this is it, folks

i'm working on a long post right now, but the simple fact is that for many of us, the belief "this isn't good enough" or "i'm not good enough" or "i'm not awake" or "enlightenment is out there somewhere" or any kind of variation of the statement that most resonates with you..... is the core NO to life.

and it's the reason it hurts so bad. NO = no. simple. you say no to this, and this being what is here, means choosing an argument over reality. simple as a pimple.

the restoration of cosmic good humor happening here, and the simplicity presents itself in the most amazing ways. more on this later.

but really, folks. why is the deficiency story the one we cling to with every fiber of our being? why are we afraid to be be THIS?

i want to gently cradle the face of every single being i meet and say to them... I SEE YOU..... and also to whisper in their ear. yes. you. perfection as you are, divine as you are, confused as you are. you, my sweet Beloved.... you are it.

reboot

"We need to stop treating the relative, the dualistic, the mundane, the unrepentingly dense, as lesser than the Absolute, the Nondualistic. We need to get so, so close to the specific, the particular, the idiosyncratic, that any distance between us and it exists only for focusing purposes. God is not just in the details, God IS the details."  Robert Augustus Masters (Freedom Doesn't Mind Its Chains)

my beloved adyashanti talks often about the dual movement of spirituality..... freedom FROM and then freedom TO. in other words, first we gain freedom from our stories, our humanity, by the recognition of that emptiness, that witnessing..... and then the movement is back into our humanity, being free enough to even be free from the need for freedom discovered in emptiness and witnessing. (what a mouthful!)

this blog has has the bulk of its entries written early this year, when the freshness of the revelation christmas 2010 brought was still sweet on my lips. there was an experience here of awakening that night, and then there were the months of sorting through what that meant. but more was going on under the surface that i couldn't have really predicted. see, once unity is experienced and no-self is recognized, there really isn't much room left to be "spiritual" anymore, at least not in the way it had gone down before. one thing is one thing, and what could be any more spiritual than anything else? when all is divine mystery, what remains? what could be outside of everything?

so, the first few months after christmas were a whirlwind of ideas and beliefs being ripped from my mind without ceremony. all the stages of things that the sacred writings pointed to, things like emptiness and luminosity and all that began to reveal themselves. but mainly, what was going on, is that my last holdout in ego-land.... as the spiritual person, identified as the Great Witness that had been discovered in March of 2009, was being taken away. i mean, really, deeply, ripped from my bleeding and clutching grasp.

now, the thing about the the witness position, is that while it is no more valid than anywhere else to stand, i have no opinion that it's a bad or a wrong thing to have hid there for so long. my entire early life had been plagued by such extreme states of suffering, it can only be called human nature to dance in the freedom of emptiness for as long as life allows. so that's what i did. during the two years from the awakening in march 2009 thru the christmas realization, i burned through all the personal storylines of my life, all the attachments, while my sense of myself hung out free as a bird as the space that holds the whole thing.

but then, in it's own way, the burning begins to burn itself up, like the quote from Ramana about the stick that stirs the fire. eventually, true freedom has to come back for everything, including the need for freedom itself.

so this year, during these months while i have not been able to write, i have been dying a painful death, and simultaneously coming back to life. the movement here has been back into the world, back into this body, this being, this humanity with all of the quirks that entails.

on that subject, there is probably a lot to say. a dear soul got in touch with me today and commented on the blog, which was the last in a string of perfect revelations to remind me that if it's time to come back to life, then the voice gets to have its time as well. it's been coming at me for weeks, the urge to write here again.....

so. reboot. because this isn't about being free FROM life... it's about being free enough TO live.

and with that, the heart swells with love and gratitude, and i hit "publish post"

enjoying the view

i just haven't had much to say lately. it's hard to explain why except to say that i just don't have any frictions here that guide my inquiries. in fact, for the most part, inquiries have ceased. i'm sort of over the whole spiritual thing, going along in a world where the boundaries seem more and more invisible, and where the edges of things are blurred into a beautiful rainbow of vibrant life.

i'm sort of, well, done with wanting anything else. it seems like there is just no energy left, and hasn't been for some time now, for argument in any way, with anything. there isn't a plan, any decisions, any belief left in control or a person here to take such an action.

everything seems just right, just like this, and i can't find myself wanting anything other than just this, just right now, exactly as it is.

admittedly, any sort of ongoing living like this is new to me, so probably the talking will right itself again at some point when there is compulsion in that area. for now, i'm just living life, smiling a lot, playing, enjoying the angela thing a great deal. without drama, without conflict, this whole human thing is such an immense joy to experience, it's hard to describe in words.

my curiosity about the whole borderline thing, and my personal experience with growing up with such a fractured and mainly non-linear fragmented 'self' remains strong. i just feel drawn in that area, to tend to something that caused such a great deal of suffering here early in life. but beyond that, i guess, for now at least.... i'm just sort of enjoying the view.

for those who take the time to read here, thank you so much. i just know there will be more words later. for now, this silly smile on my face is enough.

it's not perfect as it is

even though it's clearly perfect, exactly as it is.

curious?

well, for today's simple reminder we take a minute to consider that new, neo-advitic beliefs aren't any more true than any other beliefs. and for us to take on a new belief, based on the experience of the absolute, even if that belief is called "there is no do-er" or "everything is perfect as it is".... well, kids, that's just another belief.

yes, clearly everything is as it is, and that's perfect. in experience. but to create a mental structure, a belief system, from the absolute isn't going to serve you any better than any other fundamentalism.

sure didn't for me. turned me into a rambling advitic facist, actually. today, be kind to your fellow humans, and relax a bit, that gripping, grasping, groping mind.

;)

i keep meaning to write

i really do keep meaning to write here. i keep meaning to have something to say. but i just don't, really, have much to say. at least not about this, at least not right now.

the thing is that it's become clear there isn't anything to say or do around any of this, that any kind of "spiritual" life we hold dear is just more resistance. there's nothing else going on, nowhere else to be. this is it, and the very fact that we're here and awake is..... it.

the first few times i contemplated it, the catch 22 nature of the whole thing made me a bit seasick. wait, i thought.... give up? surrender the fight? drop the search? but then surely i'll never get what i want from the wrhole thing. if i give up, then i'll never arrive. but the lived reality, more and more, has shown - i mean shown repeatedly, through ongoing revelations and awakenings - that this is it, kiddo. your resistance is why you suffer, your argument with this. the awakeness here is awake to itself, it recognizes itself and is in love with the silence and stillness it has found. all that's left is an argument in my mind, and since i don't trust my mind's antics anymore, it's just..... drooping down, running out of hot air.

it's no joke to say we're all already awake. it's not metaphor. it's literal. then comes the argument that says "oh, this isn't it!!" and we believe that thought. spiritual people especially, even those engaged in serious self enquiry who are open to questioning beliefs still find a space to believe that one, to believe that "this isn't it".... and it really touches in with the remaining spiritual identity, the hidden arrogance and resistance there, to even suggest it as a line of questioning.

