ABOUT
The Trilogy - On one level, this Trilogy is the story of my personal quest for ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ that I captured in detailed journals from the end of 1989 to 2002, when my spiritual quest ended abruptly. But on a much deeper level this story also serves as a roadmap for any human being that takes his or her spiritual journey seriously enough. These books document my gradual realization that to be fully committed to the spiritual path is to metaphorically throw yourself off of a cliff and then having to get used to the feeling of no longer having a foundation to rest your feet.
All religions utilize silence as a spiritual practice whether it is Christians and Muslims using silent prayer, or Hindu’s and Buddhists using silent meditation. The interesting thing about silence is that any human being that practices silence long enough will invariably experience the same sequence of events. At first, the experience of trying to silence the mind will be agitating and uncomfortable as you discover how little control you have over your own mind. However, if you persist in your efforts to achieve a silent mind than you are rewarded with a deep sense of peace that continues beyond the actual practice of ‘silence’. And this is where it gets interesting.
If you practice ‘silence’ long enough, than the peace that was once enjoyable begins to expand to the point that you feel like you are going to completely vanish from existence altogether. This fear of annihilation is so real that practicing silence becomes an exercise of gaining the courage to throw yourself off of this metaphorical cliff. It is at this point in our spiritual journey that our greatest spiritual weapon is revealed. The nuclear bomb that all of us have in our spiritual arsenal is our ability to ‘surrender’.
It doesn’t matter if we surrender to God, Jesus, Brahman, Allah or the Universe altogether, what does matter is how deep our trust is in that which we are surrendering to. Because it is that very level of trust that is going to be the deciding factor of whether we will have the courage to overcome our fear of annihilation and take the plunge off the cliff that is awaiting everyone on this path. When we finally do step into the Abyss, we find that what is waiting for us on the other side of this fear is a profound Bliss that surpasses even the most glorious descriptions of the heavenly realms that are promised to us in the world religions.
The act of surrendering is not relegated to the practice of silent meditation only. Surrendering is at the heart of the spiritual life altogether. Once you surrender your life completely to that which you have faith in then your whole life becomes your spiritual path. The culmination of true faith will ultimately manifest as a complete and unconditional trust in every aspect of life.
The reason that I wrote this Trilogy was to demystify the subject of Enlightenment. There are already many excellent books on the subject of Enlightenment otherwise known as ‘Nondual Wisdom’. But what I have yet to see is a book that actually chronicles the day to day, month to month, year to year gradual unfolding of the self in excruciating detail. This book is a very personal account of an incredibly impersonal process broken down step by step in slow motion. The reader is invited on a journey that chronicles each step along the path to Enlightenment, the details of the climactic experience itself and finally, what it is like to live in the everyday world after undergoing such a radical and permanent shift in perspective.
It is my hope that this trilogy will serve to demonstrate how the experience of Enlightenment is not something mythical or a fable belonging to some other time or place but an actual shift in perspective that is available right here and now to anyone that is curious enough to explore the true nature of ‘being’. I speak to the reader from the point of view that we are all sharing the human experience and when we explore the depths of our minds, there is the same treasure awaiting us all. The fact that I am a husband and a father who has a full time career, stands as proof that you don’t have to choose between a worldly life or Enlightenment.
The truth is that you don’t have to move to India for Spiritual Enlightenment. You do not even need a teacher or any specific teaching for that matter. You don’t have to sit in any special position to meditate and you don’t have to chant or learn some special mantra. The only thing that is necessary for Spiritual Enlightenment is the attention that you are using right now.
The Author - I was born November 11, 1969 in Annapolis MD into a non-practicing Jewish family. The subject of religion or spirituality never came up in my family so when I discovered a spiritual yearning within myself at the age of twenty, I was completely on my own. I graduated from Towson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and philosophy in 1994. While in college, I had become an avid practitioner of meditation and met my wife to be. We married in the spring of 1995 and had our only daughter in the Summer of 1996.
I had become a serious yet self-taught student of Eastern Philosophy, particularly Zen and Dzogchen and had found the perfect career that would allow me to continue my studies while working. In 1997 I trained at Johns Hopkins University Hospital to run sleep studies and I continue to work as a Registered Polysomnograph Technologist today. After the birth of our daughter we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1999 and lived on the Piney River until we moved to Tampa Bay in 2017.