Venture Fourth Weekly Work
Week Twenty-Eight Oct 2, 2010

Dear Venture Fourth friends,

I hope this finds you all well. I'm just back from a week at Omega Institute in NY, where John of God was doing his special brand of miracles for four days. The opening day there were 1200 people attending, and the energy was rich and beautiful. My assignment as a volunteer this week was to "anchor the Current," sitting about 15 feet in front of the Entity incorporated in Joao's body, front row aisle of the Entity's current room. Dorothy (a dear friend from the Casa) was sitting just beside me, and about 8 more volunteers strung out around the room. Then the room was filled with those whom the Entity invited to sit in his Current, different folks each morning and afternoon. For me the meditations were profound. That first morning was a 5 hour session as over 1000 people moved past the Entity and were directed into whatever healing was appropriate, followed after a 45 minute break by a 3 hour session. Somehow, attention stayed awake and present, strong access concentration, very little body experience.

These days taught me some things about consciousness. The learning was enhanced by a rich ongoing email dialogue about consciousness with Jim Marion, and an opportunity to see what we have been discussing, Jim and I have been exploring the articulations of these experience and where they come together. Our separate articulations are Buddhist for me, and Christian for Jim, but the experiences themselves are not Buddhist or Christian. A bit from my journal is at the bottom below. Some of this was part of the dialogue with Jim rather than straight journal. Reading is optional; it may help you to understand consciousness better, but feel free to just toss it.

On Wednesday afternoon I went up to see the Entity. He took one look at me and, before I could say anything but "obrigada" (thank you), said "surgery" and rolled his eyes back. He's the boss. That was the end of sitting in Current. Surgery, a day sleeping it off, trip home, and here it is Saturday and I am still rather wiped out from what seems to be a very extensive surgery, can feel the pull of stitches in various places in the body, but feeling noticeably less pain in the body than I have felt in years. I'm being very careful.

Let's talk about the upcoming intensive and preparation for it. We'll begin Wednesday night with taking the precepts and refuges, a go around, and meditation. Thursday morning Aaron will talk. Then we'll start noble silence and begin whatever mindful work each will do. Our focus will be on mindful presence from a place of as much emptiness as we find, and to take the time to STOP every time stories of any sort begin to appear. This is not about getting things finished, though certainly whatever we do will be appreciated, but is a deep opportunity to practice mindfulness in the moment with everyday things, to observe the places we still each get caught, and to return again and again to the wisdom that knows it all as arising out of conditions, impermanent and not self. That which rests in the stillness is what then picks up the work again.

I said in letter #26:

Which of the supports that we've been nurturing – working with the elements, with chakras, with guidance and energy, with vipassana and Mussar practices and pure awareness – which of these help to release some of these old unwholesome patterns when they arise?

We'll stay in noble silence Thursday night though we will probably have a group discussion. We'll maintain silence until Friday afternoon before dinner. Friday night we'll have a discussion about our experiences of the 2 days.

Saturday we'll shift into several area of discussion:

1) we'll spend time discussing chapters 4 through 6 of Donald's book.

2) the exercise on page 121, Inventory of your views. What views do you see as predominant in your life? Even if they are "good" views such as that we should be kind to people and do no harm, is there a subtle statement there that people who do harm or act with less kindness are "bad"?

3) We'll discuss this from letter #26. I want each of you to find an issue, world/ local/ family/ personal, and watch it in these ways. What supports compassionate but clear and strong response? What helps bring you to center: meditation, work with elements and body energy, toning, our guides and power animals, all are available for support.

4) I also want us to discuss the distinction between attachment to views and holding to one's own truth and deepest values.

We'll just let this flow organically and see where these conversations take us with no set agenda.

Saturday night we may either take the Tiep Hien precepts together, or just discuss them, as people prefer, or Aaron may lead us in some guided meditations around views and attachment to views.

Sunday we'll spend time in small groups discussing whatever ongoing characteristics each is working with as primary. How is that going? What are you learning? In letter #26 I said:

We're not going to drop off the mindfulness and Mussar practices you've been doing the whole past year, not at all, but you're not going to take specific characteristics on which to focus, but rather to take all those characteristics into the next step. Ask,

What am I doing in the world?

How am I using these characteristics in the world?

What supports me in the world?

And:

I want you also to reflect between now and the next intensive on, "What is my personal path to service?"

We also will look at what special areas we may want to work on when Donald is with us next May.

I look forward to talking to some of you Monday and Tuesday this week, and to seeing you all in just 10 days.

