At a recent retreat, I found myself sitting on a cushion facing a wall while my meditation partner sat to my side, outside of my visual field and started reading to me "From You to Infinity", pointing-out instructions from Ken Wilber. The text is quite trippy to read. What happened next was quite intriguing and it was probably the most significant experience of my life thus far so I wanted to write down as much detail as I can remember here so I never forget what happened.

First, I remember my breathing rate started to increase, there was some sense of anxiety "Something bad is about to happen". My mind was empty (I generally have no verbal or image-based thoughts as baseline unless I need them so this is normal). I didn't try to process the rising anxiety, I just left it there; I was excited and worried, but there was a sense that something interesting would happen so I sat with it.

At some point something flipped. I don't remember exactly the seconds before or after but I remember I was crying and very distressed. "My" mouth was moving, emitting words like the below (Quoted because I remember sharply that I said these exact things)

• "I don't understand I don't understand I don't understand"
• "So beautiful"
• "In all directions"
• "Awareness up and down, left and right, front and back"
• "It's all me"
• "It's always been like this"
• "Everything is made of love"

Then I pointed at a lamp (yeah normal language kind of struggles at describing this) and said, among tears "That's also me" followed by "I love this lamp as I love you" to my meditation partner. Looking into her eyes for the first time (remember, she was sitting by my side) I had the sense that I was talking to "myself", not myself as in "José" but rather that there's a thing that's talking to itself, and that thing manifests as both José and my meditation partner.

Someone then held my hand and asked me to take some deep breaths to calm down. Then "I said" "Please continue", and she kept reading the text. Eventually I stood up and while still somewhat distressed I talked to one other person and it also felt like it was talking to myself.

Importantly, my perceptions were not altered: there were no flashy or fractal colors like in an acid trip, no weird sounds, no visual or sound hallucinations. There was just this felt sense that continues to this day that it's all like this and that this is what I had been looking for since I was a teenager (an answer to how consciousness works, a topic that has obsessed me so much I decided to put it away as it seemed too frustrating to try to grasp). If I had to put that felt sense in visual terms, a sense of vivid luminosity comes to mind but that's not what my eyes saw, my eyes were seeing normally. Though I know that "It is like this", I am not experiencing it with the same intensity as I did in that moment. The altered state lasted a few minutes only.

Weirdly, there was also the knowing that "it's always been like this", and that felt like a gigantic cosmic joke, ie I was expecting some flashy fireworks big moment like what people describe when they go on ayahuasca ceremonies but instead no, there was a whimsical funny aspect to it, like the thing has been in front of my face all along and I just didn't let myself look.

Another way to put it is that the universe was making fun of me while simultaneously enjoying it, all the while I was that same universe.

Did I feel like I was deliberately saying those things? In a way yes and in a way no. I had the knowing that I could pop out of that state at any time and stop it and some sense that it would happen at the right time. It's the same sense that right now I could start jumping up and down but at the same time "it's not the vibe so I don't feel like it so I won't". Another way to put it is that all I wanted is the present moment right there, right then, changing anything seemed silly, why would I want that.

There was some terror present, but I'm someone that goes around life saying "I want to stare at the truth of things until my retinas burn out" so this deep desire to know what's going on kept me going.

There was some emotional pain in my conceptual mind staring at the bright sun that is the true nature of things, like a fist clenching around shards of glass, hurting itself. Eventually I felt like I somewhat gave up on a core commitment that had been driving me through life: To know and understand everything, something I consciously remember as my answer to "what's the point of life" that felt more right than "happiness" or "meaning". The tagline of this blog "To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything" (originally something Tolkien wrote) is directly connected to that. What started my meditation journey (the sense that it's ok to not be learning all the time, I can just sit) found some completion: the deep heartbreak that I won't know everything and the whimsy of now knowing that I know that I don't know.

I talked to some other people about this that have had similar experiences and it's not always like this. The incredible distress that came with it was a product of me having made knowing and understanding everything part of my identity. Field after field I had showed to myself I can learn whatever it is that I want to learn: nothing could ever escape my intellect, I thought. If you are that kind of person, this will feel like getting smacked by the universe... and wanting more of it, because deep down what you really wanted was to see this. If on the other hand someone is more okay with not knowing, then it may still be meaningful but not distressing.

