Things about transformation I wish I had known before  

This awakening is the beginning of a profound journey that moves deeply into the present, allowing us the experience of integration. The Path of Return is a path of healing into wholeness. All of the splits, the rifts we created in our experience of self, of life, are healed in this journey. It is not, however, easy or gentle. It is a complete and thorough psychic reorganization of identity, consciousness, modes of knowing and modes of being. It is psychospiritual alchemy. This powerful transformation involves the death of the ego and the rebirth of the self as a vehicle of Spirit. Although beginning with vague malaise, the period of transformation is eventually filled with upheaval, panic, painful emotions, and the powerful tidal waves of the inpouring power of the Ground of Being. One Buddhist teacher used to say,” Thinking about going on a spiritual path? Don’t! It’s one insult after another!”

— Kathleen Singh, The Grace in Dying

For those who have an idealized conception of what transformation/openings are, may this account serve as a sobering reminder of how the process unfolds.  To itemize –

The Face of the Transformational Impulse

The transformational impulse, when it appears, can manifest in a form that is fearsome and terrible to behold. The Hindus worship Kali, a “black mother goddess” that destroys, a precursor to new creation.  Depictions and sculptures of Kali show a goddess dancing on the body of a demon, with a necklace of skulls around her neck and blood dripping from her hands. She is terrifying to behold. Joseph Campbell writes of the hero’s mono-myth and the guardians at the threshold, who ensure that no one crosses into supernatural realms that has not left his ego behind, or at least subsumed it in large measure. These guardians are usually depicted as fierce beasts, snarling and lunging at the seeker. The language of Revelations in the Bible, with its imagery of widespread destruction and apocalyptic endings (so often mistaken for literal events in the world-field, but actually a symbolic expression of the effects of a transformational impulse on the human ego and the end of psychological time), evokes a feeling of dread in the reader. The Gospel of Thomas has this verse:

                “Jesus said: Let he who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be troubled…”

It is very evident that my response to the events written of was one of abject terror.  Foreboding and fear dominated my feelings and thoughts prior to the opening and for a number of months afterwards. Instinctual and existential fear was what was released from its bindings. This was no garden variety of fear coming forth. This fear was as if the gates of hell had been opened and the dogs of war released. It was terror, a terror that seemed early on to a small detached part of myself out of all proportion to what was immediately and objectively happening. But there was an intuition that the events that had begun signaled the end of life as I had known it for the first four decades. And in fairly short order, the terror appeared to have complete justification, for the effects I suffered from, both physical and mental, had no known etiology and seemed to spring full-blown from nowhere. The suffering was intense. I doubted for a period of months that I would retain my sanity, and I watched in horror as my body shuddered under the weight and pressure of the force of the opening, causing effects like unrestrained gagging and retching, spontaneous body vibrations, vastly altered sleep patterns, cognitive impairment, and seeming to correlate with supernatural phenomena and synchronicities that I had no previous basis for accepting. The terror did not abate during the majority of the time I was incapacitated.

And this terror at its root was the existential fear of annihilation, of dissolution and death. It was the fear of having no choice but to surrender to what looked like the end of myself. I was dimly aware of this even during those most stressful days, that my fear had become an all-encompassing state that extended to death occurring at close quarters to me, thoughts of personal annihilation, and the serious health issues of others. It was all connected in what seemed a grand and sinister conspiracy of sorts, surrounding me at every turn.  There was no possibility of escape.

We all fear, without exception. Those who claim they don’t are unconscious of their own depths, too densely-protected from nonphysical reality, or actively seeking to deride and belittle those not so defended in an effort to further their own ego aggrandizement. We all harbor fear at the base of our personalities, a fear that we may not even be conscious of as being present until we are confronted with a life-threatening situation. Any form of self-protection or behavior that bends towards survival, whether physical, emotional, mental, fiscal, social, or transpersonal is indicative of the presence of an underlying fear.  And all fears ultimately are symbolic and vaguely threatening of the fear of dissolution and non-existence, of death and the end of our locus of consciousness. Ultimately, fear is inseparable from the separate self. It is part of a package deal; there cannot be one without the other.  The only pertinent questions are: can we become conscious of our fear, and how may we best come to terms with it?

