When you are so quiet you feel like you are deep underwater, deeply removed from the noisy world above, it can’t stay that way. Like a swimmer, you surface.
October, 2011 an awakening to true nature smashed the walls of the self I imagined myself to be, and with tidal wave force turned my reality into a quiet landscape I barely recognized.
Reactive and angsty personality traits I called Lori Ann were smashed to bits. What remained was a serenity that was truly the calm of a post-apocaylptic storm. Nothing could upset “me” but nor could anything “excite me.”
I thought this silence would last forever.
But this silent stillness was not sustainable. As if God itself, could not forever hold its breath….sigh.
Eventually (about two months after a profound empty quiet) sounds began to emerge. They sounded to me like muses, whispering ideas and poems and songs and creations.
These notes sounded like life, singing to itself.
I am sure, God sings. That even as there is the in-breath, there is always the ahhhhh of the outbreath. I am telling you this because I had a dream.
In the dream, a guru came to me. Well, it looked like a man, but he had a halo. I recognized his “awake-ness” and asked, “How long have you been awake?”
He said, “Ten years. But I want you to know this.”
And then he proceeded to draw a picture for me. It looked like an hour-glass, but more angular. Like two upside down triangles meeting in a narrow waistband of a juncture.
He said. “This is how it works. You are vast wakefulness. Then you condense into a point of embodiement. And then you expand again…and so on.”
I woke in my bed, and knew he meant that each awakening to the vast stillness of being, would be followed by a contraction to the busy localized self…and then, woosh, back out again. And I suppose, in again. The breath of life, in and out. Infinite and finite. Vast and condensed.
Life.
So…I am in the midst of vasting out again after condensing in. I feel it daily, in the awe and stillness, the absolute delight in simply being. It took going through a cataclysmic phase of re-identification, to come back home to the still point. But I know this:
God is moving. Still point is simply home base in the game of life. God loves to start as much as She loves to stop.
Let me know. Have you found the joys of both the stop and the start. The empty and the full? The End and the Beginning?
Awareness is here, Learning as She Goes.
Lori Ann
PS: Did you know I’ve started a weekly 3-minute video blog? It’s free, fun and magical. Curious? Then subscribe here.
The Awakened Dreamer 
تنظيف سجاد
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Vironika Tugaleva
I love this, especially because your revelation has rid you of the pressure of self-judgment. Too often, people awaken and, then, when they lose their ability to experience unconditional love every-single-second-of-every-single-day-always, they crash. Almost like from drugs. I’ve had clients blame me for deceiving them about the nature of life because of this constant movement! They said I made everything seem like it was going to be blissful and happy and calm forever. But, of course, the process of healing is not so still, and who in our spiritually anorexic world does not need healing (and plenty of it)?
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Sat
I thought of the article on this link: http://whatneverchanges.com/blog_files/do-i-need-to-shed-ignorance.php I share this with joy, because, at least for me, meant freedom forever. Yes, end of searching and all.
It’s great reading your blog. Peace.
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herb
so where is this awareness in periods of uncosciousness?
dreamless sleep for example , or before the birth of the body
or after death
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Lori Ann Lothian
Hi Herb: great question. I don’ t know, but when I in dreamful sleep, I am not unware of having an identity (at least while dreaming). I am also aware while asleep of not only who I am as Lori Ann, but who I am beyond the dream….I am quite often a lucid dreamer. In that vein, I have also experienced occasions of being lucid while out of my body, and looking down at its sleeping form.
After death, I will let you know if I can message back, what consciousness looks like. In the meantime, these questions are interesting but not particularly useful to me because they are not referencing what is, but what might be.
hugs
Lori Ann
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Davidya
Hi Lori Ann
Great post. It’s useful to recognize there are 2 processes here. The first is the more local cycle of growth and expression. Contracting the expansion, and then expanding again. This is the process of integrating both the silence and the expression to create a foundation for oneness. It’s also not uncommon for a sense of “me” to come back to some degree. In your case, the shift sounds pretty thorough but some have a more modest shift with more me coming and going. When the awakening is fully established it is known as nirvana or sat chit ananda. Not just the silence and expansion, but the bliss.
The other is the larger process for which the awakening is just the beginning. The first is establishing that wakefulness. The second is getting to know the triangle between the point of a me/ ahamkara, and the vast expansion. In other words, the full range of expression. This is accompanied by an awakening heart and more refined perception. (love is added to the bliss) Still further is getting to know the lower triangle, that which leads to the expression of a point value in the first place. This is completely unknown in the west. This typically takes place after the boundary between “inside” and “outside” falls away and the expression and the silence are both recognized as the same Self. This is known as Unity or Oneness. That in itself develops in stages, where layers of experience, memory etc are joined into oneness. Finally, the 2 triangles are recognized as the inner dynamics of a larger totality, a kind of torus of creation.
Big subject and you got a very deep teaching.
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Lori Ann Lothian
Thank you! This is all new knowledge for me. I appreciate you taking the time to share. Lori Ann
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Ray Loewenau
Not yet the way you describe. But your comment reminded me of something one of my teachers (Shinzen Young) has said, to wit: “everything is expansion and contraction.”
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Justin Cascio
The self and consciousness you describe reminds me of the notion of self as a particle/wave. I don’t know if I got that idea directly from the documentary, “What the [Bleep] Do We Know?” but that’s when I thought of it. Consider it: energy is a wave until you look at it, and then it coalesces into a particle. It is in a waveform of potential locations until then, not truly anywhere. I think of this when I consider how I label myself. Until then, I’m just this guy who does and thinks certain things.
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Jurgen Ziewe
Before: taking pride in the outpouring, satisfaction in being recognised and accepted. “I” a vital central aspect of the process of creation.
After: being a bystander of the outpouring, surprised by the results, watching in awe how abilities are used to illuminate my particular corner of the universe. “I” have become facilitator, the amazed servant, no longer capable of taking credit.
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Lisa Kathleen
Yup… in and out, tight and loose, peaceful and active. They happen at various intervals, and so far, no end in sight. Lots of love, Lori… ♥
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