i find myself quite content right now, and yet out of sorts. the loss of my fight, the loss of the seeker, is a bit confounding. the mind wants to scream that "oh my god if you don't kick up the search again you're never going to find what you're looking for!!!" and yet, i just can't muster the energy. something here knows better. something here is quite thrilled to have tried to go all this way and ended up exactly right here, right where i never could ever have left. i am sort of quiet, a bit introverted about it all. i have no more fire for the whole deep burn. it's just flickered out. there's not a whole whizz shebang about the search, there is no more excitement. i deeply grokk down to the marrow of my bones that i'm already what i am looking for. and while the mind has not gone quiet, and still wants to make up stories and look about, it just doesn't drain too much energy from the system for it's seach. it doesn't roll on for very long.

i don't know what this all means. i don't know much of anything anymore, actually. it's why i can't find it in me to write much. i've been drained of myself mostly backwards into empty space. i don't have opinions or tirades to share, or profound thoughts about any of this, or even much experiential realizations to share. it's just this. here it is. here i am.

maybe more will come later, we'll see. for now, i am only interested in writing while it feels vibrant and authentic, and for some reason this 6:30am post spilled from the fingertips.

enjoy yourself, this life is what it is, and even your quirky human being is just another angle of the One. there is no harm to love there, as you would love anywhere else.

this is it

we're already awake.

and all the looking in the world only obscures this fact.

like saying to the divine - which is the entirety, the all, the everything, every moment, object, feeling, body - like saying to god, directly.... "no thanks, i don't want what you are. i am going over here toward this better thing that i have in mind."

silly humans.

we're already awake. that means you.

going on retreat part 2

tomorrow i fly out to california for my retreat. my last post was pretty intense, as per usual in my world these days, i just write off the cuff in the moment whatever i'm feeling. at that moment, apparently, i was pretty sick of the sound of my own voice.

in general, right now, i'm really drawn to silence, and the futility of words is so obvious. it's all a story, of course (thank you b.) and yet, maybe right now, i'm just the kid in the playground who doesn't want to play anymore. i'm too tired to hold it up, and so there's a bit of a downturned lip and hands in pockets, i just wander off on my own.

i've been such a talker, a teller of tales in this lifetime, and for right now.... i'm just grateful beyond belief for the ability to stop all that, and do the alone wandering thing. when i return from retreat i'd like to write a post about the last time i felt the deep inner pull to the lonely silence. it turned out to be one of the most vitally alive times in my entire life. so.... with gratitude in hand, and a less bratty post, i say a little farewell.

and i hope for anyone who reads this, that there is a moment or two or ten when the silence captivates you with the dazzling, vibrant emptiness of who you really are.

going on retreat

on sunday i am going to a week long silent retreat.

i'm just sort of at a point when i wish my whole life was a silent retreat.

i'm sick of the sound of my own voice. especially considering the voice speaks up as if it actually knows something, when it's clear as day that i don't know a damn thing.

it's so strange, in this half light, can't go back, no efforts to go elsewhere amount to a hill of beans. just here, just this. just..... this. and still, the mind, constantly saying this isn't enough. and i ignore it, the best i am able. but it's just so goddamn loud.

so shutting up for a while will be nice.

this seeing....

it comes into a phrase...

it's the difference between looking AT and looking FROM....

and although even that description leaves a bit to be desired, it's poetically close to the mark, at least for tonight.

borderland - a return perspective

i haven't posted any thoughts about borderland here in a while, perhaps because it's more or less slipped out of my thinking while other things were being revealed. the whole period of bliss caused by revelation of there really being no self was working through my system, and as i mentioned in yesterday's post - i had to come to extrapolate what it means for the whole world. and as i did, as i saw this void inside of me reach outward and embrace the whole world, i have been pained, i have cringed and cried, i have felt that the last bit of anything that mattered to me was being taken away.

but really, i was curious why exactly that was? why was there such a sense of shock over the world not being real, over the people not being what they seem to be?

talking to a dear friend yesterday helped put some things in perspective.

borderline personality disorder which marked pretty much the first 20 years of my life, as i have mentioned here is a strange condition whereby the person with it doesn't have the ability to put together a solid sense of self. the shifting sands there are marked, and dramatic. and the instability causes the person to suffer from chronic terror based on the feeling of void within, on the feeling that they don't actually exist.

having no real sense of self on which to rely, and never having any context or paradigm by which i could explain to others why i felt so differently than they seemed to, my life was a mass of confusion, each day existing without the benefit of the previous day's knowledge and solidity to help guide the new days. it's hard to even explain all this in words, but without a sense of self that is at least semi-solid, there is nothing from which to hang context and linear growth in time. i lived in the moment because i couldn't do anything else, had no other choices. when people were away from me, it was as if they didn't exist. when no one was looking at me, it was as if i didn't exist. my behaviors were erratic, incredibly selfish, and yet throughout it all i had no language by which to explain to anyone what was going on. i just floated, adrift.

the world was all i really had that made any sense to me. i didn't feel solid, or find any solidity to myself, but the world seemed very solid, and i had no reason to think it wasn't. everyone seemed so different than me, capable of holding together a pattern of behavior and personality in a way i was never capable of. the natural world was a refuge, in all it's solidity and constancy. music, and especially dance, were also a refuge. i was able to use my body very well, because despite what seemed full of flux within, the strength and grace of the limbs were dependable. all things that were seemingly physical around me, all the people of the world, the objects, my own body.... this was where i put my faith in solidity, to shore up against the ongoing terror of the void and flux within.

i have said for a long time, during all my 'self help' years in my late twenties, when i studied astrology and enneagram and such, that i am a very earthy person. i have felt very kin with earth and the solidity there has never been in question. while i've been markedly intuitive (probably the only reason i survived the first decades of my life) i haven't had my reality marked by strange happenings whereby the world grew thin or surreal or anything. i have accepted, in the zen terms, that mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers.

but lately, as the sense of there being no me here, has been explored more deeply as i mentioned in yesterday's blog entry, the extrapolation of the understanding has left me with no choice but to accept the obvious. the world, and the people in it, are not even remotely as solid as i would have once thought they were. not even close. if there is no me, there is no anyone else, either. and if i accept that i don't know anything for sure, as i have been forced to do dozens of times these last two years, then i have to say that i clearly can't really know anything about the world either.

i remember several times during the last two years, there was this strong yearning to learn what the teachers all meant when they talked about emptiness. the word, the feeling there, held a charge for me intuitively, and several times i tried to squint into the distance and figure out what exactly that term meant. i didn't get it, until i did. and this space now, where the world grows very surreal and thin, where the whole thing seems oddly busy yet very empty.... well, i get it now. and it's entirely not what i thought it would be.

so how this ties together is that right before my experience on christmas, i had been considering the lingering fears i had that if i really let go, surrendered into this truth as it had been exposing itself in this life, that the whole borderline thing could reappear - and i would be some sort of no-self godzilla monster stomping through the landscape just ruining people and destroying lives the way i used to when i was younger. i thought that giving into the reality of no self could mean that the containment level wouldn't operate anymore, and my behaviors would go back to what they had been when i was young - all the terror response causing cruelty, emotional vampirism and inconsistency by the truckload.

i looked deeply there, and by doing so, there became this lovely perspective in my whole life. and i admit, right now, with this new understanding, there is that feeling again, that feeling of things linking up into one whole thing, making sense because in the realm of truth, everything is unified, and infinite.

