionary progression through different incarnations didn't occur to me, and it came as quite a surprise when I eventually learnt that some eastern religions believed in such a process.

I remember there were a few months, I think in my very early teens, when I actually tried believing in the the personal God of Christianity. Briefly I managed to kid myself that it was bringing some relief to my inner misery, but I knew all along really that this was a nonsense: God either was or wasn't there, regardless of whether I believed or not, and no compassionate God that I'd want to know would turn away from me just because I didn't hold a belief in Him and praise Him every day. Even the sun doesn't require me to hold a belief in it and praise it for it to continue to shine upon and nourish me!

One day when I was in the sixth form in the grammar school we had a visiting speaker on Buddhism. I didn't remember anything much that she said, or follow it up, but it had struck me at the time that what she said of Buddhism made a lot more sense than the theistic religions. My only reason for not following it up at that time was my general unwillingness by then to be seen to be associated with anything that might be called religion or to depart at all from scientifically verified 'reality' (I thought of myself as very science-oriented), and I felt a little nervous about getting into something that seemed a bit exotic and strange, for paradoxically I found I'd become distinctly afraid of the idea of letting go altogether of the idea of a personal God* (apparently preferring the 'devil' I knew...! [ouch!])

* Later note (January 2008) - ...And guess what 'God' really is! If you haven't already read it on this site, you can get your answer from Astral Entities - Interference and Attacks from 'The Dark Side'.

Finding my way in adulthood

Beyond homosexuality - beyond sexuality

I became more and more distressed by the contradiction between what I still sensed of my inner self and my external conditioning. The loneliness of not finding anyone really on my wavelength became increasingly oppressive, this all being exacerbated by fear about the homosexuality I was concealing (and of course, masturbation). Eventually, at the age of 29 I 'came out' about the homosexuality, not always with exemplary tact! After a few pathetic little attempts to interact with other 'gay' men (the contents of my short story A Monastic Weekend describes part of one such attempt) I quickly came to an important decision - never again to seek to meet anyone on the basis of their sexual orientation or even gender. I'd realized that despite all my fantasies, my and presumably other people's true nature transcended such mundane things; the fantasies had been unmasked as pure, naked self-deception. Naturally I got accused of being 'unnatural' and even 'fascistic' in making such a choice.

This didn't mean, however, as various people imagined, that I was rejecting or suppressing my sexuality or sexual feelings. Sex itself wasn't the issue; it was the manipulative behaviour of people which surrounded sex; it was our old enemies desire and attachment and the wielding of power over each other rather than anything much to do with love*. To so many people, sexual 'love' was primarily about exerting willpower (or submitting to somebody else's) and a grasping for self-gratification, even when they sought to justify their behaviour by preaching about the beauty and sacredness of the experience. I considered it better to keep to myself and masturbate privately rather than get entangled with people who persistently wanted me to be less than myself and indulge in emotional ego-trip role-play in the name of love. This was certainly not what I'd call an ideal situation, but I was handling it in the best way I knew. I always kept my options open for loving physical relationships with men or women, but realized that to seek them or get entangled with people who were seeking them with me would only bring more problems and unhappiness.

* see Love Is Not What Nearly All People Believe.

That dreaded weed

My (non-sexual) encounter with one particular 'gay' man had a particularly important spin-off: he introduced me to smoking cannabis. Let's be clear that I don't recommend the use of any mind-affecting drug, and indeed I know various people for whom long-term regular use of cannabis is having a seriously harmful effect, but it's a fact that there is a very small minority of people who are able to use particular drug experiences to open their minds in a highly constructive way*. Such people do not keep using the particular drug but incorporate their resultant enhanced vision and outlook into their everyday lives and very soon turn their back on the drug altogether. I turned out to be one of those people.

* Later note (January 2008) - I say this with considerable caution, because unfortunately most people would interpret such a statement as something of a commendation of cannabis for such people, and that isn't really what I mean. Indeed, I have come to understand that even the particular people who use cannabis only briefly for constructive purposes and then never use it again still run a real danger - and I myself had thus been in real danger when I had those long-ago 'smokes'. In some cases even a single 'smoke' could be the trigger for a major problem with seriously troublesome entities which could wreck the remainder of that person's life.

In my case my eventual severe entity problems apparently didn't relate in any material way to my early and brief cannabis smoking, but for some other people it could work out very differently. The fact is that nobody can know that their next 'smoke' isn't going to precipitate a life-wrecking entities problem, and clearly people can draw their own conclusions about the advisability of using cannabis at all, regardless of any supposed benefits that it might confer.

One evening's overpoweringly vivid cannabis experience opened my mind to a whole new way of experiencing life, as well as greatly enhancing my mental creativity. For the first time I had the experience of standing aside from my restrictive and negative feelings and beginning to see things, even if fleetingly, in a joyful, non-judgmental way. Subsequently over the next two years I very occasionally had a smoke of the weed, on a couple of occasions alone in the countryside; a hint of that experience is captured in my poem Smoking Grass on Pewley Down. Significantly, despite the happy glow and wonderful displays of mental images which I experienced, I got increasingly bored with the effects, intuitively knowing that my task was to make all the positive aspects of such experiences manifest in my life generally, as the drug effects had simply shown me qualities and abilities that were already innate in me. Indeed in 1974 I decided to cease using all mind-affecting drugs altogether, including such socially acceptable ones as caffeine and alcohol, as part of a drive towards clearing myself of habitual tendencies and any perceived need for 'props' - but here I'm jumping ahead of my story...

Enter Re-Evaluation Counselling

By mid-1972, a year after my 'coming out' about the homosexuality, I was feeling all my hurt feelings inside so intensely that it seemed that at some point I would burst into tears at any moment, even in public, and somehow fall into some hellish pit of mental self-destruction; an intense grief continuously manifested as a physical ache in all my joints. This terrified me, for I'd picked up the pernicious 'men don't cry' conditioning that so plagues and dehumanizes our culture. I simply had never been told and didn't know that crying was a natural healing process and needed to be allowed. Yet the very thought of submitting myself for treatment of any kind, or indeed of regarding myself or being regarded by others as ill in any way, was completely alien to me. To take prescribed tranquilizers or other drugs to make me more comfortable was not an option I ever seriously considered, and it filled me with horror (it still does!) that so many other people were so ready to allow their senses and experience of life to be dulled thus and their brains to be possibly damaged.

Then through a seemingly divinely timed set of coincidences I got pointed to one of the first groups in the country to be practising Re-Evaluation Counselling, a very powerful and purposeful type of co-counselling. They were actually in Guildford, where I was living at the time. The prime aim in Re-evaluation Counselling was to unblock the functioning of the rational, loving, dynamically peaceful and happy mind by enabling crying, trembling and laughter as well as certain other emotional discharges or releases to occur freely. Over a few years I estimated I must have cried about 500 hours* - so much for my 'don't cry' conditioning! And on top of that was a similar amount of time spent with trembling and laughing. A tremendous amount of inner healing occurred during those processes, and I quickly accumulated important insights into the irrational behaviour of people around me (and of course into my own remaining irrational behaviour and emotional patterns), which gradually made it possible for me to be less hurt by other people and likewise more understanding towards them.

* Later note (January 2008) - Yes, you may well be wondering where I'd got all that emotional stuff from. Indeed, many people have gone further and assumed that there had to be something deeply unsound or 'wrong' about me to have had such an immense load as it turned out that I was carrying.

