Whatever path we have followed to get here, the appearance of this final question moves us out of the West and into the North on the Wheel. In the West, our journey requires us to interact, from the place of the witness, with the world around us as the source of not only the maps and teachings we require, but also the day to day events that will be the means by which we are able to connect the dots and come to experience the world from the new perspective gained from these teachings. We need grist for the new mill we have become. In the North, the journey changes in that answering the question we have posed will require us to become totally inner directed. The world outside of ourselves becomes either a distraction or a means by which we can create a suitable setting for the final part of this journey.
This is what we have come to know thus far on the journey: the experience that I craved in the South, call it happiness, love, contentment, many names, is not connected to those things outside of myself that I attributed the experience to, but rather the absence of desire for the thing that is attained. I now know that I am not the doer I thought I was and that things will unfold how they are meant to unfold given the energies at work in any given situation. And I know that everything in this world, including this body, is a manifestation of the same energy and it all feels like a dream we need to awaken from if we want to know who it is that is having this dream. We are left with only one desire to be fulfilled and one question to be answered. But this desire is stronger than any desire we have ever known, and the closer we get to the answer, the more painful it is not to be there. There is no denying this journey that must be taken alone because the landscape we are traversing is in our own mind.
There are many ways to approach this journey. But the end result does not differ, and this end is the realization of what this I or ego, as some would call it, actually is as an experience we can encounter while still in a body. Thanks to the neurosciences, we can now begin to talk about this process in terms of brain chemistry and this will help us to understand how all the different approaches are actually accomplishing the same thing. We know the brain is divided functionally into two halves we call the right or left side. The right side is the place where all of the information gathered through our sense organs flood our mind and the left side is that part that decides what information is relevant to who we think we are, and what we are about, and only allows relevant information to become known to us. This left brain is a necessary valve if we are not to be overcome with too much information, thereby putting our own survival at risk. But it is of no value in the search for this illusive “I” we are talking about and actually is the very source of this illusion of separateness into which we are born. And just as the eye cannot see itself, this “I” cannot know itself. We cannot know who we really are because it transcends the thinking mind. But there is the right side of our brains where we can know unfiltered sensation, and it is here that the magic takes place.
Those of us familiar with the use of entheogens are already familiar with the experience of unfiltered sensation. It is a place of brilliant colors and patterns and sounds that can seduce us into this magical realm if that is what we desire. But if we approach it with it with a desire for knowledge about the workings of the world around us or a question needing to be answered, then we find ourselves a witness to all of the pieces we have been working on coming together to form a picture that embodies the answer for which we are searching. This process is set into motion by our desire for the answer and the pieces we bring to the table. The work we do that precedes coming to this place orients our minds in such a way that we are able to perceive the answer that is always waiting there to be discovered.
These experiences are possible because this space of unfiltered sensation contains all of the information about everything in the world around us or, to put it another way, it is the oneness from which nothing is excluded. Given our orientation upon entering this space, there is no question that cannot be answered including who it is that has entered. This is why entering this space will create a different experience for every individual that ventures there and will even vary every time for that individual if there is work done on oneself between visits. And this work is the key to unraveling this mystery we are confronted with in the North on the Wheel. To discover who I am requires that I have access to this space of unfiltered sensation with only one question in my mind. And I must finally be in a place where I am willing to surrender whatever it takes, including my own life, to get that answer because the pain of not knowing will far surpass any that might be experienced through the letting go of everything. Not an easy task in a world that would label you insane for even considering such a venture.
There are many ways to approach this need for access to this unfiltered place in our mind. Some of these are already familiar to us from our journey in the West. These include meditation and yoga and dancing and different entheogens, depending on where we find ourselves on the planet. And even, for a few of us, the spontaneous arrival of this experience either from seemingly nowhere or from external circumstances that require us to be fully present as in life threatening situations. The dilemma we are confronted with is that we need to access this space at a time when we have done the work and are oriented in a way that will allow the experience to be transformative. We need to bring about this encounter when we are ready and willing to let go of whatever we find is in the way of our crossing the ocean and getting to the other side.
Unless we are that very special individual such as Ramana Maharshi, to whom the experience presents itself at the right time and unbidden, or author Jill Taylor, who comes upon it as a result of a medical condition, we are given only two choices. We can either use techniques such as meditation to shut down the left side of our brains leaving us in the unfiltered right brain or we can use one of many entheogens to fully open the valve in our brains thereby accomplishing the same thing.
The journey the Buddha took is an example of the non-entheogenic method. He began with one of those esoteric questions that nobody around him could help him with, and probably was advised to let it go as unknowable. He needed to know why there was suffering in the world and went in search of someone who could help him with this question. Leaving everything behind, he eventually found a group of aesthetics who were begging for food and spending the rest of their time in meditation who suggested he follow their lead. And he spent the next few years practicing and perfecting sitting in meditation for long periods of time. Having perfected the techniques but gotten no closer to an answer, he left the aesthetics and began building up his strength in preparation for the next phase of his journey. After years of practice, he now possessed the ability to sit in one place for a very long time while keeping his mind focused on a single subject–in this case, the question of why there was suffering in the world. When he felt strong enough, the Buddha found a suitable place under a bodhi tree where he could sit immersed in this place of unfiltered sensation for as long as it took for the pieces to come together. And their coming together gave him access to this experience we call enlightenment and the knowledge of who it was that had begun and finished the journey.
Having been born into a culture that neither acknowledged these techniques as valid or useful, my journey involved the use of entheogens, and proved to be useful in the West and the North on the Wheel. There are those who would suggest that any experiences resulting from the use of these ‘drugs’, as they would call them, cannot be valid but they don’t speak from experience, but from the fear of a substance that can affect them so profoundly. We are, when all is said and done, simply talking about changes in brain chemistry. And where these changes originate is not the issue we need be concerned about. Whatever the method we chose to access the place of unfiltered sensation, the experience we encounter won’t come from the method we use but rather who we are when we find ourselves in this place. What we bring to this place will always determine the outcome and what we don’t bring will always stifle the journey. As always, the work we do on ourselves is the only way to further this journey around the Wheel.
Whatever path we have chosen, finding ourselves in the place where we experience who it is that has been on this journey from the beginning takes us out of the North and into the East on the Medicine Wheel. And, in a sense, it is the end of the journey taken by who we thought we were and the beginning of whatever comes next. What is left after this experience is a body but there is nobody home. This is true because who you thought you were was always a trick of the mind and when you see this for what it is, it simply falls away and what is left is who you really are and have always been. You become an enlightened being. There can no longer be any desire for things to be different than they are because you are how they are, and there is nobody there to play the game. There is only moving into the East where whatever comes next will come next.