i see that my belief in the world was the only solidity i had in a life full of flux and chaos. during extended periods of terror, ongoing months and years of extreme fears and psychotic, neurotic chaos, the world's reality was where i put all my faith.

and now, at this point, i have to reconsider that, and am being urged to investigate the questions backwards into a place where the question itself is not answered, but disappears.

i don't get to hold onto the world, and be an empty self amid a world of solids. that's incomplete knowing, a half truth, and leaves me as that which i have called 'half born'. i am not just empty capacity for all things, even though that still remains true. the emptiness has to move outward and embrace the whole world, to be drawn further and further out into infinity - drawn forward by the heart's intuition that all of this is actually One Thing. it doesn't get to be one thing if it remains unaffected by this truth - it will forever be one thing minus me, or rather i will remain here, looking at that out there.

that, right there, touches in too on these shifts in seeing that happen to me all day every day, and the possibility that, as always, they've been happening as a way by which to keep me out of a trance, and allow me to soften all the mental understanding of the world, and to soften into the kind of unknowing that is required for me to allow truth to move more clearly in my life.

so, even though the world, seemingly solid, and the people, seemingly directed by their own inner self, turns out to be a bunch of nonsense, there does not have to be terror. pain, while processing it, sure, but there doesn't have to be suffering around the whole thing. it just is what it is. mystery. more of the i don't know, magnified and expanded outwards in all directions. my letting go doesn't have to mean the kind of terror that i experienced when i was young, or the kind of madness of behavior that evidenced. there is just this, in this moment. and if the world isn't what i thought it was, well, that's just lovely considering i think my mind is a bunch of malarkey anyway.

there was some dark feelings over all of this, right up until yesterday when there was a pop in clarity, and the context of the whole thing made sense. at that point, i can see how easily the mind replaces a full, meaningful world with an empty, meaningless world.... it's all the same, it's somewhere to stand, a reference point, a belief. and therefore, in essence, it's not really true. and the pain abates, and a sense of wonder and curiosity creeps back in.

okay, the world is empty, seems busy and is also not really full of anything at all. wierd!! but wow!! a whole new wonderland of life to explore and be in and of - as the moment arises. nowhere to stand, which can be terrifying to the mind..... but it's a real liberation for the essence here, a kind of a love almost impossible to describe.

the unending collapse of all things....

it's been a little while since i wrote. i didn't know for a while there what to say. i knew something was shifting inside, and without any clarity on what that was, i have walked around in a bit of a numb funk for a couple weeks.

see, i as i mentioned, it's one thing to see that i didn't exist. it's not that much of a shock. i always suspected i was a big gigantic lie. so cutting through "me" wasn't really a huge deal. i mean, it hurt at times, but it was clear that it was for the best, because i knew i'd been an illusion for my whole life.

but then there comes in the whole world, as i've known it to be for my whole life. the world, and the people in it. extrapolating from the revelations of the last two months, the whole thing has shocked me backwards into a deep sadness from which i don't see how i could possibly emerge.

the revelation of no me, as it moves outward into the world, means there is also no one else either. and the revelation of not being able to know anything for sure, means that this world (which we can only ever know through our senses) isn't able to be known either. together, this is the one two blammo punch i could call:

HOLY SHIT NONE OF THIS IS REAL

and i am writing with humor, because i've had a cup of coffee and it's a nice day outside. but when i am not trying to amuse the 3 people who read this blog, i admit, there is a kind of sadness that comes over me that makes me feel quite honestly like i'd rather die than bear it for one more minute.

in addition to the existential sadness about the reality of emptiness, i still deal with these shifts in seeing, which have been going on all day every day for two years. and, you know what? i'm sick to fucking death of them.

i guess for a long time i thought they made me special, or that they were wisdom pulling me home or some ridiculous thing. they may in fact be the truth, meeting up against the lie, who knows for sure. i do know that they're driving me mad and i just don't know how much longer i can put up with this.

with any of this, really.

i'm exhausted. i've been storming these gates for longer than i care to admit. i am a ferocious human being, full of energy and vigor and determination. and there was just never any question that i was going to get what i wanted. until recently. because i just can't fight anymore.

since christmas, since the clarity of no one here became my daily experience, since the battle to see through angela's storyline ended, the entire network of energy that made up the rest of my life has collapsed, repeatedly, not despite my best efforts.... but more because i just don't have any more energy for the efforting.

the revelations have extended outward, to touch and include the whole world, and i can't argue with what i see. i wanted for two years to know what teachers meant when they said emptiness, because although i knew that i didn't know (in regards to angela) there was apparently a lot of leftovers in the knowing department where the rest of the world was concerned. so now, emptiness becomes obvious. and it's sure as hell not what you'd think. it's freaky, eerie, creepy..... a world that seems busy but is actually just barren and void of life. a world where nothing has any reference point, no solidity against each other, empty of qualities and meanings and import in a vast sea of the unknown.

so i am really hurting over here. as the shreds of mind left able to think about these things behold emptiness, they scream and wail and cannot believe it would be possible to live on like this, in this horrorshow of a world, where once there was beauty and light.

i am being removed of all tendrils left of that which matters, murdered backwards into a kind of unknowing from which i cannot possibly hope to emerge.

see, the three unity experiences i've had (christmas, and two others since then) have shown me that there is peace to be had when there is no "me" left to behold that which it dubs "emptiness".... so while this hurts, very very badly, it's not particularly confusing.

it's just exhausting. because the efforting here, the girl who is ambitious, the one who will do, be, become or gain somehow..... she's not done yet. she keeps gasping for air, riddled with bullet holes, standing back up and swinging her sword a few more rounds. and i get so damn tired, i just weep and cry and become numb, staring up at my ceiling. i cannot express in words how totally just OVER this whole spiritual thing that i really am.

i am tired as hell of all the folks i've encountered in the last few months who think they know something. i admit, too, i am jealous of their certainty. because from where i stand, it just aint happening. i think that's why i got involved with silly roleplaying and message board antics..... because the last ditch attempt in me to shore up some kind of knowing, and i hoped that maybe amid a new tactical style of dealing with this (that of the 'ruthless' variety) something could stave off the darkness. turns out, they're as full of shit as anyone else. ever.

which is why the best teachers are the ones who admit that they don't know anything. and i would have laughed at that myself a few years ago..... oh yeah? nothing can be known about this? then what about all the enlightened folk who have stopped asking questions?? well, it's all about the angle. if you're hoping that the truth is going to be known with your mind, and you fill your days with cobbling together theories and expounding ideology and having chat sessions about all this.... well, you're fast asleep at the wheel. and that means me, too - doing my whole "helper" thing with other people.

the truth of existence will never be held in the mind, or in any part of it, conversation, theories, words or any kind of mental structure. it just can't, and won't ever. and i mourn, hard, looking over my shoulders at everyone who thinks they can and do know something. i want to be them. i want my knowing back. (not really, but i admit some part of me that does) because it's comfortable, and it's not lonely. you can spot the people who "know" because they have a whole community and philosophy built up that helps them shore up the thing.

the ones who don't know, are the ones who just slip away into the darkness, alone, without a single friend in the world, without a person anywhere who they understand, or who understands them.

and that is me, these last two weeks. in a world where no one exists, including me, and understanding clearly that none of this is real..... i'm just..... defeated. alone. annihilated in such a way that these pathetic words cannot describe it.

i have nothing left to offer, nothing left to gain, nothing left to effort towards, nothing left to ask.

and although i may keep fighting on, trying out new ways of staving this off, i can't tell a lie. it happened at christmas, and i've been in some form of denial ever since.

i am done. and that's that.

further

it was one thing for me to work backwards from the storyline of angela - to cut through the identity and see that i wasn't real.

it's another thing entirely to recognize if there really is no me then there is no one else in the whole world behind all the busy-ness and faces and storylines, to recognize that  i cannot know anything for sure based upon these simple five senses as my incoming information, and extrapolated from these recognitions - to see that the whole world, as i have taken it to be for my entire 34 years, is not real. not in the slightest. not at all.

none of this is real.

weird.

more on no one doing, no one home...

