I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately. One of the greatest enlightened sages to ever live, Ramana Maharshi, was once asked, “How should we treat others?”
He replied, “There are no others.”
To a lot of people, this won’t make any sense. But when you look closer, what he’s pointing to is that what you really are deep down – consciousness itself – is not different for any person.
The consciousness that is shining out of my eyes is exactly the same consciousness that is shining out of your eyes.
It is all one. Literally.
The reason most people don’t see this, apart from the enlightened few, is because we have been taught from the time we were little babies to regard ourselves as separate and distinct from everything around us.
But this isn’t how we start out.
When a baby is born, they have no sense of me vs other. Their experience is just a whole bunch of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch.
They’re hard-wired to have preferences. They like the sound of their mother’s voice and dislike loud noises. But they don’t see themselves as separate from these experiences.
Then people start pointing at them and saying this weird sound that they eventually come to know as “my name”.
A mental construct of them as a distinct and separate self then starts to build.
This is very convincing. The mind is extremely powerful at clouding over the blatantly obvious fact that everything is one.
And this is reinforced and reinforced by society to the point that it really feels like we’re a separate self, distinct from everything around us.
Then some people start to question this through various means.
Maybe they see that it doesn’t make much sense from the point of view of neuroscience that there’s a special place in the brain where our “self” resides.
Maybe they come across the teachings of an enlightened person and start to examine what experiential evidence there is for this self.
Maybe they have a spontaneous awakening where they see this clearly with no clear “path” to this realization.
Whatever the case, these awakenings are taking place in greater and greater number all around the world. There really is a great rise in both the realization and discussion of this topic.
So what about you? How would your life change if you were to see clearly that everything is one and there is no true separation? How would the world look if a great mass of people started to realize this?
As the late comedian Bill Hicks once famously said, “What’s going to happen to the arms industry when we realize we’re all one?”
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Yin Yang: An image that perfectly encapsulates the paradoxical “half-truth” nature of reality
I’ve been mulling over the most recent article I wrote – “The Illusion of Free Will” for a couple of weeks now, and the thing is – I don’t really agree with it. At least, not fully.
This is going to be
an article where you don’t get any set, defined answers, so if you
don’t like articles of that kind, skip over this one now.
The question of
whether humans – or any sentient being – has free will was one of
the first big philosophical questions I ran into in my undergraduate
science degree.
At the time, I had
an assumed belief that humans had free will, that we were ultimately
responsible for the decisions we made, and should be held accountable
for our actions. The more I looked into this belief, however, the
less it seemed to make sense.
In order to really
explain my “position” on this, I’m going to have to get quite
deep. Think ultimate nature of reality deep.
I think the best way
to do that is with a diagram. This will obviously be limited too, but
it’s the best way I know how to convey my perspective.
The Three Levels of Reality
At the ultimate
level, there’s the Source of all existence. The ultimate One. The
Infinite reality.
This is beyond the
dualistic mind of humans. Beyond good and evil. Beyond right and
wrong. Beyond this versus that.
As the Heart Sutra
of Mahayana Buddhism states: “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi
svaha” which translates to “Gone, gone, gone beyond, totally gone
beyond.”
Welcome to reality.
This is the annihilation of the separate self. The ultimate
perspective on reality. The eradication of distinction.
Not everyone wants
this. Even those on the spiritual path, not many of those truly want
ultimate truth – they want to just make their lives a little
better.
That’s fine.
Everyone has their path to walk, walk it freely as long as you
choose!
I think this is the
path I have chosen, however. Do I know that for a fact? No. It’s
quite possible to me that I could stop short of this so long as my
life was enjoyable.
There’s a part of
me that feels I won’t be satisfied until I know the ultimate
perspective however. Time will tell as far as that’s concerned.
Which brings me to
the point of this post, which is kind of a rebuttal against my last
post.
Even though
ultimately everything is one, and ultimately everything comes from
the same source, there is still simultaneously distinction. The
Infinite reality can split itself up as much as it likes and still
remain infinite.
And that’s what
humans are. A splitting off of infinity.
Life is
simultaneously all one and yet has distinctions within it.
Which is where the
question of free will, along with the existence of the self, becomes
a bit blurry.
Ultimately if there
is only one and no separation, then obviously there can’t be any
true free will or true separate self.