In fact, in 2007 I established that there is a clear and precise explanation for this immense load of emotional trauma, and it cuts right across the beliefs of the vast majority of healers and people who are into life improvement or self realization. In fact almost all of the tremendous load of emotional trauma which I was carrying was not my own! I myself was in fact remarkably sound and stable - it was just what had got attached to me which was the problem! For the eyebrow-raising explanation, please see the relevant section in My Own Self Realization Path - Updates.

My 'reading' now is that all significant emotional issues which were actually my own were fully cleared in the 1970s through my use of Re-evaluation Counselling - and even that clearance would have been greatly quicker than it was if I hadn't had the great load of other people's baggage to try to clear.

Over the years, within the Re-evaluation Counselling community an increasing emphasis was put on the contradiction and breaking of rigid patterns of feeling and behaviour. This was certainly an important advance, but it tended to be done rather unawarely, often using one rigidity to contradict another, so its effectiveness was very variable and despite its successes it quite often created new problems.

Re-evaluation Counselling theory didn't postulate any particular broader, non-physical aspect to human experience, but it was clear that the practice could eventually lead to full liberation of one's innermost nature, whatever that might imply. The sticking point for me was that the co-counselling process depended on one's counselling partner having sufficient awareness to be able to support one's opening up without the partner's own hurts and rigid behaviour patterns getting restimulated by the 'client material' and getting in the way. There was no general understanding of the need to recognise and set aside the feelings and compulsions of one's ordinary mind when in the counsellor role, so I sometimes had very disagreeable and upsetting experiences when I got landed with people with strong and manipulative patterns as counselling partners*, and although I was often a very effective counselling partner for some people, I'm sure there were times when my own anxiety to gain status made me over-zealous and pushy, so causing particular people difficult experiences.

* Later note (January 2008) - There was one occasion on a large residential RC workshop where I got paired up with a particular man, really much against my real wishes, who I found particularly upsetting and frightening in a certain manipulative quality about him and something about the way his face moved, which even then told me that there was something very seriously wrong about him.

Now that I'm often able to 'read' from my deepest aspects what was going on during earlier challenging situations of mine, I understand that that man had a partial walk-in, and, under the control of astral entities, it was trying to get me so frightened that I would go out of body sufficiently for the entities then to get a partial walk-in established within my own person, so effectively destroying this life of mine.

THAT is how dangerous Re-evaluation Counselling can be - because people are opening up to each other without any significant understanding of the problem of astral entities and the way they seek to exploit such situations to pass on and proliferate extremely serious problems.

In Some Potent Self Realization / Healing Practices I describe in detail a completely safe and IMMENSELY more powerful and efficient method for clearance of all emotional issues (and gaining a lot of additional self healing) - and that method is Power Walking. That method is also breathtakingly simple, requires no analysis nor reliving of experiences (indeed, no awareness of specific issues at all), and depends on nobody else to work with you. It is joyful and invigorating to do, requiring no crying, trembling or 'heavy' stuff at all. And for those who wish to do their emotional clearance while seated, there is The Work. So, let's now consign RC, with all its and longueurs and problems about finding oneself working with unsuitable people, to the Recycling Bin!

In any case, as I sought to work at deeper and deeper levels, and was so strongly motivated towards liberation, other people increasingly took fright. At age 38, after 7 years in the Re-evaluation Counselling community, I was quietly ejected from the Re-evaluation Counselling group in Exeter because almost all the members felt so threatened by where I was at, and they preferred to continue colluding together in maintaining their own level of unawareness. So much for the loving commitment to each other's 'emergence' that was supposed to be such a hallmark of the Re-evaluation Counselling community!

How mountains were mirrors

For a number of years then I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by that very section of humanity that I'd thought was to be my salvation. But meanwhile I was developing in other ways. For one thing I made a regular practice of doing long and often remote hard single-day walks (typically 18-21 miles or 29-34 km, with some 1,000-1,500 metres of ascent), especially on Dartmoor and those parts of the coast path that were within easy reach from Exeter, and I also established an annual spring visit to Fort William to walk on mountains and wilderness in the Scottish highlands; over the years I also got in a number of mountain walking trips to various parts of the Alps. My walking was usually solo, though I also enjoyed the company of others when I had the opportunity. I never felt any loneliness out there on my own in the wilds. The sense of oneness, unbounded space and transcendent peace was always with me up in the mountains, and I knew it was something very special and important which was really needed by everybody even if they were quite unaware of it. Little did I know then, however, just how important was that experience! Little did I realize that what I was actually looking at in that experience was my fundamental nature - that of enlightenment itself - and if at that point I'd recognised it for what it was I could have permanently severed my deepest source of suffering there and then!

Creativity beginning to flower

Following a request from a very young niece, in 1980 I started writing short stories, some of which left me quite awestruck at the depth of awareness of the content which emerged as though channelled from a 'higher' source (try reading A Squoggle Comes Home to Roost, for example, to see what I mean).

Also, I did a lot of nature photography and, using the slides so produced, gave adult education classes and one-off slide talks on natural history and hiking.

Enter the Alexander Technique

In 1990 I started getting clicks and aching in my neck. Already for a decade I'd had lower back grumblings with occasional flare-ups. By the end of 1992 my neck was so troublesome that I was feeling a new fear and desperation as the attentions of the medics, physiotherapist and osteopath all proved to be to no avail. Once again, enter a spot of seemingly divinely timed coincidence: an acquaintance strongly recommended the Alexander Technique, and just then I'd got enough money to cover the cost of a course of lessons, which I normally didn't have as I was very long-term unemployed.

It was almost Christmas, and I couldn't start lessons for about 4 weeks, but I did buy what appeared to be the best of the available books on the technique, and drank in its contents as though I'd found the one oasis in a boundless hot desert. It all made sense and related clearly to the theory of Re-evaluation Counselling, but it was from a different viewpoint which put emphasis on learning simply to let go of habitual tendencies in one's use of the body rather than to dwell on emotional release. I realized that release of those habitual tendencies which were locked up in the body must release their counterparts in the mind, so, apparently, freeing two prisoners with one key.

With nothing to lose, although it was reckoned that virtually nobody could learn the technique from a book without personal one-to-one lessons, I at once experimented with the lie-downs which are the central thing that one takes time for (a direct equivalent of Buddhist meditation sessions, though with the mind applying itself to letting go of physical tensions and distortions). After a week of lie-downs (at that time some 12 to 14 per day!), a major chronic tension released in my lower back, and simultaneously I was aware that I'd been relieved of a heavy chunk of deep and probably lifelong anxiety. Although my neck didn't exhibit major release of its chronic tensions until some 9 months later, because my spine overall was getting into a better state alignment and I was learning better use of the neck, the neck pain was at once reduced to a much lesser level, and because I now knew I was in control, what pain I still had was no longer the cause of fear and mental suffering. By the time I was getting noticeable major release in my neck it was normally out of pain altogether.

With the AT I learnt a looser, less stressful mode of walking, and indeed the technique benefited every part of my life - apart from a few physical problems which to this day remain intractable. The AT integrated 100% into my everyday life, so that at all times I maintained awareness of my state of balance, poise and alignment and how I was carrying out my body movements, and I was able to interrupt and let go of the habitual distortions and reactions as and when they arose. This also worked on the purely mental level, proving to be a much more efficient way of freeing and opening up parts of the mind than by spending hours on end crying. I could still cry over something that arose in my mind, but I would keep my attention on the letting-go aspect, so that the 'physical' emotional release process was brief and my outlook kept positive.

