Sort of riffing on something mystiq said in the Pilgrimmage thread…
I had an interesting experience last week. I walked into a place in Berkeley called Monterey Market, and I felt like I was being lured by warm sticky tendrils into “I Am”. It felt like something in the vicinity was meditating me…powerfully. I’ve never had anything like that before…I’m not one of those “princess and pea” seekers always scanning the ether for vibes. I feel strongly that the omnipresent Big Vibe is all that matters.
It was definitely specific to that locale, because it got stronger as I approached and weaker as I left (which also makes no sense to me…spiritual energy isn’t like a baseboard, it ought to transcend place). Anyway, I have no idea what that was about. Was there a clutch of high Tibetan lamas meditating in the basement? (doubt it…I’ve been present when high Tibetan lamas meditated, and never caught this sort of buzz). Maybe I just got woozy over the prices ($15 for a cart ful of beautiful organic produce that would have cost $50 in NYC).
I’m guessing it stemmed from a person who happened to be there, but it may be a grocery bagger or something. I’ll go back sometime.
Jesus, I’m getting new agey. But I experienced what I experienced…
Hi Jim:
Great story. I loved Mystiq’s Kerala pilgrimage story too…
Could’ve been the bag boy. Maybe one of those peaceful warriors? Or an indigo child playing in the aisles? A lot of folks are doing AYP in California these days – could’ve been one of those too. Was anyone looking at you bedazzled, like you were the burning bush? 
These are interesting times. Much more “inner seeing” happening, and there’s much more around to see too. Inner openings and inner perceptions go together on all sides.
We are all living in paradise, and are finally beginning to notice!
The guru is in you.
Idunno, Yogani. I just don’t find things to work that way. At certain times I feel my heart is gushing pure love to the ends of the universe (the internal becomes external thing you write so well about), but no one seems to notice (thank god! If they did, I’d be in awful trouble). In fact, in that market I was resonating like a cosmic gong, and I got no evidence at all that anyone was changed for it. Just folks buying groceries, seeming like prisoners in their bodies (most of them meditators, I bet, too, seeing as how this was Berkeley).
And, conversely, I’ve been present when some very serious (not just famous) people were meditating, and I’ve only caught the lightest of buzzes. And I’m someone who gets around and pays careful attention.
I don’t much buy into the personal power thing, it just hasn’t been true in any way I’ve been able to personally verify. I enjoyed Wilder as a fable, but I don’t see it as a real life thing. And i don’t need any of it, either, because I find surrender far sweeter than any notion of personal power. What you say about paradise is literally true. So there’s nothing to become or develop, just a clearing off so you can see What Is.
But this one single experience was distinctive. So…maybe I’ve got everything wrong. 
Hari Om
Hello Jim,
I have had a similar experience i.e. locale driven. At first you say “naaah , must of had some bad tofu or mung bean sprouts” - yet when another person ( sadhu) says " you notice somethin’?" then you know its beyond just you.
Happy to hear of experiences outside of the ‘eyes closed’ arena.
One day of Brahma = 4.32 billon years. [FYI one second = 100,000 human years.]
Frank In San Diego
Jim, I had no idea that you were in the neighborhood. I am frequently in Berkeley. We should get some coffee sometime.
Frank, nobody in the store, and nobody I was with, noticed a damned thing. Nor did they notice when I started glowing in resonance. This stuff is all pretty intangible, I’ve found.
Victor, I was just visiting from out of town.
BTW, I need to add that I don’t doubt for one picosecond that I’m simply missing stuff, am not very clear yet, have lots of ground to travel. I feel great, I feel like I’m in the thick of the good stuff, but I can think of many aspects of my life where I felt that way but, in retrospect, had tons more ground to cover. If I turn out to still be a beginner, I say “yahoo!” Every dab of opening has felt so great that I’d be delighted if I’ve turned out to have opened only a tiny fraction of what’s closed!
So maybe one day I’ll open my eyes to a world where spiritual supermen tread, where children throw flower blossoms in my path as I walk, and multitudes are really seeing with clarity, and where super stunts and powers are available (and wielded without any corruption or distraction of the wielder). Where people gasp at my flowing kundalini and savor my stillness. Maybe I’ll enter the Wilder novel and do superhero stuff to inspire the somnabulent and gosh darn smite the evildoers, and every AYP person I meet will have a distinctive energy aura and We Evolved People will winkingly recognize each other.