But within that reality, there exist the *appearance* of distinction. And those appearances are still relevant. They still have their own unique makeup. Their distinct preferences.
This is where, from
my perspective, life becomes not a simple yes or no answer, but more
like a three-layered answer.
There’s the ultimate perspective. Then there’s the unique individuation. Then there’s the mental construct or ego level of identification.
The third layer, the
ego layer, is the one that I think is entirely illusory and that
humankind would be much better off getting rid of entirely.
But that still
leaves the unique individuation level. The level where life is seen
from the ultimate perspective but acknowledges the distinct
manifestations of that ultimate one.
And that’s where
it could be said that “free will” is not an entirely erroneous
concept.
If a unique
individuation has a desire, and the freedom to act upon that desire,
then for all intents and purposes that could be said to be a free
choice.
The issue is not so
much about answering a question definitively as it is about removing
set belief systems.
The belief in true
free will is problematic, just as the belief in no free will is
problematic. The question instead becomes “from what perspective
are you asking that question?”
Because the answer
differs depending on what perspective you’re asking the question
from.
So, do we have free
will? Yes and no. Does the self exist? Yes and no. Is this answer
going to satisfy you? Yes and no.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
First, let me get something out of the way: I don’t necessarily believe I have schizophrenia. I had a psychotic episode with schizophrenic features, but as any psychiatrist will tell you, one psychotic episode does not a schizophrenic make. In fact, according to the US National Institute of Mental Health, three out of every 100 people will experience psychosis at some point in their lives.
Now, one of my doctors said they believed I showed psychotic symptoms at an earlier point in my life, but I disagree with that diagnosis. That was in relation to my belief in extraterrestrial life, which I supported with evidence (see my previous article, “Evidence for the Existence of Extraterrestrial Life” for more on that). Another doctor was less convinced I have schizophrenia — he was more open to the possibility of this being a one-off or a “brief psychotic episode”, the type three out of every 100 people will experience.
Nevertheless, it’s my opinion that I had a one-off at this
point. The future of my life will be more revealing as to what
exactly may be going on with my mind, but I await further evidence
before labelling myself as schizophrenic.
Secondly, I have been on a spiritual path for the last 7 years
where the express goal of that path is to attain “enlightenment”
by transcending the limits of the human mind. This is not an easy
thing. It requires you to deeply examine all your belief systems, and
ultimately let go of all your belief systems so you view the world
directly as it is in awareness rather than through the filtered, and
often erroneous, prism of the human mind.
I believe this second thing is the main cause of what I went through, given my psychosis happened after an intense experience during a meditation weekend. I believe I am on the path of awakening, and the path of awakening is not always easy, and can sometimes lead you down a very rocky road.
This isn’t to downplay the severity of what I went through or
the consequences of it, which you can read in my first article, “My
disastrous spiritual awakening”. What I went through that evening
and the weeks leading up to it was the scariest thing I’ve ever
experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I believed — more
out of uncertainty than anything else — that I may have become
a target of “negative beings” in the universe, and in my
ambulance trip to the hospital I thought I had finally been captured
by them and was being taken to be tortured and possibly killed. I
can’t really explain the terror of believing something like that
was happening. The fear was paralyzing.
But that is why I don’t necessarily believe I’m schizophrenic.
I believe that what happened was directly a result of my spiritual
path in which I was attempting to transcend the mind. The consequence
of this is that the mind begins to break down — it has to in
order to see beyond it. And I believe it just so happened that in my
case my mind breaking down — while becoming more and more open
minded (I am probably the most open-minded person I know! Some might
say too open-minded!) led, because of some deep-seated fears of mine,
to experiencing a very scary scenario.
This leads into my next point, and the subtitle of my article,
that: everyone is a little bit psychotic.
At some point in our evolutionary history, humans started to
develop language. We started to make sounds and point at things to
communicate to each other what we were seeing. This was an
immeasurable benefit to the development of our species. It allowed us
to let others know what was happening, even if they weren’t
experiencing it themselves.
This started to become more and more detailed, to the point that
we were making up *stories* about what was happening.
