Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

409 Pages·2013·2.87 MB·English

by  Ed Muzika

Self-Realization
And Other Awakenings

Ed Muzika
1
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
© Copyright 2013, Edward Muzika.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized, in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the author or publisher, except for
brief quotations in critical articles, books, and reviews.
First edition: February, 2013. We Are Sentience, USA.
Second edition: February, 2014
ISBN:
Additional illustrations:
Chrissy Core
www.brainflowercreative.com
2
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
Acknowledgments
I want to express my profound gratitude to
Deeya Gair who is foremost among many
students that have collaborated with me to
develop a spirituality of embodiment which we
call Devotional Advaita.
By embodied spirituality, we mean that
traditional Advaita has to be grounded in a
return to the marketplace, of reentering
physical reality after finding our Absolute
nature. What we are is not only That, but also
an embodied human being, a personality with
physicality and emotions which must be re-
owned after transcendence, and accept that we
are all in the same boat as sentient beings,
each as precious as our own selves. We become
our brother’s keeper and the good shepherd of
all living things.
Deeya showed me how her work as a healer
can aid others not only to overcome physical
pain and emotional suffering, but serve as a
pathway towards Self-Realization at multiple
levels of Consciousness.

3
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

We Are Sentience (WAS) is a California religious
corporation with a federal 501c3 charity tax status. Its
mission is twofold: to support the teachings of the two
lineages of Sri Ramana Maharshi/Robert Adams, and
Nisargadatta Maharaj/Jean Dunn as interpreted in the
converging figure of Ed Muzika, and to function as an
animal rescue and preservation organization in Los
Angeles.
There are about 1,500,000 or more homeless cats
living on the streets in Los Angeles, and there are only
thousands of people who care for them: providing
food, vaccinations and medical care, as well as
trapping some and finding homes. Ironically, most
people who manage these feral cat colonies are poor
themselves, and the sheer burden of caring for 100
homeless cats each nearly exhausts their resources.
Ed is a caretaker himself and helps many other
colony caretakers with food, medical supplies and
veterinary services for several hundred cats.
4
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
In addition, WAS aims to bring Los Angeles shelters
to a No-Kill status wherein no healthy animal is
euthanized. Currently about 80,000 dogs and cats are
euthanized each year in Los Angeles City and County.
For more information about the mission of “We Are
Sentience”, visit:
http://www.wearesentience.com/no-pet-left-
behind.html

A cat colony in Reseda, California.
5
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
Contents
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................ 3
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 9
My Story ............................................................................................. 14
The First Awakening: ......................................................................... 15
No Self; There is Only One! .......................................................... 15
Illusion’s Realm ................................................................................... 26
Robert Adams and I .............................................................. 33
Second Awakening: ........................................................................... 44
That One Is Not Real! .................................................................... 44
The Absolute, the Void, and Identification ................................ 50
The Third Awakening: Self-Realization ...................................... 54
Personal Love ........................................................................................... 59
The Self as Other: Self-Realization ............................................. 61
Conclusions .............................................................................................. 63
The Helicopter ............................................................................................. 72
Consciousness Diagram ........................................................................ 94
The 100 Room Mansion ........................................................................ 98
Things Gurus Don’t Tell You ....................................................... 117
The Majesty of Self .................................................................... 123
Of Energies, Ecstasies and Orgasms ............................................... 127
Can You Go Naked Before God? ......................................................... 135
More On Robert: ............................................................................. 143
I Am Here for My Students, Not for Me ......................................... 145
6
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
Self-Inquiry: With Affection and Love ............................................... 147
Love, Surrender and Awakening........................................................... 153
The Spiritual Processes Around a Guru and Ashram ....................... 170
Continual Seeking ....................................................................................... 186
Freedom! ................................................................................................ 193
Awakening in Daily Life, Letter from a Student ............................... 206
All is Love, All is Self ............................................................................... 212
Faith .................................................................................................................... 213
On Being Comfortable ................................................................. 221
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too ..................................................... 226
The Search ......................................................................................................... 232
Robert Adams ................................................................................................... 243
A New Way of Teaching ............................................................................ 248
The ‘True” Teacher ..................................................................................... 254
Ramana, Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta ................................. 262
Sex and the Guru ........................................................................................ 269
The Ecstasies of Women ....................................................................... 279
The Difficulty of Awakening .................................................................. 283
Hunting the I and the Witness .......................................................... 289
Emotional Truth .......................................................................................... 298
We Are Also Human Beings .................................................................. 304
On Guru Concepts and Self-Inquiry .............................................. .309
More on Being Human .............................................................................. 313
7
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
Role of the Teacher ..................................................................................... 321
Coming Alive to the Whole Self ........................................................ 325
The Void is Not the Absolute; Silence is not the Absolute ............ 334
Who Says the I-Thought is the Ego or Self? ..................................... 340
Creating a New World, One Life at a Time ....................................... 364
Little Red ...................................................................................................... 369
My Evolving "Depression" ............................................................ 372
Well, the Deed is Done. Little Red is Dead ............................... 376
Strong Emotions, Negative and Positive--a Path to God ................. 383
Robert Adams II ........................................................................................... 389
A Dwarf and a Siddhi ..................................................................... 391
Meeting Ramana ................................................................................ 393
Into the Silence ................................................................................... 394
Exodus ................................................................................... 399
Dimitri .................................................................................................. 405
Poems From the Heart ............................................................................... 409
Ed Muzika Online ......................................................................................... 418
8
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
Introduction
You are not who you think you are. You are much,
much more than that!
You are not just your body or mind. You are not
just your emotions, thoughts, images, and dreams.
You are more than all your relationships, family ties,
career, and loves. You are these but also much, much
more.
There are rooms within the spiritual mansion which
are ‘You’ that have never been explored because from
infancy onward, You (and we all) have been educated,
indoctrinated, acculturated, and nailed into boxes of
social conformity and multiple networks of thought
and communication.
The world of our senses is really an interpretation
of an underlying “real” as experienced through
multiple cognitive filters. Both the “real” external
world and the “real” Self are far different from what
we now experience.
This book is about that real world (and real You)
which can be experienced and lived in after many of
the filters are unlearned.
This unlearning is done through various kinds of
self-investigations, both through the use of the mind,
9
Self-Realization and Other Awakenings
but mostly through exercises, learning how to shift
awareness out of the “brain,” thinking and cognition,
into the heart. Experiencing the world through the
heart's senses reveals a very different ‘You’, and a very
different world that is far more fluid, far more alive,
far more energetic than the relatively flat world most
of us live in.
This is a world where our bodies, our hearts, and
even our minds become drenched in bliss so
remarkable that all we can do is swoon and fall to our
knees, feeling the ecstatic grace of total self love and
love for another. There comes a peace so profound you
do not want to move so as to not disturb it.
Finally, there may be an inner explosion like an
erupting volcano of joy, energies, light and love that
reveal the deepest levels of the Self to the 'little self'
you had always thought yourself to be. I call this Self-
Realization in contrast to the multitude of other kinds
of awakenings or enlightenments so much talked about
in Eastern and Western spirituality, although these
other awakenings are thoroughly explored in this book.
Remarkably, you lose nothing in this realization, for
you are still much, but not all, of what you were
before. You still have a body and mind. You still have
relationships with family and other. But you have also
found the much larger world of flowing and healing
energies of the subtle body and world, as well as a
10