But if that happens, I’ll deem it yet more stuff to surrender, whereupon it’ll fade into Isvara along with all my other worldly fascinations and yearnings (along with Halle Berry and plasma televisions). Poof.
Hi Jim:
Who said anything about power? Power is illusion. The real prize is something far greater than power. Joy is the underlying thing. That is real. It is what’s left when all the rest is purified and opened up. Inner seeing is not power. It is joy! … a synonym for pure bliss consciousness.
It is joy that will have us all bedazzled and rolling in the aisles, and it is everywhere. Stillness is its essence.
The guru is in you.
I’m totally and unquestioningly with you on that, Yogani, and am intensely grateful to you for providing such a clear pathway. And I hope my posting (which was snarky but hopefully memorable and amusing) will be helpful to anyone who gets sidetracked by the woo-woo possibilities.
Will I ever manage to post something without editing it later? Maybe after four more years of AYP?
Jim said:
I don’t much buy into the personal power thing, it just hasn’t been true in any way I’ve been able to personally verify. I enjoyed Wilder as a fable, but I don’t see it as a real life thing.
I have been thinking for some time that the powerful ‘spiritual superhero’ is purely mythical. The idea is all over the Yoga tradition (not so much, I think, in Buddhism) and I have often wondered how well Yoga is served by it.
There seems to be an idea that when you get through your transformation, you can magically and powerfully pull everyone else along. But for everyone I have seen and heard of on this earth, their power to pull everyone else along was limited, no matter what their realization.
It may be instructive to look at the Buddha. Possibly of the most powerful realizations in centuries, yet he did not go around shaktiputting or vibe-ing people into bliss. Instead he taught a path, knowing that the spiritual development of people would take time.
If someone believed, that when you become deeply spiritually realized that you can magically, super-heroically pull everyone else along, and found out that that was false, it might be a little saddening.
But there is a good side to the more realistic picture – you don’t have to be deeply spiritually realized to help pull people along, to be a good or even a very good teacher. Being a ‘great realizer’ and a ‘great teacher’ are as separable in spirituality as they are in ice-skating or any other endeavor.
And we can all help. We are all ‘the Guru’, and individually limited at the same time. It’s all good as it is, without superheroes glamorously handing out our realization like Eva Peron handing out money to the poor on the street.
Very true, David:
The greatest miracle of all is people choosing to do what it takes to tap their own vast potential. Facilitating that choice in others is no small task, but well worth it – a surrender of its own special kind to what evolution is leading us all to. And you are right. We can all facilitate it. Please do!
The guru is in you.
PS – Jim, Your California story is a joy. The art of humor is a divine gift. Keep em comin’
Dear Jim,
As our levels rise or if one is involved in working with energy(Tai Chi, healing etc.)then our sensitivity increases and we feel the energies of others much easier even if one is not making a conscious intent to do so.Even if you were sending any amount of energies to others they would probably not feel it unless they were sensitive to energies.If this is your first experience of feeling energies from others then it’s time to say ‘YAHOO.’
L&L
Dave
‘the mind can see further than the eyes’
It may be that our greatest teachers are not the gurus, but those who annoy us the most. If we can learn to love even them, then surely we tap into something powerful within ourselves.
The most important difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is that Buddhism believes all is one, all is God…whereas Hinduism believes all is one, all is God, but that the oneness is divided. Buddhism says that beneath ego is emptiness (a misunderstood concept which is nowhere near as bleak as it sounds). Hinduism says that beneath ego is atman, a true self that, yes, is just another manifestation of God, but a LOCAL one - think Catholicism, with its patron saints, trinity, and other folds and complications (which all reduce to one in the Big Picture but are nonetheless taken quite seriously). Think Protestantism for Buddhism: the abandonment of all those folds and complications for a more direct connect to the Big Picture. An unloading of lots of complication and intermediation.