This is when the trouble began, however. Stories are useful so
long as they accurately reflect the details of a situation, but often
they don’t. Often they are inaccurate stories based on inaccurate
conclusions, and stories that can become so detached from reality
that they could themselves be labelled as psychotic. This is why I
think intrinsic to human language is the propensity to be somewhat
“psychotic” — that is, to break from reality and become
“just a story” in someone’s head.
We humans have a lot of these stories. Stories like “I’m a
good person because of A”, or “I’m a bad person because of B”.
Stories like “the world is a scary place”, or stories like “the
world is a good place”. These are all just stories, but they’re
stories that the majority of the human population has at least some
of, and usually a lot of.
Language is an invaluable tool so long as it sticks with our
actual experience, but often human stories are so detached from
actual experience that there’s no real basis for them at all. Yet
we believe them anyway.
Why? Because stories are what we use to try and keep us safe. We
think if we just *understand* things enough, then we can know how to
navigate this life we find ourselves in.
My contention is that no stories are ultimately true, they are
simply relating a perspective of one individual to another. Some
stories are at least somewhat accurate — they convey useful
information that is grounded in experience. But a lot are not. A lot
are so abstracted and detached from reality that there’s no basis
for them at all. This is what happens when someone becomes
“psychotic”. Their minds have become the sole ruler of their
internal world, and has created stories within stories to the point
of not being based on anything legitimately occurring in their
experience.
Most human beliefs are like this. In fact all are. In my opinion there should be no such thing as a belief. A belief is what happens when you say “I have all the relevant data and I have made this conclusion” and you stop looking at any evidence which might contradict that viewpoint. But why would you ever want to stop being open to evidence potentially countering your viewpoint? This is why the subtitle of this article is “everyone is a little bit psychotic” — because everyone has some of these beliefs rolling around their heads. It may be “I’m not good enough”, or “I’m not attractive enough”, or “I’m not likable enough”, or conversely “I’m great”, “I’m the best at this”, or “I’m the most popular person around.”
When has nature ever looked at a flower and come to one of these conclusions about it? When has a tree ever looked at its withering leaves and thought, “I don’t deserve to be here”? So why do humans do it? Why are humans the only ones who come up with these crazy stories about themselves and about the world?
The truth is, you are fantastic just as you are. With all your
faults, all your blemishes, all your past embarrassments and
failures, you are fantastic just as you are. Why? Because you are
living in this incredibly complex and mystifying world and you are
doing your best to navigate it, while trying to manage all the crazy
stories going around about who you are and what you’re worth.
So, how does it feel to be labelled as schizophrenic? Well, it feels pretty normal. I went through a period of my stories taking over completely and losing touch with what was real and what wasn’t, but now I’m back. I don’t believe any of the stories my mind comes up with about myself or about the world, I just think to myself, “hmm, that’s an interesting perspective you have there”, and that’s about it.
The truth is, we actually don’t need stories as much as we think
we do. Some of them can be very useful to navigate the world, so long
as they’re based on our direct experience, but so many of them are
simply just stories. A byproduct of our species developing very
sophisticated language. And along with that, a whole lot of suffering
that no other animal on the planet experiences to the same degree.
So why not just get rid of all your stories that you can’t be
certain about. I’ll bet you there’s really not much left once you
do that. Just the practical everyday things the mind can be useful
for. e.g. I drove to the store today to pick up some food. Great.
Awesome story based on direct experience. But how about all the other
ones we come up with along the way? Are those really necessary? Are
they based in certifiable direct evidence, or are they just a crazy
story you picked up somewhere along the way?
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
As humans, we often like to think of ourselves as very rational, intelligent beings. We like to think that we make decisions based in rationality and observing all the facts at hand.
I argue this is not the case, and that our emotions are actually the driving force behind most of our decision making, not the other way around.
You can see this in day-to-day conversations where people have instantaneous negative (or positive) reactions to a given proposition, when they clearly haven’t had the time to really consider the proposition in question.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume was one of the main proponents of this idea – that we accept or reject propositions based on how it affects us emotionally rather than whether the proposition makes sense.
This may sound like a dreary view of humanity, but it isn’t. You see, I think our emotions are excellent guides for how to live life. The problem is when these emotions are repressed (because we try to avoid uncomfortable feelings), and are thus turned into distorted and conflicting emotions.
