These days, there is so much information out there about Enlightenment and Awakening to the point that the words hardly have any functional meaning.  The full enlightenment of some, is written about as the partial enlightenment or fleeting experience of another.  Indeed, there are many people writing cookbooks who have not deeply tasted the food.  There are stable experiential plateaus and sign-posts along the way, though they don't transpire in any kind of perfectly linear fashion.  One of the many sub topics of which there seems to be much conversation is whether Enlightenment is some kind of sudden shift or a gradual unfolding.  When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was asked, he answered, “it’s a gradual switch.”  In my life, the movement from the smaller egoic filter to deep oceanic Presence has been a decidedly gradual process marked by exciting peak experiences here and there.  Something of the Destination has been experienced everywhere along the Path.  This is so because the Destination to which we are traveling is here right now.  The extent that which we can relax into the Now determines how much of the Now we are able to experience.  If you think you’ve reached the floor of your possible relaxation, it’s most likely a false one. There are always more things in the heavens and the earth than in my philosophies.  My short life has been filled with expansion that I imagined would take many lifetimes to experience and wonders as numberless as the stars.  My own process of unfolding far from done, and for my that is a decidedly joyous state of affairs!  The Now, the Source is not a finite thing.  It has no boundaries and has infinite dimensions, the circle with center everywhere and circumference nowhere, there is no end to what can be Realized.  Many of us, myself included, won’t notice the sign-posts of entering a new plateau of awareness until after we’ve been living in the new territory for a little while.  It has not been important for me to keep track of where I am on the journey, in fact that has often slowed the process.  Rather, the most important element has been attending to the Silence itself.  That process became a regular and repeatable experience through meditation practice.  Having peers and teachers who were solidly steeped in the Presence was also a wonderful boon, allowing me to tune in, expand, and refine my own experience of Consciousness through resonance. But the foundation was the practice, for while Enlightenment may indeed be a grace induced accident, spiritual practice can make one very accident prone indeed. 

​A couple weeks ago, I was in bed reading a lovely little book called “The Awesome Science of Luck” by a not so widely known author named Peter Ragnar.  There are things in that work and in his other books and videos that I don’t agree with and things that I might find slightly off-putting, and there are elements that I deeply appreciate and find downright magical.  That evening the experience of reading the book fell squarely in the magical column.  Between that and my meditation practice, I definitely fell asleep deeply intuitive zone.  The next morning I awoke with subtle feeling as if I had taken in some Felix Felicis.  A deep, comfortable Silence seemed to fill in all the corners of my inner and outer world.
 
Sitting at the edge of the bed, a clear thought moved across my mental horizon, “if you go to Nordstrom or the Goodwill in NW, you will find a beautiful winter coat hidden away where it shouldn’t be at a deeply discounted price.  Heeding the thought, we decided to take a little trip into slightly wintery Portland.  Planning the route out, the first place we decided to go was the Goodwill.  Digging through the CD’s we found some treasures.  I meandered back to the men’s sweaters and XL coat section.  Going through the jackets I spotted some camel fabric that looked to have some quality from a distance.  A feeling akin to déjà vu mixed with a palpable sense of magnetism grew larger as I moved closer and closer.  The Silence grew loud.  I quickly noticed that this coat was in no way a men’s XL.  Taking it off the rack, the tag read Brooks Brothers, 100% camel hair, and the size was double petit- which happens to be the perfect size for my wife.  My wife Luna had actually been wanting a coat of that sort of cut for quite a number of years, a recent viewing of Newt Scamander leading to a resurgence of that desire.  I took the coat off the rack, and brought it to Luna to see if she would be interested in such a coat.  It fit her perfectly, and although it wasn’t red (the color she had envisioned for it), she nevertheless enjoys it immensely both for its inherent aesthetic loveliness and for the magical way it entered our life.
 
I knew it was a valuable coat, my guess in the store was that it would be around $700 new.  We paid $80 for it, only to find out later that the coat usually goes for $1298.  What is even more magical about this find was that it was the confluence of a few desire streams that had come around in the past year for whatever reason: Brooks Brothers (I know, rather waspish!), cashmere (camel hair is close enough), long overcoat, and steep discount.  In subsequent trips we were showered by even more of it, with me finding brand new Brooks Brothers pants for $7.00 (retail $100) and Luna finding both a $200 cashmere sweater (on that day, my gut instinct was for her to find a cashmere sweater or cardigan) for $20, and a Brooks Brothers double petit pure cashmere sport coat for $15.00.

