My First Enlightenment Intensive

A personal account by Barry McGuinness

Since turning 30 (May 1991), I had started having heart palpitations and ongoing anxiety.

I wasn’t sure what was causing it, but on the advice of my then wife I started attending meditation classes at the local Buddhist Centre, hoping that it would help me to relax. I might even learn what was causing me to be so anxious.

Well, the first thing I learned when trying to meditate was that my mind was constantly, obsessively, trying to anticipate other people’s negative judgements of me. Every single moment.

And eventually I realised: I’d been in an identity crisis since my teens. I had never known who I was, or who I’m supposed to be. While publicly I presented a well-rehearsed ‘cool dude’ persona, privately I saw myself as a shy, nervous oaf, with a very dark shadow. And at some subconscious level, reaching thirty had hit me hard. I was literally anxious to know myself.

And then … by strange coincidence … as I flipped through an events listing magazine, I came across an ad for something called an Enlightenment Intensive.

"An opportunity" it said, "to experience the change in state of consciousness traditionally known as enlightenment.”

I didn’t know anything about enlightenment, and the Buddhist teachers I showed it to were very sceptical. It was supposed to take many years, even many lifetimes, to approach “enlightenment” – not three days!

But this process called to me, if only because it was described as “a way to discover the truth of who you are.”

I gathered that the format was like a cross between a zen meditation retreat and a self-help group, combining non-stop self-enquiry with one-to-one communication exercises. The participants spend the entire three days contemplating a question such as "Who am I?" But during each day, they also periodically sit with a partner from the group and the two will share with each other whatever they experience as they contemplate.

The communication bit worried me. As a newcomer to the growth field, I was unused to sharing my thoughts and feelings with complete strangers. There were certain rules in place, however, to ensure that whatever anyone said was to be met with silence and treated with utmost respect.

I was, though, definitely attracted to the idea of intensively contemplating who I am. I reckoned it was time I stopped playing games and ‘found my true self’—if indeed there was such a thing. Either way, I had nothing to lose ...

So a few weeks later, there I was on my first Enlightenment Intensive.

On the first day, I was mostly affected by the austere orderliness of the situation—the lack of everyday distractions, like TV and beer. It's amazing how interesting wallpaper can seem once the inward search begins to bite!

Without the support of the group structure as a constant reminder, I know I wouldn't have had the willpower to stay with the technique. In fact, some people soon wanted to leave. But the “master” running the whole thing assured us that resistances will come and go all the time. So I just resolved to see it through and give it my best shot.

On the second day, it was more like taking the lid off my unconscious. I had all sorts of spontaneous memories, feelings, images, fantasies, as did others in the group.

Seeing others taking risks to say what was really going on for them was, for me, incredibly inspiring, and I began to feel very close to several in the group, despite (or because of?) the formal structure and rules.

That second day was the noisiest—there was screaming, shouting, hysterical laughter… Yet all the time we remained sitting facing one anther respectfully in our neat rows!

On the third day, there was a calmer, more ‘studious’ atmosphere. A warm trust had developed within the group, and almost everyone was by now well into the process. ...

At some point late in the third morning, something strange began to happen. Every time I closed my eyes to contemplate, I could see a gravestone. And this gravestone kept getting closer and closer to me – until there came a point at which I could read the name on it. It was my name.

It was as if my unconscious was getting me to accept that one day I'm going to die, something which I found terrifying. The last thing I wanted to do was to confront that fear—so here it was, bang on cue.

I started shaking, panting and sobbing as I communicated all about it to my partner, but I finally got it out.

Then it was time for lunch, and the whole thing was behind me.

It was during lunch on day three that I had the most amazing experience of my life. Just as I was lifting my fork to my mouth, there was a timeless moment in which I just knew who I was. It was as if I had accidentally caught myself in the act of being myself.

And, paradoxically, it seemed as if I always known who I am, but had simply forgotten. It was so obvious, yet so marvelous! What a cosmic joke!

I started laughing loudly and uncontrollably, until a passing monitor interrupted me and got me to communicate to her what was happening. As I did so, I understood why communication is the key to this process. In communicating, that moment of pure knowing returned, leaving me so awestruck and humbled by its reality that my rational mind could never deny it.

Part of what I got was the very opposite of my lifelong sense of not belonging here. I now knew that, fundamentally, who I am is integral to the very fabric of reality. Always was and always will be.

Despite all my efforts, it didn’t feel like I had made this great realisation happen. It had just come out of the blue, like an act of grace.

At the end of the Intensive, I learned that about a third of the group had had their own ‘direct experiences’ of different aspects of Truth, some more clear than others. This was said to be par for the course on Enlightenment Intensives.

I later read a book full of accounts of people who have had spontaneous and totally unexpected mystical experiences. One moment they are out walking the dog, say, and the next moment they are suddenly in blissful union with the transcendent Reality of self and life. Then moments later they are back to normal, only now their fundamental understanding of self or life has been changed forever.

I had just experienced something of this sort. It was the turning point of my life.

I went on to take numerous more Enlightenment Intensives. As a result of being blessed with more and more encounters with Truth, my initial naïve scepticism gradually gave way to a very personal spirituality grounded in absolute reality.