((a note to a friend along the way.... same subject as the last blog entry, but more poetic, and more clear....))

i am confused. and i think my confusion is just another trick of the mind to keep energy going there.

at christmas, i recognized myself as pure awareness, empty, "capacity for all things" or whatever you want to call it. and the mind still goes on. and that's odd. because now, i don't buy into any of it.... because i see that everything arises IN awareness, or AS awareness.... that consciousness is primary, all else is secondary. nothing the mind can do is real, and frankly i can't take it seriously anymore.

but it still does it's dancing. it tries to snag and cling. and so i say to myself - well then, recognition of this awareness is not it. it's like, a halfway point. the "end point" must be when the mind stops doing that dance.

and yet. those thoughts all arise IN awareness. and they're not really accurate.

so. to just simply ignore all that arises from the mind? forevermore? because all sifting around with content is just more of the same, avoiding right here right now in favor of a dream.

is it really true that the mind cannot, and will never again, be a guide for me? the way it was all those years when i was trying to "better myself" by uncovering unconscious motivations, exploring the shadow and all that?

it's been two months now, since christmas, since that recognition. and that time has been spent really looking at the personal will, do-er, chooser myth. the "one who does, chooses, or wills".... and seeing that it's just not possible that there is anyone here who does anything.

and for two years, during those shifts in Seeing that i may have told you about, or at the very least, mentioned on my blog..... the inquiry that i lived was "what is this Seeing".... and christmas answered that question. and lately, the inquiry has turned into "you mean, there's really NO ONE here, doing ANY of this?!?!?!?".... and honestly, much like the thing with the Seeing.... i intuitvely knew the answer, the whole two years that i lived into the question. and this one too. i just get that i grok the answer.

the world is growing a bit weird. thin, somehow. almost eerie. the sense is that all this is going on, but no one is home. i finally think i understand what the teachers meant by an "empty universe"....

the only real confusion is in/of the mind. it tries to figure this stuff out. and it can't. and i know it can't. but it still tries. and i'm beyond the point of trying to "sort out angela's stuff" anymore..... she's really of no concern to me. i guess some fear arises that the leaning into the reality of this means complacency somehow, that it means that i am going to have some kind of free license to act like a jerk. that the experience of this will turn me into some kind of no-self godzilla monster stomping around the landscape with great cruelty because nothing matters.

in some way, and it sounds odd, i know.... but right here, i almost feel like my heart is holding me back somehow. there is this fear of leaving humanity behind forever. like it's not okay to find out what's behind the curtain, because.... well. yeah.

i can't ever go back.

it's all very strange, here, today, in the half light as the sun sets over the mountains to my west.

just some thoughts, reaching out to someone along the way, who probably has no answers, but it's nice to know you're there anyway.

blessings and love,
angela

so, there's really NO ONE here doing ANY of this?

for two years, while the Seeing was the sort of first major unfolding away from the illusory identity of angela - there was a question i lived, not one i tried to figure out with my mind, but one i really lived. it was about the Seeing itself, just a sort of "what the heck is this Seeing??" that kept uncurling in me, all day every day. i was so curious about it, like a desperately thirsty person, i just dove into it, all day every day. then, on christmas, i sort of got the answer. not in the form of some thought structure, but in the lived experience that the Seeing is actually pure, empty awareness. it is the primacy, the capacity, into which the whole world unfolds. and it's synonymous with the knowing of "i am"

having seen myself out of any theory, structure, identity or affiliation with angela, there is only this, right now, happening. there is no one here "doing" any of it. at first, it was all free feeling and clear and wonderful and i even had huge bliss rushes and all that.

but then, as the reality of it all sinks in, and the last vestiges of "personal will" are seen through to be complete garbage, things begin to shift. the world takes on a very strange, very eerie kind of feel, and seems to stretch very thin, and become extremely weird. because if there's no me, there's no one else. if there's only awareness, then that's really all that's going on here.

it struck me today as i was out walking with my dog, that we can hear something like 10,000 times, but we just don't get it. until we do. and then, there it is.

so i've been hearing about the whole "no me" thing for over two years now. and intuitively, i always knew it was true. i saw it intellectually right away, but without doing the dismantling whereby the identification with all the angela storylines were seen through, it was all theory. two years of swordplay later, and angela finally lost her hold. on christmas, the "popping out" whereby i recognized myself as pure awareness, as the capacity for life and not a thing itself.

but oddly enough, the conditioning, the habitual movement away from right here, right now, continues. so, i see that this mid-way point, this half born feeling, is just that.... not complete. there remains this odd, tiny sense of a me in there, somehow, pulling attention away from right here, right now, and into a mental fantasy of sorts. that's all a self really is, anyway.... a verb, a movement, a sort of living argument with this and the sense of choice to spin off into mental constructs and other forms of "selfing"

so, for two months now i've been really beyond fascinated by the whole personal will, choice, surrender exploration. it's been the crux of most all of what i have done. and lately, a new question has been born, pushed forth from this sort of extraordinary grokking of what is going on here at the deepest levels.

i walk, talk, look, think or otherwise experience my humanity - and then one of the Seeing moments pops up - and the new question arises "so, there's really NO ONE here doing ANY of this??" and i look around at the world, in this wonder beyond comprehension, this wonder that is so strange, and so stark, that it's almost scary.

personal will or surrender is no longer really an issue. it can't be either, in the grand scheme of things. there is no one to perfect, to being to make more whole or healthy. there is quite literally nothing to do, and no one to do it.

the question, the inquiry and the Seeing moments, the combination of this pull back to Right Here, Right Now, along with the clarity around all the whole world arising in/as awareness..... none of it stops the mental world from trying to erect itself, over and over all day. it's not as loud as it once was, and is much weaker, but it is persistent. and it comes up with all sorts of questions, and curiosities about all of this that it wants to explore. mainly, it is afraid to "believe" that there is really no one here, doing any of this, because well now, isn't that some kind of excuse to go behave badly? and what if i get drunk on that power, and start doing mean things to people?

which brings me to the curiosity around how the whole mental structure plays into awakening in general. there seems to be plenty of teachers who insist that recognition of awareness as the "i am" is equated with enlightenment. that as long as we know we're not the thoughts and feelings that come and go in awareness, then we're essentially awake. i am not so sure that i buy into that. my own experience is that the intuition which has driven this whole thing says "further" whenever i try to settle down on the "i am awareness" train. it doesn't feel complete to me. there's something else going on.

