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In the near-death experience, when the heart temporarily stops beating and frozen fear grips every cell of our being, a stream of white light is generated, vast and full, deep in the heart of life. This is the deepest spiritual experience those who have it will ever attain, accompanied by a love so profound and unifying that it comes from a universal presence and nowhere else. For those keenly receptive, the gates opened by this profound experience lead to a complete turnabout in their life. According to the wisdom of Tibet, those who absorb the very most are those who understand that the near death experience is Bardo, and that bardos occur all the time. The key is to be ready for them. The word bardo means “between two.” According to Tibetan Buddhism, the near death experience is the prelude to another bardo, the waiting ground between two lives that we enter after the body is shed. In that state, with the psychical apparatus left behind, our deepest subterranean desires propel us into our next life. Traditional practitioners pray for the soul traversing Bardo and say mantrams to protect hastily choosing birth in an inferior life. The greater wisdom, however, teaches that it’s not just in the bodiless, after death state that we get the chance to choose our next destiny. Anytime in life when we find ourselves in between two jobs, or just out of one relationship and not yet into another—in other words, when we are deprived of the role that defined who we were, we are smack dab in the land of bardo, ready to make a choice that can could set our destiny for decades to come. Who could say that someone ripped out of the security of a relationship, or who has suffered a serious accident or lost a coveted job or role, has not been thrown into the tumult of Bardo? We don’t need to die to reach such a state; bardos happen all the time, if we but notice them. Such “in between” places often involve pain, because without any name to give our current place-- like wife, student, author, or CEO-- we find ourselves tossed about in a sea of raw, unfamiliar feelings. We can judge and blame ourselves, feeling deflated and devalued. Or, we can sit with and witness our feelings and turmoil, expanding awareness into this new realm. The choice of how we receive a bardo experience and what we make of it is entirely up to us. The feelings brought up seem strange, but they have always been there. When we were the happy wife or the president of the Board, such uncomfortable feelings were radio waves passing so far beneath that we never tuned into their frequency. But with the fall into a bardo, they blast us loud and clear. Disappearance of favorable conditions exposes us to raw feelings we previously were insulated from. Moreover, the ties bundling our often contradictory personality traits together can come unglued, and the drives and passions that were held in check let loose. These Bardo events are what all face after the breakup of the body; so those who recognize them in life itself are poised to absorb the deepest wisdom. For in that period of being in between two schools, two relationships, two jobs, or even two lives, the capacity for change, either negative or positive, is infinitely greater than at normal times. A day in which we show up at the same job and put in eight of the same hours of work does not hold much chance for change. But, with the loss of that job, or the end of the life of someone we hold very dear, we are thrown into confusion and pain. In this very tumult lies opportunity to bring awareness into this uncomfortable place and locate mammoth energies from our unconscious. Such power, not accessible in ordinary consciousness, can now be harnessed to remake ourselves and reconfigure our whole lives around new skills. By accepting and welcoming the demons rising up from the unconscious, we open our life out into the light of a new day. In my program of meditation on bardo experiences, I show how to use painful loss to: • find and recognize a bardo experience • access hidden willpower • process our deep feelings • get spiritual help for enduring painful loss • develop compassion for ourselves • reduce stress and defeat worry • develop stronger personal relationships • find gain in our greatest loss • establish ourselves in a new, higher self image Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com. |
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© 2005 Stephen Ruppenthal & DirectAwakings.com
© 2005 Stephen Ruppenthal & DirectAwakings.com