neti, neti

neti neti is a phrase from vedic culture and is loosely translated into english as not this, not that. i have been grokking on this phrase off and on all week, and today i sat quietly in my room for an hour and watched this Seeing negate all things that were passing across the screen with a sincere dedication to "neti neti"

it's been a strange week. there have been a ridiculous number of body and sensory changes, which in many ways amount to absolutely nothing. states are lovely, and sitting meditation is so nourishing i find myself sitting each day two or three times for an hour each. my head feels like it's going to explode every so often, and there is frequent heavy pressure at each temple, at the crown and in the middle of my brain. none of this matters, it's just me reporting from the midst...

i don't know how to explain what has gone on except to say that i am done. i, as a seeker, looking for something, have finished. mistaking myself for angela is done. there is awareness which has woken up to itself, and finds watching this world, and this life, fascinating and amusing and charming. i don't know what any of that means, frankly. my experience is that what is really happening here is empty space. i find myself to be capacity for the world, instead of a thing in the world itself.

beyond that, beyond that simplicity, i don't know anything else. i have no answers. i still don't know what they all mean when they say emptiness, unless what they mean is the world rather seems like a screen that everything is happening on (the Seeing is that screen, i am that screen...) but things have no thing-ness to them, everything seems rather like it's the same thing. but it is not some sharp delineation.

and the mind wants to wander into all sorts of sticky spots, to keep the awareness tangled up there. much like it has for the last two years, i have these perception shifts, all day every day. there is small, identified angela consciousness, and there is vast, unending space, which is the awareness that includes the whole world. the shift on christmas is that i finally know that space to be what i really am, and i can watch angela doing what she does, and i don't go asleep and think that i am her. (even though, in some twist and paradox, i've never felt *more myself* and angela is just fascinating and beloved, as everyone is...)

now, the mind is not silent, although i am amazed at how different it is these last few days. there is incredible access to silence as i know that to be my very own self, my no-thing, and when i sit quietly for even a moment, i can easily fall into a profound stillness. but over the last week i've had two or three movements of the mind to try to grasp onto control again, and during those moments i really found myself suffering until i remembered myself.

i posted two blog entries that i deleted, because they came up during one of the sticky mind episodes, when i had myself near convinced there is more to do, or something else i have to go figure out. it was the seeker trying to put herself back together again. with the grace of god and this perfect awareness that we are all spun out of, i was able to see through it.... neti, neti...

even getting stuck thinking to myself "i am this awareness" is not true, because the Seeing comes before the thought. everything, every single thing in the world comes *after* this Seeing. it is the surely the only thing in the world that i have ever known in a way that comes before mind. and that is why with every fiber of my being i know it to be true.

there is a sense of this process not being finished yet, because of the way the mind works.

it's like this: my first awakening where i knew what was happening (ie: not just a peak experience) was in march of 2009, while walking past a fountain. for the briefest of moments i saw very clearly, with absolute simplicity, that everything is one thing. i knew the sound, the water, the listening, the listener, the air and the street were all the same thing. i also knew it was only the mind which was capable of seeming to divide that which cannot be divided.

although that was my awakening, and since that time all day every day i've had those shifts in perception, where the Seeing poked through the small angela-mind, in some ways i almost forgot what the initial glimpse actually showed me.

and now, after chrismas, seeing it again, much much more clearly and deeply, and having that awareness not fade from view immediately, and spending my days with a very deep knowing of who i am, and able to check in there whenever i am so inclined.... i remember the event from last march.

this time i have seen enough about the lack of personal will and control that the awareness doesn't have to push aside as much of angela. i am the Seeing, watching angela go about her business, fascinated by what she does, her choices, how she lives, and almost (dare i say) enjoying her pictureshow and presence. i am fascinated by the mystery, by the fact that she seems to be moving without one speck of control, animated by i know not what.... because i am not "doing" angela.... i am the Seeing, watching her.

but the mind can still get sticky, and my heart is grateful for this neti, neti... this gentle reminder Not This, Not That... even when the mind tries to say I AM THE AWARENESS i can only giggle because the Seeing is present *before* the statement, so obviously the statement isn't true. and any thoughts of other things i need to do are completely false.

so when the mind tries it's own silly version of not this, not this, looking around at the world and saying this can't be it, it doesn't stick. the only thing left that is false, in fact, is that thought itself.

thankfully, gracefully, with full humility and praise be to the great spirit.... i know that there is only this. and this, is perfect.

i don't know anything

not a single, solitary thing.

today there is clarity

yesterday was christmas day, and it was lovely to spend the day with my beautiful, noisy, intelligent, insane family. after everything was cleaned up, and everyone had gone to bed, i sat in my room for a little while, and the bottom dropped out. in a moment that had no beginning or middle or end, that which was always here became aware of itself. i had been threatening my best friend for over a year that when it happened i would text her. so at 1:38am i sent the text saying:

"i am done"

and later, when i turned out all the lights in the house, and sat in sweet glow from the christmas tree, i was overcome with the beautiful, unending Knowing.... and also the gorgeous gratitude as to why christmas nights, alone in the darkness with only the tree lighting up the room, had always been so utterly fascinating to me. i felt as if my entire life had been pulling me into that moment, right there with the tree, tears of gratitude streaming down my face.

i always knew this was going to happen.

for now, this is enough. the struggle is done. i am going to drink my coffee and stare out the window.

thank you, thank you, thank you....

the borderline

i start to type, and then there seems there is nothing to say. i lean my head back and ask myself "what are you avoiding here? what don't you want to see?" and then with little else going for me, i type that. and i wait....

there is convergence here, a grand cavern of sorts in the very center of a tunnel system, and many of the tunnels have dried up, but here in this place i find there is still water running. the liquid flows over the lip where the tube drops off, and all the tubes contents join together here, in one swirling mass, going down and down some center channel to i know not where.

