Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Satori at the strangest time

I was on my way to the first SeattleIntegral Integral Spirituality meeting last Sunday, sitting at a stoplight in Fremont, when I had a sudden overwhelming recognition of the connectedness of everything. It's a good thing my windows are tinted, because I started crying at the realization (once again) of ever-present awareness.

Actually, I didn't give a hoot if anyone was watching, or not. Such is the ground of being.

Satori is a key concept in Zen Buddhism. It is the goal of Zen Buddhism, and roughly translates into individual Enlightenment, or a flash of sudden awareness. I have no doubt that mine was a "state," or peak, awareness: that is, a temporary state. It's the fourth Satori I've had, the first at 14, but I had absolutely no idea what the hell that was! I had already pretty much disassociated from the mythical relgion of my youth, and had not yet discovered the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. Unknown to me, I was in Satori limbo.

What I now know is that each of these peak experiences brings me closer to the next level of consciousness, and that while I patiently wait for that state awareness to become vertical (transcendent) stage awareness, I'll continue to work on my horizontal (translative) development, as well. Ah, span vs. depth.....another blog.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this.

I've often wondered if my own experiences, similar to yours, could be described as Satori. Until now, I hadn't found anyone to corroborate my impression - except Wilber in one of his books.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for blogging about this Gary! love to you!

Anonymous said...

=)