Towards Enlightenment (2): The Ground Floor of Heaven is All Well and Good, but How Do We Get In?

July 16, 2015 at 00:03 (3rd minute of the day)

After I shared yesterday’s article, I talked to a relative and realized that people seek peace and happiness when they are struggling in the system. I remembered my own struggling time. I set the intention before going to bed to write an article about what can be done while I am in this intense struggle and imprisonment. The next day, I will continue to write, inshallah, maybe under this title, maybe under a slightly changed title. Now I will meditate until I fall asleep.

00:57 The intensity of the meditation was a bit weak, and then I started to feel hungry. I ate a few handfuls of cherries and now I’m eating an apple. The focus started to wander, I’ll pick it up.

After 2 minutes I opened a news website. After I started eating something to suppress the hunger that I felt with the weakening of my focus, the spiral started to expand, we branched off to the news website. Can I stop this here? I will sit on the bed and focus on the Spiritual Heart. 1:03.

09:05 I can’t even see right now. I can’t wake up. I’ve been lying in bed for an hour or so, waiting for my energy to recharge. My mind is a bit fuzzy. At night the drummer came and gave a long serenade. My nose is slightly stuffy. I can meditate better when the body is upright. Much better. A thousand and one thoughts are activated while lying down. The subconscious is much more active in the lying position. But I could barely sit up because there was no energy. My eyesight is better now. The image gets blurred once in a while, but it’s better now. Now I clean my nose and sit in meditation in a good breathing mode. July 16, 2015 09:08

09:50 A lot of thoughts and dreams passed through my mind during the meditation, when I became aware of them I kept focusing on the Spiritual Heart each time. Some of them were thoughts about the series of articles and how it will take shape in the future. Now I’m going to prepare food for the cat and continue meditating from time to time. I’m going to give the cat a boiled egg and goat cheese.

10:27 Something inside me wants to move. There is a slight feeling of distress. I turn off the heat of the egg, time to continue meditating. The boredom says, stop, do something else. It feels like that, but not strong. Like a leaf floating in the wind.

11:25 I feed the cat, wash the dishes and continue meditating. My mind is calm. Who knows what will happen if I keep this focus. In a way I am creating a new reality as I write these articles and make an effort to keep my focus in my heart. When old patterns start to emerge, like last night when I glanced at the news website, I remember to focus on the Spiritual Heart again.

This is not to say that I am against anything. I am not against anything. I am in favor of souls creating with their free will. If you really see that something is not useful for you, then you give it up. To really see it, you have to look at it and see it as it is, without judgment. If you are engaging in a harmful behavior, I don’t know how much my direct judgmental opposition to you will help you to see things as they are. Instead, looking at things with unconditional love, with an intention to understand, with an energy of understanding, and reacting accordingly, will set an example for people who are living harmful patterns. I went through many harmful patterns in my life, and when I was in those patterns, my desires were to create those patterns. Because I thought I could be happy that way. For example, the pattern of pursuing individual success. This may not be interpreted as something negative. First of all, we only get to know ourselves as individuals in the early stages of our lives. For some, this can continue to later stages and to the end. Therefore, only our own success is important to us. We don’t think about other beings. We have not yet realized that they are an integral part of us. So for example, if you harm someone today, we don’t realize that that harm is done to the whole of humanity, to the whole universe, because we have a narrow sense of self. I thought it was a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, but it was a verse from the Quran, it came to my mind:

Surat al-Ma’idah, verse 32 (the translation written by Elmalılı Muhammad Hamdi Yazır. I chose it because I hadn’t done much research on which translation to choose, and because I found Atatürk’s choice on such an important subject, as a man I respect and perceive him to be highly aware, to be appropriate. He had commissioned Elmalılı Muhammad Hamdi Yazır to write the translation).

That is why We made it obligatory on the Children of Israel: “Whoever kills a soul who does not kill a life or cause corruption in the land, it is as if he had killed all mankind. And whoever causes a soul to live, it is as if he had caused all mankind to live.” Surely Our messengers came to them with clear proofs. Nevertheless, after that many of them went to excess in the earth.

