Threefold Enlightening

Threefold Enlightening: Universal Spirituality beyond Beliefs By the age of 11, Ajnanda had lost the most important people in the world to him – his parents. Then it was just him and his elder sister who had to fend for themselves, though illness soon debilitated her for decades. As a result of this loss and trauma, Ajnanda began a 30 year quest to find an answer to the pain he had suffered. He found the solution after unearthing ancient practices that led to key realizations: Sometimes the most tragic stories in life teach us about the most beautiful things in life… For ultimately this led to the discovery of Threefold Enlightening, a universal, timeless spirituality across faiths, realizing boundless Love, Awareness & Being. In this book, Ajnanda lays out numerous spiritual insights, including: • The threefold nature of your brain's physiology, your inner experiences, the ego and holistic liberation. • The threefold, universal core within many spiritual and religious traditions across the world including Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, the Yogas, Hinduism and even Advaita (Non-duality). • Why Threefold Enlightening needs no faith and how it works in real life. • The eternal mystery of how the universal trinity work as one. • How the limiting belief in a separate spiritual self manifests in 10 spiritual identities. • How the Now differs from realizing spiritual Awakening and Threefold Enlightening, but often precedes them. • How free will and fate merge. Based on the ancient and timeless wisdom in all traditions, the book offers the reader many benefits, including: • Discovery of the 8 specific degrees of spiritual realization from initial search to universal liberation • How Threefold Enlightening of boundless Being, Love & Awareness can be triggered • A decrease of mental confusion, anxiety and stress of one's spiritual direction • The foundations for understanding freedom from unhappiness.

Threefold Enlightening Realizing the Universal Spirituality of the Ages Threefold Enlightening is the ancient, timeless realization at the heart of so many time-honoured spiritual and religious traditions around the world. These have all revealed a core, threefold reality of supreme spirituality, whose essence can be distilled to boundless Love, boundless Awareness and boundless Being - relating to the heart, mind and body alike. Now Ajnanda Shon, an acknowledged spiritual teacher, reveals the mystery of Threefold Enlightening in a clear and succinct, yet profound way. So the book offers a spectrum of insights, showing: * The 3 aspects of universal spirituality across so many spiritual and religious traditions. * The consistent threefold nature of the brain, the psyche, the ego and life experience, all relating to Threefold Enlightening. * Reveals how realizing the Now precedes realizing the Infinite itself and the relationship between them. * How spiritual realization can be holistic as boundless Love, Being and Awareness and the way these relate to each other and how they are one. * How ego's illusion of separation works in the emotions and in the body, below the radar of Awakening as Awareness alone. * How Threefold Enlightening relates to the Higher Yogas, Buddhism, Advaita / Non-duality, Christianity, the New Age and to the general spiritual search. * The phases of realisation from initial glimpsing to ongoing liberation. * The 8 degrees spanning the entire spiritual process and how they evolve in realising an Infinite reality that we are all a part of. * Explains why freedom from emotions or suffering, such as anger, fear, grief and regret and anxiety is possible and a manifestation of realized life. * Describes the many benefits of Threefold Enlightening including freedom from mental noise, deep emotional suffering and aching physical cravings. * Shows initial effortless practices to trigger realisation of boundless Love, Awareness & Being. * How realisation and its lifelong impact can be increasingly effortless as causeless peace, bliss, meaning and fulfillment. * Why it is possible to directly know the meaning of life and existence, the purpose and sacredness of everything and the necessity of tragedy in boundless compassion. Excerpts: “Looking at the infinite light of your own Consciousness Listening to the boundless silence of your Being Feeling the causeless bliss of your Love Such is Threefold Enlightening.” Boundless Love: “When it encounters the carefree, there is overflowing joy. When it encounters the tragic, there is true compassion. Whichever it is, the underlying sense of bliss that all is truly well is always present. Not that everything is ideal or somehow "perfect". It is just that everything is as it has to be. That reality, with cause and effect, is unfolding how it must unfold. And how everything must unfold for liberation to happen, often only through suffering. Spiritual liberation as boundless Love brings the healing of the pain. It dissolves sorrow to reveal the unity of Love in radiant bliss. Even so, accepting everything as it is, Love still acts to change what it can, wherever it can, whenever it can. For Love is both the luminous field in which we are and the flow of energy of compassion. It is the purpose of existence. As Saint Paul said "Love is sufficient unto itself." In being Love, we realize our own meaning. The meaning of life beyond words." Time: Time passes through boundless Awareness, as all phenomena does. But that is not all. Awareness perceives the ever present moment, the Now, as the unbroken thread uniting the past, present and future as one. Time and distance are compressed to zero. So the sense of the timeless emerges in realization. With realization, here and now is everywhere and timeless. Even if life is busy, full of events, the passing of time feels as if it comes to a halt. Timelessness

