All of the great teachers ask us to digest and stabilize the wisdom of spiritual experience and then move on. This means that spiritual experiences are opportunities to first recognize the wisdom being communicated and then to open and strive to make that our embodied understanding–a natural part of our everyday life. We should not attach ourselves to the story of our experience. We should work directly with the transmission.
The litmus test of any spiritual experience is what did I learn about Reality, and how am I showing up in the world now. Can I stabilize and integrate new understanding into my everyday life? This is where regular sadhana and the guidance of a teacher are crucial.
Now, samadhi means different things to different people. To many people reading about it or mistaking some other experience for samadhi, it simply means lost in bliss. People associate states of withdrawal (pratyahara) and being tranced out with samadhi and get pretty excited when someone becomes inert or seemingly insensible to the world.
These notions of samadhi are based on a transcendental View–that the goal of human life is to leave the messy, dirty physical plane behind and transcend to a supposed spiritual plane, become immersed in that and oblivious to all else.
Realization is total awakeness. No matter what the physical expression. And it is 360 degree awakeness. For instance, there are states of experiencing in which one loses all sense of individual life. But Realization includes awareness of all possibilities, of all of life’s expressions.
So, when moments of consciously embodying awakeness come your way, that is when you must hop on the opportunity to recognize that and abide or continue in it as long as you can. There are many techniques for stabilizing the recognition of the natural state. Nearly all of what we call sadhana is directed toward this aim. (More ...)