........ As I sat in the passenger seat looking out beyond the windshield where the car lights shone I had the sense that I was looking from behind me over my right shoulder. This sense carried with me for a couple of days and then seemed to fade.



I attended a retreat later that year, where I was able to relax and unwind I had received some similar attention to the person at the Satsang. In these very quiet moments, I felt a lot of heat and my vision would alter in ways hard to describe. At a separate mid-way point during the retreat, Lorne said not to listen to the words he spoke, but to the spaces between the words. This resonated with me as I could hear the hum of the fan in the room and then underneath that the faint hum of the fluorescent lights and like another layer below this was a strong silence. At our last session with LL at the end of the retreat, I had the opportunity to speak about this experience. As I spoke about it, I again became aware of the layers of sound and the deep silence was right there.

 

Once again Lorne and my eyes met, my mind and body deeply relaxed, and in what felt like a split second and an eternity I experienced no boundary to where my physical body stopped on this tether of silence. Simultaneously I experienced being in various rooms of the retreat hotel. After this final session, there was absolute stillness and I recall very little beyond a sense of floating and seeing through different eyes. I remember looking at my left hand and it was like I was looking at someone else's hand.  Later, in moments of doubt, I would use the 'looking at my hand' as a gauge to see if this state of being and witnessing was still there. 



Since that day there has been much more ease in my daily life, less attachments to agendas, more allowance, and an acceptance to the flow. On a physical and emotional level, many sense perceptions have heightened, I am much more relaxed and there are fewer stories or ideas about how to be. One noticeable trait is more sensitivity to sounds, where it is like a felt sense in my physical body. As well, my perception of stillness has transformed. Initially, the stillness, removed of thought, would be so thick it was palpable. At times I could relate it to watching a movie with sound but no commentary.  However, now the silence and stillness, always there underlying the phenomena, has an attentive sharpness to it. One other notable aspect is the layers of my concepts and beliefs have fallen away resulting in a much greater sense of freedom.



N. C.  Salt Spring Island, BC  Canada

 

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