What... is this

I'm not the first person to have had an experience like this. I like linking and connecting experiences, so I then was trying to find what this was. It was clearly not the cessation/nirodha described in the Buddhist Theravada tradition as there was no sense of nothing or emptiness present (I've never had a cessation).

After looking for a term that fits, the thing that I saw is what Tibetan Buddhists call rigpa or the ground of being. And the whole experience fits the name kensho from Zen.

Having experienced the jhanas, which felt fairly pleasant and happening to a Self, this experience was totally in a different category. The jhanas feel like an appetizer in comparison to this.

At the same time I got the sense that I just saw the tip of something deeper. I am not enlightened, but I've seen a tiny bit of that light that's far away.

In a previous retreat I had an experience while looking at the ocean that had similar qualities: the luminosity, the "always been like this", the "beautiful". I had had a similar experience to that a few days prior to the nondual moment, looking at a lamp and crying in awe at how beautiful it is. But that wasn't distressful, there was still a sense of self there experiencing it.

During the ocean experience, I didn't have this sense that "this is it", was more of a cool "wow yeah there's so much beauty everywhere and I'm filtering it out by default, good to know". In contrast, this experience felt more existential, with a felt sense that "yep this is it" and there's more of it.

Though now looking back, it's probably apt to say that there's "a thing" and one can see a number of facets of it in different meditative experiences: the beauty, the love, the unity with it, etc. This latter experience felt more complete, having both the beauty and the love components.

To say "everything is so beautiful" makes some sense, but "everything is made of love" sounds kind of deranged because love is an emotion right? One could equally say "everything is so loving" or "the universe loves you, it's all ok and will always be", that also captures the same vibe.

Sasha Chapin once wrote about "Deep Okayness" and I think this is what he meant. Some of that is still with me but not fully.

I'm writing this almost a week after the experience and I still feel it a bit; similar to the afterglow of a jhana retreat, I feel more in the world, which is full of wonder, good things just happen, I'm not fighting the way things are unnecessarily. Part of me wants this to stay like this, part of me accepts that it may not be like that. I wonder how long it will!

How long did it take to get here

Prior to this point I had wondered how long it would take. I relate to meditation like someone playing some kind of cosmic lottery. Sometimes you sit and perfect bliss appears. Sometimes you sit and you cry at how beautiful walls can be. Sometimes you sit for one hour every day for a month and absolutely nothing happens.

Many accounts of meditation tend to be atemporal: they describe stages, or states, but rarely how long did it take people to get there. There are mentions here and there of people getting enlightened suddenly very early on and people taking decades of practice. Though I don't think this is enlightenment (it feels like a sneak peek at the thing). I thought it'd be useful to make public my own timeline and "what I did", though I don't think this will work for everyone.

I first got into meditation one day around June 22, 2024. I got home one day and I thought huh I don't feel like reading a book or doing anything, so I just sat there staring at the ceiling. Then I thought well I guess a good way to spend time is meditation, so I bought a copy of The Mind Illuminated, as I had come across it at a prior grouphouse I was at. That was followed by reading MCTB and other books, and definitely doing way more reading than practice. I practiced very inconsistently in 2024, no more than 30 min sits at a time if I remember correctly, and maybe 1 out of 4 days or even less. In 2025 I ended up going to three retreats:

• A three day retreat with Tucker Peck (Developed some equanimity towards the pain that arises with sitting all day, and convinced myself it can feel good to do nothing for a few days)
• A 7 day jhana retreat (Jhourney) (See here). The first paragraph of that essay has a similar quality to what I describe in the present post, but there was still a sense of a separate observer.
• A 9 day retreat at Diamond Mountain (also with Tucker) (Not as flashy as what happened in jhourney, more still, surrendered, I went in assuming I'd do jhana practice but I was more inclined to do shikantaza instead, and to eventually add more structure as the retreat went on)

I have also done like 3 in person sits with Michael Taft at the Alembic, and 30 days of Michael Taft sits from this playlist at home, which didn't do anything at the time.

Lastly in February 2026 I did one more 7 day retreat where the experience itself happened, Sleepawake. Though it wasn't a meditation retreat as such (ie you could talk to people), I did some amount of meditation.

So from June 22, 2024 to February 10, 2026; or 1 year and 7 months or so.