If You Are Enlightened to People You Know Withdraw From You

Buddha in Cage, Wutai Mountain, Shanxi Province, 1998 From the serial The Chinese by Liu Zheng.

Temporary spiritual experiences, such equally flashes of elation or clarity, can be helpful signs of progress if you know how to handle them, says Andrew Holecek. But if you lot don't, beware. They can be traps.

Sooner or later it's going to happen— it might be the very get-go time y'all meditate or only after years of defended practice, but anytime you're going to have a spiritual experience. These experiences come up in many forms, ranging from elementary placidity to radiant ecstasy. In their fullest expression, they are spiritual earthquakes that can transform your life. The Tibetan sage Marpa shared one such feel:

I was overwhelmed with joy. The hairs on my body stood on stop, and I was moved to tears… My body was intoxicated with undefiled bliss… There dawned an experience across words.

—from The Rain of Wisdom, translated past the Nalanda Translation Committee

At more than modest levels, they tin manifest equally the total cessation of thought, an out-of-torso feel, or sensations of bliss and clarity. Yous might have an experience of profound meditation, or of union with the entire cosmos, and say to yourself, "This is it! This is what I've been waiting for." Like the endorphins released in a runner's high, these experiences are the meditator'southward high. And they are addicting.

These events are a time for celebration—and a fourth dimension for business organisation. They're crusade for commemoration because they tin exist 18-carat markers of progress. Yous're getting a glimpse into the nature of mind and reality; you're starting to see things the way they truly are. Yous're waking up. But such experiences are also crusade for concern precisely because they feel then practiced. Surprising every bit it may audio, the spiritual path is not virtually making you feel good. Information technology's about making you lot feel real.

Spiritual experiences can exist the sweetest honey covering the sharpest hooks. Considering they can exist so transformative and blissful, it'due south almost impossible not to grasp after them. Y'all want more than. That's the hook. And someday grasping is involved, even if it's for a spiritual experience, yous're dorsum in samsara, hooked into the conditioned world of endless dissatisfaction.

Spiritual experiences are by-products of meditation. The problem is that nosotros think they're the last product of meditation. Traleg Rinpoche said, "The main cause of misperceptions regarding meditation feel is that afterward the loss of the initial fervor, we may forget to focus on the essence of meditation and its purpose and instead place more and more accent on the underlying meditative feel itself."

Spiritual experiences are chosen nyam in Tibetan, which means "temporary experience," and every meditator needs to be aware of them. Nyam is set in contrast to tokpa, which means "realization." Nyam is like pleasant vapor. No affair how good it feels, it ever evaporates. Tokpa is like a mountain. Information technology stays. A nyam e'er has a beginning and an end. One 24-hour interval you soar into the most heavenly meditation, but eventually you drop dorsum to Earth. At that place are no dropouts with authentic realization.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche refers to nyams equally "meditation moods" and says, "Nyam has thickness; tokpa is light and fine. The problem is we similar thickness more; it's more noun and satisfying." We like the substance of our moods.

Nyam and tokpa are themselves the last ii phases of a iii-phase process of consummate absorption or incorporation of dharma: understanding, experience, and realization. This shows us that experience is indeed a good affair, a necessary just intermediate stage in absorbing the dharma. We get-go with understanding, which is traditionally referred to as a patch because eventually information technology falls off. With study and practice, understanding develops into experience, which is like the weather—information technology always changes. With sustained practice, feel matures into realization, which like the sky never wavers. This is the iii-stage process of total apotheosis; information technology is how nosotros ingest, digest, and metabolize the dharma until it almost literally becomes the states.

If yous relate to a nyam properly, it blossoms into realization. If you lot don't, it rots and becomes the most subtle and serious of all spiritual traps. Tai Situ Rinpoche said that you can go stuck in a nyam for an entire lifetime. More than usually, people waste product precious years thinking that because they had a spiritual experience they're enlightened, when in fact they're merely shackled to a nyam. If you're attached to your grand experience and commencement to identify with information technology, you take merely replaced a chain made of lead with one fabricated of golden. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said:

Meditators who run later on experiences, like a child running afterwards a cute rainbow, will be misled. When you practice intensely, y'all may have flashes of clairvoyance and various signs of accomplishment, but all they exercise is foster expectations and pride—they are just devilish tricks and the source of obstacles.

—from Journey to Enlightenment, by Matthieu Ricard

Attachment to anything, no matter how spectacular, is withal attachment.

I have a special interest in nyams because I, too, have been hooked. The kickoff nyam to get me was the feel of nonthought. This defenseless me when I was introduced to Transcendental Meditation (TM) nearly forty years ago. As my TM instructor guided me into meditation, I slipped into profound meditative absorption. For the kickoff time in my life, I felt fully awake without a single idea running through my listen. I had never thought such a blissful state was fifty-fifty possible.

What made the feel so striking was the contrast of having arrived for my instruction feeling speedy and broken-hearted, and and so within thirty minutes dropping into a state completely free of idea. It was like diving below choppy waves into tranquil deep water. Because the contrast was so dramatic, I idea I had attained some level of enlightenment. Information technology took me years to realize that this is a common experience and that I was far from aware.

