Mindfulness, Consciousness and Enlightenment

Knowledge means overcoming the obstacles which form altogether your idea of separateness as an individual.
Sri Ramana Maharshi

I was in graduate school debating something with a fellow student I didn’t like very much. While he was talking he suddenly asked, ‘what did I just say?’ He got me at that moment. Sure enough, I was too busy thinking about my counter-argument to listen to him! Fast forward by 25 years, I was in a phone conversation with a friend. She asked, ‘what are you thinking at this moment?’’ I responded, ‘Nothing! I am listening to you.’

What a change! Actually, I can still block people out if I don’t resonate with their energy, but thinking has somehow stopped in many instances. I don’t think when I am with people I care about. I listen. I feel energy. I see. I wish I could tell you how to get to the stage of what I would call ‘walking meditation’. It’s such a serene world compared to the world I used to experience. I credit the expansion of kundalini energy in my body. There is a level of energy activation beyond which thought simply stops.

Consciousness is the state when you and I merge into One. It is the moment Martin Buber coined, ‘I am thou’; interestingly, he had that experience while standing next to a horse. Probably many of us had these satori moment when we become part of the landscape and the ‘I’ melts in the significance of the moment.  I have that feeling of Oneness when I see trees swaying in the wind. Somehow, I become part of that movement.

Mindfulness is not quite that stage. It is the realization that the mind—the psychological ‘I—is at work. It’s a raised level of consciousness, but it is not the merging with Oneness that melts the ‘I’. There are notable exceptions though. In significant Aha moments the entire system breaks through to a new level of Consciousness. I had this experience as I was working on my book ‘Breaking free’. I realized that it was the mind—the ego—that was seeking the Truth: ‘don’t seek, see the Truth!’ For an entire week I had that serene feeling of being at Home that cannot be rationally explained. It was literally out of this world.

Enlightenment is stepping out of this world and the ‘I’ experience completely. Be wowed by the experience when you are standing next to the burning bush so to speak, but right now please don’t miss out on the significance of the moment by searching for the Truth. Based on my own experience I figure that Consciousness is accessible in proportion to our spiritual vibration. We are literally getting upgraded all the time. Experience Oneness with constantly changing eyes and feelers.