Increasingly, especially while I was walking, even just in Exeter High Street, I was aware not only of a healthy and powerful sense of continuity and lengthening in my spine, but it seemed that the spine, in a powerful yet diffuse sort of way extended through my head and opened out into an unimaginable sort of space, which seemed almost to be a silvery or blue-silvery light yet was not a light in any ordinary sense*; there was something very uplifting, fine and noble about it, yet I didn't really know what it was. I tentatively assumed it must be some form of growing 'spiritual awareness', and left it at that. Eventually I'd notice it sometimes during one of my lie-downs, and when I did, I felt this amazing peaceful warmth radiate from that boundless space and fill my body. I didn't dwell on this, however, for my intuition counselled against allowing myself to get fascinated or absorbed by such an experience.

* Later note (January 2008) - I now understand that, although in a way this was indeed indicating a growing depth to my awareness, the primary point was that my own deepest aspects were giving me that impression as an indication of a major positive reconfiguring process which was occurring in my non-physical aspects at that time, brought about by my use of the AT.

The trail hots up

About the time I took up the AT a friend introduced me to an important book called Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten. For the first time in my life Jesus began to look like a great spiritual teacher* who was real, as distinct from the moralistic and largely fabricated Jesus of the Bible, the Church or 'Jesus freaks'. I learnt from that book as well as others subsequently that Jesus had been teaching true spirituality, not religion, whether or not he called it that. He'd been teaching about individual responsibility, karma and reincarnation. He'd been telling people to turn away from the temples and the scriptures and to look within themselves, where the true 'Law' was written, and where they could find Enlightenment ('the kingdom of God') even within this lifetime. He did not die to absolve anyone of their sins; indeed he survived the crucifixion.

* Later note (January 2008) - I didn't understand then that spirituality itself, as is generally understood, is itself extremely problematical. Please see Exit Spirituality - Enter Clear-Mindedness.

I was also introduced to Ian Stevenson's book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, which presents a seemingly quite overwhelming case for the occurrence of reincarnation*. Taking that as well as accounts of other overwhelming evidence for reincarnation, I now considered it highly likely that my apparently wolf-like identity in my early childhood 'fantasy' world indicated that I had been such an animal in my last life - though I found that transmigration of 'souls' between human and animal realms appeared not to be widely accepted in mystical traditions outside Buddhism, and subsequently I've been given a fully convincing explanation for my experience.

* Later note (January 2008) - I now understand that, although reincarnation does occur, the situation is more complex than is generally known. Please see Astral Entities - Interference and Attacks from 'The Dark Side'. As I now understand it, the wolf-like muzzle of mine in those early childhood experiences at night did arise from a set of past life experiences, but not of mine. They belonged to one of the parasitic 'lost' souls attached to me, who in one of his incarnations, had been seriously into 'dark' practices as a shaman and had made a regular practice of projecting part of his awareness into the 'mind' of some sort of rather wolf like animal (not actually a wolf).

Not only the historical Jesus but Buddhism too had at last started gathering real meaning in and possible connection with my life. I didn't rush out and immediately investigate Buddhism, though, because I was greatly put off by what I felt was all the Eastern cultural baggage that appeared to go with it.

Also by the time I took up the AT, for two years I'd been writing crazy and challenging novels with a powerful undercurrent of deep awareness that many people would regard as 'spiritual', which seemed always to be channelled into them from some deeper source without my bidding. Then in 1995, at last - at last! - a slight upgrade of my computer system enabled me to break through the musical literacy block that had prevented me from realizing any of the powerful music that had been in my mind from my teens onwards. By the end of 1996 I was composing my 6th Symphony, a pretty monumental and turbulent work entitled K2 - A Song of Enlightenment. Its focus was a remembrance of Alison Hargreaves' demise on the mountain K2 in the light of a celebration of human endeavour and the journey towards enlightenment. The final movement - a celebration of enlightenment after all the toil and strife - was a partly choral one, and although the music was all working out of its own volition, I had no words to fit the choir's sections.

It was a strange thing that although I'd often previously been rather awestruck by what had emerged from my compositional tinkerings, this time I was not only awestruck but had this inexplicable feeling that somehow what I was composing then was leading me to something unimaginably wonderful in my own life. My 'rational' mind did its best to sneer "Oh yes, that's what they call wishful thinking!", but I was still haunted by this strange feeling as I had a poke around in bookshops for books that might have Buddhist texts which I could use for those choral bits. At that point I also thought to look for a book that might introduce me to the fundamentals of Buddhism without all the cultural baggage that had made me previously keep my distance. And what did I find? The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - truly the answer to my 'prayers'*.

* Later note (January 2008) - As noted further below, I have subsequently distanced myself from all Buddhist teachings, which I see as containing untruths aimed at gaining or maintaining control over people and diverting people into astral realms (illusory realities) and thus become captives of the astral ('dark') forces. Enlightenment and self realization are MUCH better approached without reference to religious or spiritual teachings or traditions.

Three days into reading that book there came that memorable New Year evening. The electricity of the last movement of my 6th Symphony, which I was composing just at that point, became, in addition to all its 'official' meanings and connotations, a celebration of my very own enlightenment! Having read that according to the Dzogchen teachings our true nature is that of the Buddha, which went even beyond the goodness that I'd already understood to be at the core of everybody, I sat aside from my computer and, with no preconceptions or any sense of trying (the latter being something which my AT training had taught me not to do), I looked within my own mindspace, and...

Part 2: Enlightenment

I must first point out something extremely atypical about this event. I had never done formal sitting meditation, and, despite my use of the AT, my mind was still incredibly active and 'noisy', seething with mostly uncontrolled thoughts, images and feelings. I claim, only half in jest, that I must have had one of the noisiest minds in history for one who crosses this particular threshold. So what I didn't do when I turned away from the computer was to meditate and achieve some phenomenal quietude. On the contrary, I was feeling an uncanny crescendo of some inner excitement and awe, as though I knew that something momentous was about to happen. The following account, then, is of what I'd call an active contemplation rather than what most people would think of as meditation.

I assumed from what I'd read so far in the book that I wouldn't recognise my innermost nature, because Sogyal Rinpoche said that this couldn't happen without years of meditation and the guidance and pointing out from a qualified 'master'. So it was not in my mind that this could or even might happen at this stage and neither was I aiming for it.

When I sat aside from the computer and the music at that point, it was simply to look within my mind, in an imagining and inquiring sort of way, to see if I could see my inner goodness as this perfect 'buddha nature' of which Sogyal Rinpoche had so eloquently written, with its unbounded 'compassionate'* love and untainted and untaintable qualities. It all unfolded from that. I can't remember the exact order in which the different aspects of 'the View' came to me, and in any case some of the aspects that I've listed sequentially actually came together. Basically all that happened was that I took up the various fundamental points made in the book and simply checked them within my own mind. I was aware of no psychic phenomena, no angels singing (nor for that matter demon trumpets) nor funny lights; indeed you could even say that virtually nothing happened! What had actually happened was nothing more than a change in viewpoint.

