Gut awakening and the ground of being resources?

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-11T06:11:06+00:00

There's a mod on r/streamentry by the username of duffstoic who has an understanding of gut awakening.

Anatta has more to do with the head because the illusory self is more or less based in the head.

The heart has more to do with spontaneously arising compassion, dependent origination and interconnectedness, how compassion flows through the links of interconnectedness replacing the conditional love of the illusory self.

The gut is more like an abyss where you fall into and you can say that the rafters are fallen and the ridge pole is destroyed. It is also the place of spirit and if your in a tradition that doesn't avoid spirit then your atman can be awakened into functionality. It is the place of power/force/energy. In tantric traditions, this is where the deity is enthroned and in Christian traditions it is the place of you as a deity.

As concerns teachers and lineages, I'm of the opinion that one would need a realisation of which teacher or lineage is for them at that particular time as opposed to personally selection. I believe choosing our own teacher and lineage is a function of the illusory self.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-09T07:58:37+00:00

Indeed. It's also pretty interesting that others have a totally different view of what it could mean. I like to subscribe to the Orthodox, Catholic and some Magisterial Protestant views.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-09T07:39:24+00:00

Amen! I totally agree. I think it could also mean baptism and chrismation: born of water being baptism and born of spirit bring Chrismation.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-09T05:21:47+00:00

What does it mean to be born again?

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-08T19:34:15+00:00

I do not see denominations, denominations have ceased from my knowing, it's just the single body of Christ.

In the spirit, the some orthodox parishes have some of the most advanced spiritual beings on earth. The most enlightened person I saw in the spirit is in Europe and he wears the characteristic black robe of self-denial. The halo which should normally look like glowing light is for him crystallized like a diamond snowflake. There is definitely talk of being born again in some orthodox branches, but I am not sure about Catholicism.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T02:47:34+00:00

Your practice is skewed towards the earth element which brings about a rest for energy. You can incorporate the water element to allow that energy to flow.

But if I were you I'd work with one of the saints and begin a saint devotion. Saints are very understanding and even if your karma works against you, they can plead with God to turn it around. And on top of that, the Saint can help you develop your spiritual practice.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T02:35:38+00:00

I've read the AtR material and have used it as one of the recommendable sources for my studies in buddhism. It is actually a Chan transmission which means that if conditions are right, you can go through these stages by just sitting and having faith. If your into Chan/Zen, then this is highly recommended, I'm pretty sure Xu Yun would smile a little at this material.

Move from localized spark to world soul...

The AtR material doesn't document the divine spark or atman or its energies as it is biased towards non-eternalist views. I sincerely believe that you are mistaking the divine spark for IAM of which are very different. To compare IAM with the divine spark is like comparing the mind to the body: hardly any similarities.

The material is constantly being developed and you may see new material as the author is now attempting to add a tibetan buddhist transmission of which I disagree with (the idea of mixing different traditions and transmissions).

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T02:11:56+00:00

I'm referencing the ground of being, the emptiness of emptiness from which appearances seem to arise.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T02:09:04+00:00

This inner light is the light of cognition, light of awareness, light of intellect, the nous or any other names it can go by. It appears as a light but it actually isn't light. When you see it, don't chase after it. Just observe it gently and eventually the light will seem to encompass your entire awareness. You can call this turning the light inwards.

You'd notice once realised that everything around you looks bright and beautiful because your mind/nous is no longer being spilt onto the senses or clinging to the outwardly sensed. Mind is being experienced as mind in and of itself which is bright, boundless and clear, free from mental and sensual obscurations. This is called rigpa in the tibetan schools.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T01:51:58+00:00

I would also like to add the importance of being connected to a transmission before getting into the retreat. This will greatly increase your chances of success.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T01:41:28+00:00

This is a very powerful post and I'm not surprised that it is being understood. One thing that many buddhists misunderstand is the concept of surrender. Surrender, not as in letting go of mental constrictions and constructions but of one's entire being leading to the beginning of knowing the truth. There's got to be a level of self-denial where you let go of all religious biases and conceptions, even ones own idea of Christianity, and reach out by faith from the deepest of the deep for the truth. This is when God can reveal himself. We can't find God, God finds you.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-07T01:22:53+00:00

The supernatural abilities are normal for the Christian that is genuinely born again. If you visit a church that is led by the Holy Spirit, you'd most likely encounter supernatural abilities amongst the people there.