In my opinion, this is why girls and women are often considered “crazy”. It’s not because emotions are inherently crazy; it’s because we’ve suppressed our emotions in society to such an extent that they are bottled up until they explode in unhealthy and irrational ways.
But emotions can be rational. Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly felt, “I shouldn’t be here”? That’s not a rational response, it’s an emotional one, and if the person pays attention to their emotions, they’re often giving us very good advice. The “gut feelings” we have about things, so long as our emotions are not suppressed and distorted, are usually very accurate perceivers of what is going on in any situation.
As far as I see it, emotions should be the basis for how we navigate life. We should leave the mind to doing what it does best: sorting out practical things that need to be done – not ascertaining the ultimate truth of any given situation.
I think the reason humans live in such a conflicted state is precisely because of this avoidance of emotion. We hate experiencing negative emotions so we’ll do anything to avoid that, even if it means agreeing with propositions that are clearly untrue, just to remain comfortable in our safe small bubble of false emotion.
I have experienced this in my own life. To take one example, a friend was talking to me about 911 once, and how she thought that the official story was bogus (a sentiment I now agree with). At the time however, I was in such a protected state of emotional avoidance that I forcefully rejected her proposition before she even got a chance to state it.
Why? Because considering the fact that some shady things had gone down on 911 made me feel very uncomfortable. It made me question my version of reality with something quite horrible, and I wasn’t emotionally equipped to be able to deal with that.
I can see this now in people I talk to about this. Some people are open, some people react badly and want to shut down the conversation straight away.
In my case, this was clearly a distorted emotional response to something when it should have been a rational and intellectual discussion of a topic.
The same goes with any difficult truths you are trying to share. I am now of the belief that extraterrestrials exist, and when talking to people about it, I can see some people are open to it, and some people shut down the conversation straight away without even hearing any of the evidence I am presenting.
This is a very strange phenomenon. Wouldn’t we all want to listen to all perspectives and evidence in order to ascertain truth? Why shut down a debate before it has even begun?
The reason, again, I think is simple. Our days are mostly spent trying to experience good emotions and avoid bad ones. This is what Henry David Thoreau was pointing to when he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
So, what to do with all this knowledge then?
I think the answer is clear: We need to get more in touch with our emotions. Understand them better. Be conscious of what is happening inside us so we can make sane decisions on any given topic, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction of accept or reject based purely on not wanting to feel uncomfortable.
The best way to do this I believe is through meditation. While meditation can be a very difficult thing to maintain – after all, we are facing up to uncomfortable emotions inside us – it is only when we are willing to do that, when we are truly willing to allow anger, fear, sadness be present in us and move with those emotions rather than running away from them, can we truly become rational creatures. Only then can we live up to our name of Homo sapiens – by definition, discerning, wise, and sensible.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
One of the reasons I find it difficult to write sometimes is not that I have writers block — there are lots of things I could write about — but instead, as I’ve moved along my spiritual path, I’ve begun to see degrees of logic and validity in what almost everyone says. I can see their point of view, even if I think it’s only a fragmented view, or missing the bigger picture, I can still see the truth in it.
I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that there’s a quote which says: “An appreciation for paradox and ambiguity are a good measure of spiritual progress.” I think this is very true. The more I delved into any topic, the more I could see the logic of both sides of most arguments. Some were better arguments than others (some are obviously totally gibberish), but in almost all of them I could still see the valid point they were making.
Which leaves me in an interesting position, both with writing but also in social situations. I’ve always been a pretty quiet person, but now in conversation there’s so much more silence coming from my end because I find myself disagreeing with people a lot less. I may not agree 100% with what they’re saying, but I can agree with it partly.
So when someone asks me my opinion on something, it’s always a tricky thing to answer.
Some questions are easy, “Do you prefer apples or oranges?” Answer: oranges. Easy.
But when the conversations become more complex, there are so many different perspectives to consider, and so many contradictory truths coming from both sides that I find myself in a very odd position of not really being able to answer concisely. I usually end up with a long response which goes something like the article I’m writing here.
Take politics for example. I used to consider myself a left wing type of person, and I think many people would still consider me that today, but over the years I’ve gained a lot of appreciation for the opposing side of politics and the valid points they make. (they also make a lot of invalid ones in my opinion, which is why I don’t consider myself a right-winger).