When you harm someone, you energize the thought patterns/emotions and physical motion that cause you to harm. This energy affects the whole universe until it is extinguished. In a way, you are injecting a damaging energy into the universe, or you are energizing the potential for harm that is already present. For example, when you believe in a system of thought that degrades and despises a certain group of people, and you act in spite of your conscience, that is, when you don’t focus on your conscience but focus on this and your energy flows into this, you are influencing the universe in line with the schema created by these ideas. Until one day, you realize what you are doing and shift your focus to a more benevolent schema and intention that you will discover. By schema I mean the thought pattern, the feeling pattern, the inner mental system that gives shape to the pure energy that flows to us unconditionally from God.

So we have to realize our responsibility. And in order to realize it, we have to have the intention, and we have to focus on that intention and cause our energy to flow in that direction. So we have to focus and will. What is it? Whatever is right for you (in good conscience). Because that’s the best way to realize our responsibility.

I will stop writing now and continue meditating. July 16, 2015 11:52 a.m.

12:12 The cat came and distracted me by sucking my lips. I took it back to the food. Right now, while I am meditating, I am getting stimuli from many places to call my attention. My father has put the pancakes in the kitchen. I just took a look at Facebook. Now begins the test of concentration and non-distraction. All I have to do is to keep focusing on the Spiritual Heart without fighting what is. Oy oy oy oy. 12:15.

14:25 After sitting on the bed for a short while, I moved to a horizontal position and continued to focus on the heart. Then I fell asleep. This sleepiness continued for the last hour, half asleep and half awake. As I was lying down, I felt an inflammation in the body, a feeling of low sugar, a slight weakness, a slight decrease in blood pressure. But the body was calming down, I could sense it. I didn’t have the strength or the will to sit up. By 14:25 I was out of bed with a clear mind and some of my energy back. I think the body is going through a mild detox. I’ve had the equivalent of a couple of glasses of water since morning and I haven’t eaten anything yet. That means I’ve only had 2 handfuls of cherries, a small apple and 4 olives since yesterday. And I’m not hungry right now. There is a strange calmness inside me. It’s like in Counter Strike 🙂 (I haven’t played for many years) when we eat a sound bomb and then our ears ring and there is silence… there is a silence and stillness in my body. I continue to focus on the Spiritual Heart. I think the body has gone into a slight ketosis mode. The English Wiki entry mentions a disease, but it is not ketosis. Ketosis is when the body starts to work with low metabolism, taking energy from particles in the blood called ketones instead of glucose. There is nothing negative. Because I don’t sense such a situation at all, I know that long fasts can be done. As a warning, my body is quite clean right now. For many years I have already slowly eliminated toxins from my body. My diet has become closer to natural. For the last 1 year, I have been eating mainly fruits and grains and natural yogurt. I also eat one or two junk foods a week, such as chocolate, ice cream, pasta, meatless spicy raw meatballs in different periods. Recently I was eating yellow wheat bread, but I’ve cut it out for a few weeks. In summary, I have a vegetarian but close to vegan diet. And after I stopped eating meat completely about 5 years ago, I had a runny nose for years and the detox continued in my body. For a period of time, I couldn’t get rid of snot and phlegm all day long. Finally, about 1 year ago, a period started for a while when I started to eat a fruit-based diet for a while. For 1 week I couldn’t get rid of snot, phlegm and coughing, it was happening almost all day long. Even once at night I woke up breathing hard because of the phlegm in my lungs. It wouldn’t go away. I went outside and my parents were worried about what was happening to you. On a hot Lapseki night (we were on vacation here at the time) I walked on the beach, breathing hard and coughing up phlegm. So what I’m saying is, if you suddenly change your diet from one that contains toxins and artificial foods to one that puts you into ketosis, like I’m doing now, you’re likely to get seriously ill and start toxin discharge. In the past years I have tried one-day, three-day, five-day fasts. I think my body is clean enough now and that’s why I get through this period with a slight feeling of weakness. (Note added afterwards: It is useful to listen to the body, to increase your knowledge, to make changes consciously, to be well informed before going into long fasts. This is what I did).

