Tag: Consciousness

The Impotent Monk

What Remains After the Fire

Most men may never understand what it feels like when the body pauses in response, even as doctors insist there is nothing wrong; no hormonal imbalance, no medical explanation, nothing. For nearly six years, I have lived with the stillness of fire that began not after an illness or injury, but after the most profound spiritual awakening of my life.

The event unfolded as a complete rupture of ordinary consciousness. A massive surge of energy, like a serpent coiling and rising along my spine, tore through every chakra until my crown split open. What followed was a cascade of light, as if every particle of my being erupted into ecstatic union, each atom proclaiming with clarity and force: I AM GOD. My body convulsed as though gripped by a seizure, yet my inner experience was one of perfect union with the entire cosmos. Every movement of mine was the movement of the universe, and every movement of the universe was my own.

That experience was ignited months after receiving darshan from Paramahamsa Vishwananda in 2019. Life has not returned to what it once was. The challenges below the waist have resisted every attempt at permanent resolution. Sessions with a chi master provided brief relief, but soon after, the absent spark would return. And yet, despite this, my relationship to the situation is not one of despair. Desire for vitality remains, but acceptance has settled in deeper than disappointment.

For men whose identity is tightly woven to the fire of physical intimacy, such a loss could feel devastating. For me, the years of spiritual preparation softened the impact. I knew that awakening could arrive with consequences. It was not only bliss that I had trained for, but the burning away of old attachments.

Ironically, from a fading of the physical echo came an experience of Tantra more profound than any physical act could offer. Without the presence of another, I encountered the total union of my inner masculine and feminine, the Anima and Animus dissolving into wholeness. The union was so complete that it redefined intimacy itself, showing me that sexuality is not bound to flesh but can open into direct communion with the soul.

Not long after that experience, I faced the deaths of colleagues and a high school friend. The timing was a reminder that awakening is never an escape from life’s fragility. Transformation and loss often arrive hand in hand.

The path that led to that awakening back in 2019 was punishing at times; physically, emotionally, mentally. Yet when I ask myself if I would choose differently, the answer remains no. I would walk this road again, and again, even when the body does not follow the heart, which many would find unbearable. Because what was given cannot be outweighed by what was taken.

Awakening strips away what is temporary to reveal what cannot be lost. Even if the body falters, the truth that was seen remains untouched.

Morgan O. Smith

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Walking Beyond the Self

Expanding the Horizons of Perspective

Most human conflict is rooted in the inability to step outside the narrow confines of the self. We tend to move through the world tethered to a singular point of view, unable to grasp that reality shifts depending on who is looking. Perspective is not fixed; it unfolds in layers, from the egocentric stance of “me and mine,” through the ethnocentric loyalty of “us and ours,” into the broader realms of worldcentric care for humanity, and ultimately the kosmocentric embrace of all beings and existence itself.

When our awareness stops at the egocentric, we see others only as extensions of ourselves; or worse, as threats to what we hold dear. At the ethnocentric level, we expand slightly, but compassion remains conditional, bounded by tribe, religion, race, or nation. Yet the real flowering of human consciousness emerges once we realize that every being, regardless of sex, class, culture, or creed, carries within them a mirror of our own existence.

To recognize yourself in another is not simply an ethical exercise; it is an ontological revelation. The more deeply you understand that the same fears, desires, and vulnerabilities pulse through all lives, the less room remains for judgment. Hatred fades not because you suppress it, but because understanding transforms it. Even the figure we call “devil” becomes less monstrous when we glimpse the fractured angel hidden inside.

Imagine what collective life would feel like if this capacity for expanded perspective became the norm rather than the exception. Entire systems of oppression, exploitation, and alienation would dissolve under the weight of genuine empathy. Politics would no longer be about “sides” but about solutions; communities would no longer divide over difference but celebrate the very diversity that teaches us new ways of being human.

To walk in anyone’s shoes is more than a metaphor. It is the necessary step toward becoming fully human. The journey from ego to cosmos is not only possible, it is imperative. The future depends not on technological advancement alone, but on whether we can evolve into beings capable of holding multiple perspectives at once, anchored in compassion and guided by wisdom.