Ajnanda's Life From Profound Tragedy to Causeless Fulfillment From the beginning, Ajnanda has had a challenging life. His father verbally abused and inflicted domestic violence on his mother and sister. As a sensitive child, Ajnanda saw this and froze in terror countless times. Then, when Ajnanda was five his mother died and six years later, so did his father. This meant his devoted elder sister had to raise him single-handedly. All this left Ajnanda with deep grief and sorrow within. The Spiritual Quest At 13, he learnt his first spiritual lesson by himself when he had a vision of the great spiritual teachers going back millennia in a single line and bowed to them in deep humility. Ajnanda’s quest for inner fulfillment began at 16 when he explored philosophy searching for the meaning of life, but soon realized that whatever truth is, it is beyond the intellect. At 17, he experienced Charismatic Christianity and from the early 1980's he studied and tried many Western therapies - Cognitive Behavior, Counselling, Hypnotherapy, NLP, Psycho-synthesis and others. Yet Ajnanda did not find freedom from his issues, let alone unconditional fulfillment and spiritual liberation. So Ajnanda began exploring Eastern approaches and for 25 years, he practiced many forms of meditation and spiritual practice - Buddhism, Ashtanga Yoga, Advaita / Non-duality, Kabbalah and Taoism, receiving guidance from many accomplished teachers. Through these years there were many experiences of spaciousness, transparency, spiritual ecstasy, I am-ness, the Now and various meditative states. During this period he also witnessed and helped his sister deal with serious illness for over 20 years, before having his own multiple illnesses and symptoms for the last 15 years. These meant he had to cope with several types of pain as well as exhaustion and all the challenges they brought. He is now making a slow, concerted recovery. Realizing Threefold Enlightening of Boundless Love, Awareness and Being Then in 2006, a pure and boundless awareness was realized. It was simple and totally clear. Before long, after feeling boundless energy in the heart, this deepened into realization of unconditional bliss and compassion for all things and people. Then Ajnanda entered a vortex of fear before a deeper realization in the body of both limitless emptiness and being at once, revealing an unspeakable sense of meaning and fulfillment in ordinary life. Now the realization of pure awareness also occurs in luminous, dreamless sleep too. This is all holistic realization at the three levels of mind, heart and body as boundless Awareness, Love and Being which settled as the union of boundless Love Awareness Being. Freedom This resulted in freedom from Ajnanda’s deep-seated issues. He describes this as: “Freedom from feeling trapped in thoughts, being swamped by emotions, from the deep grief and sorrow of losing my mother at 5, from childhood traumas that led to panic attacks, from the deep ache of unrequited love, from anxiety over financial hardships, from long term chronic illness, from the fear of going blind or losing my feet, from the fear of death even into oblivion, from the anxiety of no long term security, from chronic long term background anxiety that was there for no reason at all and of course, from the illusion of ego at the root of it all. All that has gone and as destructive emotions such as anger, fear and grief have shrunk to a trace, causeless serenity, bliss, well-being, meaning and purpose have been revealed.” As his life now proves, causeless peace, contentment and fulfillment are possible, regardless of health, money, status, family, thrilling experiences or hopes for the future in this life or the next and even if life circumstances are harsh, which they are. So he now lives free from unhappiness, as this is unconditional spiritual freedom. Vocation For over 25 years, Ajnanda has run or assisted in running dozens of retreats, ongoing groups, seminars and workshops. He has enjoyed helping people from many different social, spiritual and religious backgrounds and from a variety of countries. Ajnanda has guided people in Threefold Enlightening for six years, providing personal guidance and group instruction to people facing challenging issues or for realizing spiritual liberation. He finds it truly worthwhile as the methods of Threefold Enlightening work deeply. He does not ask people to change their beliefs or to adopt his views. This is because the practices work regardless of whether people believe in them or not. So people of all faiths can and do use them. He currently lives in England with his beloved partner of 18 years, Sukyananda, who works as a special needs teaching assistant at a primary school.