But let’s take a look at one simple example: unemployment benefits. I’m lucky enough to live in a country where these are available for those unable to work for various reasons. It provides something to fall back on when times are tough, and I think this is a great service offered by our government. However, there’s a counter-argument which also has some validity: If you hand out free money to people, they’re not going to be as motivated or proactive about getting a job and getting back into the workforce. For some people, this could actually be doing them a disservice, because a lot of our self-worth is derived from what we do for a living and what we contribute to society. It may make people lazier, thinking “Well, I’ve got enough to live on, I can just lay back and take it easy for a while.” I don’t think many people would consider this the recipe for fulfillment or happiness. So you see, one simple issue, two opposing points of view, tough love or soft love, both with their own degree of validity.
Or how about the gender pronoun debate? Yes it’s crazy to put people into boxes and say, “You’re this gender therefore that means you must be a, b, and c.” But likewise, it is also crazy to say that there are no biological differences between the genders. So how can you really provide a concise opinion on something as multi-faceted as the gender pronoun debate when there are so many intricacies and subtleties that go into the debate?
Or another: the question of whether humans have free will. On the one hand you could say, everything is pre-determined by physical laws governing us, therefore there’s no such thing as true free will. On the other hand, we make (relative) choices all the time. Some decisions we have a lot of choice in, some decisions we have less choice in, but it’s still what could reasonably called a “choice”.
And this simultaneity of truth or “relative truth” perspective goes down to physics itself. Look at the double slit experiment in quantum mechanics: when not observed, the electromagnetic spectrum behaves as if it were a spread out wave of possibilities. When observed, this wave function collapses to a single point giving us a determined set of characteristics for a given particle. So in answering the question, is light a wave or a particle the answer is: both. Or one, depending on which measurement you’ve taken or chosen not to take.
The physicist Leonard Susskind thought up a conversation which took place between Alice from Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. It went like this:
Ever since her last science class, Alice had been deeply puzzled by something, and she hoped one of her new acquaintances might straighten out the confusion. Putting down her cup of tea, she asked in a timid voice, “Is light made of waves, or is it made of particles?” “Yes, exactly so,” replied the Mad Hatter. Somewhat irritated, Alice asked in a more forceful voice, “What kind of answer is that? I will repeat my question: Is light particles or is it waves?” “That’s right,” said the Mad Hatter.
I see this pattern in all of human thinking and human endeavours, which is why philosophers, despite going hard at all these problems for millennia, have never come up with any good unifying theories for how to explain life or any other issue they were discussing. They’ve merely been circling around the whirlpool trying to sneak a look in at truth.
But truth is multivariant. There are so many different layers to truth that to put in down in words — in the language of humans — is an almost impossible task.
Right now there are many ways to discuss what’s happening here while you’re reading this. First, there are subatomic particles which were set in motion at the beginning of time and were all pre-destined to make it to this point and to having this conversation. Second, we’re having this conversation because of the cultural situation we find ourselves in. Third, there are electronics within our computers which are processing the input and transferring it to your phone, allowing for communication. Fourth, at the level of quantum mechanics, we have very little idea how this functions but it seems like an infinite wave of potential is collapsing in every moment giving us this exact experience.
All of these are simultaneous truths, and one doesn’t discount the other, which makes it difficult to really discuss exactly what is happening. You have to first set up a premise which is never ultimately true, in order to have a conversation within defined parameters.
I personally believe this will always remain the case. When you look at how our minds evolved, they are basically like those little labeling machines from the 80s. We think if we stick enough labels together we can come up with a coherent story to explain things. But those labels are still just labels. In Zen there is an expression: “Don’t mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself.” That’s the mistake our minds always make. In order to simplify things and find a “yes” or “no” answer to every question, we dumb down reality (and ourselves) by clinging onto these simplistic solutions.
And us humans hate this. This “yes and no” response. We want set and defined answers we can guarantee on and thus know how to navigate this world we find ourselves in a bit better (or, just as often, to feed into our egoic self that we’re right and we’re smart).
So what should we do in a world that’s so contradictory and holds so many valid but opposing points of view? Well, this for me is where the logic of love comes into play. I believe we are all really on a search for love; a search for unity and connection. So why not just start there, where we’re all aiming to reach anyway? Why not just love the person or situation as they are without the need to label them as good or bad, useful or useless, right or wrong.
