Mountain Path

A man’s description of finding the mountain path.

“My life had felt shitty lately. I had lost any sense of God or hope, all I felt was emptiness with nothing to live for or any satisfaction. Then I was walking up a road and had what felt like a waking dream, and so was aware of churches on my right. They were all empty and dead, exactly as I felt.

There was a gate leading to a path, and somehow I had the feeling that I wanted to put a warning sign over the gate saying something like, “Give up hope all who enter here”! The path led to a hill, and when I reached the top I was on the edge of a precipitous drop. The view was extraordinary, like looking into a vast void. It was like seeing into everything, and with a sinking heart I could sense no being, no God, just a huge impersonal space.

A classic statement is, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” It can be seen as a warning, but it is given depth through the words of T. S Elliot:

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;

wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing;

there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So, the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Some years ago, I tried to do as Eliot suggested; for weeks I gave up doing my daily yoga postures, the hours of meditation and sat without any expectations so I waited for the unknown. I felt that it was like waiting for a stranger to come and touch me on the shoulder as I stood outside the cinema at the top of Tottenham Court Road in London, then I would know them.

I waited like that for many weeks and then one night I had got out of bed to visit the toilet and was just getting back into bed when I heard a loud bodiless voice saying, “You asked how God touches the human soul, now watch closely.”  I had never before had such an experience and so I felt something important had occurred. I did not have to wait long because I was not touched – I was shaken!!!  The feeling floored me and I sat there and gave up on any hope of finding what I had hoped for – a sort of wonderful welcome. But as I sat a deep quietness grew in me – I had really given up! And that was when a quiet bliss grew in me, and I realised that many others had got to the same spot and sat there. I also realised that I had been seeking an external god, and in giving up my search and becoming quiet had found the inner god that we all are.

And in my quiet bliss I turned my head and looked to my left there was a path leading up a mountain and I know that it was a path others had taken after they knew the bliss, and I would take it also. I realised that the bliss I experienced was what many people call enlightenment, and I saw or realised that this was not an end, but the beginning of a climb.

The mountain was the path I have taken over the years. I got to that spot on the hilltop where I just sat, as if there is no way onwards. This path has led me to drop my ambition, let go of my desire to lead or be a creator of something special to bring me acclaim. But it doesn’t stop me seeing the tragedy of the world and wanting to do something about it. So I feel like putting the image of the mountain path into the world and seeing if people who have also climbed that path and faced the void, who also have sat there and realised freedom, will collect under that image as the dream suggests, to create practical action in the world.

Slowly another possibility clarified – freedom within limitation. An amazing sense and experience of this freedom came upon me. It was more rewarding than Yoga’s Ananda/bliss, and with infinite possibility. Life could begin in an entirely new way. Relationships could be things of depth, variability, and beauty, once freed of the shackles of the eternal buzzing desire to fuck.

Yet buzzing is not forbidden. Work can become a joy and a game instead of a struggle and a task. It is Life itself facing experience naked. Was that really it? I could hardly believe it. Surely an anxiety, problem or injury lay underneath. Perhaps I was still defending. I would dwell deeply in the ache and see.

As I did so I saw the colours got lighter and lighter. It felt as if something was going faster and faster. Yes, I could see kaleidoscopic patterns moving and changing faster, speeding up and getting lighter. First of all just colour, movement and intensity, then it burst into a direct awareness of energy in my being vibrating faster and faster. I could feel it moving each side of my spine, actually vibrating. It got more and more intense until suddenly it felt like the energy had cleared all its pathways and was vibrating at tremendous speed without barriers. It was an incredible experience yet at the same time not at all strange.

I had read about this, and expected bliss, strange awareness, entrance into other dimensions, contact with nonphysical intelligence’s, or a view of life that was goal oriented.

Something like – Aha, so life leads to this wider awareness – or meeting other minds – or fresh worlds – but no. It was all very ordinary in an extraordinary way. There was the energy. It was vibrating in a physically apparent way, just as it does when I sleep, only faster. It had reached a point where it seemed to clear out last remaining obstacles to stream freely. But it didn’t put me in touch with disincarnate entities, other dimensions, bliss, or a hidden life, or divine purpose.

What it did do was to increase what I already had. It gave more. This incredible energy I saw, experienced, that it didn’t do anything in particular, but on the other hand it would do anything. If I turned my energy into fear or self-destructive patterns, then I could be a lot more frightened and self-destructive with that amount of energy. Like a man who drinks and one who paints. With more money or energy they could respectively drink alcohol or paint a lot more. If I used my energy toward creativity and life enhancement, then that’s what the energy would do. It could heal or cause illness, give peace or restlessness, wisdom or folly. It would fill whatever one put before it. In my case it was being used to look at life and myself and cleanse body and consciousness of sickness and limiting painful or anxious attitudes, and that was what it was doing.

In fact it cleared so much pain, darkness and anxiety out of my soul, I felt a peaceful joy shining from me and no longer obstructed by the anxieties I have felt of late. It brought clearness, calm confidence, and open warmth. It brought more, in the same sense light brings more in a dark room.

Consider this. The room we are in is in darkness. With a little light vague shapes are apparent but no colour. With more light shapes begin to take on meaning as to what they are, and dim shades of colour appear. More still and hidden details in the shapes become obvious and colours begin to blaze out. More still and things hidden in the colours show. The room has not changed. No other doors have opened on fresh dimensions. No other intelligences met. The room changes only in the appreciation and awareness we have of it.

The colour was always there, but we see it more and more, and what has always existed and been experienced opens up to us more fully. So this flood of energy gives more in the same sense. No new worlds within the same world, but with much deeper appreciation and awareness. True the whole world changes, but only because of heightened awareness.

As for goal orientation, I wondered, is this where man is destined to evolve? Is this where yoga leads? But really it was not like that. The energy did not lead anywhere. There was nothing to it or beyond it to reach. There was nowhere else to go. That realisation was repeated over and over. There is no divine purpose, higher world, meaning, or future evolution to escape into. There is only me, here, now. I have to be self responsible and self creative or be unconscious, driftwood on the sea of life.

Years ago I had an insight that I put into these words –

I am a wave on a shoreless sea.
From no beginning
I travel to no goal,
Making my movements stillness.
Constantly I am arriving
And departing,
Being born and dying.
I am always with you
And yet have never been.

This was all experienced while in a state of waking lucid dreaming – Waking Lucid Dreaming; Opening to Life – Integration – meeting oneself – The Wave – Life’s Little Secrets