“Nothing is implied except the joys of dharma and the love of inquiry.”
— from an email by Patrick Bryson

Encounter One: Stages, Rhythm, and a Subtle Mismatch

My essays and other writings often arrive as surprises. I can be sitting at my laptop, engaged in some ordinary activity, when something appears—a post, a line, a phrase—and there is an immediate inner response that asks for attention and investigation. Since my life has recently changed so radically (thank goodness for retirement), priorities now feel more like shifting bubbles, with attention led where it is needed rather than where I insist it should go. This essay began in exactly that way.

One morning I read a piece circulating online that described awakening in terms of four stages of the gap. Framed in sophisticated Hindu philosophy and terminology, the language was evocative and the insight invited a deeper engagement: contraction and expansion, letting go and taking hold, a rhythmic breathing of consciousness through time and a place for ego, recognising its functional aspect when not the centre of attention. There was something recognisable in it—a sense that awakening is not static, not a final arrival, but an ongoing movement. That much rang true.

And yet, as I sat with it, I felt a quiet sense of dis-ease...

Enlightenment Out of Time:            

beyond states and stages