so, the very raw, open ended question of "no one here doing any of this" is a deep curiosity for me right now, and is drawing me into the living experience of it's depths right now. and it's freaky. and sublime.

songs of the half born

so, a quick clarification about something i call the "Seeing" and then a little fable about will and surrender.

two years ago, in march 2009, reality came along and flashed me in an incident i would later refer to as "when my brain blew up" because it was just about that subtle. there is a whole storyline before that maybe matters, but probably doesn't. suffice to say, the incident in march was a serious glimpse of what is actually going on here. of what is real. and from that day on, i have been having these "Seeing" moments. for a while i called them jolts, probably because they were strange and new, but then once they weren't strange anymore, they weren't jolting, and by that time i'd had them going on long enough to begin to have some clarity around them. i began to call it the "Seeing" because it was clear that the moment was a different kind of seeing, a different perspective. it was as if angela's life/storyline would be going on, and then this "Seeing" would break through, part me like a veil, and remind me of that universal flash that had gone on. it was like a kind of whisper that would tell me "there's something other than this" meaning, there is more than this little angela. but to be clear, it was not a "knowing" or a thought of any kind - it was subtle as a feather, but also as fierce as a fist in it's revelation of itself as a whole other way of seeing. too obvious to be denied. and so, during the two years after the march event, that "Seeing" seems to have guided the dismantling of my storyline, and with a constant reminder that i didn't actually exist as i thought i did, and i wasn't the person i thought i was.

now, let me point out, these "Seeing" things happened (and still happen) hundreds, or thousands of times a day. they were brief, during the first year, just tiny 1-2 second long glimpses not at emptiness, but from emptiness. it was not looking *at* something, these "Seeing" moments. it was clear that something else was looking through angela, but it was also clear that i was that thing looking. so the experience was as if "I" was looking through "me" somehow. i asked adyashanti about it when i was able to meet him on retreat in may of last year, and i said "it's like there's a big hole looking through me" and he said "that hole is you" and i was like. okay. sure. of course it is. i knew it, intutively, but it took until the event-out-of-time on christmas to know that with absolute certainty. (i also told him that feeling this way, this back and forth, i felt like i was half born, a phrase he particularly liked, and thus the title of today's tale)

so. coming to the current part of our story.

having these "Seeing" moments, which for two years, whispered to a small identified angela that there was something else, and sort of.... beckoned her to take that backwards step, and come home to emptiness. that happened, that step was taken, and i backed out of my life into emptiness, into the experiential knowledge of myself as not a self at all, not a thing, but as space or capacity for life. and even that, i wouldn't put a stamp of certainty on. i mean, the experience is that the awareness is primary, and all the whole world of arising, angela, space, time, world are all secondary. but i wouldn't go toe to toe in a fight over the label of "me" as "awareness" or whatever. all i have is experience.

and being that all that i have is experience. my experiences these last weeks have taught me over and over these lessons about surrender and control. that has been the energy, drawn on a whole life with this sort of bhakti/devotional kind of path. everything points over and over again to surrender. and since christmas, i have had a couple unity experiences that have shown me, with great clarity, that this, right here, right now, is all there is. there cannot be anything else, this itself is heaven, and the only reason it feels off somehow is because the mind is pulling a scrapper move and throwing punches into god's face saying "no, this isn't it"

and the "Seeing" remains. and now, since christmas, all it can whisper is "right here, right now" in a thousand various ways. and i know in my heart that's the song, that's the only tune it knows. here, and here, and here.... this beingness, this awareness, the love of this moment. the sat-chit-ananda of ripe suchness of the world.

the fable is the strange tale of a mind, no longer believed, and seen through as being an arising "in" consciousness, still trying to exert control, still doing a fierce dance in attempts to draw energy into it's gas tank and keep the car moving.

because the mind would say "this isn't it" and raise fears about calling off the search altogether. it says to me that if i call off the search, and give up, and give in, that i will never find what i am looking for. and the "Seeing" reminds me repeatedly that i will never get what i am looking for anyway, because the i who is looking doesn't exist and is only a collection of thoughts, mainly arguments, with what is going on.

how a movie, called my mind, projected onto a screen, called reality, can believe itself to have any control whatsoever over what is going on, is quite a terry gilliam type psychedelic conundrum. especially because, in this example, i wrote the movie with terry, helped him film it, and put it up onto the projector reel myself. ie: i am aware of what it is doing. i know the jig. i see, every day, all day long, through the "Seeing" moments and in many other ways, that i am not the one "doing" this life. i watch things arise spontaneously, out of nowhere, and know that the mental story called "i did that" is absolute rubbish.

but still, it goes on, because it is neither the born (created, arising world) nor the unborn (the absolute).the experience is of them both. weather it is, or isn't, absolutely or relatively, i have no idea. and in this unknowing, life is lived.....

so, all my thoughts about surrender and will are fascinating here, especially these last few days where reality has grown very "thin" in experience several different times. the depths to which there is no one here, doing anything called surrender, are not lost on me. any questions, really, of my will, and thy will, are silly, because there isn't a me and a thy. i get it, not quickly, not easily, but i get it. i see it, hazy and in shadow, but i see it. and still, i want to surrender, i want to "do" surrender, because i see that is the only way home.

but "i" can't "do" surrender. never could. and so the songs of the half born continue, sliding gently out of my lips as i walk alone under a midnight moon, sort of lonely and aching, but also fully aware that this landscape, every single step, right here, just this, is my home....

the "sickness" of wanting and will

 
my body can't hold untruth in it anymore, at least, not the way it could before. due to programming, it tries, the mind and will try to exert control, and the very attempt makes me suffer. apparently, continued attempts make me sick - literally, sick with weird flu like symptoms - that last until i am forced into a surrender of the whole situation.... at which point the sickness begins to leave the body, almost immediately, as if on cue.

as i've mentioned in the blog, since christmas there's been a couple times where i suffered mentally, due to an argument with reality. the last one, a meditation called "what if you didn't have any choice" arose spontaneously in my life, and was the grace by which i was delivered.

in many incarnations in my life i've been very controlling. not always so much of other people, just very much of my own being, and it always arose with particular ripeness around my living situation. this past week, as i mentioned here in the blog, i had a situation arise that had to do with my living situation. it's a long story, and not very exciting in details, but suffice to say i am not getting what could easily be called "my way" in the situation. and i've been suffering over the situation, quite a bit more than i like to admit. the last week, since the initial meeting (which i blogged about) has been not very pleasant, full of a clicking "storyline" in my mind, and various "planning sessions" whereby i try to figure out a new situation to help soothe my need and my want. all sorts of behaviors that i would have easily navigated during the previous part of my life, certainly before the major awakening in 2009, and likely, up until this christmas.

but i'm just not able to be the person i used to be. she's nowhere to be found. and when i try to engage in her behaviors, to activate her programming, i get sick. i spent much of this week sick with want, and that's the power behind all the storytelling.

so, yesterday i kept thinking to myself that something was going to have to change, and i prayed to god to help me with this. the feeling of falseness in my body, the sense of "my will" which i don't even like anymore, or have any faith in, and disturbs me greatly..... my entire heart/soul/being is really interested in "thy will" and surrender to what is..... and yet the programming pulls me, again and again, drawing attention into something totally false, and right out of heaven, right here, right now... so when i prayed, openly and with much intensity, i was on a walk with my dog. we returned from the walk by 7pm and by 8pm i was in bed, sick and shaking with chills and flu like symptoms.