I have found in my own journey, as my mind’s fixed positions began to crumble more and more, I experienced more empathy and compassion for those around me, and I also funnily enough became smarter. I became smarter because I was looking at each situation with an open mind, and considering whatever the proposition was entirely on its own merits, not relying on my mind’s previous conclusions about the subject in question.
And this is still happening to me today. My mind is still crumbling and crumbling, but I’m getting smarter all the time. I’m definitely not the smartest person in most rooms, but I can seem like it because I have such an open mind and can see things from a bigger picture than I used to be able to.
That’s why I think love is not just an ideal to hope we run into, but one we cultivate through expanding our awareness and understanding those with different points of view.
As one of my idols Helen Keller said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Imagine the world we would live in if people everywhere started to consider all possibilities when having discussions, rather than doggedly arguing for their set point of view, with all its inherent limitations and contradictions.
At the end of the day, when the mind begins to break down, and you can see people who are still totally enslaved by their own mind, compassion arises. Love arises. This is why I consider love not just an emotion but the most logical position given the circumstances we find ourselves in.
So, as always, and to the best of my ability, in love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve listened to countless spiritual teachers on my seven year journey into spirituality. The number of hours spent listening to teachers on youtube would be easily in the thousands. But one still stands out head and shoulders above the rest: my teacher of the last three years, Isira.
Now, that is saying something! Some other spiritual teachers I’ve listened to I have absolutely loved; the main other one being the American teacher Adyashanti. I used to tell my friends he was the first man I ever loved. Kiran Trace (from Mystic Girl in the City) once called him “the shit”, and it’s hard to really top that description of him. He is an incredibly good teacher.
But, as he says himself, he’s very much a “wake up” guy – he’s not a “how to live your life better guy”. And he describes his teaching method as being very “broad strokes”. Which is fine. Wake up guys are great – they wake you up! It’s also fine being a broad strokes teacher: there’s no use getting into all the nitty-gritty of spirituality when you’re just coming onto the scene; you need someone who can lay it out in general terms so you get an overall picture of what spirituality is all about.
My gratitude to Adyashanti is out of this world. If I saw him in person I have no doubt I would have tears in my eyes. He helped me along the way SO much.
But, and even though it pains me to say this because of how much I love Adyashanti, I still found someone better. Someone deeper. Someone with more breadth of understanding. Someone who could talk to anyone and offer them advice for exactly where they were at, and exactly what they needed to hear.
That teacher is a woman called Isira.
Now, I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog before, but for those who haven’t read that: When I first came across a video of Isira, I didn’t really “get it”. I came away thinking “she seems like a nice lady”, but that was about it. There was no deeper recognition. Then, about a year later, a friend recommended her to me again so I went along to one of her satsangs (a Sanskrit term meaning “association in truth”). This time I got it. This time I felt her presence, and it was powerful.
I remember walking into this room with all these people seated facing an empty chair at the front of the room. Then Isira came in, dressed all in white (“what’s with the white?” I thought to myself), and sat down in the chair. She scanned the room in silence, welcoming everyone. Then she got to awkward, little me, at the farthest side of the room, as far away from the centre of the action as I could get (this was always my preferred place in all situations). She looked me in the eyes and I instinctively looked away, embarrassed. After a few moments I looked back up to see if she had moved on, but she was still looking at me, with the same warm, welcoming face I originally saw. She wasn’t going to let me get away with my shyness.
The satsang was a success, I guess you could say. This time I got a glimpse into what she was about. I felt her presence and was uplifted all the way home.
There was an announcement that the organization was looking for volunteers, and almost immediately I began volunteering. I was the technical equipment storage and transport guy, and eventually became the tea-maker for Isira’s one-on-one consultations on Saturday mornings. I sort of fancied myself a bit like the kung-fu master who guards the Oracle in the Matrix, albeit much less skilled in martial arts. All I really did was mix tea.
I was fascinated by this woman, as many who meet Isira are. I had never met a truly enlightened person in person before, so I watched all her actions, analysed all her movements, looked at her through squinted eyes trying to figure her out. Trying to see if she really was as enlightened as she seemed.