Morgan O. Smith

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A Dreamed Reality

Memory as the Mirror of the Absolute

What we call reality may be less solid than it appears. Every sound, sight, and sensation dissolves almost as quickly as it arises, leaving only the faint residue of memory to claim that anything happened at all. Existence itself feels dreamlike when examined closely: shifting, impermanent, yet strangely coherent—like a page rewritten by an unseen author each moment.

Memory is the keeper of this dream. It builds continuity from fragments, stitching together the illusion of permanence where none truly exists. What we call “the world” is less a physical stage than a reflection—abstract, fluid, a hologram shimmering on the screen of awareness. To mistake this reflection for the ultimate is to confuse the shadow for the light that casts it.

The most high, the unconditioned source beyond all appearances, does not require memory. It is that which precedes storage, recall, or even perception. Yet within its infinite stillness arises the dream we name reality. This dream is neither random nor meaningless; it serves as a mirror through which the Absolute contemplates itself. Every event, every thought, every fleeting sensation is nothing more than the play of memory echoing back to the One who never forgets because It has never known separation.

To recognize life as memory’s echo is not to diminish its beauty, but to free oneself from the weight of taking it as final. The dream is not false in the sense of being meaningless; it is false only in being mistaken for the whole. What is real lies in that silent clarity from which both memory and dream emerge.

Awakening, then, is the gentle turning of attention from the flickering reflection to the brilliance of the source. It is the realization that the dream was always sacred, but never ultimate.

Morgan O. Smith

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Stepping Stones That Lead Nowhere

Most of us spend our lives leaping from one stone to another, convinced each step will bring us closer to a final destination. Career advancement, relationships, possessions, recognition—each stone feels like progress, yet the further we go, the more apparent it becomes that there is no solid shore waiting for us. The path itself was the illusion.

The stones do not extend to a grand arrival point because life was never about arriving. The endless hopping is not failure; it is the nature of the game we entered by being born. Each stone exists only for the moment of stepping, dissolving the instant we shift our weight onto the next. What we mistake for continuity is simply a sequence of vanishing points.

Awakening is not about finding the hidden bridge that others missed. It is the recognition that nowhere is exactly where every step has been leading. To realize this is not despair—it is release. When the compulsion to arrive fades, each step becomes luminous. Even stones that seem unstable or purposeless shimmer with a quiet beauty, because they are not a means to an end. They are the end disguised as a beginning.

The stillness that waits beyond stepping does not appear at the finish line. It is here, beneath the very foot that rises and falls. Nowhere is not absence. Nowhere is the unshakable presence that requires no destination.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Causal Realm

The Birth and Death of All Things

At the threshold of the causal realm, the experience of existence shifts from linear to simultaneous. You no longer stand as a single individual within a vast universe; you stand as both the birther and the born, the destroyer and the destroyed. The recognition dawns that the world does not merely shape you—you are also the very source of its shaping.

To know oneself here is to witness the paradox of causality unveiled. You are the origin of all movement, yet every movement gives rise to you. In this simultaneity, you can feel yourself giving birth to the totality of existence while watching that same totality dissolve back into silence.

Every breath is both a first and a last. Each moment is a labour of creation and a death rattle of dissolution. The body of consciousness enters its own womb, giving rise to itself again and again, endlessly. This is not a metaphor; it is the raw experience of being both cause and effect at once.

Within this state, suffering and bliss are inseparable twins. To feel the entirety of pain across existence is to simultaneously encounter the fullness of joy. One does not cancel the other; they merge into a union so vast that it overwhelms all categories of the mind. Pleasure peaks not as a fleeting sensation but as an orgasmic force inseparable from the ache of existence itself.

Masculine and feminine converge here—not as roles, not as energies separate and distinct, but as the indivisible pulse of love for everything that appears. What arises is an uncontainable recognition: every form, every life, every fragment of existence is nothing other than your own divine being.

