The transmission of grace is like a force of nature

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

The inherent fear of being extinguished is natural, and can't be avoided. We naturally fear being non-existent. I've seen this in all of you. You'll be meditating along, doing beautifully, and just as you're about to plunge into the ocean the fear will seize you, and you'll jump back out. You open your eyes, get up, walk around; try to avoid it. I see you do this all the time.



The transmission of grace is like a force of nature, like the weight of the ocean, an indescribable and unbearable pressure arising from all points. You can't resist it. It's important for you that you find a way to deal with that ever-increasing presence of truth and light within you. Find a way to align with it. When it bumps against one of those nodules of pain and fear, don't recoil. Just breathe deeply around it. The fear will be released.

There is no causal relationship between your actions and the enlightenment process.

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

As we move into the third millennium, we're actually getting to the outer stretch of civilization. Life is becoming very complex—technology, the structure of society, everything.



The impact of enlightenment doesn't stop just because it's not twelfth century India, where you sit under the Bodhi tree and become enlightened. Nobody's going to do that anymore because the landscape of modern life just isn't shaped that way. You'll probably be sitting in your kitchen or at a bus stop or on the freeway going to work, and you'll get enlightened.



It doesn't matter. There is no causal relationship between your actions and the enlightenment process. At some moment in time you brushed up against the seed of awakening, and the seal of your personal identity began to crack. From there on, it's just a matter of time. Don't kid yourself. The complete annihilation of personal self is an absolute. Not just sort of; or kind of or maybe; It really does happen.

It's better to have true ideas of your own

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

It turns out we enjoy being existent. Nobody wants to stop existing, however painful it may be. Existing is cool. The idea is just to not be trapped like a rat in a maze, always having your choices handed to you, and being forced to think that those choices are yours. It's better to have true ideas of your own.

How to Survive Enlightenment

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

You're actually living a multitude of lives simultaneously. Your senses are bound to this life and thus you think this is the totality of life. This is the life of the body but the mind is more like a hologram.



In fact, most of your spiritual practice is taking place in alternate lives. We use the life of the body to produce a magnetic force powerful enough to anchor the force of the totality of life. Once the transmission of grace occurs, the ocean of consciousness pours in and affects all your lives. You'll start to have memories of events that you don't remember doing because they actually happened in alternate lives.



All of what we call yoga is not designed to get us to enlightenment; it's designed to help us survive enlightenment. Spiritual life is a way of keeping up with what's happening to us during the process of awakening, finding a way to deal with it. That's why you meditate.

Conditioning

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

We as perceivers are so absolutely affected by everything it is inconceivable. The template that you declare to be the open portal through which you view your existence is so radically conditioned by past action that the entire framework of your present experience is based on what you have already experienced.



What happened to us before completely conditions how we experience what happens to us now, which will so utterly condition the possibility of what will happen to us in the future.

Transmission of Grace

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

We have produced such an irrational fear of the death experience that we hold ourselves back from the onslaught of enlightenment, desperately clinging to the very identity that binds us to the wheel. When enlightenment appears in your life, it begins to wipe everything away. It doesn’t say, “Well, this is a good thing so we’ll preserve this, and this is a bad thing so we'll get rid of this.”



It’s as if you were an egg floating around in the ocean, an infinite ocean of consciousness. The enlightenment process is like someone coming along and unscrewing the top of the egg; the ocean just starts to pour in. It conducts itself through the entirety of your being. It's only a matter of time before everything is reduced down to its most basic components—electrons, protons, atoms.



This is the transmission of grace. You are brought back into touch with the ocean of consciousness. What you’re afraid of is that when the ocean of consciousness pours in, it zeroes out everything you’ve ever been, everything you are, everything you'll ever be. Everything dissolves back into the ocean, extinguished. You exist, and yet it's as if you never existed. So you ask, “Why would I want this to happen?”

Enlightenment is a Calamity

HARD LIGHT CENTER OF AWAKENING

Excerpt of a talk by Mark Griffin...

Your identity is built upon a string of memories and their associated emotions. You carry this identity with you like a passport and everything that you experience in your life checks itself off against this passport. It is your face to the world. You use it to define yourself to yourself, to define yourself within society. Your attachment to this definition of yourself is so great, that you will destroy yourself before you will change your idea of who and what you are.



The process of enlightenment is the annihilation of this passport, the annihilation of your personal identity. It destroys all links that you have to yourself. It destroys all links that you have to the world. This why it has been said that enlightenment is a calamity; yet this fear of enlightenment is irrational and only arises from the extreme attachment that you have to the lists of qualities on your passport.