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People often ask me about what I call the “sudden awakening experience” I had almost a decade ago. It is, of course, as impossible to describe as the demands of motherhood to the newly pregnant, or trekking to New Delhi, India when you’ve never been outside Ohio. And it most certainly falls into the category of “I guess you had to be there.” But I try to comply, if only for the beauty of it.
It was November 15, 1997. It appeared to be an ordinary day, though not an ordinary time of life. Only months before, I had left my husband and lost my day-to-day motherhood role to a shared custody arrangement. On this day, I had pondered going, or not going, to a day-long workshop on psychic development. I’d always had the gift, but didn’t really understand it, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. After all, if I understood it, things might change even more.
I Went Anyway.
When the teacher started talking about people who were “energetic vampires,” I raised my hand and asked “Yea, what is with that? People suck you dry, and it’s like you have no choice.” She replied with something along the order of, “Well, if you are being sucked dry, that means you are not connected to the Source.”
That’s it. That’s all she said. My recently raised hand tingled, and then my whole body felt as it I’d been set to “vibrate.” The sky opened up—right there in the classroom—and I remembered who I was. Relief poured over me, because I knew I was that source. My first rational thought sent my eyes skyward, and I whispered to myself “Took you long enough.”
In That Moment
Ten thousand things I never knew made sense. I got it. I mean, I really got it, on a level I didn’t even know existed before that moment. I went home and started reading reasonably heavy texts on Tibetan Buddhism and kept saying to myself “I know this stuff. How do I know this stuff?”
I still don’t know how I knew it, but I did. I felt arrogant, giddy, crazy, and perplexed—after all, I was still living Robin Rice’s life. Same old Robin Rice’s problems.
But There Was A Difference
It was as if I, myself, as I had always known myself, stepped out of costume and took a bow. Good show. Nice performance. It’s just a play. Suddenly, I knew that. Of course, I’d heard things like “life is an illusion,” (though I was far less exposed to alternative ideas than most—I’d never even heard of past lives before this event). But this was not understanding. It was experience. Somehow, the eyes I looked out of, or rather the person looking out through the eyes, was a whole different person.
As a shaman, I’ve come to learn terms like “assemblage point” which, among other things, speaks to how and where the real self and non-self is put together and residing. And that is another good way to describe my experience. In a split second, I was reassembled. The surface me took a back seat to the deeper me, not unlike changing drivers in the middle of a road trip.
Nothing Solid Is Real
Another way to put it is that the all-important nouns of my life became far less important, while the verbs took a more central role. It was being, not doing, that was important. It was who I was, not what I looked like. I could never believe any of this life and physical experience was completely “real” after that moment. Even I was not real.
I knew on a deep level that I was more awake when asleep, then when supposedly “awake.” Just because I kept returning to the same dream of “me” day after day (if, in fact, it is a going and returning), that didn’t mean it wasn’t a dream.
If you are having a hard time relating, I suggest you try feeling what I’m saying, not understanding it. Even I don’t understand it. And that was another change—I stopped needing to understand things so much. It would take quite a while for all that mind-need-plan-control stuff to wind down, because my brain synapses were still set to fire to all my old patterns. But each time they did go off, there was a constant, gentle second perspective serving as a new interpreter.
Why Me?
In all my childhood tragedies, it was easy to ask “Why me?” of God. Yet after my waking up experience, this was a much more pervasive question. It dogged me for years, yet from all I read about enlightenment, this pointed back to me not being enlightened at all. My ego, according to the readings, was just on another wild goose chase.
And so it was. But I needed that wild goose chase to get me further and further down the road of integration. It did not take me off my path, but allowed me to stay on it long enough to realize that “Why me?” is a question answered only by the highest thinking.
It is, in and of itself, a question worthy of long contemplation. And in some ways, I time, it answered itself. Because people who had no clue about such things, started to leave my life. And people who did get it came in. “Why me?” became a ridiculous question, because it was happening—either suddenly or with the more common, and longer “fade-to-light awakening”—to a whole lot of people.
Awakening Is Not A One-Time Event
Even if you have a sudden awakening experience, it’s not a done deal. Yes, you are forever changed. But you still have to navigate real life. There is a real temptation to bypass this, to start acting enlightened because, on some level, you do get it. (Read After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, by Jack Cornfield if you need more on this.) But you have to grieve for all the years you stumbled around making a mess of yourself and others. And you have to stumble around some more, exploring this new vantage point. Then, you have to face the old patterns and habits and deal with them—at least if you want them to change.
But that is the beauty of awakening. Because after even a glimpse of that awakened state, you can. From this assemblage point, the old dogs that have chased you through your childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and maybe even through your middle and later years, can be thrown a bone to chew on while you get on with what brings more joy. The negative thought patterns can be chuckled at. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to say to myself “Wow, there goes Robin, all wound up again. Look at her go! Wonder when she will stop? Wish she did not have to suffer so over all this.”