Humanity’s historic answer on coming to terms with fear has been ineffective in the final analysis. Typically, we fight, grasp, attack and hold on ever more tightly to what we think we have. We attempt to define and set off the inside (whether of a family, party, group, nation, or emotional space) as safe and protected, against the outside, which is dark and threatening. This can be seen at all levels, at all scales, throughout human culture and history, from international disputes and the threat of nuclear war, to family arguments and violent disagreements between individuals. In short, we contract, both individually and collectively, and densify our perimeters. And this oftentimes yields the illusion, after the crisis has passed, that it has been our contraction that has kept us safe and enabled us to live to see another day. But this is just an illusion. It merely postpones another encounter, and the next encounter will carry all of the denied and rejected energy of previous encounters with it. This is the underlying dynamic of the occurrence of escalation, in small situations and large. The Apocalypse cannot ultimately be avoided. The day arrives where it shall have to be faced and surrendered to.

And this is the ultimate coming to terms with fear. For when one at last allows the Apocalypse to wash over and swallow one, in that very allowance is the beginning of alchemical transmutation and the first time that fear will begin to ebb. The energy of fear begins to transmute into the energy of peace and expansiveness.

Deliverance from fear is not as far away as we think. From one who postponed his personal apocalypse too long, let me humbly offer this advice: There is no need to court fear, but when events bring it to your doorstep, face your endings and assimilate them sooner rather than later. The violence and severity of the assimilation process is directly related to the degree and term-length of denial, repression, and exclusion.

Spontaneous Gift versus Organic Growth Process

Transformation/enlightenment is not a “one step and you’re done” process.  It does not happen in the blink of an eye. Many times (as it was for me), an apparent spontaneous onset is the tip of an iceberg of previous preparation or aspiration that may not be apparent to the casual observer (or even, in rare cases, to the subject).  The actual opening can occur suddenly and without much warning, but once this occurs, the purification and assimilation process is ongoing.  It may well be the work of a lifetime. Though I use the word “enlightenment” here, I have grown to dislike the term.  It seems to imply an illumination and omniscience that in my experience has not occurred.  It also implies the acquisition of a static condition in one fell swoop, and suggests that the state is one obtained by the individual. None of these assumptions are borne out in actuality: objective knowledge is not suddenly openly available on all subjects to the aspirant; the condition is not static, but part of an ongoing organic respiration and growth; and the individual does not “attain” and hold onto anything [it would be more accurate to suggest that the individual (i.e., the ego) increasingly dissolves the further he or she advances into stages of enlightenment].  Nevertheless, the term is useful to distinguish between kundalini arousals arising from the base of the spine, mystic openings of the heart, and mental/visionary openings descending from above (initially affecting the head and upper body more predominantly)^[1].  The term “enlightenment” is most usefully applied to this latter class of spiritual openings.

Transpersonal and Personal Emotions in Transformative Experience

 Blissful states arising out of spiritual openings appear to be of a single class of experiences, that of the mystic opening of the heart.  In addition to the bliss, states associated with the emotional center that awakens spiritually include all of the qualities we routinely ascribed to all spiritual openings — joy, love, compassion, a sheath of beauty over all, etc. It has not been my experience that any of these necessarily are associated with all openings — personally, I have felt only suggestions or intimations of joy and bliss.  Peace and stillness have been prominent parts my experience.  Love and compassion are qualities that I am actively working on manifesting, but it has been surprising to me that negative emotions — resentment, anger, pettiness, jealousy, all residual parts of the ego — persist and can coexist side-by-side with expanded consciousness. Though they have loosened their hold on me, they continue to hang around. Perhaps as long as one has a human personality, these emotions will always have a foothold. This suggests, in a correlative sense to the previous topic that the ego does not disappear in a flash of light and a puff of smoke, but continues to be present and active into the early stages of the transpersonal levels. It continues to exert its old pull on our identity, but its exclusive dominion over our identity has been forcefully rebuffed. At these stages, the ego is more like a moon than a sun…a subsidiary entity, still plainly visible and active in its own way, but no longer the principal force of gravitation.

The New Birth: The Role of Pain and Distress   

Spiritual openings have very real and sometimes very painful physiological and psychological effects. Initial openings that apparently occur spontaneously often catch the recipient in an unprepared and unreceptive state.  Resistance, whether conscious or unconscious, can create excruciating pain and discomfort as the physical body stretches to accommodate an influx of spirit.  My own experience was one of feeling like a water balloon affixed to a faucet as the water was turned fully on. Often, a popular analogy employed to illustrate the individual finding God in mystical states is that of a drop of water entering and becoming one with the ocean. The implication is that the drop is lost in the ocean. But if the ocean receives the drop of water, it is just as true that the drop receives the ocean. Meditation on this image for a while will bring forth an understanding as to just what is occurring in the transformative process and what is required of the recipient. No less than all of the Holy Existence is seeking to come in and marry itself to one. It is no wonder that fear might be evoked when the experience begins.