* Later note (January 2008) - This is quite a thing in Tibetan Buddhism, making a big meal of what they call compassion. The problem about this isn't that compassion is exactly wrong, but that it is a distortion of what people are really trying to get in touch with, which is their intrinsic empathy.

The Buddhist notion of 'compassion' is heavily loaded with a moralistic and thus judgemental view of people and their outlooks and behaviour, and implies a great deal of giving oneself away without getting any sort of return - which is seen as extremely virtuous. In reality such behaviour is extremely harmful for all involved, and that is well understood among many (but by no means all) healers here in the West. When you keep giving yourself away for the supposed benefit of others, you are depleting your own non-physical aspects and so weakening yourself, and through doing so you are also having a weakening and disempowering effect upon all who you are supposedly helping and indeed to some extent upon everyone who has anything to do with you.

A healthily balanced, enlightened and self realized person would have virtually unlimited empathy, but would not allow that to hinder his looking after his own wellbeing first and foremost, so that he can be most catalytic for other people's self empowerment. It's both an interaction of non-physical aspects ('energy system') of oneself with other people and a straightforward, down-to-earth matter of being a good role model.

To me there is no mystery at all about one thing which seemed rather to mystify Sogyal Rinpoche - the reason why so many 'great' Tibetan 'masters' seem to die more or less prematurely. Because of their distorted notions of their role among other people, and their toxic idolization of 'compassion', they set themselves up to have their life force energies progressively sucked out of them by their students and all others who they are seeking to 'help' or indeed who are 'looking up' to them in any way. Additionally, their whole stance ensures that they accumulate all manner of problematical or 'negative' energies and thought forms from people around them. Those 'masters' are not teachers of anything worthwhile at all.

Crossing the threshold which the book said I couldn't

The buddha nature; love & compassion

Quite disconcertingly, the moment I looked within myself I was immediately aware of myself filled with that very love that distinguishes the buddha nature. 'Love' as is normally meant is a grasping and conditional sort of thing, which is directed to individuals (or maybe particular groups) to the exclusion of others, and is to do with desire and attachment, pleasure and displeasure, and tends to be coloured by compulsions rooted in our own individual sets of disturbing and actually negative emotions.

On the other hand this love and compassion that was uncovered now was like a radiation, shining out without fear or favour on all beings, objects and phenomena. It was completely outgoing and unconditional and making no demands; it transcended anything I'd previously known as love or compassion. Compassion here was not a separate thing from love but simply one of the inherent qualities of love. It was clearly timeless and unceasing. It must have been faint glimpses of this that I'd felt during the preceding year when I'd seemed to be opening up some sort of spiritual awareness. As I turned my mind to successive aspects of 'the View', this timeless love never left me, nor could it, because I now knew that I was that love and that love was me. This was a love that made no demands and singled nobody and nothing out for special attention, and I sensed its phenomenal power to heal and bring about positive change when focused.

Later note (January 2008) - As already pointed out, the Buddhist 'masters' have got it wrong about compassion (as well as a whole lot of other things), and at the time I became enlightened I was taking on some of the confusions and plain inaccuracies in the Tibetan Buddhism teachings.

In fact, even then what I was really opening to was NOT compassion but my intrinsic empathy - just temporarily distorted a little by the confusions I'd picked up from Sogyal Rinpoche.

For a more balanced and coherent account of the true nature of love, please see Love Is Not What Nearly All People Believe.

Oneness with the enlightened ones

As I thought of the historical Buddha, his very presence and countenance seemed to be in that radiation of compassionate love. I directed my focus to other enlightened masters of the past: Padmasambhava, Avalokiteshvara, for example, and masters of the present day. Whoever I thought of was in that light that wasn't a light. I thought of Jesus. His presence was at once recognizable here within me. But no, that's not correct, to say that each of these presences appeared within me. Rather, that the light of love was Jesus and was me; it was Buddha and was me. We were neither different nor the same; indeed, the concept of 'we' was meaningless here; the duality of everyday conceptual thinking was now transcended.

Later note (January 2008) - Yes, in the above I had got a good point, but in the midst of a flurry of Tibetan Buddhist bullshit. I completely distance myself now from any raising of individuals onto pedestals. Nobody is to be looked up to because they're enlightened, for that just gets in the way of our becoming enlightened ourselves. We are all as we are and do as we do. Simple! And likewise, now I'd keep well clear of that 'compassion' bogey, which, at least in Tibetan Buddhism, seems to be almost as much of a status thing as enlightenment. I'll stick with my intrinsic empathy, thank you very much - it doesn't earn me Brownie points for my status, but it's a damned sight healthier and more beneficial to all involved!

...and with the great wrongdoers too

How compassion seared the heart* as Adolf Hitler and all manner of tormented deluded beings who'd wreaked havoc in this world were also seen to be one with me! This was an awareness that had been in my mind in a mundane conceptual form over about the last year. See the divine essence of these beings and understand with heartrending compassion the enormity of the torment and suffering that their delusions and the effects of their past behaviour have been wreaking upon them and could well do so in the future! It was now possible to see directly that in essence I was no lesser than Buddha nor Jesus and no greater than Messrs Hitler nor Nero - nor indeed the drunk who last asked me for some money 'to buy a cup of tea'. What an inspiring leveller!

* Later note (January 2008) - There he goes again! Compassion, my sun hat! It was simply my intrinsic empathy. Also, nothing is divine nor Divine - except in the astral sub-reality of illusion and delusion (i.e. what many people would refer to as 'the dark side'). ...You mean, you didn't realize that Divinity was of 'the dark side'? Well, you can think again now. More about that aspect in Astral Entities - Interference and Attacks from 'The Dark Side'.

The Vows!

An overpowering compassion filled my heart, and from within, with a wild fury of positive energy, came a vow that I silently made to myself and indeed the Cosmos: that from that point on, every thought, word or deed of mine was dedicated to the spread of love and compassion in all other beings - for the rest of this life and for whatever follows beyond. Towards this end, a subsidiary vow - the basic bodhisattva vow - similarly emerged: that I was from now on dedicated to attaining full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Externally I cried and trembled a bit as the energy of the vows emerged as though out of some great trumpet into the Cosmos.

Later note (January 2008) - Oh ha-ha! What a calamity of newly absorbed Tibetan Buddhist bullshit! Quite apart from all the 'compassion' stuff rather than plain, down-to-Earth empathy, there's another major gaffe. Such vows as I blurted out then may appear to be wonderful and virtuous - but actually ALL vows are HARMFUL and of 'the dark side'! This is because they are effectively self-made curses put upon oneself, which limit one's free choice. You're MUCH better off without a curse upon you which forces you to think and act in certain ways regardless of the full reality of each new situation which unfolds.

A truly wise and aware - indeed, enlightened - person thinks and acts out of love and consideration for the deepest and ultimate good of all anyway, so any dictation from an earlier part of that person's life - or a previous lifetime - that (s)he must think or act in particular ways thereafter simply imposes the more restrictive and less aware outlook which the person had at the time of the creation of the vow, and thus creates stress and disharmony, hindering the unfolding of any true deeper and beneficial purpose of that person's life. It also greatly increases the hold of the astral ('dark') forces upon that person.

Even marriage vows are harmful, because they do not take account of the reality of future situations and the partners' ever evolving true needs. How can they possibly know, when they come together really closely, such things as whether or not in the future it would be appropriate for either of them to be close with anyone else as well, or indeed to separate again within the current lifetime?

