1. Christian: Orison (Introversion) Christian meditation and prayer.
Conversion: Here a practitioner converts from an external to an internal emphasis, as the search for Truth, or God begins. Practitioner has good intentions, and prays or meditates occasionally.
Eastern: Practitioner begins to question life.
2. Christian: Conversion deepens: Reading books, listening to sermons, cultivating a circle of spiritual friends. Begins occasional meditation.
Eastern: The spiritual path and meditation practice begins.
3. Christian: Purgation: Transformation of character, in order to reach higher levels of consciousness of reality or God. Seeing our sins, our greed, hatred and illusions, and with the assistance of God and meditation, dissolving them.
Mortification: The old character is erased. Self interests and attachments are gotten rid of. The old personality is sublimated. This is total death to all old attachments. The old inclinations to human pleasures and satisfactions are eliminated. There is only the desire to please God, or to become enlightened. There will be many physical and mental tortures during this process depending upon and equal to our attachments to things of the world.
Eastern: This is self-simplification, a stripping away of the superfluous, unreal and harmful things. Detachment and poverty, both materially and physiologically where we don't know anything, and with faith we meditate. This is painful but necessary.
4. Christian: Awakening
Awakening (supernatural infused prayer): consolations and spiritual delight are experienced here.
Consolations: Our own efforts augmented by Gods grace. Purification, simplification, and non-attachment: Speech and dress become conservative, but an attachment to wealth, health, material security, and honor remains.
Spiritual delight: Begins with God and overflows into us without our effort. Spiritual delight is passive, as we allow the intellect to operate, different than one-pointedness concentration, but we don't allow the intellect to operate without our being aware that it is operating, and therefore we in essence, prohibit the intellect from carrying us away to worldly thought.
Eastern: One-pointed concentration Meditation becomes more regular, and a taste for practice is developing, as the meditator practices dispassion, desirelessness and detachment in his or her daily life. There is a resignation from all social and business activities, other than those required to earn a living, and additional acquisitions of property or increased income levels are abandoned. No further attempts are made to climb any social or worldly ladders, and life becomes simplified. Samatha, dyana or one-pointed concentration now lead to jhanas, or states of absorption.
Passive meditation (Zen: shikantaza, just sitting) is practiced, withdrawing all faculties inward, with no action on the part of the mind. No thinking, and no thinking about not thinking. The intellect is allowed to function, but nothing is held on to.
A constant awareness of the kilesas (Greed, hatred and delusion) develops.
An investigation and mindfulness of body, feelings, mind and thoughts begins, including an investigation and awareness of the I: thought.
5. Christian: Quiet
Illumination: The body does not see, the body does not feel, ears do not hear, tongue can't speak. Externally the mystic is in a trance; mentally he is unified with God in exalted perception.
Ecstasy: The identification with God, a unity of consciousness which can no longer discern God as an object of thought. This excludes all analytical thought. All mental, emotional and physical faculties are suspended.
Rapture: This comes more suddenly than ecstasy. A violent and uncontrollable expression of genius for the Absolute.
When all of these experiences pass, the practitioner descends down into normal life again.
Consciousness of the Absolute: The mystic is full of joy and pleasure,. punctuated by periods of purgation and suffering. He or she is certain that they are going toward God, and God becomes more real than touching and seeing. But the practitioner is still separate from God, unlike the unitive state to be experienced later where he or she is totally merged with the absolute, and sees God in all things. Everything is imbued with divinity.
Eastern: 2nd through 8th Jhana. To know that everything in life is connected, the interconnectedness of the universe. This is Stream Entry, the giving up of a permanent personality, giving up religion and dogma, and any doubt that this practice will succeed. Also, there will be a weakening of lust or strong sense desires, and of hatred or aversion. Then the practitioner will come to know the true self or soul completely, which is never born and never die. Silence, emptiness, and awareness of all things at all times is achieved now. This is pure awareness, your true being, but you have not yet merged with the universal consciousness.
6. Christian: Dark Night
The growing soul needs much courage here. There will be many trials and tribulations. There will be opposition from others, i.e., praise, which becomes a trial, severe illnesses, fears of being on the wrong track or rejected by God, anxiety and depression. This can be sprinkled with delights as well, however, and there is also much joy and humility, and a rejection of things of the world. The exhausted soul at this point must withdraw from the ecstasies and raptures of the previous stages. It feels as if God has abandoned it and you are only a beginner who must fend for him or herself, as all the weaknesses and fears of the novice return. This is a phase of passive purgation where the self can do nothing, as it is cast into the shadow of death and the torments of hell. This is all because of the belief that you are still a separate self. You have not yet attained unity, which is the next step. Alone now without spiritual friends, everything that one does is a failure. There is no relief, he or she is truly nothing, has nothing and desires nothing. This is the utter purification, and complete humility is established. He or she can only wait now.
Eastern: You are in total darkness, silence and alone. Helpless, you must not strive anymore. You just surrender, and wait for your karma or grace to carry you. This could take years . . . or weeks, as long as it takes to see through the false idea of self. This is the field of the true spiritual warrior where everything will be taken away, and there remains restlessness, ego-conceit and ignorance, the final hurdles for the enlightened being.
7. Christian: Union or the Unitive Life.
In the fifth and sixth steps above, the soul is blind and deaf. In this seventh step, God opens your eyes. You do not lose balance or go into ecstasy. This is union with Christ, or enlightenment, as you now live like Christ and do good deeds. With internal calm, the good works need not be great, but are done with complete love and compassion. One serves those closest first. You go back into the world to serve the world, yet be not a part of the world. You breathe rarified air that others don't breathe. You are an ambassador for God, or the absolute. You are proof that communion with God or reality is achievable. All human desires are taken away as you are immersed in the divine will. The I, ME, and the Mine is renounced.
Eastern: This is the ultimate state of consciousness. Everything you touch will be mended and healed within the grace or karmic credit of the recipient. You are now a beacon to your community, country and the universe in this state of ultimate reality. There is no division between God and yourself, only differing aspects of the One, without a second. The realized person sees the seamless garment of Being, and seeing it, brings his or her activities in alignment with it. He or she sees that all is cosmic consciousness, and that there is only consciousness. The practitioner wakes up from the dream of conventional life, generated by the ego-based sense of a separate self. Its not so much that they are within the cosmos, but that the cosmos is within them. This web of interconnectedness is universal consciousness. The practitioner uses his or her tools of their physical body, emotions and intellectual mind to serve humankind and the earth. There is no reaching universal consciousness, the practitioner is already that, and there is only consciousness. All phenomenal existence is seen as illusion.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at the Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation Retreat Sanctuary (www.dhammarocksprings.org), and author of A Year to Enlightenment. His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Thervada Buddhist monk.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
tweet this!