Hi,
Your questions:
"Can a person without any
realization achieve constant consciousness?"
I don’t think so but who knows. But Ken Wilber has had deep realization of the I AM followed by Non Dual.
"1st step:
Awakening
2nd step: Abiding Awakening
Does this make sense to you? If
so, what stages these steps correspond to in Thusness'
classification?"
Awakening is awakening. No more doubts. 'Abiding' might
indeed be Ken Wilber's constant consciousness. It is not a separate Thusness
stage, but a progression of the I AM stage. However Ken Wilber also spoke of
non-dual realization. But if you are talking about constant witnessing
throughout the 3 states, it is still the I AM stage.
"Does Tom mean that
after reaching 2nd step, a person will no longer get lost in thoughts? He said
even if the ego arises, it will fall away instantly."
I would think so, yes. Because in a state of abiding as the witnessing,
necessary thoughts arise but there is no identification. If ego arises, it is
immediately recognized as an illusion and not believed in. This already happens
in 1st step, but identification /getting caught up with thoughts and feelings
still happens intermittently by sheer habit/tendencies.
From the links you quoted, just my own comments based on
my experience:
" Once one is
truly awake, or as Jed McKenna would call “done,” there is no longer any doubt
as to what you are"
- this is the Realization part. Once you realized Who You
Are, there cannot be any doubts. There is no such thing as 'unsure'. There
is only 100% Certainty of the undeniable, undoubtable and irrefutable fact of
your Being. That is realized on 09 February 2010 for 'my'
case.
"no tendency to re-enter the dream state of
separateness."
Actually you can still re-enter the dream state after
realization (being hypnotized in your mind stories of apparent time and space
and me and you). You can still get lost in thoughts and emotions, even though the tendency lessens due to the insight of your true identity. But you will
not have doubts such as 'I lost awareness' because such statements are plain
ridiculous: even if identification and thoughts and emotions occur, they occur
in the undeniable, undoubtable Presence of Awareness. That can never be lost,
ever. You will not be under the impression that you need to meditate or work to
get back to a 'stage of awareness' - this is again plain ridiculous. Whatever
you are doing or thinking or feeling is happening in Awareness, you can never
escape Awareness even if you wanted to.
Ken Wilber's constant consciousness is developing the
ability to stay absorbed into the wide perceptual openness of the Witness - as
the Witness, all thoughts and objects come and go freely through the open clearing of
Awareness itself, without being grasped or identified with, like the open sky
allows all clouds to pass without attachments. Even dreams are being witnessed
in the presence of the Witnessing and one does not lose sight of the Witnessing
by identifying with the dream character. Whereas, for those who do not
experience constant consciousness to the extent that their strength of being absorbed in presence-awareness penetrates into all three states, they might still get identified with their thoughts,
dreams, etc from time to time, by their habitual tendencies. It is like
identifying with a movie character and forgetting that the whole scene is a
movie playing in a cinema screen. It is a form of contraction from the natural
wide perceptual openness of the Witness into the tiny fragment of your
experience - your body and mind along with its thoughts, feelings and
sensations, and as a result suffering for being a limited self. It is losing
sight of the non-conceptual pure presence over a conceptual identity and
story.
An important point here however: having the ability to stay (even if persistently) in wide perceptual openness is not the Realization of I AM, it is simply an 'experience' or 'recognition' and I experienced that since early 2009. Nevertheless, even after Realization of I AM, it does not mean that you will live the rest of your life free of egoic contraction. Go for the realization, not the experience - and to go for the realization means to practice self-inquiry. As Thusness told me the last time I met him, he doesn't like approaches that emphasize too much on the experience, like focusing to get the experience of the spaciousness of awareness, the mirror-like quality etc, all the various aspects. Why? Because that's like only accessing the fringe, but once you penetrate to the Core of the
matter via Self-Realization, then all the aspects are accessible to you, like 一针�血
(striking the right note). Not only self-inquiry, but koan practice can also lead to
realization.
"Even more, there is no “one” who is even awake, for the
sense of individuality is gone."
I wrote this on 10 February 2010 as well - the part that
thinks I'm awake or not is not who I am, what I am is forever already
'awake'.
"Consciousness has returned to a clarity, a clearness
that is no longer deluded or confused."
True clarity is in seeing that all apparent delusions and
confusion are only insubstantial mind movements happening in a clear
cloudless/thoughtless sky of Awareness. That cannot be confused and is ever in
equanimity with regards to apparently confusing thoughts. This True Clarity is
the natural Clarity of your Being, which is ever clear and beyond all
confusions. Realizing this, you can never 'get out' of clarity - it is not
something that rises and sets.
"Some days it is as if my awareness is on a roller
coaster, going up then down, over then under and around. Moments of utter clarity then moments of delusion. "
Clouds come and go in the sky of awareness, awareness
itself doesn’t go through a roller coaster ride. Sky-like Awareness becomes apparently obscured
by fixation and identification with the clouds of thoughts, but only apparently so from the perspective of thought (like you mis-identify yourself with a movie character on the cinema screen and start thinking 'where was the screen?') -
not from the perspective of Awareness itself - the ever-shining sun behind all
the dark clouds. Even dark clouds are revealed owing to the Presence of
Awareness. It is not an obscuration of Awareness, it is the evidence of
Awareness.