if you're grossed out by bodily descriptions of things, stop reading now. there are some "too much information" portions in the remainder of today's blog.

so, my body was expelling insane levels of dark brown mucus from my sinuses, and i spent hours shaking and sweating and thinking i was going to vomit. i just shook, and slept a little, and couldn't swallow, and sipped little bits of water, and shook and snotted and shook more and slept some and on and on all night long. when i woke up today at 9am, i called off work, and then lay on my bed with my dog....

the sunshine coming in through my south facing window poured over me and odin, and we lay there in the warmth together, listening to soft piano music, and i remembered Myself.... i remembered myself as That, clearly, and knew that there is nothing but gratitude for everything that Is.....

and the meditation of "what if you had no choice" came back to me, clearly. it was a warm enough day today that i wandered out to the mailbox with bare feet and felt the whole "sickness of will" draining out the bottoms of my feet. shortly after, in another moment of "too much information to put on a blog" i passed something very black, very strange, tar like, out of my body.

i know this isn't really what i would want to read in a blog about surrendering and that which is spiritual.... to read about my flu and my gross body expulsions.... but for me, being so physical, the body has always been the reality and the guide. it has always taught me things when i was mentally unwilling or unable to learn.

and this, this surrender, is what i constantly pray for, pray to be taught lessons about. because although i have an ongoing sight of my True Face.... i also have 34 years of programming and a very strong will there to keep gazing at. and now, since christmas, since that glimpse began in earnest... my entire life, my entire being and body, are being adjusted by the truth. i am being reprogrammed to live out what i know is true.

and when i don't live in harmony with that which i know to be true, i suffer. i suffer hard. and the sickness becomes visible in my body, because that's just how it rolls for me. and i am grateful for that lesson.

grateful for everything, being taken out of my hands, out of my control, out of the illusion of angela having any part to play in any of this.

thy will be done, indeed.

the brutal lesson of oneness

we spiritual types love the word unity, oneness. we daydream about being swept up by god into an infinite embrace and rocked gently to sleep with all the deep attention we never got from the world and the people around us. we love to think of ourselves glorified, risen up on high, sublimely dismantled by a tender god like a brilliant lover, tearing us away from all the things about us that we ever didn't like....

and yet, actual oneness doesn't leave room in that equation for a "me" anywhere in the spectrum. it's god sweeping god up, and sorry sweetheart, you're not invited. subjects only. "you" are an object, and cannot come along and play.

this borderland that i have been walking since christmas, gets weirder and weirder all the time. as i've talked about in this blog, there is a difference between intellectually seeing that there is no self, and the real lived experience of no self - of not being grabbed up by the identities, thoughts, opinions and storylines that once defined your life.

so here, the storylines can't grab me anymore. the beliefs hold no sway. the feelings are seen to arise *in* awareness. there is no me, in the me. but that little niggling sense of a do-er, of the one who can will or choose or animate.... that remains, somehow, despite all odds. no longer a storyline of angela, more a base level gut reaction to existence. a little screamer that says I AM DOING THAT to whatever is happening.

and since christmas, having had two very powerful unity experiences that have blasted out any remaining sense that there was ever anywhere to be but right here, right now.... leaving the mind sort of, shocked into lapses....

it's really, really not pretty here. not for me, what is left of me, it's not pretty at all.

sometimes, like right now.... this just hurts, a lonely sad aching wound.

there is only this. and i am really clear on that truth. there is no one here doing any of this. there is no me. there is no more pull into angela's thoughts and opinions about life, or her storylines. but there is a base level pull to just exist. to just be, somehow, to just hold the space as a separated me, existing.

and that pull is a lie, and it causes the suffering i am feeling right now. and yet the pull keeps pulling. because it is will, because that is its very essence. it cannot do much, not anymore, but it can stage this final argument. and i cannot "will" it to stop, because that's the very same action.

and i cannot "do" surrender, because that is the very same action.

i cannot actually "do" anything at all. that's the fierce reality of this, right now. there is just this, and no way out, and no real will left to do anything. will is busy just saying "i exist" - the only thing in it's power to do. and that simple, incredibly simple gut level reaction, causes a deep, tender ache....

the brutal lesson of oneness is that there is *nothing* in this for me. not a thing. no place to stand, to sit, to rest or to live. this oneness is the end of me. the end of the me who wants oneness.

and today, today it hurts, quite badly. and i mourn myself, in my passing, and laugh for all the moments when it seems i really believed i was going to somehow "get it" and be the one who woke up.

the waking happens, but it happens over "my" dead body.

more on personal will...

and how it's a complete lie. haha.

in my life this week a situation came up where something i thought i wanted was presented as probably not going to happen. and for about an hour after that discussion, there was this sick sort of feeling in my stomach. i watched the energy from will, which seems to live at my gut/solar plexus, try really hard to rise up through my body and into my head. the other three times this "will versus reality" has come up since christmas, it got much further than it did this time. the energy this time couldn't quite muster the strength to rise up into my head, where it would connect with the energy of thinking and then torment me for the next however many hours until the clicking stopped. watching it, i was amazed. it was totally amazing.

i was literally sick with want. literally. sick to my stomach, wanting something. and at the same time, watching it, knowing that this right here, this exact experience, is the way life teaches the lesson of surrender.

just as an aside - i've been writing the word 'surrender' on my left hand for just about two years now. so. it's clear i always knew it would come to this.

the bodymind here has always been the "strong woman" archetype. and in this situation i speak of, the other parties involved could easily be pushed around to give me what "i" want. it could even be done in such a graceful, high-level passive aggressive style with all the trimmings of "for your own good" type energy that the whole thing would make you gag on your organic evaporated cane juice (sugar, for the non-spiritual grocery shoppers out there. haha!). anyway. it was clear that the situation was absolutely ripe with the sensation of "choice" - as if personally designed with an exceptional eye for detail just for me.

i am not going to say i rose up like some pristine angel and conquered the demons with some spledid grace. i didn't. i whined a bit, and consulted my best friend via telephone. i told myself stories while i was alone in my room. but i laughed pretty deeply during the whole thing because it was clear how ridiculous the it was. it was like, i managed to turn on the car, but having already removed the wheels, i just sort of sat inside and listened to the radio for a while. no movement, and a decent soundtrack. all in all, not a bad day.

the whole incident put me in the mind of the life i lived during 2004 and 2005, right after i gave away everything i owned on new years day and began roaming about the country, hitchhiking and living out of a backpack. those days were phenomenal in the kind of surrender that was called for. the difference between then and now is that at that time, i was able to get the good time vibes into my ego by thinking i was the one doing the surrender. i was able to begin building a spiritual ego, that of a renunciate, and to feel subtly proud of my accomplishments for having given oh so very much of my preciousness into god's grace. i tease myself, typing this, because the whole time was a great teacher, and very moving to the soul, but the revelation at that time was although i'd been removed of huge chunks of self in order to be able to take that journey - i wasn't backed up enough to see that the surrender was moving toward being free from the One Who Surrenders.

that, well, that is what i am being dared to explore today.