The adept news was that I had tasted an attribute of the awakened listen and wanted more than. The experience inspired me to pursue meditation with gusto. I began a daily practise that hasn't waned in iv decades. The bad news was that I tied myself in knots trying to reproduce that feel. I had prepare a bar that was ridiculously high and caused me all sorts of unnecessary anguish when I couldn't measure upwardly.

Relating to Spiritual Experience

Considering these exalted states are so succulent, information technology'southward hard not to cling to a nyam. On i level, they're merely spiritual processed; having some of these sweets is okay now and over again, but feasting on them volition brand your meditation sick.

How do nosotros properly relate to a nyam? Let's say that y'all have an experience of bliss in your meditation. Information technology's okay to celebrate information technology. Give yourself a pat on your dorsum. But then let it go. Reinstate the conditions that brought nearly the feel in the offset identify. In other words, most of these experiences arise when the listen is open, spacious, and relaxed. William Blake, in Songs of Innocence and Experience, wrote:

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy
Merely he who kisses the joy as information technology flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

If you grasp after the event and try to repeat it, that contraction around the experience ironically prevents information technology. In order to let realization come up, we outset accept to let experience get.

Another attribute of improper relationship is talking about the experience. It's very tempting to share, proclaim, or fifty-fifty annunciate your awakening, but it's important to check your motivation. Enquire yourself, why do you lot want to practise this? Exercise you lot want others to know how realized you are? If so, let your actions speak louder than your words. Live your awakening. Don't vocalisation it.

Spiritual experiences often arise in the sanctuary of silence, and they should be kept in that sanctuary. There is a reason for secrecy in the traditions. If you remain silent, the experience tends to stabilize and mature. The nyam evolves into tokpa. If you talk about it, the experience trickles away. The nyam degenerates into a distant memory. Don't be a leaky container and dribble onto others. Keep your experience hermetically sealed so it doesn't spoil.

Information technology may be okay to share your experience with intimate spiritual friends; subsequently all, it could inspire them. Merely even hither, always check your motivation first. When people talk nigh their experiences, they usually just want them to be confirmed. The one person you should talk to is your teacher or meditation teacher. An authentic teacher will keep you on track by telling you the feel is neither good nor bad, or past ignoring y'all, or encouraging you to let information technology go.

During one long retreat, I had some other nyam. When I came out of retreat, I raced to share my "realization" with my teacher, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. Equally I shared my enlightenment experience, he yawned and looked out the window. My so-called "awakening" was putting him to sleep! When I was done, he spoke about a topic that had nothing to practice with my experience. I came in all puffed up with my nyam and left punctured and deflated. Information technology wasn't what I wanted, but it was exactly what I needed.

When yous talk about your experience inappropriately, yous transform opportunity into obstacle. The blessed event flips into a cursed one. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche said that talking about spiritual experiences is similar beingness in a dark cave with a candle and so giving your candle away—you're left in the night. This is one way to tell the deviation between a truly realized chief and one stuck in a nyam. Truthful masters never talk about their realization; those infected with a nyam are happy to talk. As Taoism puts it, "He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak."

The essence of a proper relationship to spiritual experience is silence and release. Continue your mouth airtight and your heart open. Utilise the experience to inspire you lot to keep going, but go frontward without the nyam holding yous back. Relate to whatever arises—the skilful, the bad, and the ugly—with self-possession. That's how experience matures into realization.

Since spiritual experiences tin be so ecstatic, and the grasping correspondingly farthermost, sometimes our fingers demand to exist pried abroad from the nyam. Khenpo Rinpoche said that you nurture meditative experience past destroying it. Patrul Rinpoche echoed this advice:

The yogin's meditation improves through devastation… When experiences of stillness, bliss, and clarity occur and feelings such equally joy, delight, or pleasant sensations ascend, you should blast this husk of attachment to experience into smithereens.

—from Lion's Gaze: A Commentary on Tsig Sum Nedek, past Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche

What'southward blasted is not the experience itself but our grasping onto it. Tsoknyi Rinpoche also points out, "Ordinary people don't get enlightened because they don't meditate. Yogis don't go enlightened because they don't stop meditating." They can't get plenty of their high.

In that location is no tyranny every bit great as the tyranny of success—fabric or spiritual. Success leads to pride and attachment. Nyams are markers of success, but the tyranny of that triumph can boomerang. When nyams are solidified, they must be defeated. Honest meditators invite that defeat; charlatans shun it.

Guru vs. Guruism

There's another reason why it's dangerous to talk about spiritual experiences. When you talk near your spiritual experience, you reify it and begin to identify with it and believe it. The more you talk, the more than you convince yourself that something special actually did happen. Worse still, others might start to believe it and feed the reification. Word of your awakening tin can spread like a virus, and earlier you know it, everybody may become infected with strains of your nyam.

