How to Have a Bhumi!

One of the strangest things about a spiritual awakening - which I call a bhumi - is that people assume it only happens to saints, prophets, and people with statues built in their honor.

Sure, the usual suspects seem to have gone through one. Jesus. Muhammad. Krishna. Gautama Buddha.

In the truest sense of the word, these folks were Buddhas - 

people who woke up to something deeper about reality and dedicated their lives to sharing it.

But the list doesn't stop there.

I can see the same experience in the lives of Mary, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, Judas Iscariot, Isaac Newton, Rumi, Nikola Tesla, Carl Jung, Mozart, Confucius, Saint Augustine, St. Christina, St. Brigid, St. Teresa, Tilopa, Naropa, Guru Rinpoche, Milarepa, Bodhidharma, and countless others who suddenly began seeing reality from a completely different angle.

History remembers the famous ones.

 Life is full of the rest.

The grandmother who became a different person after losing her husband. The recovering addict who found a new path. The artist. The scientist. The exhausted parent. The random guy at the hardware store who somehow figured out what actually matters.

The point isn't that these people became special. The point is that they became more fully themselves.

A bhumi is not reserved only for prophets, mystics, geniuses, or people who spend thirty years meditating in a cave.

It is part of being human. 

Which is good news because becoming a prophet sounds exhausting.

What surprised me most wasn't discovering that awakenings are real. 

It was discovering that there seem to be doors to them. Patterns.  Perspectives.

 Ways of living and paying attention that appear again and again throughout history, religion, mythology, psychology, and ordinary life.

I didn't set out to find these doors. 

I was just trying to understand what happened to me. But the deeper I looked, the more obvious they became.

The Buddha pointed toward them.

Jesus pointed toward them.

Rumi pointed toward them.

Carl Jung pointed toward them.

Different languages. 

Different cultures. 

Different stories.

The same fingerprints.

Can I guarantee that walking through one of these doors will lead to a bhumi? No.

Life doesn't work that way.

Fate, grace, karma, divine timing -

 pick your favorite word. 

There is something larger involved. 

I discuss this in the book.

But I can say this: I see the door. 

And if fate allows it, other people can walk through it too.

 That's why I wrote this book.

Partly, it's the story of what happened to me.

Partly, it's a map of the strange territory I found myself wandering through.

And because there's a door hidden in plain sight, it seems rude not to point at it.

You don't have to believe anything I say.

You don't have to join a religion.

You don't have to shave your head, move to a monastery, wear linen pants, or start speaking exclusively in cryptic metaphors.

You don't even have to agree with me.

You just have to be willing to look.

The door is already there.

My job is to point to the door. 

Walking through it is your adventure.