With love, Barbara

Omega Journal, 2010:

. . . It was easy to slip into that place of Light and even into cessation, but I needed to do my work here and stay grounded in both the Light and the relative reality of Current room, hence doing the Pole meditation.

I began to look more at the shift from resting in infinite Light to the transcendence of even that Light, into cessation. It is like moving into the center of the pond where the stone has dropped, ripples spreading but at the center spot, totally still. First there is increasingly high vibration, and then it stops.

. . . in the Current I was in a very deep space. First a memory arose of these 3 levels of experience (of no-self or emptiness, Causal (Buddha or Christ) consciousness, and opening into the Unconditioned) Then it seemed like consciousness moved through the memories, but more as re-experience than memory. The first experience, seen in retrospect, was more about dissolution of ego and surrender of the self. Perhaps more clearly stated. It was a surrender of the small self to the Self, not yet a non-dual experience but one in which both levels, the mundane and Christ consciousnesses, could be seen and honored, Yesterday in Current, I began to see this is akin to the crucifixion, small self on the cross in which the true Self is revealed.

The second experience was a unitive experience, self and everything dissolving into the light. All negativity is burned away. All that remains is of the vibration of Love. I began today to see this as akin to the resurrection.

The Light grew ever stronger. There was a sense of going in reverse, like ripples returning to center until reaching the still center. It was the coming together of emptiness (the center) and form) the ripples. There was a sense of the stillness as infinite potential, so it was both still and expressing outward. Just beyond the center was a very high vibration, perhaps the highest I have ever felt, but in the Center it was still. Jim had described it as "vibrationless" so I was curious to understand what that meant. The energy before entering the Center was extraordinarily powerful, but there was no fear, unlike the previous experiences, just a letting go into that space of stillness and potential and Love.

This was not different from previous cessation experience, but the mind has some new ways to understand it,

As the experienced closed, maybe after an hour, I heard spirit say, "One might call this a baptism by the Word." (as contrasted to baptism by fire or water) I am trying to understand the meaning of that phrase. From the Bible, John 1:1, something like:

In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was spoken into the abyss,

and the Word was God. . . .

or "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (King James Version)

Another translation has it as, "In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, . . " John 1:17

. . . I saw it as The Stillness (Godhead if I understand that term from Bernadette Roberts correctly) and the breath of that Godhead . . . (the Hebrew word Ruach came to mind from somewhere within so later I googled it; see this site; It feels like there is an important connection that I have yet to explore) http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/Spirit_of_God/spirit_of_god.html - "In the Tanakh, the word ruach generally means wind, breath, mind, spirit. In a living creature (nephesh chayah), the ruach is the breath,"

. . . the infinite expressions, all of God, all 'the Word', manifesting first as the Christ consciousness (Buddha or awakened consciousness) and then as lower consciousness in all its forms. Jim talks about the distinction between resurrection and the ascension and I had never pursued the difference. This "Center" is akin to an ascension experience. The Light Baptism was more like a resurrection experience. I don't mean these terms in a traditional Christian sense as I have no knowledge of such usage. I'm using the terms loosely, not as traditional theological terms. After no-self, the Divine self is resurrected into the light, or believes that happens to it. In truth, it never left the Light. Then it ascends into the Heart. Phrased another way, after dissolution of the self, we move into a unification experience and then transcend even that as we deeply experience cessation and the core of the Unconditioned.

. . . The no-self experience, which I have called a parallel to the crucifixion experience, is like (I am using "like" or "akin to" rather than "Is") the experience of dissolution of body and ego on the Buddhist path. It is the opening to subtle consciousness. It can occur with any stage of consciousness. In Buddhist terms, it is "stream entry" and brings certain purifications but lower stages of consciousness may be reverted to through several rounds of the stream entry experience until both state and stage are integrated in to the personality.

When the integration is complete, the stage will also be stable at subtle consciousness. If the integration is incomplete and the meditator moves into a unification experience that is akin to the resurrection and once returner experiences, the meditator may continue to hold him/her self in that lower stage, especially if there are still emotional issues to be resolved. This is where the movement can become an escape from doing the inner work.

This brings up an odd question. At a certain level the purification of the emotions "does" itself, or we might say it is Grace. There is no one left to "do" it. Yet, repeatedly at this stage I see students still trying to get away from emotional pain by entering these higher levels. My premise is that it is the trying, maybe incomplete surrender of the small self, or phrased differently, lack of faith in the fullness of that experience of emptiness, that holds the lower stages present instead of allowing progression through them. Aaron, does this make sense to you?