Once this stance is taken, our inner drama queen looses steam, all of life looses its “reality tv” edge, and peace becomes not a one-a-year Christmas card wish for the world out there, but an ever-growing reality within.
Awakening The Body
However much inner peace we develop, we still live in a body. Some who have awakened, and many forms of spiritual growth that promise an awakening-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experience, seem to want to bypass this reality. Again, I understand this temptation. But I don’t believe that is the purpose of awakening. We are not here to escape the human experience, but to learn to revel in it.
When we suggest that we are to peel away all that is not true, and live from what is true, it is easy to think that means peel away the physical, and live from the spiritual. It’s a nice idea, since most of the gunk of life is on the physical. But it doesn’t really work. The physical keeps coming back. It has to. It’s the teacher.
Where The Rubber Meets The Road
They say that if you want to test your level of enlightenment, get into a relationship. I’ll go one better. You want to really test things out? Go on a diet. Seriously. We who are affluent, indulged, and can pretty much eat anything we want, at any time that we want, have grown accustomed to this luxury. It’s not a blessing or privilege we (again, especially in the affluent USA) even think about. But when it is taken away, by our own resolutions or by the demands of poor health or a downturn in circumstance, it’s something we think about a lot. Quite frankly, we get cranky.
I teach a class called “Weight Loss As A Path To Awakening” because I know that any attempt to deal with the body will show exactly how awake we are. It will also provide the fodder we need in order to arrive at that awakened state. I call it “poking the bear” to see where, exactly, the bear lives. And then we are free to examine such things as “Who other than the bear lives in there?” and “Is the bear really real?”
For most women, beauty and body issues are the easiest path to awakening, because the pain is so very close to the surface and the inner critic’s voice is the easiest to hear. But you could easily take cancer as a path to awakening, or lupus as a path, or miscarriage as a path. For teenagers, acne can be a terrible path to awakening, and for older folks, incontinence might be a worthy path.
Where The Beauty Kicks In
In the words of Walt Whitman, “Henceforth I ask not good fortune; I myself am good fortune.” The beauty of awakening is getting this, down to your bones, so that the world no longer needs to play our internal dramas on the backdrop of life. We can watch the drama as it comes and goes, maybe making a genuine wise crack, or just laughing at our own antics.
We stop looking to manifest abundance; we are abundance. Even without a job. Even when you give away the majority of what you create. Even when there is no one but ourselves standing at the finish line to thank us for doing out part to help save the world.
Best of All, We Can Let Go
The greatest beauty in awakening, and following that path as it moves and shapes us, is that we are no longer so tied up with our smaller selves. The concept of “letting go” seeps into our daily experience, and all the things we have suffered over are reduced. There is still pain—that is the nature of life. But the suffering becomes a choice, and often one that is not worthy of our attention and energy.
From there, we really do have something to give the world. This is why we all came and, I promise you, where all the greatest of joys hang out. As Daniel Berrigan says: “Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have bought it or baked it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.”
That Day In 1997
I was changed on that day, in that moment. But it would take more than half a dozen years before I could really say I was getting on with simply having a life. And I’m still working on it. Or, more accurately put, letting it work on me in its own time, and in its own way.
Today, as I have said, when people ask about how it all changed for me, I do try to explain. But often, I would rather say, “Just sit here, be here for a while. Feel what it feels like, and notice if anything seems any different. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Either way, I’ll sit with you.” Most people want more to sink their teeth into. Or, like me as I contemplated going or not going to that workshop that day, they are simply afraid it would change things too much.
This Month’s ShapeShift
Watch yourself. See the you that is your name/body/occupation/role, and then with that person clearly in vision, step back. Now, the you that stepped back—who is she? Is she hard to see, or do you know her well? Ask her if she knows the voice of your inner critic—the one that always has a negative comment about what you look like, or what you have or have not done. Is this “witness” that voice, or is it the voice of another? Is that critic’s voice even real? Ask who is really running the show.
If you have trouble, use an object like a plant or a piece of paper to mark your name/body/occupation/role’s spot, and then step back. Let the object be your name/body/occupation/role, while you as the witness watches.
Imagine that you are not this name/body/occupation/role. That this is as unreal as the last dream you had. Imagine that this “becoming the witness” to yourself is always accessible to you, especially in times when your name/body/occupation/role is getting steeped in drama or legitimately experiencing great pain. Ask yourself if the witness is suffering.
Be sure to step back into your name/body/occupation/role when you are finished, but don’t forget what it felt like to be more than only a name/body/occupation/role. Shapeshift often, preferably without judgment, until both selves come to know each other well.
Namaste, my friends.
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