When this happens, a subtle codependent relationship develops between "chief" and disciple. The disciple unwittingly enables the "master" by revering their nyam (and projecting their psychological issues onto the "master"); the "master" then enables the disciple by showering them with attention (and similarly gets tangled in a swarm of their own projections and shadow elements). They think they're lifting each other up, but they're actually pulling each other down. Everybody buys into the experience of the "master," and soon a cult is born. A "guru" has been forcefully delivered into the world.

This is not the cute nascency of a realized guru but the deformed birth of guruism. Guruism is based on the spiritual experience of the "master," and the cult is all about spreading that feel like a disease. Everybody catches the fever and wants to take the experience. These "gurus," in an endeavour to protect the nyam and their exclusive role as its transmitter, often quarantine their disciples from outside influences. They merits they're protecting their disciples, just in reality they're just defending their own egos and empire. The Branch Davidians, Jonestown, and endless other cults have followed this classic formula. Information technology's another expression of grasping afterwards elite experiences, a natural outcome of a nyam run wild.

The danger in confusing authentic gurus with guruism is that both involve surrender. Surrender has a powerful place in spirituality, if you give up to the proper authority. When y'all intelligently surrender to a guru, their pure realization can pour into your open up heart. The result is awakening. If you ignorantly give up to guruism, that tainted feel tin as well penetrate your center, and the result is frequently catastrophic.

In my years on the spiritual path, I have seen many teachers cemented to their nyam. There's no dubiousness that many had genuine spiritual experiences, simply there'southward also no doubt that they were superglued to that experience. These "masters" tend to popular upward in the West, where spirituality is ruled by convenience and instant gratification, and where the need for disciplined practice is too often supplanted by the desire for rapid results.

Because nyams are desireable, they are marketable and they sell. Who wouldn't pay for an experience of elation, clarity, or nonthought, the iii most famous nyams? Teachers stuck in a nyam besides sell, because they oftentimes exude an aura of the nyam itself. They ordinarily extol the extraordinary and ecstatic aspects of meditation and easily snag others just as they've been snagged. Their experiences audio and so delectable, then "spiritual," that it'south tempting to follow their bliss. I saw one such "master" who glided toward her throne, draped in white silk and surrounded by her flock of adoring students. She spoke in a seductive voice almost the euphoric nature of her awakening. To me, she was clearly stuck in the nyam of bliss.

Teachers stuck in a nyam tend to work alone, and while they may accept studied with authentic masters, they either pay lip service to their lineage or jettison it birthday. I know Western "masters" who rejected their own teachers considering they didn't confirm their nyam or otherwise endorse their enkindling. The 1 person who could have put them back on rail past destroying their zipper to the feel is dismissed as not understanding their feel.

Once such a "chief" gains traction and establishes a following, it's almost impossible to excerpt them from their nyam. The enabling is also deep and the success as well addictive. It would take tremendous honesty and courage to turn to their adoring students and admit that they've all—teacher and students—been seduced into a nyam. It's much easier to remain stuck in spiritual codependence.

Waking Up from Nyam

In the world of dreams, in that location's an outcome called false awakening. This is when someone wakes up from a dream and discovers afterward that they were all the same asleep. In other words, they wake up from one level of dreaming into what they think is waking reality, only to and then realize that what they've woken up to is yet another dream. It's similar in the movie Inception, where at that place are dreams within dreams, deceptions within deceptions.

As a student of dream yoga, I've experienced a number of these false awakenings. It can be shocking when the alarm clock rings and I'grand jarred into waking consciousness when I thought I was already awake! It's as jolting when someone comatose in a nyam is finally roused from their false awakening. Most adopt to slumber. Faux enkindling is a term that describes what happens when people error their nyam for genuine tokpa.

Those stuck in a nyam rarely submit to the discomfort of beingness jerked away from their heavenly trap. One manner to discover if yous're stuck in a nyam, therefore, is to see how yous react when your special feel is interrupted or challenged. If you get irritated, defensive, or angry, you lot're probably infected with a nyam.

If you desire to look for progress on your path, don't expect for spiritual experiences. Look at your ordinary life. Sogyal Rinpoche says:

The wonder of [enlightenment] is that it is something not exotic, not fantastic, non for an elite, but for all of humanity; and when nosotros realize it, the masters tell u.s., it is unexpectedly ordinary. Spiritual truth is non something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense…. being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, merely condign at last a truthful human being.

—from Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche

Are you condign more than kind, patient, and generous? Is your heart opening? Are yous more than understanding and empathetic? Are you learning how to dear? That's where you'll observe the signs of realization.

There is a place for spiritual highs, merely it's the same place reserved for spiritual lows. Relate to both with equanimity and y'all volition be liberated from them. Left alone, spiritual experiences are wonderful events. They can inspire you to practice more than and actually elevator you up. Simply if y'all don't relate to them properly, they can elevate you down.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, "Enlightenment is ego's ultimate thwarting." From ego'south perspective, enlightenment is a downer. It will let you down—from the heights of inflated spiritual experience to the plateau of ordinary life, which is where true realization awaits.

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Source: https://www.lionsroar.com/just-when-you-think-youre-enlightened/