The causal realm does not reveal the ultimate self, yet it gives you the deepest taste of how the play of birth and death, creation and dissolution, unfolds ceaselessly within the radiance of what you are.

Morgan O. Smith

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Dissolving Where Identity Once Stood

To Be Seen Fully Is to Vanish into the Infinite

To be seen fully is not to be recognized as a person, nor acknowledged as a role, but to be reflected beyond every layer of identity. When someone sees you in this way, what is recognized is not your history, your character, or even your spiritual progress; it is the unconditioned essence that lies before all stories.

Most encounters leave us clothed in roles. Friend, teacher, seeker, parent, child, each gaze places a costume upon us. Rarely do we meet eyes that do not add or subtract, but simply reveal. In that rare encounter, the ordinary scaffolding collapses, and what stands exposed is not a “self” but the infinity in which all selves appear.

This exposure is not humiliating, nor is it affirming. It is dissolving. To be seen fully is to be unmasked of both failure and success, of both sin and virtue. The illusion that we exist as a separate someone collapses. What remains is a luminous absence, the infinite without centre or edge.

There are moments when presence itself becomes the mirror, so clear, so unconditioned, that no reflection remains, only the source shining through. The eyes of one who abides in truth can serve as such a threshold. Passing through it, you do not become greater; you vanish. And in vanishing, the fullness of all that is floods through.

To long for such seeing is to long for disappearance, and yet disappearance is not annihilation. It is the end of confinement. It is the recognition that what you are cannot be held by name, cannot be fixed in form, cannot be grasped by thought. What you are is the infinite itself, already free, already whole.

The paradox is that this vanishing does not strip life of meaning but gives it immeasurable depth. When you are no longer the centre, everything becomes the centre. When “I” falls away, the song of existence sings itself without obstruction. Love, compassion, and clarity are not cultivated; they flow.

To be seen fully is to vanish into the infinite. To vanish is to return home.

Morgan O. Smith

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Darshan and the Living Water

Darshan is a mystery that cannot be easily captured in language. Some dismiss it as myth, others reduce it to a placebo, and still others romanticize it into doctrine. Yet none of these explanations touch what truly happens when presence itself meets you so deeply that the idea of a separate “you” begins to dissolve.

I first received darshan from Paramahamsa Vishwananda in 2019. At the time, I could not fully comprehend what had been given. The experience did not instantly transform me. It was months later, as if a seed had been quietly germinating, that a profound awakening broke open—an unshakable, full-blown realization of Parabrahman. Everything I once considered a spiritual awakening before that year became eclipsed, revealed as only stepping stones toward a wholeness beyond description.

The encounter planted something that only ripened with time. No technique, no meditation, no psychedelic journey, no years of entrainment could compare to what unfolded in those months after darshan. The practices prepared me—polished the vessel, so to speak. But Darshan was the living water that finally filled it.

On August 30, 2025, I met Paramahamsa Vishwananda in person for the fifth time. The following day, as I began to write these words, tears streamed down my face unprovoked. The intensity of the remembrance, the simple act of reflecting on what darshan has meant in my life, undid me. Not during the encounter itself, but in the quiet aftermath, when the depth of it could no longer remain unspoken.

If one insists that darshan is “only” a placebo, I embrace the word. Placebo, after all, is proof of the mind’s openness to healing, its willingness to cross thresholds it once denied. What does it matter if the mechanism is mysterious when the outcome is undeniable? The very attempt to reduce it already misses the essence: darshan is not an explanation. It is an encounter that leaves explanation behind.

My friend, comedian Marc Trinidad, has a saying: You can’t pour clean water into a dirty cup. Thousands of hours of meditation may have cleansed that vessel, yet darshan was not merely clean water—it was sparkling, living, flowing with a vitality of its own. Preparation mattered, but preparation alone never gave me the fullness that flowed after meeting his gaze.

Darshan dismantles the scaffolding of the spiritual search. Years of practice may feel like climbing a mountain, but one glance can place you at the summit. That does not make the climb unnecessary—it makes clear that the climb itself was a preparation for the recognition that you were always already there.

