I’m not very comfortable with the term enlightened but I’ve been on retreats teaching non-dual meditation, received ‘pointing out instructions’ in the Mahamudra tradition and have experienced some bizarre states of mind where it seemed to make complete sense to think of a sense of awake awareness as being the ground thing that was being experienced spontaneously, with sensations, thoughts and emotions appearing to it — rather than there being a separate me distinct from awareness that was experiencing things ‘using my awareness’, which is how it had always felt before.
When I have (or rather awareness itself has) experienced clear and stable non-dual states the normal ‘self’ stuff still appears in awareness and behaves fairly normally (e.g there’s hunger, thoughts about making dinner, impulses to move the body, the body moving around the room making dinner…). Being in that non dual state seemed to add a very pleasant quality of effortlessness and okayness to the mix but beyond that it wasn’t radically changing what the ‘small self’ in awareness was doing.
If later the thought “I want to eat a second portion of ice cream” came up followed by “I should apply some self control. I better not do that.” they would just be things appearing to awareness.
Of course another thing in awareness is the sense that awareness is aware of itself and the fact that everything feels funky and non-dual at the moment. You’d think that might change the chain of thoughts about the ‘small self’ wanting ice cream and then having to apply self control towards itself.
In fact the first few times I had intense non-dual experiences there was a chain of thoughts that went “what the hell is going on? I’m not sure I like this? What if I can’t get back into the normal dualistic state of mind?” followed by some panicked feelings and then the non-dual state quickly collapsing into a normal dualistic state.
With more practice, doing other forms of meditation to build a stronger base of calmness and self-compassion, I was able to experience the non-dual state and the chain of thoughts that appeared would go more like “This time let’s just stick with it a bit longer. Basically no one has a persistent non-dual experience that lasts forever. It will collapse eventually whether you like it or not. Nothing much has really changed about the contents of awareness. It’s the same stuff just from a different perspective. I’m still obviously able to feel calmness and joyfulness, I’m still able to take actions that keep me safe — so it’s fine to hang out here”. And then thoughts eventually wander around to ice cream or whatever. And, again, all this is just stuff appearing within a single unified awake sense of awareness that’s being labelled as the experiencer (rather than the ‘I’ in the thoughts above being the experiencer).
The fact that thoughts referencing the self are appearing in awareness whilst it’s awareness itself that feels like the experiencer doesn’t seem to create as many contradictions as you would expect. I presume that’s partly because awareness itself, is able to be aware of its own contents but not do much else. It doesn’t for example make decisions or have a sense of free will like the normal dualistic self. Those again would just be more appearances in awareness.
However it’s obvious that awareness being spontaneously aware of itself does change things in important and indirect ways. It does change the sequences of thoughts somehow and the overall feeling tone — and therefore behaviour. But perhaps in less radical ways than you would expect. For me, at different times, this ranged from causing a mini panic attack that collapsed the non-dual state (obviously would have been visible from the outside) to subtly imbuing everything with nice effortlessness vibes and taking the sting out of suffering type experiences but not changing my thought chains and behaviour enough to be noticeable from the outside to someone else.
Disclaimer: I felt unsure at several points writing this and I’m still quite new to non-dual experiences. I can’t reliably generate a clear non-dual state on command, it’s rather hit and miss. What I wrote above is written from a fairly dualistic state relying on memories of previous experiences a few days ago. And it’s possible that the non-dual experience I’m describing here is still rather shallow and missing important insights versus what very accomplished meditators experience.
I’ll give it a go.
I’m not very comfortable with the term enlightened but I’ve been on retreats teaching non-dual meditation, received ‘pointing out instructions’ in the Mahamudra tradition and have experienced some bizarre states of mind where it seemed to make complete sense to think of a sense of awake awareness as being the ground thing that was being experienced spontaneously, with sensations, thoughts and emotions appearing to it — rather than there being a separate me distinct from awareness that was experiencing things ‘using my awareness’, which is how it had always felt before.
When I have (or rather awareness itself has) experienced clear and stable non-dual states the normal ‘self’ stuff still appears in awareness and behaves fairly normally (e.g there’s hunger, thoughts about making dinner, impulses to move the body, the body moving around the room making dinner…). Being in that non dual state seemed to add a very pleasant quality of effortlessness and okayness to the mix but beyond that it wasn’t radically changing what the ‘small self’ in awareness was doing.
If later the thought “I want to eat a second portion of ice cream” came up followed by “I should apply some self control. I better not do that.” they would just be things appearing to awareness.
Of course another thing in awareness is the sense that awareness is aware of itself and the fact that everything feels funky and non-dual at the moment. You’d think that might change the chain of thoughts about the ‘small self’ wanting ice cream and then having to apply self control towards itself.
In fact the first few times I had intense non-dual experiences there was a chain of thoughts that went “what the hell is going on? I’m not sure I like this? What if I can’t get back into the normal dualistic state of mind?” followed by some panicked feelings and then the non-dual state quickly collapsing into a normal dualistic state.
With more practice, doing other forms of meditation to build a stronger base of calmness and self-compassion, I was able to experience the non-dual state and the chain of thoughts that appeared would go more like “This time let’s just stick with it a bit longer. Basically no one has a persistent non-dual experience that lasts forever. It will collapse eventually whether you like it or not. Nothing much has really changed about the contents of awareness. It’s the same stuff just from a different perspective. I’m still obviously able to feel calmness and joyfulness, I’m still able to take actions that keep me safe — so it’s fine to hang out here”. And then thoughts eventually wander around to ice cream or whatever. And, again, all this is just stuff appearing within a single unified awake sense of awareness that’s being labelled as the experiencer (rather than the ‘I’ in the thoughts above being the experiencer).
The fact that thoughts referencing the self are appearing in awareness whilst it’s awareness itself that feels like the experiencer doesn’t seem to create as many contradictions as you would expect. I presume that’s partly because awareness itself, is able to be aware of its own contents but not do much else. It doesn’t for example make decisions or have a sense of free will like the normal dualistic self. Those again would just be more appearances in awareness.
However it’s obvious that awareness being spontaneously aware of itself does change things in important and indirect ways. It does change the sequences of thoughts somehow and the overall feeling tone — and therefore behaviour. But perhaps in less radical ways than you would expect. For me, at different times, this ranged from causing a mini panic attack that collapsed the non-dual state (obviously would have been visible from the outside) to subtly imbuing everything with nice effortlessness vibes and taking the sting out of suffering type experiences but not changing my thought chains and behaviour enough to be noticeable from the outside to someone else.
Disclaimer: I felt unsure at several points writing this and I’m still quite new to non-dual experiences. I can’t reliably generate a clear non-dual state on command, it’s rather hit and miss. What I wrote above is written from a fairly dualistic state relying on memories of previous experiences a few days ago. And it’s possible that the non-dual experience I’m describing here is still rather shallow and missing important insights versus what very accomplished meditators experience.
Great description. This sounds very similar to some of my experiences with non-dual states.