Was wandering through a local park a few weeks ago. Very peaceful & relaxing environment, in a very calm mood ( & no, none of the following is drug related ). Happily & contentedly feeling the environment . No great yogic focus required, it was all too attractive to need any deliberate effort.

Sat down on a bench, relaxed a bit further , then the observer-observed duality dropped.

I was everything I was seeing & feeling. I wasnt limited to any of it. I wasnt averse to any of it. It was all equally 'me '. I wasnt a"Witness". I wasnt witnessing,I was "Being". Being It.

I cant call it a 'deep' experience, & there were no particular fireworks, but everything was obviously myself,As well as simultaneously an utter mystery rushing into the vast space that was 'me'.

I was the space & the forms within it. All in a very calm, delighted, curious & 'obvious' way.

Though very beautiful,it didnt seem 'special'. Just obvious.

After what may have possibly been about 10minutes of getting up & walking about marvelling at everything, awareness of fearful compulsions ,"cravings", as disturbances of energy in the body became evident. This didnt obscure the "Oneness", but it did make me start chuckling aloud,as it was all so obviously RIDICULOUS. I had nothing, NOTHING to lose ( or gain for that matter ), so such cravings were simply FUNNY !

Then a freinds dog came bounding up to me, closely followed by the freind, & as I commenced social engagement , the sense of dual seperation resumed .

Strangely, I associated no sense of immediate loss with this. I just took it as a matter of course.

Within half an hour though, I could detect old stress patterns causing actual discomfort again, & things were back to 'usual".Things started to be felt as 'issues', physically.

Happened again about a week later, in another park oddly enough ( are trees conspiring in my favour ),though to a lesser extent.

Overall,Ive come away with a direct experiential "There is nowhere to go,nowhere to get to,nothing to be gained, as the Fullness of it has Always Allready been here. There is no 'elsewhere', so stop acting like there ever could be " kinda thang !

The feeling was that the total energy of the situation was allready sufficient in its fullness,I just have a confused habit of grasping for a nonexistent 'other'. These habits felt like patterns in the body itself, obscuring & disrupting the power thats allready there ( & everywhere else for that matter).

So, thats my experience. NOT the serene detached seperate Witness,but something else.

Now Ive heard that some schools of Zen recognise a 'mini-satori'. Is that something akin to this ?

Feedback from the more well-informed would be groovy.

Regards, Cloud

yes it was a mini-satori. congratulations!

<bow> Thank you for sharing such a jewell.

Procurator & Spectrum;

Thank you both for your acknowledgment


Its strange, in that I feel an urge to tell people about this , but cant really find much to say, as the whole thing felt 'Obvious' & somehow shouldnt need explaining . Does that make any sense ?

Ive tried to explain it to two other people face to face, but felt a conflict of motivation. By which I mean one part of me felt all eager to communicate this, while another was puzzled at why such a discussion would be necessary.

Why would you try & explain water to a fish, isnt it allready obvious & utterly commonplace ?

Its not a 'dilemma', just odd.

Regards, Cloud

I hear ya. Like explaining water to a fish after he's been out of it, but is back in it... and explaining from the perspective of being out of it.... while he's in it... go figure.

not odd at all, i don't think.


that's really great. and yet, not!


you speak of the wonder of being and the passion of becoming. they seem at first to contradict, but they do not.


the formless being has no propensity to come crying out that it is.

the form of the becoming is a different matter. it lives and moves in an evolutionary universe. it has passion and the potential to change the world if properly guided.


it's the same motivating force of all the great sages who have experience the full-blown satori, i think.

Or water to water.



I've struggled with this as a separate self who has some recognition of the uncommunicable. It seems like the most obvious thing, yet it seems to be ignored most off the time by most people. I used to not really want to interact without establishing some sort of understanding at the level of the uncommunicable. I'm starting to think that that was just a really clever way of not seeing/being what already is.

Funny stuff, huh?

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration,


that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively,


there is no such thing as death,


life is only a dream,


and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Bill Hicks

this happens to me when i simply become aware. like in school, i'll describe it.

i was late to class from dance class and seeing as how i live in miami and attend an outdoor campus school, there is a lot of trees and grass everywhere. so i'm walking at a pretty dull pace even though i'm late and then it starts.

i was walking down a somewhat secluded outdoor hallway with tons of trees and grass everywhere. it felt as if though everything was shining and alive. really peaceful. i looked at the grass and everything looked golden. my mind was dead kind of and i just had a smile on my face. i can't describe it any further than that.

felt really relived though and i can do this at will sometimes. if i pay attention to my breath while walking and take deep breaths i can sometimes induce this state.

