Eric Allen Bell's Page

By Eric Allen Bell

When it comes to the subject of Enlightenment I am no authority. I do not possess special knowledge nor do I profess to speak to you now from some elevated state. On all matters Divine there is but one authority and that is The Great Mystery.

Enlightenment is often said to be a state of conscious communion with Divine Source.

According to some spiritual traditions this state is something of a finish line. One's existence is seen to be a cycle of birth, death and rebirth as one's soul…

With each passing day, as I look inward and as I take in what is going on with the world outside, my heart opens. And the more it opens the more I understand why I have kept it shut for so long. The more my heart opens, the more I understand why the world has closed its heart.

ॐ

I find it harder and harder to criticize the world from a place of anger or disappointment. The screwed up world and the screwed up self are not only reflections of each other, they are one in the same. I am the suffering and the beauty and everything in between - not as some new philosophy but as a felt experience, moment by…

If you consider yourself to be on any kind of spiritual path, you very likely have had a tendency to be too hard on yourself.  You try not to think negative thoughts, to avoid judging others, to avoid "sin".  One definition of the word "sin" is "separation from God".  We want to avoid our dark side and become of "how we are supposed to be".  This way of thinking occurs probably not as the result of religion, but religion has sprouted as the result of…

I went skydiving for the first time in tandem and the parachute did not open properly. We jumped from over 2 miles up in the sky out of a small aircraft and at about 3,000 feet the instructor cut the chute loose.  I asked him what was going on and he didn't answer me.  I could see the ground coming at me fast.  When I jumped out of the airplane, I knew to expect a feeling of free fall, but I did not expect to have that feeling twice.  It was as if I had been pushed down an elevator shaft.  I kept asking the instructor what was going on and still there was no answer.

Then I felt this tremendous tug at my rib cage as the free fall slowed down.  The instructor had dispatched the emergency parachute. All of the little squares down on the Earth below…

Over a long enough period of time, the survival rate for your body is zero.  Contained within the body is the brain and one of the functions of the brain is the ego.  The ego is the self concept of the brain-body organism and it does not like what was just said one bit.

And there are different states of consciousness than just ego.  The ego is like a dog you bring with you on a journey. Untrained, it will run off, bite others and come back to bite you.  But trained and disciplined it knows its place. It can sense things, warn you of danger, protect you.  As the…

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda,…

No religion is entirely wrong. 

And no religion is entirely right. 

Each faith tradition,

those that have passed on…

I was standing in a bedroom. There were toys on the floor. I think I was wearing nothing but diapers. There was warm sunlight coming in through the windows. I looked around in a state of innocent curiosity.



Standing in the doorway were my parents. They were saying something. They wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be scared. They were trying to explain to me that they were going out to dinner and were coming back. They were leaving, but they would return. Something about a babysitter and reminding me that I liked this babysitter. And then they left the doorway.



And then it was just me. This is my first memory of self reflection. I touched my arms and I touched my stomach. I had a sense of remembering. I was remembering a time before this time. The details were unclear. All I could recollect were the feelings, sensations. I had a feeling that "I" existed before all of this...



And…

Do you remember back when the night would call you and you ran after it?  Do you remember its song and the endless drive that had you driving up and down city blocks for hours at a time?

Do you remember the neurons firing and not letting up, as the street lights went on at dusk and died at dawn, while your eyes dried trying to stay open, while that urgent hum inside your head refused to stop?

Remember what it was like back when you were alive but the world was dead?  Remember how many times you died trying to bring it back…