*********

it seems to me now that when i was younger i had a host of symptomology common to borderline personality disorder. i don't know if i was full blown or not, but i was close, and undiagnosed, and in the end i have rather self-healed. the kind of of pain, frustration, confusion and wreckage i suffered because of living on a borderline, and also the kinds of horror i inflicted on other people... it is hard at this point to turn around and stare at clearly. i can see now how much i have wanted to distance myself from that girl, from the person who felt those dangerous levels of hysteria and trauma, from the girl who was blinded to others in that way.

but i am still on a borderline. i am standing at the edge of an abyss, as deep and wide and infinite as any i have ever contemplated before. and i am not going to deny that girl in me. she was as me as i am me, and weather i am me at all is really the question that remains.

my inclination as the fingers move across the keys is to stop, to fall into the emotional state offered up by this conjunction, but i know there is no satisfaction there. there is no satisfaction anywhere, and that is the miasma i am working from.

having borderline personality disorder may turn out rather complicated in western psychotherapy, and the healing prospects may look dim, but from where i sit now it appears very simple. going back as far as i can remember i was terrified of the black hole at my center, absolutely aware of the emptiness there, the void that was sucking me in, and i spent my life stealing energy, manipulating people to give me energy, creating a vividly epic and mythic life to manifest energy, shoring up the intensity and charisma of my character, being good at everything i tried to do so i could be the center of attention, lying and acting out.... all in an effort to prove to myself that i existed, to feel for moments at a time when the layers of character and attention from others was just right that i had actual substance. i used to say to people "it's like when no one is looking, i don't exist"....

there is a very particular flavor of emotional hysteria that i associate with my symptoms, and over the years since i stopped acting out in that way in the outside world, i have had recurring dreams a few times a year where that feeling is still full blown. in the dreams, i am in a tremendous amount of pain, i am quite literally hysterical, bawling and wailing, and trying very hard to get someone to notice me. in the dreams, whomever is around is always aware that i am in the room, but they are never paying me any mind at all. they may glance over, but they go right back to doing what they were doing. in real life, i guess that no matter how much someone did actually look, or engage with me, i still felt the same way. the pain and hysteria would come up, catch hold of me like a poltergeist, and then it would create some situation that would feed attention into me in order to shore me up somehow. i just cannot find words to describe how awful and alone and unnoticed i felt in those moments. i was, rather literally, possessed.

i have always been a creature who relied on intuition. i would all throughout my life always have the "right answer" to things, or know what was needed next... but i never really "did the math" and knew how things arrived from point a to point b. so in retrospect now, i can see i always knew there was no self, that i did not actually exist. i was always fighting being sucked backwards into the void. i intuited there was no self there, even though i never had the mental or intellectual understanding that i have gained now from my exposure to teachers and mystics pointing to the truth.

starting about 13 years ago, and more seriously 9 years ago, i began an active, seemingly successful campaign to end my living with the borderline symptoms. i began to meditate, became mindful, became contemplative, surrounded myself with books and people that supported that life... and also built up an entire identity (whom i affectionately call wisdom girl) around being the opposite of that broken, borderline girl that left such a tender place in my memory. i became identified with being strong enough to face personal challenges, being brave enough to admit when i was wrong or small, being humble enough to know i wasn't perfect, being wise enough to choose with more heart and soul.... altogether, the other side of the pendulum from the creature i had been before. and it worked.

and then, almost two years ago now, when my brain began to blow up, when i began to see through the illusory world, and started to investigate the idea that none of the identities are true, and that i don't even exist as a separate being, so much began to finally make sense to me. and structures and identities began to fall away like dust. my entire life structure fell away, and easily, but in a subtle way it still fed wisdom girl, still fed the identity of the girl who was "doing" those things. the one who chose it.

i am being stripped now of even her, even that wisdom girl identity, and coming face to face with the absolute lack of personal will.... there is so much awareness of lack of control here that i am finding myself surprised and every so often overwhelmed by this thing. if wisdom girl was a plug of sorts, stopping the hysteria monster from going out and attacking the world, what happens when she is fully removed? what is left when she falls away?

i am still a borderline. i am still a person with a borderline personality. i just don't see it as a disorder. i am on the edge of the abyss of no self, the abyss of that which is true being revealed but only in the total surrender to the fall to my death. and i am finding this terrain here fascinating.

so today, another synchronous day, where i look over my shoulder and find that the god i chased for so long is now chasing me, i have moments of pain and terror, right along with the most serious gratitude i have ever experienced in my life. i know being exposed to this, having this unveiled, is exactly as it should be. and i am glad that i am feeling the fear now, finally feeling a kind of terror that i have been expecting for months.

surrendering control, letting go of my illusion of will over any of this, is a fact. it's not even something i can choose to do. it is being done, to me and through me. and somehow i can find a continuity at the edge of having always known that this was what was true, underneath it all.

i feel the endings, the edges, the borderlines, and i am grateful.

returning clarity....

last year when i started this blog, i was in the middle of the most intense sorts of chaotic demolition that i had ever experienced in my whole life. the whole of angela was being ripped to shreds and all i could do was watch.

this year, 2010, has been very different, and has had a subtle sort of movement that is as perfect as last years madness was. everything in its right time and space.

there is much to say and be said, but today is not the day. this is just a bridge day, a reminder, an opening.... because i do want to play around with how to express the way this has moved, i'm just not sure how to do so.... yet.