What Fell Away at The Break

         Recently, I went to Suzanne Segal’s book, Collision With the Infinite, to look up something. I ran into what she said were Transcendental Meditation’s three stages of enlightenment: cosmic, God, and unity consciousness. I was struck before, but more so now, by how they measure enlightenment not by the absence or presence of ego, but rather by what had come to stay in awareness. In fact, even when Ms. Segal finally found someone, a Buddhist, to explain her decade long feeling of the absence of the self and the fear that filled that void, he told her she was in bliss because of her awareness of what she called the Vastness. He dismissed the fear she felt, which clearly indicated ego was still present.

So, the TM and Buddhist measurement of enlightenment is not ego’s absence but, the Presence of the Light in conscious awareness. The Light is called many things. I call It Spirit and Ms. Segal called It Vastness. In the TM tradition, the first stage of enlightenment (cosmic) is described as an ever-present observer.

If I go by that designation, then enlightenment came to this consciousness in 2011, when I became aware that The Enlightened Mind was here. It did not leave my awareness after that realization. I wrote in my journal at the time that I felt I’d left behind a shack (ego) and entered a Mansion (Spirit). But I felt I was only in an anteroom or foyer. I couldn’t seem to get beyond the entrance. And I was still measuring enlightenment by the absence of ego, which was still decidedly present. Also, the awareness that The Enlightened Mind was here did not come with bells and whistles. There were no mystical experiences. It came to me quietly during meditation. I knew it was important, but I did not feel a shift. I had experienced Spirit-consciousness before, and I felt it was near but not quite here. I experienced a significant change in perspective but not a change in consciousness. And that shift in consciousness had always been my measure for enlightenment.

That shift came seven years after The Enlightened Mind came to stay. They were seven years of increasing discomfort for ego, culminating in the moment I call The Break. (See my memoir.) I felt as though I shot upward in consciousness. I came to realize I was in a new experience of existence. And something distinctly fell away at the moment of The Break, what I felt confident to say was ego, even though aspects of ego continued as usual. Eventually, I understood what happened in that moment was Spirit took the center of this consciousness, knocking ego out of that position.

I now know there were two other times in Liz’s life when Spirit was here. The one I knew about Liz’s whole adult life was when she was twenty and became a student of A Course in Miracles. She had what I thought were her first mystical experiences, including the vision of the holy relationship and a direct revelation of God. It is a time I call The Young Golden as the Golden Light of Christ hung around for a while. But I now have recovered memories of a time as a child when Liz had mystical experiences and Spirit hovered around for a couple of years. I was aware that there was Something Else that could live in this consciousness. These experiences were entirely forgotten until they began to surface three years ago. The experiences of The Childhood Golden were closer to what I experience now. But I do not consider these early episodes of Spirit enlightenment because there was no shift in consciousness. They occurred in the context of ego. And these episodes passed as ego advanced in consciousness here again and continued as its center.

I was told that after an experience like The Break, ego continues to wind down. And, indeed, it has. Its power is gone now that it is not the center of this consciousness. But aspects of it have remained, and I have been curious about what exactly fell away at The Break. It was something so fundamental to ego that I felt comfortable saying ego was gone although other aspects were still here and could be triggered. I often said it was ego’s identification with the person that fell away.

I can describe all the things ego does, like projection, judgement, asserting its reality through ideas and feelings, how it uses relationships to validate its seeming existence, etc. But even when ego is not doing these, ego is here. These are what ego does, not what ego is. There is a fundamental difference between the experiences of ego and Spirit. What is that? The bedrock of the ego experience is gone. What was it?

I began to feel it was a mask or façade, not as in something ego presented to the world, but as in something it hid behind. Then one day I remembered what it felt like when whatever fell away was here. I recalled experientially how real ego and its world were, how unconscious ego felt compared to how I feel now. And I realized what fell away, the bedrock of the ego experience, was ego’s denial of God (Reality). Replaced by the Idea of God, Spirit, ego’s fundamental unconsciousness to God was no longer the center of this consciousness.

Ego’s denial of God is not intellectual or a lack of belief in God. Ego’s fundamental unconsciousness to God characterizes the whole ego experience of existence, it is what makes it seem real. And it is not that what is left of ego has come to accept God is Reality. Ego’s remaining aspects continue to assert ego’s reality, but with ever diminishing power. They cannot “catch on” and bring back that other experience of unconsciousness to God.

Since The Break, this mind has gone on a Grand Tour of Ego and a review of Liz’s life. Without denial of God, ego is exposed as never before, both its mechanisms, its aspects, and its story for the person-as-reality. I felt the personal identify fell from ego at The Break because ego identified with consciousness through a person, and this consciousness is now occupied by Spirit. I have described what is left of ego as being like a machine without its housing. That is exactly what it is. Its housing was denial of God, which is impossible with Spirit as the center of consciousness, no matter how much the machinery of ego still grinds away trying to convince itself of its reality.

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