Aaron: Good morning; yes. This is why we continuously slow people down. After the stream entry experience I have often asked you to have the student step back into work with sila and purification, and also metta and karuna practice. It is at this point that we ask people to observe what habitual tendencies hold them into the small self despite the experience of no self and to consciously work in vipassana to bring attention to those tendencies and allow healing of them. Only this can prepare them to move into the Unification experience without a small self using that step as escape from human pain. Please continue.

Barbara: Thank you Aaron. I understand.

The next experience, we are calling once returner, or the resurrection experience, the move into the Light. This is the entry into Causal consciousness. The third eye is open; the crown chakra opens. When the predominant stage of consciousness is below the subtle, the experience doesn't "take." There are far fewer students here, of course, so hard to generalize and can only surmise. But I can think of several students who have had this experience and built more ego on it, didn't want to work yet again on the mundane issues and healing of emotions and habitual tendencies, and could not stably hold the high vibration of the state of causal consciousness. So again, when we use vipassana here to bring attention to the arising of negative emotion and thought, and see those arisings through the lens of "no-self" truly see it, then the patterns fall away and causal consciousness becomes stable.

I am thinking here of my experiences, probably 15 years ago at the long dzogchen retreat, when I worked with feelings of unworthiness. I was spending most of the day hanging out in a very high-vibration state, no self or other, resting in Rigpa; but when someone walked past me and averted their gaze, as per retreat instructions for visual silence too, the old pang of "I'm bad/ unloved/ unworthy" would arise. It would have been easy to just escape into the Light and bury those feelings. Aaron stopped me repeatedly and asked me to investigate; was there any self in whom these feelings arose? Was there ever anyone who was unworthy? Could I see the whole process of conditioning, of dependent arising right there in that experience and feel it release. This was cutting through with the sword of wisdom. By the end of the month, those feelings, which had been with me all my life, had ceased. It was very hard work, but with rich reward.

Aaron is pointing out now that here is where Grace can come in, to release such old conditioning, but it may not. Aaron, is the release not still Grace?

Aaron: Yes, but you can prepare the ground for that Grace by doing your part. You cannot make it happen, only invite. If you turn the latch, the door can open. If you keep the door barred, it cannot open.

Barbara: Going on. So we have the stable resurrection experience, Unitive experience or once returner experience. It is the entry into the causal state and if the practitioner is ready, there will be a stable stage of Christ/ Buddha consciousness.

The next step is into the ascension experience, non-returner in Buddhist terms, or non-dual consciousness. This is the breakthrough into the still center. In Buddhist practice it seems to occur with cessation experience but that may not be stable. One can have cessation experience and return into a much lower state and stage. The first times I entered cessation experience, the emotional body was still very chaotic; the cessation experience was transformative in that it opened doors but there was no ability to walk through the doors. It was like a glimpse of what can happen when one is ready, but no ability to follow through.

Later cessation experience allowed exploration into that realm of stillness. What explores when there is no self? Just Pure Awareness. There are no 'stories' nobody getting any glory or benefit, just presence and insight. I think the shift came for me around the time of the Bodhisattva Vow experience, in the late 90s. Looking back, it seems that deep intention to service for all beings purified any remaining grasping and fear and allowed the fuller stable entry through the unitive and into the non-dual.

This is the step Ken Wilber calls Dark Night of the Self (the third "dark night" after dark night of the soul) . I don't know why he uses that term. It is the move beyond the causal state, into non-dual consciousness, the ascension experience, but it is not necessarily a move into a high stable stage. That would explain why people like Trungpa could move into such a high state and still be confused in the world, but I still don't understand how that can happen.

Moving into that still center, there is what Jim says Bernadette calls "Godhead" and that seems an appropriate name. This is the Unconditioned, pure Dharmakaya. The Dharmakaya always includes all three kayas, yet there is a place where one experiences only the Dharmakaya, and a place where one experiences the simultaneity of the three. I have often asked how the Kayas relate to the Trinity but I don't understand the Trinity enough to answer. I believe Roshi Robert Aitken (with whom I have spoken personally about this at a Buddhist teacher conference years ago) and Brother David Stendl-Rast address this in The Ground We Share but don't reach a conclusion. Not enough common language. Thich Nhat Hanh may also address it in Living Buddha, Living Christ. And Father Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle (A Zen master and Jesuit priest) in Living in the New Consciousness, addresses it. I will have to look. I'm moved to reread all three books.