Traditionally, a spiritual journey entailed putting down our attachments to Earthly distractions, although that idea should be understood in the way of not letting them be our purpose and personal aim. We are human and we will have human experiences. What these teachings are pointing to is that our spiritual purpose should guide our interests and interactions – because everything can be done in a spiritual way, a connected way, a purposeful way. It is about elevating the reasons why we do what we do. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: If you’re true enough to yourself, then you realize that running that course, which may get glimpses, the glimpses are really, then, to a complete total letting go and the stopping, which is the stillness of the out-breath turning to the in-breath, and that the two have to come together: the out-breath turning to the in-breath, and the in-breath turning to the out-breath.
Those points of stillness, when they are one and the same, then there is no such thing as a journey, and there’s no getting caught on either aspect of the breath, either the in-breath or the out-breath. That’s what I had to dream about, that came together as a meditation dream, and was able to see that all of that can be done in one fell swoop – as opposed to having to dribble along, like everything seems to do. So we’ve got to hit the stillness behind everything, or we’re still in some part of the breath.
In the meditation dream, I noticed that it is now possible to experience a step, which could be a lifetime, because time as a concept is relative: it could be a lifetime, could be a moment, I don’t know. All I know is that it is now possible to experience a step that goes from bottom-to-top, or top-to-bottom, or however, depending upon how one inflects.
Maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t discount the fact that it can be done in both directions. And, in the past, you weren’t able to do it like that in one fell swoop, in the past there were multiple steps and with that came complications and delays.
I apparently dreamt this as a response to a question that was hanging in the air. The question has to do with, what’s the nature, or purpose, of the path? Is there a purpose, or a nature, of the path, something there that one has to adhere to?
And, as a result of this, there was like a reply, a type of reply. In other words, saying that it can be done in one fell swoop, which causes me to ponder: if going to the stillness, beyond the breath, the breath’s manifestation, per se, if this, apparently, transcends the journey of breath. And is a step, not ordinarily possible, but not in a process of waking up, and waking up, is possible now in one fell swoop – not the quality of a little bit this and a little bit that?
I say this because, in the dream, I saw the process as having been this in one great big swoop, instead of a process in which there’s a step, pause step, and no end denoted. So the scenario for this is I’ve apparently touched upon, in my reply to Dean, I apparently touched upon something that isn’t talked about because there have been spiritual illusions on the in-breath that had been predominating, and, correspondingly, as a counter reflection, the out-breath’s co-creation state lying in the way of stillness.
So what I saw is just one step without the usual fits and starts associated with the in-between-ness, which is a temporal quality. The reason I say this is because most Sufi paths work at the hiccups we carry on the breath, and not upon the interval of stillness.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Beyond the Breath
