Uninterrupted Flow of Awareness
TM-teacher of over 40 years of practice reflecting on her experiences with Flowing Wakefulness meditation
I have been practicing Transcendental Meditation regularly for over 45 years and have been continually happy with it throughout that period of time. The technique is simple and easy to do and I was able to quickly and reliably transcend within moments of first sitting down to meditate using my mantra. With TM I enjoyed the experience of a sweet high vibration, a sense of expansion, a lightness of Being, of sitting blissfully enveloped in the lap of Mother Divine. The settling down, the expansion, and the Bliss I experienced during meditation continued into my activity and with time I felt fairly well established in the Field of Being.
About two years ago I had been introduced to Igor Kufayev’s meditation. I was surprised by its immediacy, its dynamism, and the originality of its flavor as compared to my TM experience. I marvel at and continue to seek to understand the relationship of the two techniques, which seem related but generate such different experiences.
Having a strong identification with and affection for my original path I had a dilemma. I still enjoyed TM and noted that the experience was notably different from the work at Flowing Wakefulness. The expansion I experienced with the Flowing Wakefulness meditation was/is more powerful, more visceral. When I initially sat to meditate under Igor’s simple instruction the settling down was also immediate. But it soon became apparent that I had a choice to make — staying with the sweet familiarity of bathing in the simplicity of inner peace or venturing into the new instruction. I chose to give over to Igor’s invitation.
The experience was as if having a lid lifted off or dissolved from that reservoir of Bliss to which I’d had access all these years, experiencing that lightness of Being irrevocably rising and spreading throughout my body. It felt as if the flow of consciousness was being locally pressed through the sieve of my nervous system. I was experiencing the juncture point of abstract absolute consciousness and consciousness becoming.
In a later meditation on that first Immersion I recognized that I felt somehow suspended within a vast space, a universal space, and I was drawn into experiencing the rapture of my Being reaching out into all directions, and I drew out with my arms the new dimensionality of my being. I knew it was my body but it was also not my body. I was as if giving over to a greater being, a sort of “making a place” for Divine Being, making way for and facilitating her greater expression, or perhaps I was placing myself on some perfected blueprint of my higher Self. I became aware of other benevolent beings singing and chanting and I was treated to beautiful visuals of celestial realms, thoroughly enjoyable, very entertaining, and stunningly beautiful.
These experiences continue, though not as definitively as on the Immersions with Igor’s presence. Outside of the meditations I experience gushes, waves of kundalini in activity, which are pleasant if unexpectedly intense. In direct result to the stretching of physical boundaries experienced during meditation I feel more grounded throughout the day, more fully available to the requirements of the householder’s life. The knowledge that I am more than my little self is made more tangible and my spiritual purpose has come more to the forefront of daily life, more into focus.
In the Flowing Wakefulness path we are encouraged to directly examine inner inconsistencies or challenges that come to our awareness, committing ourselves to full disclosure, understanding our intents, and taking full and conscious responsibility for our thoughts and actions. A part of me misses the sweetness and the simplicity of my TM. Practicing it is like resting in a cloud — lovely, simple, sweet. I owe everything to this knowledge that has served me so well, and have been and am so grateful that I had stumbled onto its path. I am part of and relate to an extended social network, many members of whom, incidentally, would not accept my “stepping off the path”. I had been content to stay in that space before I had come to my first Immersion. And now I find that my path has changed. My meditations are not the consistently quiet, conveniently unobtrusive ones I once enjoyed, but now are occasioned with strong intonations as my arms stretch up, arc down, and reach out to my sides.
The new work is a “wake-up” call as inner resources are energized and enlivened. There is an acceleration and a heightened responsibility to which I was not accustomed. The work demands ruthless self-examination. It is perhaps this more conscious living that I find most challenging with this work, and it is coming to me that perhaps I had become a little too comfortable over the years, perhaps a little spiritually lazy.
Igor has deep experience with and appreciation for this TM which I’d enjoyed for so many years and he is uniquely positioned to help me broaden my understanding of where I was on the path. He offered up much of his time in showing me the wisdom of why my path had been drawn a certain way. He helped provide me context with which to go forth and determine for myself where to go from here. One point of wisdom that has sweetened each moment since our talk was a small “tip” he threw out at the end — the idea that as far as the wave which must inevitably fall back into the ocean is concerned, it could lament the loss of being a wave or it could choose to enjoy its approaching union with the unbounded ocean of Being. Igor asked if my experience was naturally pleasant, which of course it is, and suggested I choose to look at my “predicament” from another angle.
It is the depth of the inner experiences of this new meditation which serves to balance the challenges I find in my activity, and I am grateful to Igor for his clarity and wisdom in encouraging us as students to trust in that inner experience as well as exemplifying his mastery of knowledge. I had to some degree lulled myself to a place of spiritual complacency, and I am grateful that through Igor’s kindness and patience, masterful articulation and expertise comes revealed a new and further expanded level of knowledge and experience.
Jai Guru Dev
An anonymous author, MA, United States. November 2019
Images: taken during immersions with Igor in Mallorca, Spain, November 2019. Courtesy of Flowing Wakefulness.
For more information on live events with Igor Kufayev, and the next scheduled 5 Day Immersion at Schloss Thalheim in Austria from May 11-16, 2020, please visit: http://www.igorkufayev.com/events
Dearest K.V., Thank you for this beautiful and so-conscious sharing of your explorations/experiences in meditation, (your meditation journey), both formerly in T.M. and as you continue to deepen your “drop-in” and expansion into “the field” of Consciousness under Igor’s guidance and, importantly, into incorporating this expanded awareness into your householder’s life! Beautiful and inspiring!
Thank you very much for this open and heartfelt sharing! ♥
This is a rare gem of a sharing, coming from someone with a depth of experience of decades long , dedicated spiritual practice. It comes as instructive, insightful, very honest, and as an even reminder to what treading this path is all about. Thank you for this beautiful sharing.