TransRelational Awakening

IS THERE A WAY TO TRANSCEND THE EGO?

The ego-self, or separate individual identity seeking to transcend itself, is committed to a hoax. The 'self' cannot transcend it 'self.' Nevertheless, the self attaches to past teachings that continue to inform it that self-transcendence is the end of all suffering and the beginning of infinite bliss. This keeps the self on a treadmill of self-reinforcing through the 'spiritual' projects it attaches to in order to transcend itself.

However, there is a way to dissociate from an exclusive egoic identity by immersing in other egoic identities.

Through deep engagement with another ego-self, the individual egoic identity can be essentially extinguished and awakened to a reality no longer exclusive to itself. The evidence for this is clear, since your most blissful and “enlightening” moments have been in loving extension to, and with, others. However, as soon as the exclusive self-identity resumed control, in opposition to mutual depth, such bliss through self-extension was gradually dissolved as the ego-self agenda predominated.

WHAT ABOUT THE ANCIENT MASTERS WHO “AWAKENED” TO TRUTH ON THEIR OWN

Most authentic past “wisdom” teachers have reported intense experiences of love from individual practices. This may be a mistaken interpretation of the individual ego, which subsumes the entire shared experience for itself when, in fact, this love was a “direct experience" correlated with a yielding extension to others. Most biographers of authentic ancient masters focus entirely on the master’s individual enlightenment ‘episode’ and fail to recognize the relationships from which this episode is directly correlated with and emerged from. Even today the focus is on some linear transference of “truth,” while the deeply engaged teacher-student relationship is ignored or minimized as subordinate to the transmission of proprietary truth.

I suggest that nothing is ever transferred. However, truth is encountered simply because it is touched, or engaged with, through the intimate depth of relationship to one or more others. In other words, love or enlightenment is an emergent creative truth, solely contingent on the relationship between teacher student and having nothing to do with any linear transmission of truth. Truth is experienced IN the relationship. relationship is the content and the type of relationship, teacher-student, is merely another of many forms relationships take.

The deeply engaged and intimate relationship is not conduit to truth, but is the truth itself.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT I HAVE TO BE IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE TO BE ENLIGHTENED?

Love is unknown factor of 'reality' and only exists as a relative approximate interpretation based on the conditions determined by each separate mind (6 billion minds, to be more exact). Therefore, to seek love with another is merely an opportunity for the ego-self to apply its own conditions based on its own conceptual interpretation of love. This negates an absolute or non-conditional love or the Truth that we seek to awaken to.

Therefore, you cannot be “in love” with another, but you can seek to encounter love, with the understanding that you have no idea or accurate concept of absolute or unconditional love. Your only option is to seek to encounter an ‘experience’ of love by extracting your conditions from which this love can be encountered or “awakened” to and this would be an “enlightenment” episode from which insight, not of this world (truth), would be realized.

Keep in mind that the forms of expression are unimportant and confining love to specific forms only restricts the experience. However, you can employ the forms (parent-child, marriage, etc) that exist in your life presently to engage in the depth of intimacy through which you can be “awakened” to this truth. Nevertheless, romantic relationships are unnecessary and one could engage in the depth of intimate awakening through other relationship ‘forms’ such as parent-child, siblings, coworkers, friends, etc, etc, etc. The content is available through whatever form the deep engagement occurs. However, demanding that only certain forms are required to experience enlightenment (love) is to impede the experience and this is exactly what we do in seeking out the “teacher-student” relationship as the only means of awakening or enlightenment.

Therefore, as with the Christ message of "love thy neighbor as thyself," the reference to neighbor would include any relationship form you are currently involved with. This message is also presented in “A Course in Miracles” and the recommendation is to seek this intimate awakening, or “Holy Instant” experience through all relationships, no matter what form the relationship takes.

SO ARE YOU SAYING I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP MY MEDITATION AND ENGAGE INTIMATELY WITH OTHERS?

Absolutely not. However, you may wish to restructure the ideological premises of your meditative practices to take on a new role of facilitating shared extension as opposed to, or superior to, individual seeking or awakening. Now instead of facilitating self-awakening, meditation may serve as a means of clearing blocks that impede relationship depth. But it will be through relationships that impediments to love are realized and not solitary practices.

As such, meditative practices allow a calm, centered-self that facilitates a deeper engagement with others. A depth of engagement with others facilitates a depth of engagement with the world. Thus, nature no longer becomes a means of spiritual bypassing or escape from a world of others, but becomes a “spiritual” experience only to be shared with others and not to be simply engaged with alone. The more nature is a shared experience the more we no longer use it as means of escape to protect the psychological self, but as a means of enhancing a collective shared self.

The theory that mediation allows for the identification of self-defects or shadows is a flawed theory of egoic proportions. This presupposes that the self-concept was established separate from relationship and the constant flux of engaging with and fearing intimacy or deep understanding.

TransRelational awakening is an encounter with truth through understanding that your only purpose is to engage deeply with others in order to engage with your 'self' and the world since there is no division except in the egoic mind.