 Of course, the central beauty of all this wasn’t the stuff, it was the magic of tuning into the river of intuition and choosing to follow it.  There are some other elements in here that I have found to be common to the other strange experiences of manifestation from my life, perhaps they may even be principles of a kind.  The first thing I have observed is that many of the things that I have wanted, haven’t necessarily been things that I would identify myself with wanting.  In this case, Brooks Brothers clothing fits the bill.  The fewer things you identify with liking or disliking, the better.   The more stuff you pile onto your identity, the less flexible you become, while the confines of life become more and more narrow.  Be like water indeed!  
 
Many strands of manifestation and Law of Attraction speak of it as if you are making something happen.  While there is certainly some volition, I might describe my experiences as being more akin to stepping out of the way and allowing the river of life to take you for an adventure.  If there is a doing involved, then it’s more of an “undoing-doing”.
 
If you are a tiny drop of water, then you might only ever bump into the tiny drops right next to you, but if you were to live as the entire ocean, then you could experience all of the drops.  How does one live like the ocean?  Herein lies the most important principle, and that is the Silence.  In this case, the mind is the ocean.  Most of us spend most of our time on the often-choppy surface level, fighting the currents, and avoiding the rocks of life.  However, we can also experience life in a different way.  We can dive below the surface of the mind and experience peace, vastness, silence, and a profound sense of stability.  It can be like sitting peacefully at the bottom of the pool, only we are also able to more fully enjoy the party at the surface.  In my life, my long time meditation practice has been the most profound catalyst for these sorts of experiences and so much more.
 
Please feel free to contact me if interested in meditation, the expansion of consciousness, and manifestation in general.  I’d love to hear your stories.  I’d also love to be of some service.  After a decade and a half of cultivating these sorts of experiences and teaching meditation, I’ve begun to coach and assist others in perfecting their own practice of swimming in the Presence, flowing with the River, and accepting the bounty hidden in plain sight.

​An incredibly important part of my life was spent practicing Ascension while working in a lovely little  Ishaya Monk-owned café situated on the equally lovely mid-Oregon coast, in a town seemingly named to attract my younger self- Lincoln City (as a young child I was deeply fascinated with Abraham Lincoln).  The café, called the Sun Garden, served as a kind of training academy for all of us who worked there- it would be a place in which we merged the Awareness we cultivated in our closed eyed meditations with dynamic activity.  A lot of what people might call strange and wonderful things happened in that little space. The café itself, and my time there, could probably bequeath a couple chapters of writing, but today, I am focusing on one story in particular.
One of the more popular strands in American spirituality for some time has been the idea of “creating one’s life at the level of thought”.  This idea, recently popularized by “The Secret” has many proponents who form quite a large spectrum from fairly baseless speculation to those whose experiences and research strongly point to the universe being something very different from the materialist-reductionist model.  Throughout my life, I’ve had a lot of experiences with my day dreams coming true- envisioning long conversations with folks I hadn’t yet met, knowing the precise number of jelly beans in a jar because I viewed myself writing down the number (not through estimation), immediately knowing my raffle ticket for a trip to D.C. was the winning ticket, receiving my Passport less than 24 hours after filing it (even with paying for the expediting, I was firmly told that the soonest it could arrive would be 3 days later), even as it would have to be sent from Newport to Seattle, and then all the way back to Lincoln City, and countless others.  However, all of these examples, though fascinating to experience, could be explained through more conventional means.  This leads me finally to one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had.
One day, in 2004, we were finishing off what had been a fairly busy day at our monk run café.  My co-chef and dear friend, were standing in our tiny kitchen next to the salad bar, taking a well-deserved break, when I felt myself sink (or rise) into a deep, deep sense of peace, clarity, and stillness.  In that moment, a desire bubbled up in my heart and found its way quickly to my mouth.  I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if a 20-top (restaurant-ese for a group of 20 people) just came in and we were so in the zone that we got the order out in a crazy short time?”  In what must have been a minute or so later, the phone rang, and the waitress picked up and then called into the kitchen, “we’ve got 20 people coming in, YOU BETTER GET READY!”  Knowing that everything we said in there could be heard out in the restaurant, I laughed it off, and said something like, “sure, nice try!” at which point she came to the window and said, “No, it’s actually happening, you better get ready!”  About a minute later, 20 people (it was a small, 42 seat café, with half of the seating in a beautiful covered back garden area) streamed through the door.  The sight of them coming in had the effect of pushing me ever more deeply into “the zone” from which the desire arose.  I can’t think of too many other times in my life (there was this basketball game in which, Steph Curry style, I made essentially every shot I put up) when my movements were so efficient, felt so effortless, filled me with so much joy, and resulted in such beautiful products.  It was the case for both me and my co-chef, who named Nataraja, proved again to be an incarnation of the Universal Dancer.  Having looked at the clock at the start of the order, I noted that in 5 minutes we had produced 20 entrees and several appetizers, atypically finishing our orders ahead of the drinks.  As we walked the dishes out of the kitchen, it felt as if we were riding a wave of joy which also seemed palpable to the 20 guests sitting in our back covered garden.  The speed of the execution took them completely by surprise- one of them asking if we had prepared the orders before their arrival. 
Still walking on a cloud of joyful, paradigm splitting wildness, we returned to the kitchen to take stock of the needed prep for the next day.  Another desire bubbled up from the wide open clear spring that was my heart, which again moved quickly up my throat and out my mouth.  “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had 18 people come in and this time it would be a little more difficult as we’d have to prep a bunch of stuff on the fly?”  Again, our waitress announced to us that the arrival of 18 people was imminent, if we could handle it.  This time, she must actually be joking, but she wasn’t!  Nataraja was all in for it, and a minute or two later, 18 more people streamed through the front door.  Still deeply in the zone, we began preparing their orders, which did indeed involve so much “prep on the fly” that the waitress, who was and still is a wonderful cook among her nearly infinite talents, had to come in and help us chop potatoes, onions, red bell peppers, and a great deal more.  After that effort, from a truly impish place, I again started to muse about a new party coming in, when all gathered decided that, having no remaining prepped food, it was a good time to call it a day.
Was it me simply tapping into what was about to happen?  Was the world responding to my desires?  Perhaps from a certain level, there is no difference between the two.  From my perspective, option number 3 is the best fitting explanation.  It is the interpretation of some of the folks within the world of the Ishayas’ Ascension, that Pada I, Sutra 48 of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (at least MSI’s translation and commentary) partially serves as an explanation for the mechanics of “manifestation”.  One of the things I have enjoyed about my fellow Teachers of Ascension has been the high degree of modesty they have usually displayed surrounding the various experiences and phenomena that have frequently accompanied their awakening to higher Consciousness.   One of the primary reasons for this modesty is that the experience of Pure Awareness is rightfully valued above other phenomena, as one can possess siddhis (yogic powers) and still be bound to the wheel of suffering, unconscious of one’s Self.  However, it can be very helpful to know some of the possibilities for growth and experience that accompany a spiritual practice, and these posts are an attempt to provide that kind of information and much more.  If any of these posts spark conversation, and bring up questions, feel free to send us a message!