the numerous ways in which i am absolutely pointless are too many to mention. there is only this. what i think about it, how i react to it, doesn't matter in the slightest. the feeling of choice presents itself just at the moment when i say clearly and strongly how there is no choice.the paradox of life being that moment of choosing not to choose. it's all very strange.

my will is just... well, it's bull. going in that direction doesn't make me happy, because i have no more faith in myself. i don't exist. there is only this ghost now, the machine on autopilot, the halfway house where the awareness knows itself - is self realized - but the mind still goes on and on and on, fueled by the gasoline of will, the one lingering belief - that there is a do-er here and i have some say in the matter.

if it wasn't so fucking gorgeous, i'd cry myself to sleep.

amen.

what is this no-self thing? what's going on here?

another thing that has come up on the radar recently is this debate about there being no self. i've talked about it a bit before, but since i've been attending a few satsangs, participating in an online forum, and writing here on my blog - it seems like this issue comes up more and more all the time. maybe that's because it's one of the few things i have a lived experience with, although i can't say i have any answers, opinions or knowledge, per se. but since i do seem to have some kind of feelings about the certainty of opinions i find around me.... maybe i am being challenged to say what i feel about this stuff.

admitting i don't really know anything is always a good place to start. i have no sure beliefs about any of this. but i am going to describe my lived experience as well as i can about this subject, and where it has resolved into, and see if that helps me make any sense of the issue - or teaches me what i may have to say on the subject.

so along our way to truth, we discover that we don't have a self. we are told that we're not who we think we are, in whatever way that comes up. we are told we're not separate and there is no little "me" inside here directing things.

when i first heard it, i knew it was true. i didn't want to investigate much further for quite some time, because i knew somewhere deep inside the price of the whole thing. so i went about my business for two and a half years, until i was really ready to begin the investigation. when it started rolling, it wasn't hard to see. it's not hard to see at all, intellectually, that there is no "you" or no "me" or no "self".... basically, that there is no little being called angela. however, that doesn't do a damn thing about the storyline called "angela's life"

after the simple intellectual understanding of there not being a me, i spent two years in an insane bloody battle, a massive deconstruction, as the reality of no-self spread across my life. if i wasn't a me, if i wasn't a separate being, then all the identities, thoughts, feelings, and storylines were obviously false also. they weren't me either. so they had to be chopped away.

to be fair, it would have been really simple to just sit on the intellectual understanding of there being no-self, and use that belief as a replacement in some kind of ego land for the self i had been before. i felt it, summoning me somehow, trying to draw me in. the nihilism was right there, so ripe and tempting. it would have allowed me access to whatever i wanted to do in life, license to behave however i wanted to behave, because the sense of power was so great, and the meaninglessness so apparent.

the grace of my life was a sort of love/integrity combo. the integrity part wouldn't let me lie to myself - to stop at the intellectual understanding of no-self and call it a day. the love part knew that if i was going around in the world acting like a yahoo asshole then i was no different than all the little deluded egos in the world i claimed to be above. i just knew, deep down, there was something more.

so i spent two years in a kind of hysterical frenzy, hacking away at everything that came up on the radar, removing myself backwards from everything i thought i was. first, the ugly parts went. and they went easily. but then, all the good stuff had to go too. all my favorite parts, my best storylines, my most heartfelt and beloved identities.

and then, and only then, after two years of that - did i finally back up, or pop out, of my life in such a way that the intellectual knowing of no self turn into a lived experience, every day, of there being no me.

the difference is vast, and almost impossible to put into words.

but in my life now, for whatever reason, i am surrounded by various kinds and groups and types of people, most of them set upon this truth path in what seems to be the safest way possible. it seems almost like the most glaringly obvious red flag around - to hear people pounding away on their opinions about this stuff, about what's real, what's actually happening here. it seems obvious they have bought into something, somewhere, and they've sat down...... knowing.

and i get really confused hearing them speak, because my experience with truth taught me one thing, really. one main thing. that i can't know anything for sure. it taught me, while i kicked and screamed and cried, and it didn't have one iota of sympathy. as my life burned down around me, i knew less and less with any certainty, until one day i was removed of all my knowing whatsoever.

and i was removed of my knowing because the thing that knew was the self. so, i can't really argue with any of them, not only because i am clearly disinterested and bored at the whole prospect.... but because i don't hold this lived experience of there being no me as an opinion or a belief or a philosophy. it just sort of "is".... in a way that isn't, quite. haha. ;)

the whole world of advita, nonduality, noself, satsang discussions.... it's kind of disgusting in a lot of ways. it's totally gorgeous, also, especially when there is a fully clear and lucid teacher, who has practice with a blade and can behead you in a way that leaves you smiling. that's what adyashanti did for me.

but the actual work, the honesty and integrity which is required to remain open to not-knowing, well... i just don't see too much of that roaming around. i see people acting like parrots, quoting things they heard from other people, or people just plain stuck on a loop without the humor and integrity to question it anymore. yes, the lived experience is that there isn't a self. but standing here, without one, i can't fathom for a minute how anyone could turn this vast, unending emptiness of mystery into a philosophy. really. how is it done? 

my only thoughts on it are that to be capable of doing it, there must be a neo advitic no-self self fully installed and delusional. without a self, truly removed of it, or woken up out of it or whatever..... leaves not one single bit of solid ground upon which to stand and say "i know something." the teachers who speak from this empty space, and who are genuine, are deep down into paradox, and will contradict themselves all the time. they are aware nothing they could possibly say about it is true, and will tell you as much, with great humility.

it seems like the first buzzer should sound if you ever think you know anything, about any of this subject matter. if you're not in a place where you're openly questioning whatever pops up on the radar, saying, hey wait... that thing i think i know, do i really know that for sure? if the depth of the mystery doesn't seem integral in every moment, then maybe a bell should ring inside that says hey wait.... what am i looking through here? seems like a viewpoint, a stance, a belief. and aren't those what makes up the contours of a false self? hmm....

self or no self.... many people who get involved in this subject are people who care about the world at large. not all, but most of them, care a great deal. they see suffering and can't understand it, want to address it, want to find meaning, or find a way out of it. and i get that. my heart burns there too.

but in my lived experience, the world doesn't need more knowing, weather what you know is stuff about activism in egoland, or advita nonduality stuff about no self. it doesn't need the separation caused by walls and boundaries that spring up when you know something. in no particular sense does it "need" anything..... but in my own opinion, a little honesty and curiosity, and a big grateful heaping of dedicated integrity wouldn't hurt one bit.

the reality of not knowing

this morsel has popped up on the radar in about half a dozen different ways this week, and so i guess it's time to write about it. although, to be fair, it's pretty damn silly to write a blog post (using words, which construe some kind of knowing) to essentially say, hey folks, i don't know anything!

but i have a great sense of humor, so i am going to give it a go anyway.

the way awakening rolled in my life is that after a moment of absolute unity, every single moment from then on became about deconstruction and demolition. i knew that what i thought i was, was just some kind of sick fascination, and it wasn't essentially true. the process was built upon a lot of duality - having a sort of seething hatred for what i knew i wasn't, or those storylines and identities that were clearly false. i knew, as i mentioned in previous blog posts, that i knew there had to be something more than the strange, wacko world i found myself in, a world that never made much sense at all. the process was brutal, and messy, and cruel, and violent.

