As I move through my days I get flashes of intense emotions. The soma, the flesh is releasing a lot that has been hidden. I will be walking and all of a sudden be rapt in intense gratitude for someone taking me in when I was 19. I will be laying down to rest and intense pain and sorrow will arise from a tough lesson like meeting “the one” and letting her go. Drinking water will bring me to tears.
What is most interesting is the rate at which they happen, are felt and let go. With some exceptions that last minutes or an hour, I feel the turbulence and return back to my peace. This has led me to understand Joy in a whole new way. Until recently I have viewed Joy as having something. It is equally the absence of something that brings you Joy. As I dip into these dense and low feelings, I am sprung back into the light as they release. It is not so much that I am tuning into something other than my current state, but the absence of that pain brings great relief and joy.
I have two stories I would like to share about this.
Last year I was working out in the gym; I hopped forward doing a jump squat, and threw out my back as I landed. Now this was not my first rodeo in regards to back pain. Ever since high school I would have some moment where I pulled, twisted, or popped my lower back and it would just give out. It normally meant 3 days of bed rest, two weeks of hobbling around, and another two weeks to a month of walking gingerly and stretching often. Each time I would tell myself a story or believe the pain was my identity. Not this last time.
This last time and hopefully now the final time, I had the benefit of knowing breath work, meditation and laughter. Yes that’s right laughter. There is something mildly hilarious about the states of pain and suffering we put ourselves into. Once we no longer identify with that old story of “I’m hurt” or “it will be months before this heals,” we can just be present with the sensation and truly feel.
As I laid on the couch unable to move from the immensity of what I was feeling, I began to laugh. A breathy giggle is what came up. A doctor from the 50s might have called this hysteria. The pain, and then the absence of pain with each in breath and out breath was extremely exhilarating. As I laughed it intensified and a rhythm of laughter and of breathing through it arose. My wife at the time walked in and thought I was losing my mental sense. She was genuinely concerned. I was wrapped in a sensation of joy. There is no other word for it. Just being present with that agony and feeling it was enough to bring me back to my sense of Joy. My entire being was vibrating and shaking with this full body laugh and breath.
These spasms of laughter and deep breathing would last for about 30 minutes. I would stop for a time, drink water, perhaps eat a little. THEN it would start all over again. It felt like I was catching and riding a wave of healing energy sent from the great beyond.
That next day I stood up to walk. I was shocked by the fact that there was no pain. I expected it to be there at first and started limping, still not fully trusting what I was experiencing. The idea and memory of the pain was still there but nothing else. I was able to pick up my daughter when she came to me to ask for a hug. It was a miracle.
Another time, I was in the steam room. I had recently heard some story of Christ on the cross and how in those moments of intensity he actually felt bliss. I had always wondered how anyone could endure that kind of cruelty and still find grace in their hearts for others. It also reminded me of the monks who would self-immolate in China as a protest. They would enter a meditation and set themselves on fire, burning a way without making a sound.
“How does one experience these kinds of things without cursing others or giving blame in some way?” I wondered. As I began to think more on this and practice more with meditation I realized there is a deep and profound sense of life and of purpose deep within me and every person. This sense identifies with something deeper then our usual walking awareness. IN it I can feel the walls around me. I can hear the breath of someone in the room acutely. I can feel the building move with the wind. It knows it self through the ALL. It is Source and it is Joy.
I had experimented with prolonged fasts, sauna sessions and cold exposures and was beginning to find that sense of calm more and more. A big part of returning to that stillness is by not identifying with the pain/ suffering your ego mind expects. An example of this was in that steam room. In all steam rooms there is a spout that steam exits out of and into the room. The room and steam get quite hot. The room and bodies inside help cool it down as it oscillates. That is until you get real close to the spigot.
The spigot shoots out boiling hot water, steam. Water must reach over 212 degrees Fahrenheit to boil and for steam to rise. On that day I sat right next to it and began to enter into my meditation, not thinking about how close I was to the spigot. Normally it takes awhile for it to set off as there is a thermometer that gauges the room before it allows more steam to enter. I was deep in meditation and it starts to pour out, “hsssssss” is the sound it makes. My right arm was right in front of the mouth and immediately I could feel the intensity of the heat. A small voice within told me to leave my arm there. Calling my sensation as hot, meant it was hotter than me, anything hotter than me should burn me as our logic goes. Instead of that labeling, the voice guided me deeper into meditation and showed me that I can move the heat through my body and into the room as well. At that moment I became a conductor.
In this place of deep stillness I understood how those monks set themselves on fire. I understood how Christ endured his suffering on the cross. They did not suffer. They chose to tune into Joy. I sat there for over a minute with my arm in scalding heat and felt intense pain and pleasure at the same time. It is a sensation beyond labeling as wrong, right, good, evil, pain or pleasure. It was pure sensation. In that moment I felt like I had tapped into the very code of the Universe. My entire being began to vibrate to meet the rate heat I was experiencing.
As I sat there, a thought popped into my head from my external sense, ” I wonder if it will hurt if we think it will hurt.” As soon as I entertained the idea, the sensation shifted from intense joy into the beginning of pain. I attempted to return to that sense of peace, but I listened to my fears of burning myself or forever scarring my precious body. I almost immediately drew my arm from the heat.
As I walked out of the steam room a short time later, I looked to my arm to see if there were any blisters, redness or swelling. Nothing whatsoever. A miracle.
These Ascended Masters, these meditation masters achieve these states by tuning into their peace and letting nothing disturb it, not even their own thoughts. They are capable of experiencing intense pain or pleasure without identifying with either. They are tuning into something much deeper. This deeper sense of Self does not let the external reality dictate the internal reality.
As yet I have not reached that state I experienced that day. I tried it out a few more times and got burned each time. I hope and wonder if that deep stillness and Joy will find me again on this journey of 40 days.
Thank you for tuning in,
All the Love,
Ryan Orion
Ryan Orion 
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