Beginning when I was a young child the notion of self improvement held a dominant position in my mind. Much of this was very likely innate, and being read bedtime stories on the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson went far in strengthening the intuition that an essential part of a life well lived was to develop one’s character and virtues to the furthest possible extent. Notions of Enlightenment and spiritual development rose easily from these early foundations, adding figures like Gandhi, Buddha, and numerous Yogi Saints to the virtuous pantheon. I may not have been raised religious, but my worldview might as well have been, for I typically viewed the human soul and the world as a battle between the forces of love and evolution on one side, and the forces of fear and contraction on the other. Years of earnest effort and razor sharp self criticism revealed something very interesting indeed.

Like so many other seekers, I found that no matter how hard I tried, certain habits of thought and action would not change. In fact, with the many of them, it seemed that the harder I tried, the more obstinately they remained rooted, even increasing in frequency and expanding well beyond the walls I had erected for the containment of all that was unacceptable about myself. Was I truly so bad at the core? Why was I so firmly bound to tendencies which were so selfish that they couldn’t even count as self serving? I changed strategy and attempted to play to my strengths, taking great care to avoid paths that ran into my inner brick walls. The more skillfully and swiftly I walked the safer paths, the more fully it dawned that there was no escaping myself. Then one day I realized that my attempts at self improvement were not being undermined by some iniquitous part of my subconscious, but were rather being scuttled by an exceedingly benevolent part of my Self.* Inside all of us there is a ruthless part of the Self, so loving that it requires complete, radical self acceptance.  We may try and try with all our might, but there will be times when the only possible change will be the acceptance of what is.

The deepest teaching of Yoga is found hidden in plain sight in the first of Patanjali’s famous Yoga Sutras. “Now, the Teaching of Yoga”. The Union between the aspiring soul and the Self that is “Yoga” does not happen in some faraway place or some other time, it happens only right Now. This is so to such a degree that even the word “happen” can cause distortion, for in our language, things that happen, just as often don’t happen. Things that happen are bound by time and space. Enlightenment, however, is always happening. In fact, it’s the only Happening. It’s here. The words on this page and the thoughts moving through your mind are but so many ripples on the surface of a vast silent Ocean.  Yoga is both the recognition and unfolding of innate pure potential.  The expansion of Consciousness is the acceptance of your own, already Awakened Self, a wholeness that is, that’s always been, and that always shall be.

Jai Guru Deva Om

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

* The actual “mechanics” of going from self loathing and condemnation to forgiveness and acceptance are somewhat mysterious and very difficult to adequately put into words. So much of the forgiveness in my life has come through the practice of Ascension.