One day, I decided to practice awareness while walking near a highway for a change, instead of doing so in a park as I usually did. It was very different from the park experience because of the noise of cars, trucks, buses and the pollution, etc. Despite my negative surroundings, I decided to stick to my practice and went along the footpath quite close to the busy road. I found it difficult to start with, then, I remembered a few words Belsebuub had explained about reaching peace with awareness.
After a while during that walk, I started not to hear the constant traffic so much and I managed to reach a breakthrough point of total silence in my head. For once, I was actually there, present, not judging or being affected by my surroundings. Not happy or sad, I was just there in the present moment, almost as if time had slowed down.
I felt silence and an inner peace, something I had hardly ever felt in my life, I then noticed a truck containing dozens of sheep on the highway and found myself observing the cargo go by, then for a moment, I saw humans in their place, waiting calmly for something.
I knew the sheep were most likely heading towards a slaughterhouse but intuitively felt that it was their divine spark that personified as humans to me, in transit to their next journey.
My thoughts that followed were strange, I knew the sheep were heading to a horrible ending but rather than feeling sadness in this case I felt I was observing the cycle of life and death. That vision remains clear to me to this day.
Thank you guys, its nice to hear from all of you.
Exceptionally profound experience Steeve. Thank you for sharing it with us. I would have never thought the perception of the moment would unlock such a mystical vision/experience.
Thank you Steeve for sharing. Your experience sounds very powerful and a good reminder to keep trying and explore awareness.
It’s beautiful you gained this powerful lesson or insight just by being aware, and moreover in such an uninspiring environment. It makes me think how our divine Being could be waiting for us come to the right state of inner effort and awareness to be able to teach us something. If we don’t, maybe It also can’t teach it to us and we’ll miss the learning.
I also found it very hard to understand the concept of awareness and how to practice it properly. I suppose I understand it a little better now, if not perfectly, and it is great to know what I actually should be doing at any moment to awaken the consciousness and bring spirituality in my life. If there is confusion there can’t be much dedication but having the exact instructions of what to do, is very precious. Reading your experience and writing this comment makes me determined to make more efforts for it. Thank you Steeve!
That’s a great insight Steeve. A good lesson. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Steve, I brought the message in your experience to mind today as I was walking along a busy part of a city, really not wanting to be there. I didn’t reach the clarity you did, but things shifted straight away as I turned my attention to clearing the negative reactions.
It’s also really helpful to hear it stressed again just how important self-observation and awareness is as the keystones of the inner work. With this, every moment can actually be grasped. Without it, time just passes.
I’ve also had glimpses of being able to feel the higher reality within the very normal scene in front of me. It’s quite incredible how perception changes everything.
Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks for sharing Steeve. We have so many opportunities, hopefully we can all use them wisely before that day.
It sounds like an amazing and unexpected experience, thank you for sharing Steve. It is also encouraging to see how just mere and sincere efforts with awareness can bring us these suprising and deep insights. It reminds me of one of Belsebuub’s talk where he talks about how we can activate psychic senses and perceiving higher dimensions just by being aware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nylYDIy58qE
Wow, what an interesting experience, Steeve. It’s amazing what we can tap into, in the physical world, through being aware!
It’s hard to get a full sense of that picture you saw as it sounds two-sided: one one hand, it sounds tranquil to see people being calm in their personal journeys. On the other hand, it sounds ominous, to consider how oblivious many of us are as to what awaits us after death if we have wasted all our chances…
It definitely makes me reflect. Thank you for sharing!
Nice example Steeve, thanks. Of how mystical experiences are definitely not exclusive to the astral dimension but can also be had here. If like you say we activate the consciousness and it is able to perceive life, (learning directly through observing, or experiencing the new— as some have called it.) In this way we’re able to learn through observing external life, and often in relation to our own psyche as well.
‘As Above So Below’ has appeared to me as a great axiom of truth in relation to getting these direct insights.
I find it quite incredible how much we’re able to take in and learn, the insights we can get big and small, when we’re conscious in that way you describe. Its opposite is also incredible of how almost nothing is gained when going through life asleep.
Thank you for sharing this Steeve. I wonder if those sheep knew what was about to happen, and that they felt an acceptance towards it? I wonder if animals understand more than we think they do.
I can relate to your experience with the sheep. I have also been reminded about my own blindness to my reality when seeing animals go to slaughter.
It seems like animals are oblivious until the final moment, at which point it is already too late for them to do anything about their death. The rest of the herd can see the disappearance of its members and continue as if nothing happened.
Perhaps the reason why animals don’t get agitated about the death of other members of their herd is because they don’t see what happens to the animal that disappears. And their own environment does not give enough indications of impending disaster (although it gives some).
I guess this is why Belsebuub stresses to get our own experience. I can also see that ‘selective awareness’ is not enough. I think this is what leads the animals to ignore the small indications of disaster from their disappearing members.
I think you’ve highlighted some really important points here Alex. What you mentioned about animals facing slaughter is a very true analogy of human existence: “It seems like animals are oblivious until the final moment, at which point it is already too late for them to do anything about their death. The rest of the herd can see the disappearance of its members and continue as if nothing happened”.
Everything that you said about sheep or other animals going blindly to the slaughter applies to us as people. We are so often oblivious to our fate until the final moment, and even when members of our herd reach that fate, we may continue on with the same obliviousness to our own reality, repeating the same mistakes over and over again until our time on this earth runs out.
I think what you said about animals not being able to see what happens to other members of the herd at the moment of death is a big factor is our own denial of its eventuality. You mentioned that “their own environment does not give enough indications of impending disaster (although it gives some)”, which is very true for us as people.
We seem to be programmed to believe that death is far away and is therefore something that we can even evade. This belief may not be so overt that we would register it consciously, but it is expressed through the way we live our lives and our disregard for the preciousness of having a human life, with which we can carry out a spiritual transformation.
This lack of first-hand experience of the fate that is awaiting us is a real problem for humanity, as it’s then so easy to treat the seriousness of life and death as an abstract concept, which can easily be put aside and forgotten in favour of the mundane pleasures and concerns of everyday life. I think that’s why many of those who have had near-death experiences gain a new understanding and appreciation of life, as they have glimpsed its wider context.
I really hope that at least a small number of those of us who have an interest in spiritual development will be able to take the steps to avoid the blind suffering of drifting towards an unknown death, while we still have the opportunity of a human life.
Thanks for sharing your experience Steeve. It’s great that you were able to reach an inner clarity and then gain a spiritual insight during a walk in what seemed like such a mundane and uninspiring environment.
Although I find it very enjoyable being aware in nature, I have also struggled to enjoy practicing awareness when in a mechanical or polluted environment, such as when walking alongside a busy road. So it’s encouraging to hear that you were able to go past the mental judgements that are often put on less pleasant circumstances and environments, to reach an internal stillness. It shows how powerful the simple practice of awareness can be, if we are persistent with it.