Unless a time limit was expressly included in a vow at the time of creation it continues indefinitely, carrying over into any successive lifetimes (thanks to the 'assistance' of astral ('dark') entities, often causing major problems. In fact the vows of mine which I mention above came out in that 'driven' way because one of the parasitic lost souls attached to me was carrying such vows and was being controlled by astral entities to drive me to foul up my future by making such vows for myself.

My current self realization process includes dissolving ALL vows that I have made AND all the thought-form replicas or other traces in my non-physical aspects of vows belonging to the parasitic 'lost' souls that were attached to me - and this dissolution process is now in an advanced stage.

The glory of impermanence

From this viewpoint I saw in unprecedented, albeit far from total, fullness the impermanence of everything, no matter what its apparent solidity. I saw all objects, all experiences in my consciousness, my life, to be like waves on a boundless ocean within the boundless expanse of this indefinable space that was 'my' awareness. I was staggered that whereas previously - indeed right up to that very day - impermanence had bugged and troubled me, now this fuller view of impermanence filled me with compassion* and joy!

* Later note (January 2008) - Again, 'compassion' was really the wrong word here, for it was really simply my intrinsic empathy. As to why I was feeling empathy so strongly when contemplating impermanence - presumably it was simply my awareness that the vast majority of people find the very notion of impermanence to be so tormenting that they try to shut it out of their mind or escape it in some other way, and yet upon perceiving impermanence from their own enlightened viewpoint they could at a stroke be released from all that fear and torment (or potential torment) over the impermanence of everything including themselves. Aware perception of the impermanence of everything is very much a liberation, and promotes happiness and 'living in the present'.

Death, where is thy sting?

This life of mine of course was part of that display of impermanence. I could see, breathtakingly clearly, that this awareness that was the true 'me' was unborn and undying; this life was just one wave upon the ocean, each experience within it being just a transient wavelet upon the bigger wave. My fear of death dissolved; I even saw imaginary chains falling away into the waves as I was released from that deception. Although I couldn't directly see any past lives of mine*, from this viewpoint past lives seemed beyond doubt as they were a logical conclusion of this whole system of interacting cause and effect which brought all phenomena into and out of 'existence'; if this life were a wave upon the ocean, then it was presumably preceded by countless others. I now had an unshakable conviction that went beyond belief, that death would simply be the end of one part of the show I was observing, and would usher in another stage. Indeed, by the time this period of contemplation had finished it seemed to me that I had 'died' during that very hour and transcended the 'death' that would mark the end of my present life - if that makes sense to anyone! How sweet the kiss of death!

* Later note (January 2008) - As I understand it now, there was a particularly good reason why I couldn't see any past lives of mine: I hadn't had any from this particular soul - I am an incarnation of a NEW soul, not an old soul as various healers, mediums and psychics were all telling me. My understanding is that on the occasion related in the above paragraph I would most likely have seen some memories from a number of previous lifetimes if I had been through a succession of reincarnations of the same soul. I may well have had other lifetimes via different (new) souls, but one doesn't get either direct memories or true past life information relating to them. Those are non-karmic incarnations, which don't impinge upon each other in any karmic way. I explain the difference between those two types of reincarnation and their significance in Astral Entities - Interference and Attacks from 'The Dark Side'.

Me? - Who or what am I anyway?

I observed all the thoughts, memories and feelings that had up to that evening seemed to be 'me', and I looked for a 'thing' that I could really identify as 'me'. I couldn't fault Sogyal Rinpoche's account of the illusory character of the ego. From this viewpoint it was clear that the real 'I' was none other than this indefinable and indescribable awareness that was observing all the motley collection of arisings in the mind (i.e. thoughts, memories, feelings and all that seemed to be information from the sense organs) that I'd previously regarded as 'me'. And as I contemplated that deception falling away, another element of the teachings was getting underlined...

Severing the connection to the source of suffering

In Dzogchen meditation, and in maintaining 'the View' (i.e. the 'enlightened' perception) in everyday life, Sogyal Rinpoche tells us, our aim is not to suppress or judge the thoughts and feelings that appear in the mind, but to allow whatever arises to follow its course in the mind without accepting or rejecting it or following it up; you could also say we neither identify the arisings as being 'me' nor as 'not me'. This was just what was happening here for me. Despite the accelerating increase in my positivity over the years I'd still been holding many angry and resentful feelings to my bosom concerning a number of things in my life. As I let go of the ego-identification with these things stored in the mind, they were all welling up into view. The vast ocean of worldly mind was boiling up in a tumult of waves full of negativities and feelings of attachment and aversion.

For the first time, instead of looking at the negativities with discomfort and rejecting them, I observed all these arisings with that unconditional love still shining upon everything without exception. Each of the thoughts and feelings rose up and gracefully fell back, dissolving into the wild, wild sea. Among them I repeatedly saw the chains of broken shackles falling away. The word 'ridiculous' (said in a condemnatory tone), which had riddled so many of the negative thoughts kept glinting in the dissolving fragments as they fell away. As all this was going on, I also saw that it was that illusory image of 'I' that had gathered all the hurts of my life and indeed any previous lives of mine. The naked awareness that was the true 'I' had nothing in it to get hurt! I saw at once that in everyday life henceforth, each time any hurt feeling arose I just needed to look into the essence of the feeling and of the real 'me', that is, the naked awareness, and the hurt feeling would fall away and dissolve*, just as this mass of arisings in the mind was doing right now.

* Later note (January 2008) - True in theory, but at that time I had no knowledge about the effects of having parasitic lost souls or other entities attached to one. The alleged 30 parasitic lost souls that had been attached to me were more than a match for the notion of my being able to release all emotional 'nasties' which arose in my mindspace just by looking into their essence - though I've no doubt at all that it was my consistently doing the latter which enabled me to come through the massive onslaughts from the astral ('dark') forces in 2003-2007 without getting wrecked or taken over by them, and now to be coming out the other side of all that so swiftly and strongly.

The ultimate aloneness, yet the end of all loneliness!

I'd gone through life up to this point bearing a deep and intractable loneliness, which was repeatedly reinforced by the isolation that this life had forced upon me in all manner of ways. Now that I perceived that at the level of absolute truth there was no being, no consciousness, outside this one that was me, surely I should have been seared by loneliness! But on the contrary, feelings of loneliness now presented themselves as just more of those arisings of old self-delusion which I could observe falling away, no longer controlling me. True that in a sense this was the ultimate aloneness, but it was so merely through perceiving the ultimate oneness of everything, and that there was nothing outside that oneness. But as that oneness itself encompassed everything including all beings, I couldn't possibly be lonely any more, for however alone I might be at times at the worldly level I was not separated, and never could be, from all the beings and all the love in the Cosmos.

* Later note (January 2008) - This couldn't, however, prevent me from feeling the loneliness and isolation feelings of certain of the parasitic lost souls which were attached to me - especially when astral entities chose to attack me with those feelings - so it turned out that in practice there was no way that I could avoid at times experiencing those feelings and not being able to dissolve them all there and then just by looking into their essence.

Surely all this couldn't mean that I have...

Repeatedly I interrupted the contemplation to consult 'that book', for I was aware that it was almost as though I'd hit the jackpot which I hadn't for a moment thought even worth looking for at this stage as a non-meditator and complete newcomer to Buddhism or overt spirituality. I checked and rechecked to try to find something to help me eliminate the ridiculous (sic) idea that this could have happened to me. But all my attempts to eliminate it from my inquiries just helped to confirm that this must indeed have happened.

