The Personal Breakthrough

The most obvious personal breakthrough arises from your deepening understanding of what has led to the crises that we are now facing, the rigidity of a hierarchical worldview that reinforces itself continuously. The major turning point occurs when we realize that we are fundamentally ongoing manifestations of an ancient and complex ecosystem. Also, when we realize that everything that exists with an ecosystem is inextricably connected, interconnected and interwoven including ourselves, as individuals, as well as. all of civilization. We can also recognize that every action and interaction has ecological consequences. There is also a more fundamental breakthrough, a sudden, awakening breakthrough, known in Zen as satori and kensho, which reveals the primordial and natural substance of your being. This awakening breakthrough is often so sudden and unexpected that it occurs as a complete surprise. One cannot just attain it through intellectual analysis, nor any form of conceptualization. In addition, a breakthrough does not seem to require any special techniques, practices or formulas that will directly cause it to happen. When one looks back on these breakthroughs, there seems to be no direct cause to be found. The mind just breaks through its fictional conflicts and its self-delusions. No words and phrases can ever quite capture it. At best, they only point to it. Both types of breakthroughs, the analytical and the awakening, fundamentally transform our worldview, into new belief and value systems resulting in the development of an ecological consciousness existing with in the spirit, or ethos, of an ecological worldview. Individually, this new way of seeing the world, through a direct or unmediated perception is an ‘eco-awareness’. It reveals that everything, including the egocentric self, is manifested by the global (even cosmic) ecosystem. Fundamentally, there are no separated objects. There is only an ecosystem operating for the whole planet. This insight alone can deepen our understanding of who we are in terms of our primordial nature. In terms of how the mind naturally functions, breakthroughs are part of what we are. If we are having difficulties solving problems with some sort of barrier blocking any further progress, we can incubate the problem, by asking a question like, “Where do I go from here?” and just letting it sit in our minds. This allows an impersonal subconscious to work on it, until an insight bubbles-up into awareness. This insight, known as the ‘Aha!’ experience, can be a new starting point or even the complete solution to the problem. There are other types of breakthroughs, like a ‘peak experience’. In a peak experience, one breaks through the hold of one’s ongoing drama and stands in ‘awe’ of what is unfolding. The mind momentarily breaks out of the normal way of looking at the world and is surprised and overwhelmed by the extraordinary fullness of what is happening. Spontaneous andIt could be something extraordinary like a piece of music that ‘carries you away’ or a fantastic landscape that ‘blows your mind’. It could also happen in an ordinary everyday experience like cooking a meal, or in any athletic experience like playing golf. It all seems to happen through an effortless flow, yet, it turns out be an outstanding experience that is far better than we can imagine. However, not many people realize that a peak experience is a return to your primordial and impersonal mind. After the breakthrough. there is a fundamental change in one's consciousness and in one's sense of reality. You see the world not through the filters set up by the conflicting concerns of an ego-centric self immersed in its own drama, nor through the dictates of a hierarchical worldview. Instead, there is a direct perception of ‘what is’, just as it is. During the actual breakthrough, a momentary liberation occurs in which you are very aware that all personal, inner conflicts have vanished on their own. You are free from the continual egocentric confusion. You even notice an absence of the self, as you look around. The ‘me’ is nowhere to be found. There is ‘Just This!’ There is the realization that there is no self to be liberated or enlightened. The mind is now free to discover insights that might be blocked by this separate self's expectations, goals, restricted beliefs and value patterns.