The difficulty was, you see, she wasn’t your typical mountain-top, rag-wearing guru. She lived life. She enjoyed food. She had preferences. “Do enlightened people have preferences?” I thought to myself. Well, I guess it makes sense. She is human after all, and she’d much rather I hand her a cup of dandelion tea than a cup of dirt.
You see, the idea of spirituality has become so disconnected from everyday life we think there are only two options: you either choose the world, or you choose enlightenment. You can’t have both. Isira seemed to have both, which raised a lot of questions for me. Does she still like nice things? Does she still have relationships? Does she still have sex?? I found out the answer to all these questions was yes, which gave my mind more things to ponder.
Hmm, so it’s possible to be enlightened, and still live a completely full life in the world. That sounded pretty good to me. Most of the previous teachers I had listened to had been mostly male, and mostly just spoke about the importance of “waking up to absolute reality”. Isira talks about that too, but in equal measure she talked about issues in the world. I found that really exciting. Enlightenment didn’t mean you became just a nobody, it meant you became even more fully your natural self. Sure, the natural self was seen from a perspective of absolute oneness, but it didn’t discount the relevance of the manifest world – it celebrated it. To me it appeared she had achieved the goal I came to think true spirituality stood for: to become both fully human and fully divine.
Now, I didn’t always like Isira – in fact, sometimes I hated her!! I was so enraptured by this woman’s presence and energy that my ego wanted her attention and love to be focused on me as much as possible. Obviously this is not only an unreasonable demand on anyone, but Isira would never let us get away with these silly ego trips. She always kept herself at a slight distance because of this. Sometimes I interpreted this as her not liking or not loving me enough, but really it was just her way of making sure she wasn’t pandering to our egos, thus making the problem worse. When you spend any amount of time around Isira, your ego gets some harsh lessons. In fact, it is sometimes even hard to be around her because of this. Some people really can’t take it and react negatively to it, projecting all their blame onto her: e.g. “she’s a fake teacher!”; “she doesn’t really care!”; “she’s only interested in herself!”; etc, etc, etc. (all these examples are examples which came from myself 🙂 ). Because you see, the thing is, when an ego comes up against someone whose ego has been thoroughly removed, it can turn pretty nasty. I remember at a retreat once a woman said: “I thought I was a nice person, but I wanted to kill you! And you just responded with the same love you always did.”
I’ve got to be honest – as I’m obviously not completely free of the ego myself, there’s still a part of me that desires this attention. This can still make my ego very annoyed, and I think that will remain until I am completely free of my egoic attachment to her.
To this day it still surprises me that Isira is not more well-known than she is, but I think there are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, she has not had much of an online or youtube presence until just recently; and secondly, and maybe more significantly, I think that as in my case the old saying holds true: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When I first came across Isira, I wasn’t “ready” for her. I wasn’t resonating on a wavelength that was close enough to be able to really get her. That changed for me in the year between seeing her video for the first time and then attending one of her satsangs. And I think this will happen on a collective level as well. I think humanity may be getting nearer and nearer to be ready to be able to hear Isira, and to be ready for the message and energy she is here to contribute.
All I can say finally is, I can’t wait! I’m greatly looking forward to a time when people en masse start to see who Isira really is, and what she is here to do.
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more information on Isira, check her out on youtube, or visit her website at www.isira.com
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I’ve listened to many many spiritual teachers over the last 7 years since my spiritual journey began. As I mentioned in my first blog post, “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I consumed endless hours of youtube videos, read books, and watched interviews with teachers from all around the world, the best I could find. Below is the chronological list of teachers who I have found most helpful to me on my path.
Gary Weber
I was initially attracted to Gary because he seemed very down to Earth and came from a scientific background just like myself. He was also very involved in brain research on the differences in brain wiring that so-called “enlightened” people had compared to “regular” people. He is also a subject in the new book by Dr Jefferey A. Martin which is a research book on this topic called “The Finders”, which I highly recommend for the scientifically minded among you!
Eckhart Tolle is a great teacher for a general audience, and one of the best introductions for learning to live from a place that is not so dominated by the mind’s chatter. I highly recommend the interview series he did with Oprah where they went through his book “A New Earth”. (His first book is called “The Power of Now”)
I don’t usually like telling people that I have loved listening to Osho because there is so much controversy surrounding him and what happened at his ashram (ashram is a Hindu word which basically means a spiritual hermitage or monastery/community). I don’t know the details of exactly what happened, although I think a lot of the negative stuff that happened was actually perpetrated by the person he left to run his commune, Ma Anand Sheela, while Osho went into silence and seclusion for 3 years while his ashram was being built. But despite all that, and despite his often (intentionally) provocative and playful nature which some can find confusing, I found him to have an incredible amount of insight in spiritual matters, and I do consider him someone who was enlightened.