If you no longer have doubts on who you are, you will not
for a moment think that you have 'lost awareness'. Even the most (apparently) deluded of all
thoughts are still wordless vibrations/energy arising in and as bright vivid Awareness. So what's wrong with right now unless you think about it?
Second article: http://tomstine.com/more-on-being-half-awake/
"After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back
asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again.
And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without
the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new
half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake”
was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and
out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I
had."
This doesn't sound like realization to me, only passing
recognitions. This occurred between 2007 to 2009 for me, where there were
apparently many 'in and out' of awakeness and
recognitions.
"In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent,
something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say
that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence,
consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is
always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can
see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it.
“It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being
occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not
fully awake."
This is my experience now. But the reason why there is no
'in and out' is not mentioned. The no 'in and out' is a result of the
realization of Being, a deep certainty. As I
wrote:
9th July
2010
I remember that thoughts of losing awareness used to
happen quite often for me in the past. But this is all seen to be totally
baseless and ridiculous nowadays.
All thoughts of "I lost awareness" or "I need more
effort to maintain awareness" or anything along that line implies having had
some 'recognition' or 'experience' of Awareness, but not having the Realization
of Who You Are.
This is why, looking back, I think Thusness was very
apt in telling me the difference between Experience and Realization last year.
He said "You may have the blissful sensation or feeling of vast and open
spaciousness; you may experience a non-conceptual and objectless state; you may
experience the mirror like clarity but all these experiences are not
Realization. There is no ‘eureka’, no ‘aha’, no moment of immediate and
intuitive illumination that you understood something undeniable and unshakable
-- a conviction so powerful that no one, not even Buddha can sway you from this
realization because the practitioner so clearly sees the truth of it. It is the
direct and unshakable insight of ‘You’. This is the realization that a
practitioner must have in order to realize the Zen satori. You will understand
clearly why it is so difficult for those practitioners to forgo this ‘I AMness’
and accept the doctrine of anatta. Actually there is no forgoing of this
‘Witness’, it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual,
groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature. Like what Rob
said, "keep the experience but refine the
views"."
And this is just the case. Having an experience of
Awareness still leaves doubts (including doubts like 'I lost awareness', 'I need
to maintain it', etc). This is because you have not resolved the question of
your true identity. You can have a clear sense of presence and spaciousness, and
yet have no real understanding or insight and an unshakeable conviction of Who They Are which turns their sense of self and identity upside down. It
is the realization beyond a trace of doubt the undeniability of your true
identity as that Pure Awareness.
If you realized this, then doubts like "I lost
awareness" will not be arising, and even if it had, the thought is completely
seen as an illusion - an illusory thought arising in the undeniable presence
of YOU. Such habits of mind once seen in the light of realization will never
be able to shake you from true seeing and being - it is simply exposed for
being an illusion which they are, like the words 'this place is dark' written on
the wall revealed by bright light in the room simply reveals the illusion for
what it is. See how baseless those words/thoughts are in the light of clear
seeing?
So it is not about sustaining a state of experience,
it is seeing how this is your True Self, what you already are, and no
illusion will be able to shake you out of that - for it is not a state or
experience that requires maintenance, rather it is the undeniable Presence of
What You Are and all thoughts and illusions that comes up still only come up in
that Undeniability of Immediate Presence and are immediately seen as
illusions.
Through Realization, your so called 'understanding'
(though it is not a conceptual understanding) of Awareness will shift from being
'experience' or 'state' based to clearly seeing how Awareness is the undeniable
ground of Being and Knowing in which all phenomena comes and goes, and yet
Awareness ever remains unmoved.
Can you escape the present moment? No you can't. Can
you escape You? No, of course not! Every attempt to avoid Presence is still
experienced in unavoidable and undeniable
Presence.
So the difference between experience and realization
is this - in realization, Awareness is vividly and clearly experienced, but
more than that, it is a clear insight into that fact of your Being that burns
away all doubts and questions until only the Light of Awareness remains and is
clearly seen to always be so. And in that unshakeble certainty of Being you
clearly see you do not need to maintain anything - you simply Are
That.
It
is not an experience, but the realization, the understanding (but it is not a
mental understanding but a feeling/being-realization), that makes you
unshakeable in the face of doubts by exposing them as the illusion they are.
Without the realization, doubts will be ‘believed’.
Lastly, never think that this realization that I am
writing sounds 'difficult to obtain' as I can assure you it is Not. It is simply
an ever-present and immediate fact of your being shining in plain view
waiting to be discovered and realized. It is not a state that you need to
gradually develop over time through some kind of technique - rather, it is
always already timelessly present right here and now. You simply need to know
what and how to investigate (e.g. self inquiry) and you are on your way to true
insight and freedom.
"At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one
ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense
of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of
awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of
importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana,
for that word simply means
“cessation.”"
This is not Nirvana. It is still the I AM
stage.
Regards
AEN
Raymond Wolter, on 27 July 2010 - 12:47 AM, said: