Don't Touch with Wrong Intentions

I remember once sitting on a bus, looking out the window and thinking some deep thoughts. For some reason, I do my best thinking when I travel. There’s something about the fast pace of the world outside, seeing one thing from the next and having absolutely no clue who went there, who saw this, or who once did this or that in this place or that place and so on and so forth. But, in the fall of 2010, I remember thinking to myself while staring out of the bus window, “If there is a God, then why is there no good challenge for me?”

At this point in my life, I had been meditating for nearly three and a half years and had found what I thought was Nirvana. I was at peace with my being, I was at peace in my mind, and I had already felt satisfied in nearly all conceivable ways. The only thing that struck me as strange and odd was the lack of difficulty of diving into these highly rewarding meditative states of mind. I could slip into perfect bliss with only minutes of concentration, and yet, having the ease of access, the ability to do such was simply not enough for me. I had to move into a sphere of existence that offered more challenge, more difficulty, something that helped me feel as if I was growing. Where I was, just wasn’t cutting it. I thought it was a curse to strive for so long, with such intensity and devotion, only to find something simple. A simple existence, a simple truth, a simple process. That was simply far too simple for me. I had to dive deeper, I had to get more from this. Meditation couldn’t be simply this and that was it. I wanted something that would truly pull on my being in a more extreme way, a way that challenged everything that I had ever known.

I simply looked out the window and thought; “Fuck you Universe, is this all you got? Give me something more challenging!”

It seemed that within one year, I did indeed discover something more challenging than I had ever imagined possible. I had discovered a new way to race to the top of this bliss, then supercharge it to the point of overwhelmed intensity. It was too much for my mind to comprehend, and while I was there for that brief moment, I remember challenging myself even further. I reached this mental space, then at its height, I used this insight to push even further. I whispered to myself in this overwhelming energy “I want to master this.” Then I was quickly expelled faster than any ‘student’ could be and fell into a dark spiral. A feeling clouded my mind with an equal opposite. It challenged me with its dark envelope, devoured all the simple pleasures, and consumed my mind with an intensity. I had gotten what I wished for.

It was as if, the mere fear of running from those things that I struggle with in daily life had walked into my mind and wasn’t going to leave. It wasn’t going to leave with simple techniques, not with calming music, not with anything I had known before. This new feeling haunted me for just over 7 years, a feeling I couldn’t shake no matter how intent I was at “curing” this new found difficulty. Everything from ideas of who I was, from the beliefs I held, was melted all at once, and everything in my mind fell to its knees with extreme fear. It was as if I was blasted into the heavens, only to see its vastness, its overwhelming charge, and potential, to only look back at my meager identity. Seeing myself naked before the huge, vast, dangerous, exciting, wonderful but equally disgusting extreme of everything had shocked my being to the core. Albeit, it was a very tiny, cocky, and naive core, it was left with nothing to repair, nothing to grow.

And let you know, I was the “pro” at positive encouragement, positive self-talk, blissful states of mind, everything that was known in all traditional senses of “good” and “loving” were blown away like a nuclear blast of pure white light devouring all things seen as holy and good. All of it was gone within moments. It shook everything I had thought or known as a stable point of bliss, of peace, and of good. Nothing in my mental landscape stood with an inkling of confidence. Everything devoured in jest of pure satisfaction, on levels my mind had never fathomed possible. Everything was more satisfied than I had known in the sense of satisfaction, and now, I knew nothing in this world that could usurp this new experience. Of course, what are you to do but run in fear? A power so overwhelming in so many senses of the word cannot be gracefully picked up, as if it were a usual experience. It stood as a megalithic monolith in a silence that enveloped every memory.

My identity, my sense of self, it fell in a wind of all en-composing light. A pureness that was so pure, nothing could touch it, nothing. It was as if it was protected from any darkened intention. Nothing could come back to it with any confidence, for even that had an assumption built into its core; shattered at the moment its presence was felt. Something too profound for a simpleton, and by god, everything became complex again. If only those things came with a warning label.