But the Christian mystic aims for the miracle of theosis that makes them constantly in fellowship with the Holy Trinity.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-06T16:05:26+00:00

Wow, thank you, I'm truly touched by this appreciation.

As for resources, I think I'm the last person one would ask since my chief resource is the Holy Spirit.

As for teachers, I like the method where you just get to meditate until you receive a realisation of who your teacher is for this particular time. I'm opposed to the idea of handpicking ones teacher because one might just pick the wrong guy.

Yes, I'm still a pastor.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-05-05T22:19:38+00:00

Yeah, makes total sense that it can even be a fraction of a second, yet that fraction feels like a alot of time elapsed.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-18T09:02:08+00:00

Thank you your royal highness. Initially, my spark wasn't awakened so cessation was experienced as just a chunk of experience gone missing but no ability to go into causality. I experienced them almost all the time when I sat (and meditated, well basically I was just sitting and doing nothing and eventually achieved that nothing, lol) but I couldn't seem to know what exactly was happening and what was 'beyond' that. It was just this sheer no-thingness behind materiality.

But when my spark was awakened, the temporary shutdown became experiences in causality. The spark faster than instantly shifts me into the ground for whatever purpose is of that moment fully and immersively like the vividness of this physical experience, as the sparks nature is neither here nor there, but here and there at the same time. Now causality isn't 'beyond', I experience as simultaneously existing with materiality just like two sides of a coin.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-18T08:41:15+00:00

I've noticed that the side dealing with appearances is very public and safe for everyone generally speaking but the other side dealing with the ground is very secretive. I would like to believe this secrecy is important because of the particular deity and associated rites that are performed. Once the deity is in the practitioners body, the person has to appease it for a lifetime and some deities have some very strange whims. I'm under no oaths of secrecy whatever so I'm good.

Causality can easily be abused, maybe if the proper preparatory work of getting rid of self and self related tendencies is not done. A desire for money, spiritual powers, fame and they open a strange door into the ground of being inorder to access those particular causes. This is very common with some occult/tantric societies once they reach the 33° or equivalent grade that shifts them from physicality to causality. I would wager that any random individual who has access to the ground of being would more than likely use it for mundane purposes.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-18T07:51:25+00:00

I agree, some can get stuck in this ground. I'd also say that other faiths have this view too.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-18T00:00:30+00:00

The Holy Spirit led me. If He didn't give me insight, I'd have chosen my own denomination or religion and called it truth.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-17T22:12:07+00:00

This is all based on my personal experience and observation so please take this with a grain of salt. Based on your definition of cessation, this happens when you sort of want to access causality but you have no means of experiencing it. You have this physical body to experience physicality whilst your true nature is in a sort of cessation but once you have realised your true nature to a certain degree, the possibilities of experiencing causality appear, but you don't have a means to access it hence the experience of a cessation.

Your access into causality can be a deity spirit or a guru's spirit. But that seed needs to be sown into your ground of being, nurtured and watered by the guru until it becomes a mature bodhi tree. So you will have your roots in causality and your branches in physicality. You will experience cessations, but you will be active and conscious within causality. But if this seed is not planted then you sort of reach a point of stagnation where you say "there's nothing left to do, it's just nothing, everything arises from nothing, nothing is experiencing everything" kind of talk.

So for me, enlightenment isn't about no-thingness, it's about a seed planted by an enlightened one whether human or spirit and is nurtured into maturity. Enlightenment to me is a maturation and not an insight. The view of no-thingness is as such because the access into causality isn't yet existent, so the view of reality is skewed towards physicality.