Note: I will just add that if Osho were indeed responsible for any of the crimes or allegations leveled against him, then I would just say that his enlightenment was not as complete as I previously thought. Enlightenment is a process just as much as it is a “shift of perception”, so you can still get some “enlightened” people behaving badly – all it means is that they haven’t fully integrated their awakening yet. However, I am very skeptical of the claims against Osho, because a lot of people had reason to dislike him. I should also add that he was never charged with a crime (unlike Sheela), despite the FBI doing their best to do so. That’s all I’ll say on that matter. His teaching remains great in either case.
Well, what can I say about Adyashanti… Aside from Isira, who I mention in the end of this post, Adyashanti is the teacher who had the most profound effect on me, and who I considered my main teacher for most of my journey. Another teacher I listened to a bit, “Kiran” (aka Mystic Girl in the City), once described Adyashanti as “the shit”, and I think that’s about the best description anyone has ever made of him. He is an incredible teacher, and would be one of the first I would recommend people listen to, along with Eckhart Tolle and Isira.
I never really read much of Ramana’s work – not that he had a whole lot to read – what I know of him mostly comes from quotes I have seen, but I still consider him one of the greatest enlightened masters to have ever lived. His presence even just in photographs is palpable.
Fred Davis
Fred has a bit of a checkered past: He was charged (40 years after the fact) of indecently assaulting 2 of his nieces when he was a teenager. Not a very nice story, but he was charged for the crime and sentenced, and today he is now a very good spiritual teacher. He has a very direct, straightforward way of explaining concepts that can be difficult to grasp, so I highly recommend him for that. Some people refuse to listen to him because of his past, which I understand, but I believe people can make amends for their pasts if they are truly remorseful, which I believe Fred is.
Bentinho came onto the scene as a young, fresh-faced nonduality speaker a few years ago, and he was great at what he did. He was certainly very clear in his teachings. He then moved into more empowerment/manifestation style teachings, at which point a lot of people (including me at the time) started to not resonate with him as much. I now see the value those teachings can have, and I now consider him a fantastic teacher of both nonduality and empowerment/manifestation teachings. He has been accused of being cocky and egoic, and I can definitely see why he rubs some people up the wrong way – to me it’s still possible that he has a bit of an enlightened ego – but regardless, as far as his teachings themselves go, he’s one of the best in my opinion.
This is where my interest in spirituality took me a little bit more… out there. As I mentioned in my previous blog, “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I came across this person who claimed to channel an extraterrestrial being called Bashar on an interview program called “Buddha at the Gas Pump”. I was very skeptical at first, but was soon blown away by the clarity of his teachings and guidance. He ties in nondual philosophy with empowerment teachings, and really opens up your mind to the possibilities of the world we live in. Fantastic teacher!
Well, as with Adyashanti, what can I say about Isira… I think she is hands down the greatest spiritual teacher I have come across in my seven year journey into spirituality. I have not yet seen anyone who has both the depth and breadth of understanding of spiritual matters (aka life matters!) as Isira does. Like Adyashanti, she is essentially a “middle way” teacher – able at one point to direct someone to the absolute truth of who they are (consciousness) and then in the next moment provide pin-point guidance on any topic I have ever heard someone asked her a question about. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I was volunteering with Isira for 2 years before a big shift happened for me, and in that two years I was constantly amazed by the clarity and truth expressed through this teacher. I find it hard to imagine finding another teacher as good as her. A+!
To end with, I’ll just add special mentions to some other teachers who I’ve loved listening to: Byron Katie, Mooji (unfortunately now in his own controversy, although I am very skeptical about this because the article written on him was written by someone who intentionally sets out to defame spiritual teachers), Gangaji, Rupert Spira, Jac O’Keeffe, Nisargadatta, oh and of course Jesus of Nazareth 😉 (another pretty controversial guy there too! 😛 )
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
