2015 Easter Enlightenment Intensive: Day Four

For many years now I've noticed that it often takes a few days of intense focus and contemplation to detach from one's daily habit routines.  At the completion of a three day Enlightenment Intensive all the work required for a detachment from the daily biological, emotional and psychological habits are in place and then the retreat is over.

I call this detachment from those daily habits, Escape Velocity.  It's the term that physicists use to describe the velocity or momentum that it takes for a rocket launched on earth to escape the gravitational forces of planet earth.

In a similar way there is certainly also an emotional and psychological gravity that we carry in our life as human being.  It's a gravity that holds a sort of seriousness about life.  This gravity is our attachments to people, things  and ways of being that we grow fond of.  After a few days of contemplating and meditating upon the Who AM I riddle or koan, those attachments begin to dissolve through honest communication.  It's at that point that we reach a palpable spiritual Escape Velocity from the gravity that's associated with the mental and emotional attachments.

It's about the fourth day that I relate what Charles Berner said in one of his longer Enlightenment Intensives.  "I have already told you the importance of presenting yourself as you are.  When contemplating, you are trying to directly experience the Truth.  To experience it directly you just set out to experience it directly.  Truth has nothing to do with existence, so ignore anything that is. You see pictures in your mind, you see hallucinations in your brain, you have feelings in your body, ignore them.  You are far enough along now that you can do that.  At first you’ll just describe everything, but later on you just want the closest leap you can make to the Truth.  If you are working on self-enlightenment it is pointless to reach.  If you reach out, you are away from yourself.  So only work on that which is you.  You intend to directly experience you and ignore everything else.  So when your partner says, “Tell me who you are” or “Tell me what you are,” set out to directly experience who or what it is that you are.

Your thoughts will probably come up.  “Well, what if I am not doing it right?”  “Am I going to get it this time?”  That is not doing it.  Ignore that.  It is not going to help.  Just ignore it.  It is just another existence.  Just experience you.  Get as close as you can to that experience and express that to your partner.  You can leave everything else out now.  Just experience that.  Don’t put your attention on your body.  Don’t put your attention on your mind.  Don’t put your attention on your thoughts.  Don’t put your attention on hallucinations.  Don’t put your attention on your brain.  Don’t put your attention on your partner or on the environment.  Put it on you."