Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

If you practice silence, meditation, or you go into
psychoanalysis, whole new inner worlds of experience
open up, from matchless love, bliss, ecstasy, samadhis,
awakening experiences, which are really blows to the
dominance of mind, to an endless unfolding of the
tapestry of consciousness.
But after a while, even this wonderment loses its
excitement and you begin to return to the world of
ordinariness, of chopping wood and carrying water,
bringing up a family, feeding feral cats, helping
wildlife, opening an ashram, promoting vegetarianism.
You see, there is nothing to grasp onto, no knowing
that can be expressed. You are the totality of your
experience and more than that, but even that you
cannot express for it is only an empty concept that
helps no one. In the end you just plain stop and
remain as you, completely content as you, but with a
heart the size of a freight train, and a mind that
barely functions, because you live from that very large
heart.
It literally feels that way. You do not feel as if you
live in your head anymore. It feels as if your center of
beingness, the place you live, is closer to your heart,
but is not even part of your body. You feel yourself as
your presence, and that presence, at times appears to
have a location somewhere near where your heart
would be if you could feel it. Or, you may even lose