Gifts of the Spirit: Enlightenment Transmission Rediscovered
By Dave Oshana T
he Existential Quest Begins: I was born into a time of great fear, an unrelenting news stream of wars, famine, epidemics, terrorism, economic doom, and the threat of nuclear holo-
caust. I yearned for certainty and world peace.
yoga. Yoga allowed me to question my own identity and experi- the Wheel of Life and Death and never reincarnate again, I had to greatly suffer in order to transcend suffering.
austee life, temporarily leaving school to join an ashram at the age of 17. And yet, instead of trying to transcend the world, I found myself praying for it. I still had only one goal, Enlightenment, and know it when I found it.
My practices wobbled a bit in my teens, when I noticed that, despite long hours on my golden cushion meditation, world peace had not arrived. Mixing some offbeat Christianity with some left-hand path Hinduism, I concluded that, to truly renounce my own desires and be simultaneously loving, I should be ready to make love to anyone who wanted deep intimacy. I never acted on this idea. I never took drugs either, since that would have only messed with my brain cells and reduced my chances of getting Enlightened.
certainly did, and I agreed. I followed a diverse smorgasbord of eclectic spiritual teachings that made no sense. I was never the most knowledgeable student or committed devotee. I had no special powers or gifts. I only had the ability to get things wrong.
By the age of 30, I was a trained psychologist, body worker, and computer scientist who dabbled in stand-up comedy. I had sought, tried, tested, and explored almost every available spiritual
group and teaching in the neighborhood. And yet I was still unen- lightened. I started to wonder if Enlightenment actually existed or if
The Transformation Happens Then, on June 19th, 2000 at 5am, I awoke to discover that I
was not the same "person." I could not recall what the experience - entated, and euphoric. I was lost for words and feeling tickled all over. I had no idea what had happened to me but I was extremely impressed and very curious.
I invited gurus, psychologists and spiritual seekers to assess, explore, test and experience what I could only term as "Enlighten- ment." Over time, I was branded as a "spiritual teacher," something I never wanted to be and still don’t, for good reasons. Remarkably, people who contacted me started to have similar experiences to my own. I had been told that lifetimes of austere practices were required to become Enlightened. And yet now, without doing any- thing special, people were having direct and immediate experienc-
For these people, as it was for me, the world became
extraordinarily beautiful and vivid. They became unselfconscious. They directly experienced life, unmediated by mental concepts. They felt their body and the energies that move within it. They perceived auras, lights, and other phenomena. All of this happened without any suggestion or reference to these phenomena. I didn’t even need to do anything, I just had to show up.
Simply being established in this expanded reality could cause someone else, under the right conditions, to notice it too.
What Actually Happened? I have been trying to understand what happened to me for 18
years. My current understanding is that Enlightenment is not some- thing I did but something that was done to me by what I call the not causing my life, but I can choose to participate or try to resist it.
www.EssentialLivingMaine.com 13
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