Emptiness dancing - Adyashanti

[emc]

Adyashanti’s book “Emptiness dancing” is an excellent book, describing the wobbling stage when the first deep realizations occur, but the mind still is able to drag you in to stories again with ease.
The book contains a very personal, down to earth description of Adya’s own journey, experiences and later on growing realizations of how difficult it is for people to stay True and aware in spite of deep insights and lots of “foretasters” of awakening to Truth.
I have called it the “tango dancing in and out of time”. Adya is giving a map over that blurry area - descriptions of thoughts, the twists and turns of the mind, and… the way to stay in fidelity to Truth no matter what even in that wobbling state. A book that jumped into my hands exactly when needed. Life is abundant.
Some quotes from the book:

When awakening happens, the heart has to open. I think that for realization to be complete, it has to really hit on three levels - head, heart, and gut - because you can have a very cler, enlightened mind, which you’ll know in a deep way, but your being won’t be dancing. Then, when the heart starts to open just like the mind, your being starts to dance. Then everything comes alive. And when your gut opens up, there is that deep, deep, unfathomable stability where that opening, who is you, just died into transparency. It’s become the absolute. You are That.

The only thing ego cannot acquire is the true nature of what you are. It can acquire a hundred thousand spiritual experiences, but it cannot acquire who you are. The essence of this moment cannot be acquired because it is the only thing that is going on. That is why seeing it is called realization. You are realizing what always is, always was, and always will be. Anoyone who has ever had a glimmer of awakening finds this such a shock because you realize you always had what you were trying to acquire all your life.

The taste of no separate self is totally liberating. “No separate self” does not mean there is a spiritual experience that goes something like, “I have extended myself infinitely everywhere, and have merged with everything.” That’s a beautiful, wonderful experience for a separate self to have, but that’s not what Oneness is. Oneness is not merging. Merging happens between two and since there is only one, any experience of merging is one illusion merging with another, as beautiful and wonderful as that experience may be. Even when I experience having merged with the absolute, with the infinte, with God, it simply means that my fictitious self has merged with another fiction. Mystical experiences aren’t enlightenment.

Most spiritual seekers, even after a big spiritual awakening, are almost always still groggy. They go back and forth and are not sure they want to be awake because they perceive a whole different world out there. They want to wake up from the bad stuff but continue dreaming about the good stuff. - - - If you want to be really free, you have to make the effort to completely wake up. You will then lose interest in untruth and only be interested in truth.

People ask me all the time, “When will it all be over?” and I understand that they are equating freedom with not having to appreciate each moment consciously, not having to put anything of themselves out, not putting in the slightest effort, and so of course the answer is “Never”. - - - If you are waiting for this freedom of choice to become choiceless or automatic, you are not taking full responsability for this freedom - the freedom to choose between Truth and some comfortable story.

I think it’s great that a “newly awakened” like Adya writes so nakedly and honestly about that wobbly state. The old gurus and sages have often forgotten the details of how the journey looked, and only describe the reality from the awakened and arrived perspective. Adya manages to vividly describe all aspects, clearing out quite a few misunderstandings that could easily occur to the devoted seeker, and surely is occurring for me at the moment.
Lovely book. I strongly recommend it!

[Manipura]

gee, I love synchronicity. I just pulled the same book off my shelf for a re-read, and it’s such a mind-blower (literally). Here’s a quote that spoke to me:
"[Awakeness] doesn’t move according to the agenda of the little me, the one who has all these ideas about this or that happening when you awaken. The awakeness could care less about the agendas you have. It’s moving, and it’s not listening to what you want, and you are grateful that it’s not listening. You discover that it has its own movement, which I suppose is what real surrender is - following that movement. This is the real meaning of “Thy will be done.”

[bewell]

Thanks for the quotations.