Heres the question for me. Were You looking "at" It, or were You It? I know language is limited , but thats one distinction that can be made ,even though it will never be a full description.

To me, thats the big one. I was no longer seeing, there was just one being/non- being, as void & form simultaneously. "I" wasnt "looking at" any object, though thats what preceded it .Any "Watcher" fell away , no longer anybody "having" an experience .

At the same time there was an understanding that this still wasnt 'deep', that it could go much 'deeper',that it was still 'shallow' for some reason. Yet this did not detract or negate it in any way .

Work that last bit out

Regards, Cloud

hmm i'm not too sure but i know i was there. i wasn't anything i was just being a spectator kind of? don't quote me though it's pretty fuzzy.

Here's an interesting question. Is the sense of no I-ness more a function of having assumed that there was an I for a really long time, or is it inherent in the recognition of truth? Does the recognition that we are everything that we see (and also nothing that we see) have to be explicit, earth-shattering, or is it before all that, and wordless?

I identify with what mantis said... he describes one of the openings, which is more the result of, rather than the reality of opening to truth. Entering the Dao, we might say, though that has so many meanings... Perhaps the simplest and easiest, that one can enter the Dao before anything manifests, is also the most powerful.

Sometimes I wonder how much we are helping ourselves by identifying this with spirituality.

Just offering counterpoint though.

Maybe it has something to do with the depth cloud recluse was referring to. These sort of openings can occur with no background in spirituality, and so remain relatively pure, but they might also no receive very much attention. They feel more like a gentle breeze, that we appreciate when it arrives, but we don't go running around trying to feel another gentle breeze.

Perhaps the spiritual context focuses attention, so that one might explore those moments, or rather, that truth, more deeply when it arises. It is the easiest thing to pass over, and yet it is limitless. But then we grab on . Lovely. Or then we don't? That movement ceases and so does the thought calling I. Alright, poetic license...

It's really nice to read about your experience, cloud. The funny thing is, I don't really know what to say. Congratulations doesn't seem quite right. Sharing my own experiences doesn't seem necessary. Kind of like you felt, it just is and it's obvious but it's miraculous at the same time. I guess I'll just say thanks for sharing that, it makes me feel good reading your post.

Thanks for sharing Cloud. Truly beautiful.

A gentle breeze.Exactly, Yes!

Ive had 'fireworks' before, but they were still very dualistic experiences. This was gentle.

But I didnt / couldnt explore it much. I didnt really feel inclined. Perhaps this was the 'shallowness' of it.Or rather the shallowness of my prior cultivation . Yes ? No? My normal urge to analyse seems less urgent.

Hard to tell,but not particularly worried about it

Regards,Cloud

I constantly remind myself, "the journey is the destination, the journey is the destination."

Always true

As the experience retreats further into the past, Ive been browsing about for material that resonates. I just found this passage in a compilation of Douglas Harding, OPEN TO THE SOURCE , that is far more eloquent than my own attempts .


"I am at large in the world . I can discover no watcher here , and over there something watched , no peep-hole out into the world, no windowpane , no frontier . I do not detect a universe : it lies wide open to me ."



Just wanted to share that little gem. It really pushes my buttons ( in the nicest possible way )

Regards, Cloud

Cloud,
Dont know if you have read this or not, Franklin Merrell-Wolff wrote a book Experience and Philosophy about his experience that he called consciousness without an object.

Although i havent had that experience, your post brought his book to mind.

thanks for sharing the experience

Joebob,

Oddly enough,I had a book by him when I was in my early teens ( a LOOONG time ago ),Im not sure which one though. I didnt have the nous to read the whole thing at the time ,& it drifted off somewhere else a long time ago . I do remember it started out fairly autobiographicaly, but not much beyond that

Would it be hard to find nowadays ?

Regards, Cloud

Hi Cloud,
Yes, part of this book is autobiographical it may be the same that you had. Experience and Philosophy is a combination of two of his books, but mostly related to the time period around his enlightenment and his philosophy about the experience.

Interesting that you came across it that young. Its still pretty difficult for me to grasp some of his concepts, but he does a great job of explaining his experience what he was reading and researching before, during and then after.

Amazon has some new and used copies ill pm you the link.

JB