Understanding my experience with oneness

slavior

I am some what lost. I used to be a heavy drug/alcohol user and I had been craving what I have come to learn of as enlightenment. In an experience I had I was given the opportunity to "see" things as they are described in many Buddhist texts, long before reading any of them. This lead me to realize I was living life for all the wrong reasons. In the year that has passed since this experience I have became sober, changed my lifestyle and begun a life long journey to find true enlightenment without drugs. I want to "see", ad I quote this because it was more of a knowing but to have conversations with someone who is not near me physically and then continue the conversation when I found them later across the campgrounds transcends peoples ideas of a "trip". Since this experience I have studied a few texts but I am unsure of where I should truly start. I will say that since I have changed my habits, diet, outlook I feel my experiences and truths have come back to me, I am living I feel now more then I ever have before. So I suppose my true question is, where can I go for true insight, meditation practices and knowledge. Any specific books that are recommended are much appreciated.

robot

Try Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg

GuyC

Hi Slavior,

I know where you're coming from, I've been there, done that. I am glad to hear that you have left the alcohol and drugs behind.

I'm sure that the kind and wise people here will give you lots of interesting advice and website links to various meditation techniques, Buddhist texts, etc.

One thing I would advise is that, with any spiritual practice/advice, don't be afraid to experiment and always reflect on your experience in order to find out what works best for you. We are all different, so, what works best for one person might not necessarily work for you. Also, at different phases in our practice, different techniques might be useful. Just because something worked in the past, doesn't mean it will always work. Be mindful, be reflective.

The measure of "what works best for you" is whether or not your mind is inclining over the long-term (don't worry too much about the short-term) towards peace, happiness and wisdom.

Of all of these measures (i.e. peace, happiness and wisdom), I believe that happiness is the most accurate measure. Sometimes we might think we are peaceful, but we are dull. Sometimes we might think we are wise, but we are just fooling ourselves. Happiness is much more obvious. All three of these (peace, wisdom and happiness) go together. So, if you are increasing in happiness (over the long-term), you should also be increasing in peace and wisdom.

Apart from this general advice, there are a couple of websites I would recommend strongly. The reason I recommend them strongly is because they have been helpful for me on my path. I hope they are helpful to you too:

1) Access to Insight
http://www.accesstoinsight.org
This website is a collection of classic Buddhist texts as well as articles by modern Buddhist scholars and practitioners. There is a wealth of information on this website. If you want to become familiar with the classic Buddhist texts, a good place to start is here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bullitt/befriending.html

2) Buddhist Society of WA (YouTube channel)
http://www.youtube.com/user/BuddhistSocietyWA
There's loads of good, down to earth, practical teachings on this channel. Ajahn Brahm (the main speaker on this channel) has a good understanding of the Suttas (classic Buddhist texts) and he has a strong ability to communicate their essence in modern language.

Kind regards,

Guy

being

I suggest this:

charirama

I have found that yoga combined with meditation (they go hand in hand) is a good practice to help cut through many of the distractions that keep us from finding our true selves and our connection with others.

vixthenomad

I can recommend 'Buddhism for Beginners' by Thubten Chodron as a good, comprehensive introduction.

And meditate, of course.