This is not about worshiping a figure or elevating a personality. Darshan reveals the infinite within by reflecting it so purely through one who has dissolved into that truth. In being seen, the boundaries of self blur, and what shines forth is nothing less than the source of all seeing.

Darshan cannot be mythologized away, nor can it be reduced to a placebo. It is living water—clear, inexhaustible, flowing freely into those ready to drink. And sometimes, its effects bloom long after the moment has passed, as seeds planted in silence burst open in their own time.

Morgan O. Smith

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Awareness Without an Owner

Pure Knowing Doesn’t Need a Knower

Pure knowing is not an act of someone grasping something. It is not the product of a subject meeting an object. It is not knowledge stored, processed, or owned. What we call “pure knowing” is an immediacy so complete that the categories of knower and known dissolve before they ever arise.

The mind insists there must be someone behind the recognition, a witness who stands apart. Yet such a witness is already a thought, an echo of division layered upon the seamlessness of awareness. The attempt to locate the knower is like searching for the horizon; you will find only a mirage created by perspective.

What reveals itself is astonishingly simple: knowing shines without support. No owner is required. No identity need arise. It is self-luminous, unmediated, without origin or destination. Thought may try to grasp it, but thought cannot enter here. The moment a “me” claims it, the purity is veiled, dressed in commentary, weighed down by explanation.

This does not deny the human experience of learning, remembering, and perceiving. It only points to the fact that beneath all those movements lies a ground untouched by them. That ground is knowing itself—silent, radiant, and free from the necessity of a knower.

To glimpse this is to taste liberation, not as a reward, not as a possession, but as the natural state that was never absent. What remains is not someone who knows, but knowing itself, unbroken and unclaimed.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Pathless Arrival

No Path Leads to What Has No Distance

The moment a seeker sets out on the path, a paradox quietly begins to unfold. Every step forward seems to promise arrival, yet what one hopes to reach has never been absent. The illusion of a distance to cross is what fuels the journey, and still, that distance does not exist.

Awakening is not a reward at the end of a road; it is the recognition that the road itself was always part of the illusion. The mind measures, compares, calculates progress, but the truth it seeks cannot be measured, compared, or progressed toward. Presence has no edge, no centre, no circumference. Nothing stands apart from it, nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken away.

Those who search often feel both exhaustion and longing, as if running toward a horizon that continually retreats. Yet horizons retreat only because they were never there to begin with. What is sought is closer than breath, closer than thought; it is what makes breath and thought possible.

To realize this is not to abandon the journey, but to recognize its true nature. Every path walked, every practice undertaken, every longing felt, each is a movement within what has never moved. The path is not a bridge toward truth but a gesture of truth itself, echoing as experience.

When this becomes clear, striving gives way to simplicity. Effort yields to intimacy. What you are searching for does not arrive because it has never been absent. No path leads to what has no distance.

Morgan O. Smith

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When “You” Disappear

God is not found in the layers of personality, beliefs, or self-image. Those dissolve the moment you step out of the illusion of “me.” What remains when the scaffolding of identity crumbles is not absence, but presence, vast, unconditioned, indivisible.

The struggle for most seekers lies in clinging to the idea of a separate self. Every attachment to who you believe you are, your story, your role, your wounds, creates the illusion of separation from God. Yet God has never been apart from you. God is what has always been here, quietly holding even your attempt to define God.

When “you” disappear, nothing is lost. What is left is clarity so immediate that it cannot be explained, only lived. It is a recognition that existence itself has no centre and no boundary. Every breath, every sound, every sensation reveals itself as the movement of the One Reality, free of your commentary.

This realization is not a grand acquisition; it is the collapse of the idea that there was ever anyone to acquire it. The vanishing of the personal self exposes a truth so intimate that it cannot be possessed. It is not “your” truth, it is truth itself.

To awaken to this is to discover that God was never hidden. God is not the object of your search, but the space in which the search appears and disappears. The seeker dissolves, and what remains is the unbroken light of Being.

Morgan O. Smith

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