2023: The Year in Review

[mbready]

@Michele1

the world - as it appears to be - dissolved and I was suddenly aware

We have a lot in common . If I can remember correctly the term is sudden experiencers.

@mbready

From ‘Dreams of Light’:

“Most people move through the two preliminary phases of hearing and contemplating before they actually wake up to the experience of emptiness but a rare group can directly experience it before they understand it. Emptiness is the discovery of reality, so on one hand it’s not surprising that some people can glimpse it without preparation. But they often don’t know what to do with it. They have no choice but to download the ineffable experience into the realm of the effable, into their pre-existing conceptual frameworks and worldview. Without proper understanding, problems often begin. If you don’t have a framework to relate to the totally unframed (emptiness), you might come unframed as you try to understand what you’ve experienced. The direct experience of emptiness-to put it more bluntly, the truth of your inherent nonexistence-can be frightening to the fully framed ego. Emptiness is the death, or transcendence, of the ego. Emptiness is egolessness. If you’re not properly prepared, instead of opening your mind the experience of emptiness might blow your mind. This is why many “sudden experiencers” those who aren’t prepared, struggle to retrofit the phase of understanding after they’ve had an experiential glimpse of emptiness. On an absolute or transcendental level, they “got it”; on a relative or conceptual level they don’t get it. Many people are then baffled, wondering, “What the heck was that?” or “How do I relate to that?””
-Andrew Holecek

This is the full post from that quote.

What brought you to this community?

It’s tough to elaborate completely on this one because it was quite a while ago, and I referenced a lot from ‘Dreams of Light’ to those around me. It helped with my own integration and helped the people around me gain a better understanding of some of the things I had been experiencing. But before getting to Andrew’s book and how I ultimately ended up here, it is important to start a couple months back. My stable life became unhinged as I was reading ‘A Course in Miracles’ and similar books, …