A spaciousness in everything

One of the qualities of this mind essence or naked awareness is its space-like character. After all, it is the space within which all phenomena, both internal and external, manifest, including our whole universe, so we're talking of some universe-dwarfing infinity! Simply allowing a sense of spaciousness in everything that arose in my mind helped me maintain my alignment with the naked awareness. Sogyal Rinpoche exhorts people in everyday life to 'think spaciously' all the time for this very reason.

Later note (January 2008) - It's extremely important here to make the distinction between spaciousness and any sense of being 'spaced out'. It is the latter which people usually aim for, or at least find and try to cultivate, believing that this is 'spirituality'. What they are actually doing is ungrounding their awareness and increasing their openness to the astral sub-reality ('the dark side'). You actually make enlightenment much more difficult to occur if you get yourself 'spaced out', and it occurs most readily when your awareness is very well grounded.

This is absurd: it's not even new - I'd been looking at it all along!

As Sogyal Rinpoche said in the book, one of the reasons why people have so much difficulty in recognizing their true, enlightened, nature, is that it's so simple and so ordinary! - For it's been staring them in the face all along, only they've assumed they had to look for something beyond and much more tangible and spectacular. It's as if they've been searching for the elephant's footprints in the forest when actually they've got the elephant locked up in their own basement!

I remembered again that early time in my childhood when I'd sometimes agonized about the nature of death, looking within my mind to try to identify some sort of beginning to my life experience. Now I knew without a shadow of doubt that the naked awareness I had perceived then was the selfsame thing that I'd at last recognised as my true nature. Would that I'd had an enlightened person there and then to make sense of it! Because at that time I'd had no intimations from anyone of the true nature of mind or of reality, even though I'd perceived it clearly and directly I hadn't recognised it for what it was and had continued to live a life of suffering. I now realized that, like most people, I'd had glimpses of this pure awareness on many, many occasions, sometimes with transient experiences of peacefulness or euphoria, but without any inkling that I'd been directly seeing enlightenment itself winking at me!

I've arrived - and I didn't even know I was coming!

As the multitude of implications of my new viewpoint steadily gathered around me and began to 'sink in', so another tremendous sense of relief was emerging - the sure knowledge that I had finally arrived. That is, my life quest was over, successfully completed; there was nothing more that I had to seek or to do to fulfil myself*. This seemed incredible, because despite having been purposefully moving towards liberation from limiting habitual tendencies and negative emotions, I'd had no idea that I was heading for such a sublime goal, and up to that point had still felt painfully lacking in a life direction and was plagued by a feeling of unfulfilment despite all my creative work - and now, suddenly I'd hit the fulfilment that my life had all along really been pointing to, without even trying!

* Later note (2008) - Although there was an element of truth in that, actually overall this was a big distortion which I'd picked up from Sogyal Rinpoche in that book. The point is, we do not incarnate just to become enlightened. Becoming enlightened is an extremely important point in the unfolding of one's life, but it isn't in itself one's life purpose - as actually I partially acknowledged in the second paragraph below.

But even that wasn't the end of my astonishment about this aspect, for I also saw that because my true nature was perfect and unchanging, my whole life quest that had brought me to this point had in fact been illusory; in reality all that suffering, and even the very concept of a spiritual path had been self-delusion - a lot of old balls! In reality I'd travelled simply from here to here but yet it had seemed to be such a big and tortuous journey! How amazing!

I should perhaps clarify one thing here: paradoxically, having 'finally arrived' did not mean there was nothing further for me to do in this life, because it was and still is up to me to use the rest of this life to develop towards complete enlightenment and to benefit others. But now at last I had a rock-solid foundation for my further development and activities, and indeed a sound and far-reaching purpose in life*.

* Later note (January 2008) - I now understand that a strong sense of having or needing to have a purpose in one's life is generally problematical and has little or nothing to do with one's underlying life purpose, which simply unfolds if one really allows it to. Such feelings are best cleared using one or more of the emotional clearance methods which I give in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

My reference to 'complete enlightenment' reflects the confusion between enlightenment and self realization in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings. What I'm developing towards is full or complete self realization. Enlightenment is complete in itself.

My personal ambitions

What folly that I'd been tormenting myself worrying my head about getting money and fame from my literary and musical creativity! Not that there was anything wrong about making a living from them, but as there were clearly obstacles to the acceptance of my work and I could very likely spend the rest of my life struggling against the odds for recognition and getting nowhere, my previous ambitions fell away and I felt a great relief. Now I could happily turn my back on the whole lot and go off to devote the rest of my life to spiritual practice!* But I knew that in practice (sic) I wouldn't do so for the time being or even at all, for it didn't take much thought to understand that my literary and musical work had much in it to raise people's spiritual awareness and therefore was a gift to humanity which it was my part of my life's higher purpose to produce and use reasonable measures to seek to disseminate. I decided there and then to make all my literary works available on the Internet at an early stage and to stop bothering about getting accepted by publishers or agents. Disseminating my music would be more problematical for various practical reasons, but while I had inspiring music emanating from the deep spiritual source it had to be part of my life task to channel it into new compositions for the benefit of others, regardless of whether it would bring me any money or personal fame.

* Later note (February 2008) - Yes, and get myself well and truly ensnared by the astral ('dark') forces in a way which in the event they didn't manage to achieve precisely because I didn't devote my life to so-called spiritual practice! I had no idea at the time of writing the above, that the whole edifice of 'spirituality' was itself 'of the dark side' and most definitely something I needed to keep right out of. As it was, my involvements in 'spirituality' at all from 1998 to early 2007 caused me massive problems with the astral ('dark') forces, which had clearly targeted me for wrecking or being taken over by 'the dark side'. See Exit 'Spirituality' - Enter Clear-Mindedness.

Clearly some sort of sense was now emerging with respect to that deepest and long-secreted 'life task' awareness of mine: that my real purpose in this life was to be a spiritual teacher. This didn't mean, of course, that I necessarily had to emulate Jesus or the Buddha and become some super powerful big name; there would be so many ways that I could be a positive force (or perhaps one should say, a channel for such positive force). Anyone who seeks always to be true to himself and touches other people positively in ways that open or widen the doors of spiritual awareness in their minds is effectively a spiritual teacher or leader of sorts, even without being publicly regarded as such and gathering a circle of overt disciples. In my case my creative work was clearly one of my vehicles for such positive touching of others, and no doubt other means would emerge as I developed further. I had no doubt that whenever I reincarnated in the future I would be some sort of spiritual teacher, presumably more advanced than in this life - the important thing being positive effects, not my perceived status!

Later note (February 2008) - I have the following observations on the above paragraph:

• A good part of my constant inner urge to benefit Humanity was undoubtedly coming from a vow which I was unawarely carrying (actually not of mine but made by one or more of the parasitic lost souls attached to me, in one or more of its lifetimes), to the effect that I would always seek to benefit others rather than myself. Not so healthy!

• My underlying life purpose got a bit distorted into the concept of having a task as a 'spiritual teacher' because in about 1999 out of curiosity I went to a clairvoyant / medium to see what she would pick up about me - I just turned up off the street and gave her no information about myself. She told me an amazing amount about myself which was more or less true and which couldn't have been just guessed, but as I now know, there were distortions in what she told me, in line with the astral agenda which had been laid down for me.

