Everyday Enlightenment: Seven stories of awakening
by Sally Bongers
with a foreword by Jeff Foster
(Non-Duality Press, 2008, UK) $13 with Free Shipping at http://hopedance.org/purchase
The author of this short book, Sally Bongers, is a film director of Hollywood films (Resistance, Sweetie, Snakes and Ladders, Rapunzel in Suburbia). She decided to work on a film, called the Enlightenment Project, about people who have experienced this rather elusive consciousness altercation typically called enlightenment. In her process it seems, she decided to put some of the audio interviews into a book form, and called it Everyday Enlightenment.
The theme of this altercated consciousness is a dropping away of the self, the “me,” the one who identifies with decisions, careers, our body, our ideas, our thinking process, and especially our viewpoints. Another feature that seems to be characteristic of this major perceptual adjustment of consciousness is that you, me and the world are already perfect the way they are. The notion of an acceptance of what IS is dominant in the literature. A subset of that acceptance is that to seek to try to change or transform or become somebody misses the point exactly; in fact the more we seek the more we move away from it. And the self inquiry process helps us at least learn about the conceptual pointers as we can deconstruct what is really going on.
I was certainly thrilled to discover this book of seven stories by ordinary people who have experienced and are now grounded in what is often called a “seeing,” an awakening, liberation or I'm sure there are are other names for this—but it is certainly not a temporary state or a brief experience or from the imagination or an intellectual understanding. What's interesting is that there are some commonalities and differences among the seven people. Some people still feel their individual selves but their self/ego nature is basically in the background. One person said that during an emotional crisis, his “self” became foreground for a short period of time but then subsided into the background, after an ease of the emotional chatter and a remembrance returned. The authors of the seven stories speak about how this new “seeing” is not that big of a deal, it's often spoken about as a shift in perspective even though it cannot be manipulated or controlled or intellectually understood. I found myself wondering if this was in fact the real deal or if they did have something genuine and rather than “keep going” as in going deeper, it's as if they decided to hang out there. Like as the Sufis say, “building real estate on sand castles.” It's just a question. I don't know the answer.
None of them had anything tantamount to an explosive or mind shattering experience. All the stories seemed to come gradually, few glimpses here and there and then it happened, unexpectedly – the shift came to the foreground, to play a dominant role in one's life.
Most had been on a path, whether it was with Bhagwan Rajneesh (Osho) or Da Free John or Ramesh Balsekar or Tony Parsons or some of the lesser-known teachers of awakening. Most did not like Bush. One is an IRS agent. Another is an environmentalist. I was drawn to the latter because he was an activist before his awakening and continues to be one. He explains his new seeing as not being attached to the activist outcomes and he doesn't get so irritated at the devastation he sees environmentally; and, he said, that he may feel even more passionate about the environment since his new intimacy includes the knowledge that we humans come from nature and we need nature to survive. He says that in his workshops he asks his audience that if they don't understand our intricate and delicate need for the planet he asks them to simply count to 30 while holding their breath. “Works all the time,” he says.
He went on to describe the fun he and his social change agents would have at the serious agenda making meetings. There is an obvious lightness that he brings to the table. I appreciate his story very much because after reading Adyashanti's The End of Your World, I became of the opinion that I needed to leave that activist world altogether since how could one want to “change the world” while simultaneously seeing the world as being already complete and perfect and flourishing and simply being itself. Fascinating; perhaps I could also include activists in that similar flow, a nondualistic participation in the perfection of it all.
And Sally, if you add the stories in the book to make it to the film's editing room please include other teachers who are not of the Tony Parsons “camp.” The film will need a variety of “teachers” who are present at the moment when we, like these seven people, have a shift that might just alter us everyday people forever.
Bob Banner is publisher of www.hopedance.org
