Comments on: Encountering the Zero Point

By: bodhidude

bodhidude — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:02:56 +0000

I relate to what you shared very much and I do think letting the self slip away can be liberating if you can overcome the fear involved. I just had an intense experience with that.
Wow I do understand your relating to Buddhism and Paganism and I consider myself both Buddhist and Pagan as well, even wrote an article entitled Becoming a Buddhist Pagan not too long ago describing that process. Anyway thanks for your comment I can really relate
peace
colin

By: Less Traveled

Less Traveled — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:08:56 +0000

It sounds like you’re entering a space of “no self” – a concept I have a fuzzy grasp of at best. From what I understand, and sometimes get glimpses of in my own practice, letting the self slip away is a profoundly liberating experience: feeling that everything is connected, and you are everything and nothing at the same time.

Does that even make sense? I saw that you had some Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield books listed on your site, and I think they cover it. It’s certainly covered a lot in Buddhism.

I went on a meditation retreat once entitled, “Who am I?” As with many retreats I’ve been on, it was not a “spa day” but a time for profound spiritual reflection and growth. It pushed boundaries. Much of the day was spent with a partner, who sat facing you and simply asked, “Who are you?” Doing that for hours – you run out of things to say. The labels start slipping away. You can only say you’re a student or a person of color or a woman for so long. When I did it, I eventually tranced out to a point of feeling connected to everything. I know some people I was with felt pushed in a direction of not being able to identify what their individual self was anymore. That they weren’t separate.

The issue of the self is something I’m still trying to understand, both in Buddhism and Paganism. (I consider myself both Buddhist and Pagan.) I don’t know if this makes sense to you – please let me know.

By: bodhidude

bodhidude — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:16:34 +0000

Thanks I’m glad you resonated. I appreciate your thoughts on honesty and truth and have discovered much the same thing. For me awareness uncovers and illuminates the truth and truth brings wisdom and clarity. Living our own unique truth in the path…….
peace

By: Once Upon

Once Upon — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:31:19 +0000

Colin,
“Becoming the Peaceful Warrior” arrived in my email this morning. At first I thought you were Dan Millman, who coined that phrase some years ago in a shamanic novel. I couldn’t remember having signed up to his (now your) site; this is the first article I’ve received.

But..your reflection was timely (as all things are), so I read another blog on your site, and there I was. Your list of inner experience in this unwinding of all Pasts, personal and collective, does indeed scatter the leaves in the “book of me” we have all been writing.

You are being honest, and honesty yields revelation for any who witness, as well as for the sharer–in writing or in personal interaction. Again this morning, as most mornings begin, I had let my own inner muddling pour it’s own trail in my journal. Everything you listed in column form in your writing above identified well my own muddling. Writhing in writing has always been my transportation home, and this morning these words arrived: “If I am honest, I am home.” Never one to stop creating, I can augment: I am in the presence of my own being when I tell me the truth.”

And thus, Shakespeare’s oft quoted line “To thine own self be true” is experiential presence of being itself.

Thank you, Colin–you are, as the Mayan know, “another me.”

Once Upon