So I’m not actually sharing these experiences so that you can replicate them. I’m writing them to share what is my spiritual approach, what is my perspective as I move from one situation to another situation. And I’m sharing them so that you can see what is possible. And I feel like sharing them. I feel like I’m in an important transition and it’s worth sharing. But I also know it’s a test, because as I said, I have to keep my focus in the Spiritual Heart and I have to do it with the direction of Love, towards God. If I break the intention, then I go astray anyway, then my sharing immediately loses its meaning. I will stop anyway, I will feel that I have lost this test in this period. Right now my physical energy is normal, I am spiritually serene, I feel a very slight burning and physical weakness and I feel serenity. I am typing this quickly, with ten fingers, and I am transferring thoughts into this text without forming them. I have a very slight burning sensation in my arms, it’s vague. That’s what I call a burning. I feel a kind of energy. As if it is flowing into my fingers. Now I will sit in meditation for a while. July 16, 2015 14:46.

15:19 Oops. How did I get here? I suddenly found myself in front of the computer. Hah yes, I wondered if there was a mail from the blog. I also looked at the blog statistics on the open screen. Back to meditation again. Wait a second.

I may write this as an article in the coming days. Before the last year, I went through a very turbulent period of 3-4 years, and for a significant part of this period I was in the hedonistic seeker mode. I’ll explain this in a post. Why such a post? To explain a little bit more where we have come from.

Also… I will write something else here that came to my mind in meditation. The title of the article was Ground Floor of Heaven is all well and good, but how do we get there? I’ll give the answer to that in a moment. But I refrain, first a meditation. July 16, 2015 15:24.

16:40 I turned off the heat on the food I prepared for the animals. The last hour or so has been spent in meditation, washing dishes and preparing a simple meal for the animals. I am writing now with a still mind. I am centered, which means I can feel the Spiritual Heart in my chest. It is a silent energy. It is the energy of love. It gives me a very slight shaking, a rotation with the central axis being the spinal cord. I have learned that this is a sign of the Higher Self healing and expanding the energy system by using the energy like an auger along the Sushumna energy channel along the spine.

I used the analogy of the Ground Floor of Heaven, because if a person knows how to find peace, how to find love, how to connect with the Creator, how to strengthen this connection, if it depends only on the choices he makes, in other words, where he directs his focus and with what intention he acts, and if he is aware of this, then he is starting to live life from a solid foundation. There is a foundation of trust. During the meditation I started to feel an energy in the coccyx area. The energy of love in my heart was healing it, filling it, that’s what I intuit, that’s what my previous knowledge tells me. There is the Root Chakra here (Root Chakra). This is the chakra that affects your grounding in this world, your sense of trust, how confidently you look at God, at life, how firmly and confidently your feet are on the ground. This is the explanation I can give with my limited knowledge without being a full expert on the subject. I will say, the Ground Floor of Heaven is also a metaphor in line with this. So I feel like I have found the ground floor. It is now my choice whether to go up from here or not and I am aware of that. My feet are on a solid foundation. Even if I experience confusion, at least my feet know how to stay on solid ground, so I feel that I can remember this even if I am tossed around. Of course, if I overdo it and follow my ego for a long time, I may forget this state. In this lifetime I probably won’t forget it, because the memories are very clear in my mind now. But if I exaggerate and die and am born in the next life with this confusion, I may not remember it at all in that life, I may be miserable for a while.

The next life? Sound foreign? Forget it then, skip that part. I’m trying to reach you, but I’m expressing myself as freely as possible.

