I remember one of my first experiences of being very well.
I was participating in an awareness intensive retreat and spent the first 24 hours turning round and round in my mind, trying to answer the question: Who am I?
In the process my mind became exhausted and all of a sudden out of nowhere I was somehow outside of the mind.
I saw that turning mind as a very colorful carousel, a great carnival, a never ending movement of thought and emotion, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes angry or fearful.
I got fascinated with the watching of it. I remember cracking up again and again about the colorfulness of it all. What a show!!
And then probably some hours later, another shift happened. I no longer was interested in what I witnessed but in the witnessing itself.
It was as if my whole existence imploded into one huge pool of a unified experience which I later named Being.
Just to be here filled my body with a deep silence. My mind became crystal clear, it was as if I could see through the past and future, I became more aware of my body and it was as if it filled with substance. I remember that all of a sudden it felt like I had more weight, I was more grounded and certainly more Here and Now.
In fact it felt like here and now was the only option there had ever been, only I had missed it!!!
Great laughter arose when I realized that all my seeking and searching had been in the wrong direction. What a cosmic joke.
All I had ever wanted was here; right here and right now and my body seemed to be the vehicle for it all.
As the awareness intensive retreat took several days there were openings upon openings.
At some point I became acutely aware of the spontaneous movement of the universe. It was having its own rhythm, like the waves in the ocean. No one was making the waves yet they were moving. No one was pushing or doing and it all happened in utmost harmony.
It was a big opening and at the time it overwhelmed me cause it was so new and I was not used to being so big.
I saw perfection everywhere, even in war and sickness. I was baffled.
Over the years the experience of being deepened and became more present in my day-to-day activities. It lost its overwhelming-ness and started to feel more and more natural.
A lot of integration was needed so that the gap between being “in the mind” or being in my personality and being was not so big anymore.
Slowly my personality got infused with the different qualities of being and in that it became more transparent and porous.
Now when I stay connected to being, life is easy, everything flows, whatever happens, happens. I meet life as it comes without resistance. When there is no sense of separation there is nothing to resist!!!
There is connectedness. So there is a natural responding to whatever life brings.
When I disconnect because of one trigger or another, I bump into things and people, I sense walls, there is separation again.
My mind, who just before, in the experience of being, was a good servant to me, a great help in managing my daily life, bringing the practicalities together for me, takes back its central place as the boss, the one who runs my life.
All of a sudden I am not guided anymore by a vertical alignment but I am guided by thoughts, and their driven-ness.
And then, tension reminds me that I have left being.
When that happens, it is usually followed by a natural movement of sinking back into the body, and a discharge of the superfluous energy of stress, followed by deep sighs or even yawning and I am resting back in myself and can continue my daily activities in a connected way.
This is the dance of my life. As I learn to not resist the shifting back and forth in and out of being, the riddle dissolves.
Rani has been on the path of inner transformation since 1976.
For more than 30 years she has been sharing her experience in workshops and retreats.
I was participating in an awareness intensive retreat and spent the first 24 hours turning round and round in my mind, trying to answer the question: Who am I?
In the process my mind became exhausted and all of a sudden out of nowhere I was somehow outside of the mind.
I saw that turning mind as a very colorful carousel, a great carnival, a never ending movement of thought and emotion, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes angry or fearful.
I got fascinated with the watching of it. I remember cracking up again and again about the colorfulness of it all. What a show!!
And then probably some hours later, another shift happened. I no longer was interested in what I witnessed but in the witnessing itself.
It was as if my whole existence imploded into one huge pool of a unified experience which I later named Being.
Just to be here filled my body with a deep silence. My mind became crystal clear, it was as if I could see through the past and future, I became more aware of my body and it was as if it filled with substance. I remember that all of a sudden it felt like I had more weight, I was more grounded and certainly more Here and Now.
In fact it felt like here and now was the only option there had ever been, only I had missed it!!!
Great laughter arose when I realized that all my seeking and searching had been in the wrong direction. What a cosmic joke.
All I had ever wanted was here; right here and right now and my body seemed to be the vehicle for it all.
As the awareness intensive retreat took several days there were openings upon openings.
At some point I became acutely aware of the spontaneous movement of the universe. It was having its own rhythm, like the waves in the ocean. No one was making the waves yet they were moving. No one was pushing or doing and it all happened in utmost harmony.
It was a big opening and at the time it overwhelmed me cause it was so new and I was not used to being so big.
I saw perfection everywhere, even in war and sickness. I was baffled.
Over the years the experience of being deepened and became more present in my day-to-day activities. It lost its overwhelming-ness and started to feel more and more natural.
A lot of integration was needed so that the gap between being “in the mind” or being in my personality and being was not so big anymore.
Slowly my personality got infused with the different qualities of being and in that it became more transparent and porous.
Now when I stay connected to being, life is easy, everything flows, whatever happens, happens. I meet life as it comes without resistance. When there is no sense of separation there is nothing to resist!!!
There is connectedness. So there is a natural responding to whatever life brings.
When I disconnect because of one trigger or another, I bump into things and people, I sense walls, there is separation again.
My mind, who just before, in the experience of being, was a good servant to me, a great help in managing my daily life, bringing the practicalities together for me, takes back its central place as the boss, the one who runs my life.
All of a sudden I am not guided anymore by a vertical alignment but I am guided by thoughts, and their driven-ness.
And then, tension reminds me that I have left being.
When that happens, it is usually followed by a natural movement of sinking back into the body, and a discharge of the superfluous energy of stress, followed by deep sighs or even yawning and I am resting back in myself and can continue my daily activities in a connected way.
This is the dance of my life. As I learn to not resist the shifting back and forth in and out of being, the riddle dissolves.
Rani has been on the path of inner transformation since 1976.
For more than 30 years she has been sharing her experience in workshops and retreats.