Another point of pain consists of the very real sensation of burning as the purification begins.  This burning can continue for months.  Accounts of kundalini experiences (two classic accounts are those of Gopi Krishna and El Collie) are often horrific for the duration, intensity, and utter unfamiliarity and uniqueness of the pain (many of the pains encountered have no corollary in normal human experience and will not be traceable to any physical cause should one seek medical assistance).  My experience with the visionary type of descent had only a few types of pains; however, these pains were persistent and amplified over periods of time until a turn was made and improvement began.

Besides the pain involved, it can be distressing to see what the body does in assimilating spirit, both in prayer and involuntarily.  Involuntary movements of the body in the throes of a spiritual awakening are known in Hindu circles as “kriyas.”  These may include tremors (all parts of the body), assumption of strange positions (many time yogic in character), involuntary sexual arousals, strange sensations like electric current from the soles of the feet and palms of the hand, or others. Transformation is not a gentle process.

Trust and Agnosia in Multi-Phasic Process  

The process of spiritual opening carries with it its own innate intelligence and its own timetable and points of reference. We, as subjects being worked on, are not privy to the details of the process. One thing can be counted on: the process will not work in a linear and clearly visible fashion. Cyclicity and periodicity are often the rule; multiple cycles are overlaid, one upon another; each may be in different phases. Furthermore, a separate set of cycles exists for the overtness or latency of the spiritual force doing its work. It may be in the open and actively working; it may retire and be apparently docile for periods of time. One may feel physically taxed and in distress at the same time new insights and inner vistas are being opened up. Or one may be entering a stage of emotional purification and suffering at the same time new physical abilities and sensations (e.g. sensitivity to currents or fields, etc.) are becoming apparent. Work may be done during one’s sleep (vivid dreams may be an indicator of this) while not much appears to happen during waking hours. All of this ultimately requires a trust in the direction and intelligence of the process, and the adoption of what I have come to call a sacrament of agnosia – literally, not knowing.  We will not truly know the destination. We will not know the steps involved, their timing, the ease or difficulties of various stages of the process. And ultimately, the attitude that feels right is to accept this profound unknowing and move into it more intimately. In short, it requires the relinquishing of control over our personal being, and we will have no idea how hard this can be until we are confronted by our own fright and the looming unknowable future.

Jacob’s Ladder: The Steps to the Kingdom of Heaven 

It is becoming apparent to me, based on my experiences that spiritual advances occur in a series of intergradated steps or stages.  Each stage seems to have its own frequency and own bounds, and to advance from one to another requires the accumulation of a surfeit of “energy” to break the bounds of a given band and advance to the next.  An analogy would be that of a rocket requiring sustained thrust to break the bounds of gravity.  Once the energy has broken free, it seeks a new stabilization on a “higher” level.  Failure to break from one level to another is what Richard Moss terms  “perturbation” — a temporary change within a given frequency band, but one that is ultimately accommodated by the band without the needed quantum to advance to the next level.

Cases of apparently spontaneous and complete transformation entail a passage through numerous levels or layers at once, with stabilization occurring a number of levels beyond the starting stage.  While this can occur, it is apparently comparatively rare.  At each successive stage in an incremental advance, the self becomes more expansive and permeable, inhabiting a larger and more permeated space.  If emotional centers were involved in the opening, each stage would incorporate greater and deeper joy and beatitude.

As Christ said, “Ye must die to be born again“. It may well be that the extent of the spiritual advance in an opening correlates to the profundity and completeness of the psychic death or, stated another way, the completeness of detachment and withdrawal from the structures of subject/object consciousness and the outer life. Perhaps the longer one is immersed in the tumultuous roil of spiritual opening and the deeper and more complete the abandonment to the process unfolding, whether willed or not, the more expansive and transparent the spiritual “soil” of the eventual level at which one stabilizes and puts down roots in.