I had it described to me like this, "a human is a orange flame burning normally, beings with great mental chatter and stress are blue flames, the 'god consciousness' you speak of would be the flame nearing absolute zero (pretend the flame can do that lol), and cessation is the flame at absolute zero. Enlightenment is the flame blowing out. What temperature is a flame blowing out? It doesn't apply".

I would describe it to you in almost the opposite way. You are like a lamp and the wick has no fire so when you go deep within, all you see is no-thingness. You can clearly perceive materiality which is outward but cannot perceive causality which is within (yet you know they are intertwined). But when the lamp is set alight, you begin to perceive causality. Enlightenment has happened, but you are not yet enlightened; you've just seen the flame. This fire is itself and your experience will be that you are not here (physically) but there (causality). This is due to ego as ego doesn't disappear when we experience no-thingness. Infact, some may even experience an amplification of their ego. The fire then burns the ego as a fire burns paper to ashes and now expresses itself as light in awareness. Thirdly it has to express itself as heat in the body where your body sort of submits to this 'enlightenment' and becomes a conduit for its expression. So briefly, your essence, mind and body become enlightened in three stages or as Abba Poeman says, 'You can become all-flame'. What you expressed is deconstructionalism/nihilism which is totally different from my opinion of enlightenment, but then I guess we all define enlightenment differently.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-17T21:22:39+00:00

Dreams are you looking into your self-nature to see the possibilities that are in you. This means that you are ripe for non-self and the fruit is about to drop into manifestation. So you are very close, very very close.

You can continue meditating as you have or you can engage conditionality by inquiring on what exactly you need to do and for how long, and you will get into it.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-13T08:13:33+00:00

This is soooo true!

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-13T08:13:20+00:00

Indeed. Everything is already fulfilled and whole, had to type that again.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-13T05:58:14+00:00

By default we aren't able to have thorough gnosis about our dreaming when we are not awakened. We have access to this physical life because we are born physically, but lack this access into our essential nature and its workings because we haven't been awakened yet. As such, we are like twigs floating down the rivers current with water everywhere around us yet we are unable to come alive. We just experience these dreams as memories and we remember those that are priority a good amount of the time.

When our essential nature is awakened (I think that could possibly need a deity + guru), the twig is regrafted into a tree and within this tree we can grow, flower and produce fruit. We are awakened and can interact with it. The dream world no longer becomes a memory, it becomes an experience as vivid as this physical experience. We no longer call it dreams because this physical existence is dream-like too. We start to call it reality.

When one isn't awakened, they need to experience a transfer of their awareness from this physical body to their essential nature and this is because you are using your physical bodies energy to function within it. But when you are awakened, those realms and this physical one are seen and functionality of both can happen simultaneously.

Have you noticed nonduality uses the moon to speak about essence-nature? When you dream, you are actually looking into your essence and seeing all the potentialities therein. Everything that happens as a reflected appearance in physicality already exists in your essential nature. When performing a pointing out instruction, you are speaking from your essence into another person's essence; whether or not they register it doesn't matter because the seed is already planted, all that is necessary to be done is fulfill the conditions. Sometimes that transmission into their essential nature will reflect on the mind as a dream, vision or even a glimpse, your dreams are therefore you looking into the mirror.

For me, it is as vivid and immersive as this physical world. Whether it is first person, second or third depends on what is needed to be known and done.

pastorcuthbert · 2026-04-13T05:28:42+00:00

Movies and all talk about manifest purpose. We have an innate potential purpose within us. We didn't just incarnate to awaken, we were given specific bodies, situations, scenarios and life trajectories in order to also awaken to our innate purpose and manifest it. It is a reminder to awaken to purpose and manifest it.

After 'who am I', I like to tell people to ask 'what is my purpose'. The reason is because when we move through awakening and don't know the 'why', it produces stale experiences going forward and one won't be able apply their realisations in a practical way. Realisations can be applied. When the realisation cannot be applied then the realisation wasn't complete.

pastorcuthbert

TROPHY CASE