Quotes from Bonnie L. Greenwell

Emptiness can feel like a dark night of the soul, as described by Saint John of the Cross,18 because it is disorienting for the egoic self, which strives hard to keep us identified with our roles, emotions, and thoughts. But once we understand the nature of emptiness, we may fall in love with it, and then become it.

On the other hand, those who believe kundalini is the mechanism that leads to enlightenment are often skeptical about the non-dual teaching that awakening can be sudden and without preparation. Their perspective is that the body is involved in transformation, which makes cultivation through practices essential.

I cannot avoid seeing the so-called dreamworld of life with all its challenge, suffering, joy, and possibility. I feel we know and live in two worlds: infinite consciousness and ordinary expressions of material life. To me, we are the wondrous expressions of form within a timeless, unlimited vastness.

We appear in order to have our experiences.

Awareness and consciousness are suddenly clear and expansive, undisturbed, and undivided by thought. The experience may be accompanied by great insight, ecstatic bliss, or a mystical infusion of light, love, and vision.

clearly remembering who you are: one with all existence. Therefore, the universal consciousness within you awakens itself.

There was only joy, awe, and amazement.

Her momentary awakening can be called a "glimpse of freedom" or a "touch of grace." Many who experience it feel distressed when it passes, but its transience can offer encouragement to keep entering the silence of meditation

It requires continual alignment with the truth we have seen while awakening. It is more enduring—and therefore more challenging—than having initial moments of awakening.

Enlightenment" describes a natural consciousness and presence that is fully awakened to its own true nature. This liberation, as I'll explore in Part Three, feels like freedom, peace, and at times an irrepressible love without conditions. We deeply relax into life, and a way of being unfolds that does not feel at all personal.

Most have neither done a practice nor had a conscious longing for awakening.2 Many spiritual teachers speculate that this is happening because we live in desperate times and need an influx of aware, creative, compassionate people who will actively serve others and contribute fresh ideas. This is a radical change from the traditional spiritual path of withdrawing from society and from the 1960s movements when young people felt a need to drop out of the mainstream to seek social alternatives.

For hundreds of years, their recorded writings—whether nuns or poets, inspired teachers or artists—have described a division, or painful restlessness, within themselves prior to a moment of illumination when a great light or descent of grace fell upon them.

Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Paul of Tarsus, and Milarepa the Tibetan saint are examples of the sudden transformation from fighter to spiritual seeker. Siddhartha was a wealthy prince and father, but when he saw suffering and death for the first time, he plunged dramatically into a spiritual search, leaving home to pursue truth and to become the enlightened Buddha.

Many among us were abused or neglected as children, experienced trauma or violence, or report chronic illness

Journeying from despair into a transformed perspective, through energy, is common for many people who awaken without understanding or preparation

Many scriptures suggest this longing arises from an unconscious, deeper part of self that wants to be remembered.

Knowing the truth and feeling the spirit leap are kinesthetic and cellular, which is how awakening expands us into the unfamiliar territory of enlightenment

What is predictable after an awakening or mystical insight is that the trajectory of our life is changed. We undergo a process of restructuring our energy, consciousness, and lifestyle.

And as we awaken, our collective experience awakens. As the Buddha reportedly said, "When I woke up, the world woke up.

it is a natural, human potential that offers greater clarity, wisdom, and peace to us personally, to the culture we live in, and to the earth as a whole.

True freedom is moving beyond all clinging and attachments, whether mystical or mundane. It is not a moving beyond enjoyment of either, just releasing the tendency to make demands or have expectations regarding one's experience.

When we are in a deeply spiritual transition we can lose interest in work, social interactions, and other life activities. We can feel lost when a familiar enthusiasm has vanished or we struggle to find the motivation to engage the world. This is a stage of awakening. It can last for a long time, and our old drives will not return in the same familiar forms. Peter was thirty-eight when he had an abrupt and intense energy awakening and psychic opening.

You may feel love and compassion for everyone, but that does not mean you can continue to be in environments or with people who are hostile or toxic. You may need to leave.