A comprehensive mapping of the planes of human consciousness is a fairly recent endeavor; such mapping is invaluable in helping us to understand where we are, what lies ahead, and what advancement to the next level may “look like.” Sri Aurobindo Ghose, an Indian sage and mystic of the 20^th century was one of the first to lay out all stages of development in his masterpiece “The Life Divine.”  St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila in the Christian tradition were forerunners in this effort; recently, backfilling has been accomplished in the mapping of normal human development by psychologists including Freud, Adler, Jung, and Maslow.  Ken Wilber has provided some excellent synthesis of these theories in recent years, and many authors owe a debt to his pioneering and encompassing vision. Jim Marion, author of Putting on the Mind of Christ,  has laid out the stages as seen and interpreted from a Christian perspective.

Beyond the limits that we normally attribute to what we know of human consciousness (vision-logic consciousness in Wilber‘s scheme, also known as the existential outlook, characterized by an increasingly global vision and recognition of the interdependence of all parts of creation, but also prone to attacks of aridity and meaninglessness on an emotional level), there appear to be four major transpersonal levels leading to a completely divinized life. In Wilber’s terminology, these levels consist of the psychic, the subtle, the causal, and the non-dual. Each level has a greater scope and inclusiveness than the previous. Each has its own earmarks, trials, and triumphs. It is beyond the scope of this account to delve any further into these stages, but reference to the above authors will provide all the additional information one could desire. In keeping with the conclusions I have personally drawn, I will assert a couple of items:  the usual course of human development for those who step into transpersonal realms is progressive development through one stage at a time. In the same way that a child of six cannot be expected to reason infallibly or comprehend what existentialism is about, a “beginner” in the spiritual realms (John of the Cross’s term for neophytes at the psychic level, according to Marion) cannot normally be expected to apprehend, much less live in non-dual consciousness. There may be spiritual prodigies, as there are geniuses of the typical human realms, who are very much advanced relative to their age or their tenure in a given stage, but these are the exceptions that appear to prove the general rule. As in the personal levels, so in the transpersonal.  Secondly, from my perspective, it appears that once consciousness is stabilized and has found its roots on a new level, there is no reversion to the previous stage. This is not to say that elements of behavior or habit of previous stages will not be present; they will be, for the ego continues to exert a residual pull. But consider an individual who has graduated from a mythic world-view to a rational world-view. Never again (except perhaps in times of delirium or senility) will the mythic level dominate the healthy individual’s consciousness. The proverbial genie has been let out of the bottle^[2].

I should not neglect to mention the very large role that Grace plays in all this.  For while the initial stages are hard to break free of, with more rigidity and less plasticity,  one gets a distinct impression as the process proceeds that one is being aided from Above, that each successive step is easier than the previous, that the portals are successively wider and clearer and communication more free-flowing from the Divine to the individual.

Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Place of Ordinariness and Service

Ultimately, I am coming to view transformation as simply another human experience, albeit one freighted with Divine influence. The one undergoing a transformative process is not wiser, all-knowing, all-feeling, an avatar or idealized human.  He/she should not be worshiped or put on a pedestal.  Initiates struggle with the same emotions, the same problems (and then some) as the rest of the human race. They still have their personal foibles and weaknesses. One is not instantly transported to heaven to live in a reality other than our day-to-day reality.   The only qualitative difference I can see in the process is that it radically deepens and amplifies the sense of one’s inner being.  This new sensitivity becomes a point of reference constantly in one’s dealings with the outside world and can, if pursued faithfully, lead to a new marriage between self and the other, a deepening incarnation and commitment to Life and Spirit.  Instead of a way out, transformation becomes a way in, a deeper engagement with the endless resources and qualities of the Divine coming into incarnation. 

Service seems to spring naturally from advancement into transpersonal realms. It appears that this is an entirely consistent and predictable occurrence when a certain frame of understanding is reached. For withholding of service and self-centeredness in our normal human consciousness is ultimately based on a fiction – the fiction of the separate self. When one’s self begins to dissolve and one experiences Being as a vast Field common to all, then the other becomes just as much one’s self as he had formerly regarded himself. Thus, service is not a forced effort in this state; it becomes as natural as taking care of oneself. For, truly, Selflessness is the ultimate Reality, and those who see and feel this from moment to moment cannot naturally respond in any other way.

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^[1] Credit to Spirit Online for this distinction.

^[2] In my first typing of this paragraph, quite without intention, what emerged from my computer’s lips was “The proverbial genie has been let out of the body”!