  So, my true underlying life purpose, which was very much about disseminating awareness of true self realization (including enlightenment) rather than 'spirituality', and also about publicly highlighting the pernicious nature and pervasiveness of the astral interference in everyone's lives, got transmogrified by that clairvoyant, and subsequently others, into 'spiritual teacher', so straightaway I was being directed towards becoming yet another tool of the astral ('dark') forces - being a teacher of supposed 'spiritual' realities and 'spiritual' (.i.e. ungrounding and astral-connecting) practices. (See Exit 'Spirituality' - Enter Clear-Mindedness.)

I no longer need music! Nor mountains!

My attachment to all things of this life was dissolving throughout the contemplation. Again the imaginary image was of broken shackles falling away into the waves of that vast ocean of the mind. The great 'loves' of my life, music and mountains, were no exception. I no longer needed these things. Note that needed is the operative word here. That didn't mean that where there had been wonderful things in my mind and life before, there would henceforth just be pointless blank; I wasn't rejecting them. Far from it - but from now on I could freely choose whether and when to involve myself with music, and similarly for going on mountains, and I could leave all these wonderful things behind with equanimity at the time of death or in the event of changed life circumstances which pointed me in other directions. I saw that when I went on mountains in the future it would be not out of a sense of need but as a celebration and a glorious type of meditation in which I would transcend every worldly emotion that arose; I would experience oneness with the spacious grandeur of the mountains and wilderness, and radiate that inspiring peace and nobility into the Cosmos and quietly into the heart and spirit of all beings (i.e. via that innermost level of consciousness within which we are all one).*

* Later note (February 2008) - Oh God! (sic) Eeek! What execrable spirituality-speak! Let's have a go at rewording that into something sane, healthy and grounded:

...and a beautiful self realization practice in which I could experience freedom from attachments, and oneness with everything and everyone, in a most uplifting and healing but immensely grounding context - so in subtle ways becoming more effective in initiating / catalyzing self realization in others.

I saw how most people's unaware motivation for going walking up mountains and out in wilderness areas was to 'see' the reflection of their true nature which their surroundings presented to them; even apparently relatively unaware people were intuitively seeking such connections and engagements with Nature which could open up little chinks in their unawareness. But in the short term few people indeed would immediately recognise the underlying nature (sic) of what they were experiencing up on the mountains, so to a large extent they would fall back into their habitual ways and thought patterns upon returning to 'ordinary life'.

The paradox of transcending joy

Even as I felt wave upon wave of joy, the like of which I'd previously experienced only briefly up on the mountains, I perceived that I was observing this emotion from a viewpoint beyond. I could now feel the joy, although sort of wonderful, to have a certain unsatisfactory quality because it was still a worldly emotion which was transient and linked to at least the possibility of suffering, whereas the peaceful radiation of compassionate love that emanated from the naked awareness was constant and was beyond all such emotions. I correctly guessed that I'd be filled pretty well continuously with this great joy for several days (it was actually two whole weeks, and felt almost as incongruous as going around with a continuous erection for all that time!), and then the joy would subside, leaving it easier and less distracting for me to keep my attention within the enlightened essence. As I was now observing joy from beyond, I knew I wasn't going to fall into the common trap of thinking that the joy itself equals enlightenment and so try to dwell on it and seek it out again when it went away.

Later note (February 2008) - Especially since the astral forces were, right then, strenuously seeking to deceive me and lead me astray, I award myself a whole lot of Brownie points for recognising as clearly as I did then, that that joy was not 'me' and was something unsatisfactory, to be transcended!

In fact what was really happening then was that, unbeknown to me, I was being ATTACKED by astral ('dark') entities to hide the true, much more subtle joyfulness which, as an aspect of my true nature, was beginning to become more manifest. The unsubtle transient emotion of 'joy', like erotic feelings, which people also consider extremely positive and pleasant, is actually based in painful emotions and so is not at all what people believe it to be. The entities on this particular occasion were seeking strenuously to get me hooked on the 'joy' deception to unseat me from my enlightened state - just as they manage to divert most people away from enlightenment if they're getting at all close, by giving them attacks with apparently pleasant emotions or sensations to get them to mistake those for enlightenment.

Fortunately in my case I remained resolutely too clear-minded for the latter to happen.

---

Was my experience enlightenment?

This is a double-edged question. The strict answer is 'no', but not in the way that most people would mean. The experience was just a passing experience, albeit a wonderful and important one. Enlightenment is not in itself an experience but more like gaining a particular viewpoint upon our experiences. But to answer what most people would really mean by that question, we have to rephrase it:

Had I become enlightened when I had that experience?

Now we're talking. In fact I do give a 'yes' answer, but it has to be qualified at once because it depends how you use that tricky word 'enlightenment'. In Tibetan Buddhism that word is normally reserved for what they regard as full enlightenment, when there are no obscurations or habitual tendencies left at all, and the primal awareness is completely unobscured, shining out in its full splendour. Allegedly, a being who has reached that state (a buddha) has tremendous insight, vision and powers beyond the abilities of 'ordinary' beings like myself. But others use the term 'enlightenment' for what Tibetan Buddhist masters call recognition of the nature of mind or I would call recognition of one's innermost nature. I think it's fair enough to say that this stage marks the beginning of enlightenment. It marks the momentous point where a person lets go of her self-identification with the illusory ego and recognises that seemingly indescribable naked awareness or divine essence as being her true nature, having perceived it directly. The person then has the viewpoint of the enlightened state, even though initially it may still be relatively obscured by emotional issues.

That was what happened to me to bring about the important experience and change of outlook that I've detailed above. From this point on it's possible to keep resting the self-identity in that awareness and fundamental nature rather than in the things that arise in the mind. Indeed that forms the main basis of Dzogchen practice. By consistently applying this simple but very subtle mental discipline it's possible progressively to weaken and clear the remaining habitual tendencies and karmic obscurations, so leading progressively towards full enlightenment - the complete external realization of the buddha nature. That is my own ongoing task now - though with qualifications because I have subsequently come to understand the shortcomings of the Buddhist understanding of enlightenment, and I am very likely pointed towards a deeper sort of realization or enlightenment than is possible through adherence to the Buddhist teachings.

Later note (February 2008) - I now view things a bit differently - seeing the view expressed in the above two paragraphs as incorporating Tibetan-Buddhism-sourced distortions of the real situation. I would now say without reservation that I had become enlightened at that point. The point (sic) here is that those Tibetan Buddhist teachings confuse self realization and enlightenment. What they are calling full enlightenment or even just enlightenment is actually not enlightenment but full self realization. They tend to call the crossing of the enlightenment threshold 'recognition of the nature of mind', which isn't actually wrong but is greatly misleading in the context in which it is normally used.

However, although thus it looks superficially as though they are pointed in the right direction, even though in a rather confused way, actually their notion of what constitutes self realization, although looking sort-of correct, contains distortions whose effect would be to divert most people into various astral realms (illusory realities), including facsimiles of enlightened and self realized states, and thus away from true self realization, and indeed into the clutches of the astral ('dark') forces.

