This stage –A&P tends to be very impressive. The applied and sustained effort of attention begin to drop away, and meditation seems to take on a life of its own, and has the basic attentional phase quality of having maximum clarity at the center of attention, this stage is noted for perceiving things clearly wherever
Arising and Passing Away – 4th Insight Stage Read More »
ENTRANCE TO THE DARK NIGHT So begins what is called the “Knowledges of Suffering†or The Dark Night of the Soul(to use “St. John of the Cross” terminology) The Dark Night spans stages five through ten in this map, namely: 5. Dissolution 6. Fear 7. Misery 8. Disgust 9. Desire for Deliverance, and 10. Re-observation.
DISSOLUTION – 5th Stage of Insights Read More »
The clarity and intensity begin to return, but now the stage of Fear can involve all sorts of frightening distortions of perception when sitting, accompanied by intense feelings of unease, paranoia, terror, dread, and/or “the williesâ€. It can even sometimes seem that our body is falling in tatters through the floor or that we are
FEAR – 6th Stage of Insights – Part 2 of THE DARK NIGHT Read More »
At the stage of Desire for Deliverance, we are fed up with basically everything, often including dharma practice, but at a level that transcends mere suicidal thoughts, though definitely it may include such thoughts for an unfortunate few. It will likely pass soon enough; you need to stay alive so you can get to the
DESIRE FOR DELIVERANCE – 9th Stage of Insights – Part 5 of THE DARK NIGHT Read More »
Finally past THE DARK NIGHT stages Finally, we really begin to understand and surrender to the truth of things. We begin to accept, at a deep level, the truth of our actual human lives as they are. All the “stuff†that the Dark Night may have brought up may still be going on, but somehow
EQUANIMITY – 11th Stage of Insights Read More »
Conformity means that we suddenly flash onto a way of perceiving the whole of our experiential reality completely, directly, and perfectly clearly. We attain to Conformity Knowledge, in which we effortlessly, naturally, simultaneously, and totally comprehend two of the three characteristics – Impermanence, Dissatisfactoriness, and No-self of our entire sense field including space, consciousness, and
CONFORMITY – 12th Stage of Insights Read More »
Having understood things just as they are, this next stage, Change of Lineage, which also lasts for just a moment, yet permanently changes a meditator’s mind. Such meditators join the ranks of the awakened. While the social designation of formal lineage transmission is a very useful thing to have received, the results of this stage
CHANGE OF LINEAGE – 13th Stage of Insights Read More »
The goal of Liberation is to De-program our mistaken identity of being an ego mind body. The essential endeavors to become Self-Realized is a required process. Since we don’t really know who or what we are, we can use negative deduction to whittle down the objects that are not Ultimately our True Being. We are
13 The Spiritual Path Towards Liberation Read More »
The Instinctive Seeker would be wise to gain the common core Wisdoms from Buddha, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, Zen, Tao, Judaism, and Islam… for starters… Even Christianity’s early roots gave meditation and spiritual contemplation a very strong recommendation for not taking someone else word for the Word of God, but to experientially experiencing the Grace of Divinity. Even
12 The Fundamental Core Elements All Spiritual Traditions Have in Common Read More »
Everything of ‘Life’ is Cyclic as you will learn more deeply with Spiritual ‘practice’. We all notice that there is a certain ineffable flow to our personal lives and how we interact with the life around us. There are times when we feel like we are in the zone of an effortless groove. And other
11 The ‘Zone’ of an Effortless Groove Read More »
Our business was doing great, but we still couldn’t afford to buy a house or a condo. Renting in Maui for another 30 years was not an option we wanted to take. Then, Bobbie Jo suggested we buy a sailboat that is comfortable to cruise and live in. By the end of January, we started looking for our new home.
After a long search, we found our dream boat in Mazatlan, Mexico. COVID-19 was not yet a concern when our boat hunt began, but masks were starting to appear at airports by the time we flew to Mazatlan. Originally, we had planned to get the boat ready as fast as possible to cover a full calendar for the busy wedding season. However, it was apparent our business was going to tank amid the pandemic, and the struggle went on until the end of the year.
Luckily, we scored an awesome condo for only $19 a day at Mazatlan. On the 10th day of our stay, we received the news that all harbors will be closed the next Monday morning. We thought we’d be stuck in Mexico longer, but another sailor advised us to leave before sunrise.
We felt the adrenalin of escaping the Mexican harbor master just before the sun rose that faithful day. The seas were rough as waves were building up in the tight channel that led us to the open ocean. We ended up anchored off an adorable little isle just a mile offshore. We enjoyed cruising to many spectacular anchorages and cute villages on our way to Puerto Vallarta, where we would depart for Maui on May 7. On May 30, 2020, we completed our 24-day passage from Mexico to Maui.
