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On Retreat With Adyashanti
April 22, 2009 by Ray Baskerville
It is a couple of weeks ago now since the retreat with Adyashanti finished, and I finally feel ready to write about it. It was a truly powerful experience, not in a dramatic flashing lights and fireworks kind of way, but in a subtle and deeply penetrating way.
The retreat was held at Mount Madonna Retreat centre, nestled in the Redwood cloaked hills above San Jose. A beautiful space built with love and dedication over many years. The retreat was in silence which for some may sound like a challenge, for myself a blessing and effortless. My hermit nature loves silent retreat. What a gift it is to have all your basic needs taken care of, and the only requirement is silent meditation.
It has now been more than half my lifetime that I had been doing spiritual practice and that spiritual evolution has been central to my life. In that time I have met and seen many spiritual teachers of different persuasions and philosophies. Many hold satsang in the manner that Adyashanti does, where there is a dialogue process of self enquiry, many sadly are doing little more than spiritual theatre. Adyashanti is the real thing, he is
an awakener.
These satang dialogues of self enquiry took place twice a day. The first in the morning after Adyashanti had given a talk. The second in the evening sometimes after a short talk sometimes not. People who have questions come forward to a microphone and ask them and then the dialogue begins. At no time did Adyashanti ever push back against what came from the questioner, at his end there was no resistance just a reflecting back that slowly led the questioner deeper into themselves.
The rest of the days consisted primarily of frequent meditation periods. Adyashanti Doesn’t teach meditation technique as such, his primary meditation instruction is to just let everything be as it is.
Day by day the silence deepened, as the source in the inner silence almost imperceptibly emerged.
This is the real difference between a teacher whose consciousness is established in the experience of the truth that they teach, and a teacher who just knows the words. In the first case the words penetrate deep into your own consciousness, in the second they merely alight in the mind. So much as a process of self enquiry led the questioner into themselves, the process of the retreat was the same.
Because we could ask questions my mind came up with one for me. I received an answer within a response to somebody else’s question. Their question was nothing like my own, but that’s how truth is. The answer was a mere four words, but those words were like a key to a door that I had been standing in front of. I went through and for another day my meditation integrated the experience of this answer.
Then it became clear that this answer was not complete, it had simply been the key to the door and the question reemerged in this new space.
The same thing happened again. In dialogue with somebody else Adyashanti gave the next answer to my question. This time it was five words. Actually it was 10 words, two answers of five words, but the second answer is to a door that I’m not quite at yet.
As this answer began its permeation through my being there was a subtle shift to a state of awakeness.
My active spiritual process began more than 20 years ago with a sudden dramatic an overwhelming awakening to the greater reality. In the years between then and now I had many other experiences of expensive states, revelation and insight, which by and large were all dramatic in one way or another, including a satori experience while simply walking along a path in a buddhist jungle monastery in Thailand.
The awakening experience on retreat with Adyashanti was entirely different. It couldn’t have been less dramatic, in fact the experience was so ordinary and undramatic. In it was the realisation that this awakeness had never not been awake, it had been here all the time, it is here all the time. Awakening itself is a paradox. Awakening is closer than our own skin, closer than our breath, it’s so close we don’t notice it.
Most of us have all manner of ideas about enlightenment. We have read books of zen monks awakening from a bang on the head or the like. The overwhelming impression from all these spiritual stories is that there is a moment of awakening into enlightenment and then there IS enlightened. Becoming enlightened in this way obviously does happen, but far from being the norm it is actually unusual. They do make good stories though and get our attention. What is more common and less dramatic is a process of awakening, from what I understand, a process that doesn’t actually end.
So at the retreats end wakefulness was awake in me and I left to spend a few more days in the Bay area before coming back to Hawaii. Boy was I glad I’d invested in a GPS for the trip because my left brain really wasn’t working very well if at all.
I stayed two nights at Ammas San Ramon Ashram and spent the day after the retreat wandering the hills in quiet fascination and wonder. Actually I went in part to get away from people. Somehow the presence of other people’s minds was a bit too much. Also a lot of energy was moving in my body and being in nature was grounding. Over the next few days the presence of wakefulness remained but receded bit by bit.
Pretty consistently I have experienced that a time of opening and expansion in consciousness is followed by an rising up of what remains unhealed and in separation. Sure enough when I got home deep levels of fear emerged. From past experience I’d learned that there is nothing to do in these situations but carry the experience and allow it its process.
And now, wakefulness is here, I just have to remember to step into it. The good thing is the distinction between that that is awake, and that that is not, is clear. At some point I suppose there won’t be a difference anymore at all.
So my advice is, if you’re interested in waking up, look into the possibility of attending retreat with Adyashanti. In the meantime check out his Internet radio show.
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Great Post Thanx.I really enjoyed reading that was worth the time.