Hi all.
I stumbled onto Integral Naked about 3 weeks ago, and it didn't take long for me to realize it was something worth my time. I've been reading and downloading and listening since then, absorbing and reflecting, and now I'd like to jump in.
What spurred me to post this was listening to the discussion between KW and Dan Millman, both of whose books I've read in the past, though not for a few years, and reflecting on my own situation in relation to what they called the "highest teaching": the realization, the awakening to the fact, that there is one body and one spirit.
More than a decade ago, I had a gradual, surprising, and brief awakening. I knew without having to be told that we all share one spirit, one Love, and that the only difference between awakening and sleep is getting out of the way and letting that Love flow. I started reading things I had never been even slightly interested in before. I discovered Taoism first, and then esoteric spirituality in general, and it was grand. This realization ebbed and flowed for a period of about 3 months, with peaks of deepest enlightenment where I had no more desire, no more need, no more wish to be anywhere but wherever I was, happy, alive, breathing, content.
Somewhere, somehow, I lost that feeling after just a few months, and I feel like I've shrunk, so to speak, to a size even smaller than before. For a few years I struggled with deepest depression and despair, knowing exactly what I had lost, and feeling like the proverbial man who sold the world. I felt locked out, denied. I still do, to some degree.
I no longer struggle with that deep depression, mostly because I've adapted and learned to cope by heading off the lines of thought that lead me to despair. But do still feel locked out, like there is something I'm missing, some key, some grasp, some understanding that will throw the doors back open. It's something I think about every day, without exception. And, some days it does still get to me, and at those times I feel utterly lost.
But don't get me wrong! I do have a broad sense of humor, and there are things in life I genuinely enjoy. I just can't help thinking about the futility of things, like the feeling I get whenever I watch TV: it's entertaining and occasionally interesting, but I can never quite escape the sneaking suspicion that I am wasting time. In short, without awakening, wthout enlightenment, everything seems just a little hollow.
And now, at the risk of destroying whatever credibility I might have otherwise gained, here's the thorn, the piece of the story I hesitate to tell only because it so often creates so much skepticism and misunderstanding (but I have to include it or any response I get will be no more complete than what I'm telling you now). Initially, the first time I felt a taste of awakening, it was on lsd. But, before you raise your guard and cry foul, let me explain. What I experienced was not solely an effect of a chemical reaction in my brain, of this I have no doubt: I had taken lsd several times before and never had anything even remotely resembling a spiritual experience. What made the difference on this particular occasion was my friend talking to me about it--about universal love and tearing down walls--and guiding me through a kind of delving into myself that was both painful and revealing. I experienced feelings of openness and lightness and love, a feeling which faded the next day and didn't return for several weeks, leaving me confused and a little worried that I'd lost my mind. Eventually, the experience returned--without drugs--and it was, in more ways than I was prepared to handle, life-changing. Several times I felt it, completely sober, usually preceded by an unpremeditated mantra arising in my head: IamloveIamloveIamloveIamloveIamlove. I would feel a kind of quickening, and know that I had shifted, torn something down, pierced that veil, and stepped through. I recognized it in the eyes of others, both the sleeping and the awake. With most people, it was just like that Beatles song: "I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping..." But with the ones that were awake, no words were necessary: it communicates itself, and no words could ever convey that meaning anyway.
That's my story, in a nutshell. On a more mundane note, after what I've read in these forums and articles, and what I've heard in some of the media I've downloaded, I would say I am a combination of Orange and Green, some healthy, some not, with moments of Red and Blue. I go through sporadic and irregular periods of meditation, and try generally to be genuine and kind, but otherwise, that aforementioned feeling of futility keeps me from really delving into any long-term, steady spiritual practice.
I labeled this post an introduction, but in truth I guess it's more of a bundle of questions for anyone that feels inclined to comment: What gives? Why the sudden awakening if only to be followed by so much depression and despair? And if I've seen through the veil and I've touched the essential core of who and what I and and all of us are, why is all the practice (meditation, yoga, reiki, whatever) necessary? What can I do?
K