Tag: Metaphysicatin’ Jones

First-hand accounts from the front lines of the Human-OtherMind connection.

Fable, With Apocalypse

IN THE MIDDLE OF A flat grey wasteland, under a grey streaky sky, a handful of figures warm themselves at a snapping fire.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

One of the figures has turned to gape across the waste: a vast landscape of broken dryers and tumbledown swingsets, with here and there half a gas station or bowling alley.

“Don’t do that,” says the speaker. He takes the gaper and turns him tenderly toward the flames to warm his hands again.

“Thanks.”

“It’s why I’m here. And that” — a sweeping arm — “is why that’s there. The wasteland is only good for wasting you.”

“Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it. Just keep your hands warm. Even when you’re the last one here.”

Chanukah With Ramana

THE TECHNIQUE IS SIMPLE: just lay on your back, breathing evenly, and take a complete and negative bodily inventory: “I am not my legs; I am not my feet; I am not my arms;” “I am not my mind;” et al.

Now: What’s left after everything else is taken away?

This admittedly (and deceptively) simple exercise comes from Ramana Maharshi, an inadvertent Hindu holyman whose “Self-realization” technique resulted in one of the great spiritual experiences of my life.

In the early 2000s, on the sixth night of Chanukah (our Festival of Lights), my copilot and I were honored to play host to a famous “New Age” rabbi (“R”). I also invited along a filmmaker (“F”) of my acquaintance, who had long wanted me to meet R; he arrived with a Hindu friend of his (“H”), and you may imagine our delight and surprise when R told us that F was his own beloved teacher!

R and we were anticipating a small crowd in our apartment, but the only guests were the sparse handful I just described. So the session turned into a metaphysical round-robin between R, F and H of various Eastern and Western spiritual figures. When one of them mentioned Ramana’s name, the trio became very animated and described the holyman’s negation-of-thought technique which, upon my own diligent practice later that night, produced a most startling and profound awakening.

My word-busy mind dropped away to reveal a deep connection to the wordless Source of all consciousness – a perception of the unspoken silence between one thought and another – an all-encompassing peace of mind – a vision of the vast and intimate Self beyond the ego, beyond even the apparent separation of one thing from another.

Even now, years later, I still can’t adequately describe what happened. (Which is, kind of, the point.) Time’s passage has almost dulled the experience’s immediacy, but not its effect, which inspired in me a fierce non-dualism (or if you prefer, an undying all-is-One-ism) – and which makes me happy, and grounded, every time I recall it.

Thanks, Ramana. Apparently, that’s just what I needed.

What is “Experiential Holiness?”

SHORT ANSWER: IT’S PART OF the tagline for this blog. Longer answer: it’s a way of seeing and living that recognizes and hopefully honors the interconnectedness of all things, and That which makes them (it?) all possible.

“Holiness” is a tricky word. My trusty go-to 1972 Funk and Wagnalls defines “holy” as “regarded with or characterized by reverence because associated with God; having a divine origin; sacred” as well as “having spiritual and moral worth.” “Holiness” is “the state or quality of being holy.” Continue reading “What is “Experiential Holiness?””

Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things

IS G?D GRANTING FAVORS, OR am I just fooling my brain into higher functioning?

That’s the question I ask myself every time I pray for either greater strength (read: endurance) or greater understanding. That’s about all I ever pray for[1], and either way, those prayers always get answered (so far). But the question is also a loaded one: as a Religious Agnostic, I am somewhat prejudiced against the idea of the nameless, genderless Man Upstairs (if It is a man, and if It is upstairs) making dreams come true for me when they have so tragically gone wrong for others (e.g., and canonically, the Six Million, but also any refugees/terminal patients/soldiers/etc anywhere/anywhen). That’s also an argument against Divine Intervention: that people who have “miraculously” survived illness and disaster must necessarily be more holy than those who didn’t. I don’t think that’s fair, or accurate.

But praying for something that expands you in some way — Continue reading “Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things”

5 Thoughts: Religious Agnosticism

0. EVERYONE HAS BELIEFS/KNOWLEDGE about the nature of the (inner) world; while I don’t much like labels attached to such things it seems fitting to call mine “Religious Agnosticism.” Here’s a handful of relevant definitions (partly because a handful of anything is all we ever have): Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Religious Agnosticism”

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