Note that both hinduism and buddhism are immense, so anything you say about either can be contested. Advaita/vedanta mostly skips Atman, and is nearly identical in many ways to certain strains of Buddhism. But, moving along…
The Hindu notion of atman (the Self, distinct from the self) creates the possibility of personal power, personal energy, personal this and that. This melds with tantra (which is all about such cultivation) to fuel the superstar notion. Buddhists look on with amusement thinking it’s just a different shade of maya/samsara. And while I’m a yogi first and foremost, I think I’m with the Buddhists, and believe the whole Self/Atman thing is just another peel of the same onion to be transcended.
Same for siddhis and all that. I find the unending debate as to their reality a huge waste of time and unbecoming of yogis. The whole matter is entirely beside the point, akin to discussing whether a supermodel is hot looking. The point is surrender to What Is.
Anyway, that’s just my feeling. Which could change. And, to return to the thread, I have no freaking idea what happened in Berkeley.
Oh, i can feel energy from others. This was not that. I’m struggling to come up with a way to draw the distinction, but i think my first post did it as well as I could. Like I said: I was being meditated. I felt, in my regular activities (gruntingly getting out of a car to go food shopping!) that I was in the radiant presence of that which I’d only fleetingly perceived in my very deepest meditations. And I’ve been in places where high lamas and saints were doing their thing.
Was it a person? Was it a place? Was it a sudden temporary huge increase in the radiance flowing from within me (and which I mistook for external)? No idea.
But it wasn’t mere energy. It was something else.
Meg, your posting was nearly as astonishing for me to encounter as that California experience. You can’t imagine how timely this is. I’m at a crux point. I’ve been presented with a situation where I’m under control of someone who perfectly personifies everything that’s ever sent me into a tailspin since I was a small child. He presses my buttons like Horowitz pressed the keys of his Steinway. And I can’t help but think it’s an awesome opportunity. I don’t just want to love him, I want him to clean the remaining obstructions in my nadis. I view him as the perfect abrasive cleanser. He’s my perfect devil and my personal savior both.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve slackened in my practice due to a major work transition. This guy’s part of that. And I’ve let him frazzle me. But I’m seeing an alignment of elements ideal for my sadhana and I know what I need to do. Thanks.
Yer welcome! I’d guess that this guy was probably the catalyst for your recent astonishing experiences. I’m in a similar situation this week, but alas, no tendrils in the produce aisle.
Things are never what we think they are.
Jim said:
Same for siddhis and all that. I find the unending debate as to their reality a huge waste of time and unbecoming of yogis.
Thank you, O Lord Jim, for letting us know what you find unbecoming amongst us!
But I plead that you do not so rashly judge our ways “unbecoming of yogis”, for perhaps we have our own good motivations for the debate, which you simply do not share?
David, on the frequent occasions when you rub forumites the wrong way with your forthright opinions (which always give me a kick, btw), you always repeat the same thing: it’s just your opinion. And this is a place where we all give our opinions. And everyone should be free to give their opinion, and it’s inappropriate for people to take umbrage.
You may say anything you like and debate anything you like…because i’m not Lord Jim, I’m just this dude. And I may do likewise. And thus we’ll all share this forum in a spirit of peaceful variegated dissent with tons and tons and tons of different interesting viewpoints.
Jim,
Jim said:
and it’s inappropriate for people to take umbrage
which taking-umbrage is inappropriate and invalid? My apparent umbrage, or your apparent umbrage that umbrage is taken?
Agreed you are not Lord Jim, but yes, I was holding up a mirror to you to something which sounded quite lordly to me. Indeed it does truly, and in all honesty, sound lordly to me to tell people that you find the debate they been having “unbecoming of yogis”. You may indeed disagree that it sounds lordly. Or may be happy that it does. In one way or another you may accept or reject that mirror.
And if it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, well, the pot may still be right!
Yogani said:
>> We are all living in paradise, and are finally beginning to notice!
Way to go Yogani! It’s finally sinking in…
Jim said:
He presses my buttons like Horowitz pressed the keys of his Steinway. And I can’t help but think it’s an awesome opportunity. … I view him as the perfect abrasive cleanser. He’s my perfect devil and my personal savior both.
If you can tackle this guy, you might be able to move on to something many of us find even harder:
PARENTS!
