Hi Joseph

Thank you for your contact.

With regards to your frustration, there is a very important point to grasp here. An experience is only an experience while it is new. Just like walking out into the fresh air, or some pain ceasing, it is wonderful for a while until it becomes the norm. No experience lasts. Once you have it, you become it. There are seekers who spend many years trying to get back an experience, not realising they have become it or gone beyond it.

The second point, following on from the first, Self-Realisation is simply to realise what you already are, and as such there is no 'experience' in it, in the conventional sense. If anything it could be said to be the absence of experience. I say I am Enlightened and therefore fit into all the definitions of 'Oneness' and Non-Duality etc, but these labels are only describing the first experience of it. Having lived in the state for a while, there is only 'this'. It could perhaps be said there is not even 'Non-Duality' as that itself implies an alternative which is not the truth here now. Simply 'I am this' (whatever 'this' is).

I don't meditate. I simply practised (while I did) being aware of where I was and of what I was feeling. It doesn't matter what you are feeling, whether it is being as peaceful as being alone on a mountain top miles from anywhere with your mind as still as a frozen lake, or in a mental tornado of emotion and struggles, it doesn't matter. The point is, you should be conscious (as much as you can) of whatever is there/here. You can enjoy the peace while it is there, but while there is disturbance within you it is a chance to get rid of old emotion and thus you will be more conscious and aware afterwards. As we know, every time we are emotional, it is stored within the psyche to come up later each time we are hurt or disturbed. Being conscious in these times will turn the emotion into consciousness (for want of a better way of describing it) and you are less emotional and more conscious from then on.

So keep well and keep going. All's well. You are always in the right place doing the right thing. There are no mistakes here, though there are painful lessons sometimes.

Hope some of this is of use to you.

Let me know how it goes.

Nick Roach

Nick Roach Teachings