So how can we reach the Ground Floor of Heaven? First of all, you don’t need to aim for that. You follow the truth that comes from your own heart, from your own conscience. Everyone already has this guidance within them. Our deepest desire is to find God, to know Him, to unite with Him, to return to Him with the whole universe, and finally to get lost in Him, to become Him in a way. But not as individuals, but as a Universe, I’m talking about the final experience when all beings are enlightened, the final holistic enlightenment when the Universe has achieved its purpose. Obviously I have limited (experiential) knowledge about this subject. What I’m trying to do now is to focus on individual enlightenment before that, and in doing so, to support the souls around me, the part of the Universe that I can access and that is accessible to me, on the path to enlightenment. So as the Universe is moving towards the ultimate goal, I am playing my role in this ultimate goal, realizing myself and supporting you and other beings on this path, with support from you and other beings.

So focus on the deepest desire that actually comes from within you, focus on your highest truth. Forget about the Ground Floor of Heaven, or Heaven. Focus on God, focus on Love, focus on what these words point to in you, I’m just pointing my finger at my own experience, what does that correspond to in you… or what are you looking for? It’s going to be your choice to find it or not to find it, or to deal with something completely different.

And why did I put that title? Honestly, I don’t know exactly. But once you bring it up, questions always start to arise. And this was one of them. And in trying to answer that question, I tried to elucidate the subject in more depth.

Now.. Of course, I didn’t always go my own way with my feet on the ground. I’ve been through a lot of turmoil, I’ve been through a lot of difficult times. Let me talk a little bit about that.

Before the last year… for a period of about 4 years, I was in a mode of seeking and learning about spiritual matters from outside sources. At the same time I was not in full control of my desires, and I was very much in control of them, but I was living in my own world, in a sheltered environment, without harming anyone. Of course this was not an ideal model of a human being. People are conditioned in such a way that they judge these states very harshly. But I was a very disciplined person before I went into this state, and I went into that period having done my best, having pursued the truth with all my might, but being very disappointed about some of the personality and value judgments that had been imposed on me, that I had acquired while living in this society, and about the possibility that the view of life that I had developed up to that point would lead me to ultimate happiness. Of course, I’ve always had an upright side to me, egoistically confident. That was not a negative thing. It both hindered me and fueled my learning. What do I mean? Before these periods, I was a very intelligent, successful student, and my physical strength was at a very high level. I had never had any serious failures in life. I was a person who tried to do my best, who gave maximum effort. I believed in certain things, and I was trying very hard to keep things up. That’s because growing up I was imbued with the belief that if these things collapsed, it would be a disaster. You can include religious belief systems in that. So a standard person who has not yet broken out of his shell living in society, why is he afraid of change, of innovation? Why is he afraid of losing everything? Why is a politician afraid of losing power and why does he try to postpone or stop it until the end? Why can’t Palestine stop being Palestine and Israel stop being Israel? They break each other, the persecution continues, but people find it very difficult to give up their egos, especially a core aspect of their egos.

I had intended to give it up in my journey, because I realized that it was limiting me. I called it belief systems at that time. I started to realize that some of the beliefs I carried inside me were limiting me in my life (I don’t mean religious beliefs, faith, that’s what comes to mind when we think of beliefs). So I wasn’t achieving my desires and goals, I was postponing many things. I was always experiencing an internal war and strife within myself. And I realized that this had to do with internal patterns, mental patterns, beliefs as westerners call them, core beliefs. I also had a side that was always trying to find the truth, the reality, the deeper side of things. This aspect has always dominated me. Although I have assumed various identities and molds in my life and have passed through them like every human being, this aspect has always been with me. This aspect of me, the desire to find the truth, at that time I also called it doing what Allah wants. That gnawing desire to seek has been the part of me that has driven me in the research and internal questioning that would lead me to break the core of my ego.

And I entered the hedonistic seeker mode that I’ve been talking about for about 4 years after a moment of fracture. The core of my ego was fractured in a moment of extreme strain because of the life difficulties I was going through and because I was open to change in the search for truth and I was trying my best. After that the whole personality based on this core went into a collapse. That’s why I needed to seek in a sheltered environment and integrate the repressed desires in the core that had gotten out of control, to bring them out of the unconscious into the conscious, that is, to go through a purification process. And the universe sent me the support to do that. My family and especially my girlfriend supported me a lot in this process.