The difference between naked awareness and what emanates from it

An exceedingly common confusion arises from people expecting one's core essence or fundamental consciousness to be visible in some way, and therefore assuming they are seeing it when they are really seeing what has arisen out of it. Ultimately all phenomena and objects, whether apparently in the mind or external, have arisen from that naked awareness. Even those wonderful qualities and emanations which I've described, such as the constant radiation of unconditional love and empathy, are not themselves fundamental consciousness, but rather, they are the emanations from it, just as what we experience when we look at the sun is not the sun itself, but is the light that shines from it.

Directly perceiving the mind-essence is extremely elusive. As the Dzogchen masters often warn*, the very moment that you notice that you are resting in that naked awareness and the slightest hint of 'this is it' or any other thought or impression about it crosses your mind, you've already lost it again! So trying to recognise or rest in that awareness is a sure recipe for failure; a very subtle mental skill is required here.

* Later note (February 2008) - I thought I'd leave that bit in, just for a laugh. They are no authority on anything worthwhile, despite their knowledge and insights into the nature of reality - because they are so unaware of the considerable interference they are getting from the astral ('dark') forces, which results in their insights and teachings all containing serious distortions which mostly divert people away from true self realization and indeed a healthily balanced enlightened state.

The truth here (as far as anything at all can be called 'truth'!) is that there is no need at all to be trying to dwell in one's underlying naked awareness. The whole approach of Tibetan Buddhism, and indeed to varying extents all Buddhist traditions of which I'm aware, is distorted and leads people into an unbalanced and highly problematical sort of 'self realization'. If you use genuine self realization methods and cultivate a healthy grounded state in your everyday life, then your enlightened state opens out naturally without your having to make an issue of it at all! What is a beneficial ongoing practice in everyday life is simply allowing yourself to be peaceful observer of all that you experience, whether pleasant or seemingly unpleasant - seeing all that you experience as existing or arising within your mindspace and not being external to it. Indeed, the need is to go one step further and recognise that you are your mindspace rather than anything that possesses it or exists within it. That's all - so simple!

Had all my negative emotions gone for good?

No, not at all at this stage, just as I expected from the book. It's true that for the most part they were and are much reduced, but the most important difference now is that the disturbing emotions and habitual tendencies are experienced as phenomena or arisings in the mind which I observe with love, rather than my being controlled by them or judging them. Left to their own devices they dissolve, leaving my mind unsullied. Over time their imprints in the ground of the worldly mind are becoming weaker and their arisings will become rarer and eventually, one by one, they will disappear altogether from me - though how far ahead full clearance will be is not for me to guess. Actually I am aware of some habitual tendencies and blocks in my subtle energy system that do still have some control in my everyday life, but I have no doubt that as they are addressed, probably with the techniques of spiritual healing, the strength of awareness of my true nature and the ultimate nature of everything will increase further. My main spiritual practice now is simply keeping self-awareness in my true nature and allowing all thoughts, emotions and other arisings in the mind to follow their course and dissolve without taking me over, so widening and deepening the gaps between the arisings, through which the absolute nature shines.

Later note (February 2008) - Little did I know how enormous and taxing my 'self' healing task was still to be. You can read about it in My Own Self Realization Path - and in any case the explanation has already been given in some of my annotations further above.

I mention spiritual healing - but actually that turned out to be part of my near-downfall, because it was, unbeknown to me, involving me with the astral ('dark') forces in a sequence of events that led to my tremendous troubles with them which started in late 2003. I now also keep clear of any practices which one might call 'spiritual', for the same basic reason - that the astral forces are pretty well always involved. So I keep nowadays to genuine, grounding self realization practices and methods, and although I do continue to use what could be seen as the essence of Dzogchen, I don't make an issue of it (let alone think of it as Dzogchen) but simply allow (not force) myself to be the peaceful observer of all I experience. As I say, that comes naturally, and in a flowing, flexible way, if you simply get on with your self realization (including clearing out of astral interferences and influences) and allow enlightenment to take care of itself.

Beware! Enlightenment, like meditation, is commonly misused

In Buddhism, enlightenment, like meditation, is all too often seen as a handy escape from experiencing uncomfortable emotions. When you recognise your innermost nature you perceive directly and recognise the deepest level of consciousness as your true nature. The error that people almost universally fall into then is to place such a great weight of their awareness in that subtle space within which all phenomena arise, that, as in regular meditation, they let go of their awareness of emotional traumas and issues which they are carrying, with the notion that by doing so they are clearing themselves of those issues and so are in the process of becoming fully enlightened*.

* Later note (February 2008) - That is, what I would now call fully self realized, because becoming enlightened is a simple one-off transition with no degrees of comparison.

In fact my current understanding is that what people do by following the standard Dzogchen teachings in this respect is to lose awareness of important emotional issues* that they are still carrying. Minor issues can dissolve that way, but various major issues remain in place even though awareness of them dissolves. Such people may achieve an impressively empty mindspace and peaceful and composed manner, but their awareness and lifestyle is constrained by the issues that they are still carrying, and through having gone into a total denial of those issues they may have committed themselves to having to resolve those issues in a future lifetime rather than the present one**.

* Later note (February 2008) - For the vast majority of people most or all of these would be those which really don't belong to the respective people but to the parasitic lost souls attached to them. These still need clearing off, however, because they cause problems very much as though they do belong to the affected person - so becoming unaware of them rather than clearing them out isn't a cool option.

** Later note (February 2008) - As I now understand, that would be part of a frankly horrendous future prospect for such people, as I explain in Astral Entities - Interference and Attacks from 'The Dark Side'.

On the other hand it is possible to operate in what is ultimately a healthier and more balanced enlightened mode, which doesn't seek to deny or "just let go of" one's emotional issues. The smart way is, while still keeping awareness and self-identification within rigpa (i.e. the innermost level of consciousness)*, also to allow all thoughts and feelings to arise still, and to follow an active healing path for the various traumas - and that includes healing the past life core trauma(s). That is most effectively done not by 'just letting go' (which can far too readily be 'going into denial by stealth'), but by allowing emotional release (crying, trembling, laughter, etc) in small measure, and, more particularly, using healing methods such as I enumerate in Healing - the Safest and Quickest Way.

* Later note (February 2008) - I would put it differently now. As indicated in annotations further above, I now understand that a more helpful and balanced approach is simply to allow yourself to be peaceful observer of all you experience, so that you don't perceive anything you experience as 'me' but instead perceive those experiences as 'things I'm experiencing'.

Restrictive patterns of outlook and behaviour also need to be dissolved as part of the healing, and that requires what I call positive reprogramming through all aspects of one's life. True self realization methods progressively clear such issues and indeed all issues, and while many require some degree of awareness of one's issues so that they can be dismantled / dissolved, there are some such methods which require little or no such awareness of or confronting of specific issues. I mention again the practices pointed to in Healing - the Safest and Quickest Way and various pages which that page links to.

One great thing about those methods which I give is that to varying, and in some cases a considerable, extent they progressively clear out all one's interference and influences from entities and the astral sub-reality - absolutely essential for genuine and comprehensive self realization, and something which appears to be completely missing from the various Eastern 'spiritual' traditions such as Buddhism. Virtually EVERYBODY has at least some degree of astral ('dark') entity interference / influence, whether or not they are aware of it, so this is a very important issue. Enlightened people are not exempt from such astral interferences - though almost universally they believe that they are, because they so readily use their enlightenment as a sort of smokescreen (sort-of 'hear no evil, speak no evil, think no evil' and all is hunky-dory, except that it isn't!).