In preparing for my next piece about the process I have developed for myself that seems to work in processing and handling of emotional situations, I realized that there is a concept that I need to outline and discuss a little bit before I can meaningfully talk about the other process. This is the concept that I like to call rapture.
Rapture is the primal state of undifferentiation that we are all privy to when we are born. As adults there are various levels of rapture that can occur depending on just how much of the brain is compromised during a stressful situation.
Many unfortunately misguided traditions of spiritual practice attempt to elevate this undifferentiated state to that of godhead. Duality is the great evil. However, nondualism, or the awareness of undifferentiation is markedly different from the pure experience of undifferentiation. Awareness will be a key point in the next post I will write concerning emotional processing. Awareness is what marks the difference between a baby, rapt in its mother’s embrace, and the experience of satori for a zen monk.
The encouragement of unmanaged rapture is particularly dangerous. When we experience rapture in an uncontrolled environment, we literally lose ourselves. We say or do things that, upon later realization, we have no idea why we did, or how we did. Rapture is the state you experience after you have stopped responding, stopped thinking, and simply started reacting. While rapture can lead to excellence in sports, it can also lead to violence against those we love. Rapture puts us at the mercy of the parts of our brains that cannot fend for themselves.
Certain communities, namely healthy expressions of the BDSM community, practice forms of rapture in highly controlled environments. A submissive grants control of their person to a dominant, using carefully and rather exhaustively negotiated list of conditions. The more extreme the submission, the more complete the rapture. In this state of ever deepening fusion, spiritual experiences can be much more easily experienced without the need for drugs or other mind altering substances. Instead the higher mind is broken down through physical exertions and stressors. The fusion this leads to allows the submissive to experience a highly gratifying, highly primal sense of connectedness that is also achievable with other substances.
But herein lies the danger. Done correctly, and done with a negotiated contract that protects the submissive, the fused state does not leave the protection of the dominant. Similarly, when indigenous cultures take substances to achieve such a fusion for spiritual rites, they are protected by the other people participating in the ritual. The fusion does not leave very well defined boundaries. Humanity has known for a very long time that fused states like rapture require protection. When this state happens outside of a protective environment, it is extremely dangerous to the person in the rapt state.
Rapture is the complete and total absence of boundaries of any kind whatsoever. The only protection that exists for the unit who is enrapt is the more primal, more visceral protections offered by a mind devoid of reasoning. You may imagine, this is not very much protection; consider a 3 or 4 year old left by themselves to survive alone.
Now, I would like to shift gears. Rapture, the primal fusion, the unbounded state, is extremely helpful in feeling connected, in feeling like a part of something larger than ourselves. Rapture is absolutely necessary. And rapture is absolutely possible to manage, either externally or internally.
As westerners we are generally taught that emotions are lesser than rational thought. This creates a state in our mind where we have a tendency to disown our emotions. Rapture allows us to reintegrate and to experience the real ness of that part of us. So we set up a system where we are two instead of one. We are either rapt or logical and never the twain shall meet. We exist as dual beings needing a protector when we are rapt and soulless beings the rest of the time. We must rid ourselves of this internal separation if we are to be fully actualized beings.
I have already spoken a little bit about rapture being managed with an external protector, but it is my earnest belief that we can safely experience rapture with only an internal protector. The brain is a highly parallel mechanism capable of several forms of multitasking. However, developing the skill for this multitasking is almost very much like the point of practices such as zazen. For most western minds, we have to both learn to engage our emotional parts of our brain (through inhibiting the judgment center) while simultaneously engaging our protectors, that part of us that is aware of threats to our person. But each one of these functions, feeling, judgment, and protection, operate disparately, and need to be unified. They are unified through the executor. In mindfulness traditions there is the observer who is capable of experiencing without attachment to a given brain state. The executor is the hand of the observer. The observer is the part of our higher mind that is capable of allowing us to be rapt while employing the executor to engage the other functions so we do not lose ourselves. We experience true nonduality, in that we experience a mind that is one through unity rather than two through obsessive thought, or simply one through an inability to differentiate.
The key to this nondual unification is awareness. Plain, simple awareness. The cultivation of awareness is the cultivation of the observer. But this cultivation is very much a skill, like learning to cook. It requires time, it requires dedication, and it requires an earnest desire to develop. We practice this development with mindfulness practices like zazen. And at some point during our practice, we get the chance to perform.
I cannot express to you the joy you will feel during a successful performance. You will simply awaken when you experience it for yourself.