During this process, I did a lot of research on spiritual issues on the Internet. Before this process, I had been working on personal development in the intellectual and physical dimension. All these, my efforts, my natural development curve led me to this 4-year period. In that period, I improved my knowledge in every subject and learned to control the desires that were out of control. I healed the child in me, I learned to love and accept the rejected aspects of myself. The aftershocks of this continued for about a year when I came to Lapseki. I went through very deep emotional difficulties during this period. But now I had learned the teaching I needed to go to the final stage. In a way, I had overcome one of the main difficulties. After that, it was a matter of labor. And lately these efforts have begun to bear fruit and my heart has begun to open. The love flowing through me began to push me to share it with people. And all the knowledge I had gathered over the years started pouring out of my fingers. Of course, it took me gradually to learn what sharing is… but the flow of water suddenly started to accelerate. Especially yesterday and today I wrote a lot. I see that people are also benefiting from it… I wish the best for everything… I have the desire to find the truth, to realize myself and to share it and to support people. But my ego is not completely gone. So I don’t want you to fix me in your mind as a missionary. I am just a human being with a ego who is making an effort and trying to share what I can gather, how you see it is up to you.

I know and intuit that when I write this much, inevitably a lot of things about me come to light, become public. But I hope and believe that it will offer a unique perspective to people who are trying to follow a similar path and potentially be useful to them, depending on their choices. I’m like, oh boy, I’m going to write. Now it’s time to empty the food from the pot into the jar, add some of my own yogurt and go to the animals. July 16, 2015 17:21.

20:04 We’re back… My father said yesterday that these are heavenly places. Today our dog Tyson and our guest friend dog Ceylan drank the milk from the same bowl. There was no bowl. This time Ceylan didn’t try to bite Tyson. I guess they are learning too. Or maybe they’ve been well fed in the last few days. In any case, the animals were doing very well. I’m home. I’d like to play the accordion a little, but without losing my center. I want to take a walk on the beach. I still haven’t eaten anything and I’m not hungry. 20:06. I revised the article, something came to my mind. I fixed the spelling mistakes, made a very small correction. 20:30.

21:59 I ate two handfuls of cherries and one medium peach before I left the house. My body was sending me the signal that I needed to eat and I sensed that I really needed to eat and I did. After that I wanted to eat almonds, but I hesitated. The thought crossed my mind that I could have a few. I ate 7 in total. What I try to do is to decide everything with my heart, not with my ego. Or rather, to be guided by my heart. Maybe it’s the same thing. So now, whether it will be good for me to eat those almonds or not, even that becomes important at that moment. Why is that? There is a very subtle situation here. Now, if I had made that decision with my ego, for example, and eaten a lot of them, then another desire of my ego would come afterwards. Let’s say we obeyed that too, again and again. Now I call this spiraling out from the center. It may not be an original term. As we focus on the Spiritual Heart and learn to live with the guidance of the Higher Consciousness, as it directs us to the experiences that will be most auspicious, like in the case of these almonds, I ate just enough and it was an ideal amount for the body’s eating habits and purification. If I had meditated more intensely, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to eat even this much during the day because after a certain stage during meditation, one’s being starts to fill with energy. This energy is life energy and it reduces the need to eat. That’s why in this paragraph and in the articles I write in detail how much I eat. If I can continue this as a series, I’ll put the nutritional value calculation or something like that at the bottom of the articles through a site on the Internet. This can serve as an example that you can live on calories that are much lower than normal. I’ve been observing that I’ve been living on low calories for a while now and I’ve wanted to do this kind of tracking, it’s crossed my mind. It will be semi-scientific, not everything will be calculated very precisely. But even if there is a fifty percent margin of error in my calculations, it will still give an approximate idea. Not to convince the scientific world, but to give readers an idea, and also because I am curious myself. My challenge today is to close the day with a good meditation. I feel quite healthy, calm and centered, but not very energetic because I think there is still a cleansing going on in the body, and the body is adapting to this new diet, which seems to be fruitarian for now. Let’s see how things unfold. As a last note, I am quite awake and not sleepy at all. July 16, 2015, 22:11.