early on, sometime in the first few months, i was riding home on the bus one day, reading jed mckenna, my jed-i master during that period of time, and i was curious about why the process for the last few weeks had grown so stale, and why i felt so dry in my experience. and it became clear, all of a sudden, that the real price of this whole thing was an absolute surrender into the willingness to not know a single thing. not only wouldn't i know anything at any point in the journey, i just couldn't. and furthermore, the dryness of the past few weeks was because the mind was still trying to know, and the effort of that was taking the whole process and stallling it before it ever really got going. it looks so pathetic in type like this - the whole thing hit me like a fucking bomb. like a depth charge in my mind.

i didn't know anything for sure. i didn't, and i couldn't. i wouldn't, not ever, not ever again, if i was honest.

i am not kidding when i say i cried for weeks, yes weeks! every time the phrase floated into my mind that i didn't know, i would get all teared up and turn into a hysterical mess. it hurt so, so bad. all the mind wanted was some stability, someplace to land, to rest, to call home. some certainty. and the truth itself, ripping through my life like wildfire, showed me in no uncertain terms that if i really, really meant what i said about wanting truth - that was the price. everything. every single goddamn thing. all of it.

so i let go, into the mess, into the confusion and hysteria. i could see how much the mind wanted to stop at each insight about what was happening and hoist a flag - and call this My New Truth. but the grace of this life will remain the integrity, and the sincerity that flows through. i couldn't do it because i couldn't lie to myself. i wouldn't, not ever. not over this, this whole process, it was too damn important. it was the only real thing i'd ever known in 30 some odd years. it was everything.

and along the way, during the two years that the truth ripped through my life and gutted me, i didn't really get involved with groups or people or any of that. no community. this was my solo project, and it was the most alone i'd ever been. and it was good for me, because talking to people, every single time i ever tried, i saw how clearly false the entire exchange is. just in my experience, it's more honest to sit quietly with a beer and a pizza, farting into the wind, than to try to have some deep spiritual discussion with another human. (i don't drink. and i don't eat pizza. but still. hahaha.)

now, after what happened on christmas, when the bloody sword dropped from my hand, because i could find no more left of me to gut, all of a sudden the energy is moving back into the world. i am talking with people again, and i am incredibly surprised to find myself doing so. but whatever, i'm not in charge.

and the thing that keeps coming up is the experience that in order to actually have a conversation with anyone, especially in the "spiritual" realm, i am expected to have some kind of thoughts, or opinions on stuff. it's come up over and over this week - people either asking my opinions on things (i live in boulder, where people get spiritual at the checkout line, no kidding) or the online board that i post on occasionally, or the friends i've gotten back in touch with since i came back to town.... everywhere, there is this kind of strange dialogue.

the energy, the movement of this life right now, wants to share the kind of freedom this not knowing has brought to my own life, my own experience. i look at people, and they seem all tight and bound up and stuffed inside of themselves - like they really believe they live behind their eyes. and i am moved. metaphorically, i want to reach in, and unfold the wings of their hearts, and show them that they could always move and fly, and have no boundaries or borders. it's not like i feel i have to, or that it's some grand mission. i just love the look in people's eyes when they're grokking up with truth and freedom. it thrills me. and so the mouth keeps flapping, the hands keep typing. this empty space is trying to express itself, with full knowledge that it can only ever fail. it cannot express what is beyond all expression.

i know with absolute clarity only one thing. i know that i do not know a single thing. and in that knowing, there is some beautiful levity to the life, to the step and the lilt and the gaze and the touch. there is flow. and it feels very, very nice. and it longs to share itself with others who suspect, but are too busy knowing, to unknow themselves back into freedom.

and every time the mind gets involved, either by dissecting some conversation that was had, or trying to figure out some more proper words..... that's just Not It. but how do you share the not knowing because the love of this life demands it - when the very act of sharing seemingly has to express itself through this format of speaking/writing - the very venue of which cuts up the One into duality/the Many in order to express itself?

what a conundrum! anyway. it's fun to try. and i love life and people and all of it enough to keep playing with it. curiosity and questions are the best method i have available right now, just asking things, gently and without hope of an answer..... and praying, someday, someone will look me right in the eye and say:

"yeah, that's an interesting question. i just don't know."

what is true

is that no matter how many long paragraphs i write about the unending exploration of choice or no choice, being or doing, seeking or surrender....

the truth is large enough to hold them all. by virtue of being true, the very definition of true, is that it always must be, and never wasn't. therefore, it holds the whole enchilada.

so. i'm going to go dance for a while, and enjoy myself. if i am forced to choose, i want truth even more than i want freedom. and my truth is that while i understand, and clearly see, the dreamlike nature of this life - i love it so goddamn much. and being in it, every inch, every fiber, every movement.... is what i know to be true. here i am - and all the mental chatter is just that.

the edge of surrender is not because of choosing surrender over the fight. it's surrender in and of itself - into whatever the moment brings - weather it is tight or loose or something inbetween. that's truth. that's surrender. that's god. wiser than me by far, and big enough for everything. the not-knowing, the resting in absolute free fall, in absolute mystery, having no way to land on a this or a that, and either/or.... any of it.... the not-knowing that is the grace of this life.

i am blessed to have a life to live, and be able to smile and laugh and love. it's not mine, it never was, none of it. and the rest is..... slowly unfolding..... while i dance, and live, and laugh, and love....

so, today i hope you laugh until your sides hurt, love from endlessness into infinity, dance until you collapse, and don't know a thing.

the belief in "something else"

during this whole process, from the moment that i first got the spiritual itch (or realized i'd had it all along) it seemed like the belief/fuel/fire of "there has to be something else" helped me to cut through the bull and get down to what was real. in a real sword wielding sense, the dissatisfaction was what helped the journey from fully identified mess of a human to the present awareness of what is.

and yet, although every other belief has been seen through, and i see that thoughts and feelings and the whole world arises in awareness..... the belief in "something more" has lingered around.

i remember hearing from certain teachers that at the end, we'd be surprised by how much our own ideas about awakening and spiritual matters would be a prison, and i heard it, but i didn't really get it.

and these last days, finding this vast oscillation between the mind's antics and the heart's beautiful rest, i am holding space for this huge belly laugh about it all.

apparently, the little seeker figure with a bullhorn who wants to beat this epic universal heart into submission is fueled by that one remaining argument with What Is. the belief in "something else".... that there is something else to get, to do, to go toward. that personal will, that sense of do-er that i keep mentioning. believing there is some other freedom, and further, that it has some choice by which to arrive there.

she's cute, doing her thing there. and she's never going to stop. and the price of real freedom is to let go of wanting her to stop. there is nothing else. there never was.

oh, for the grace of god, beating me to a pulp with this surrender....

and even more surrender....

it's been six weeks now since christmas, and it's so vastly different than before it's hard to express in words. odd, too, because while i am viewing from a different perspective, the life/mind/personality was wired with 34 years of habit behind it. and sitting in a space where i can see mind, but it cannot see me, the mind doesn't know much is really different at all.

the beauty, in my experience, is the profound connection to the grace of the divine, the nearly ecstatic love and worship that i feel flooding through whenever i am still enough to allow it as such. it's funny, for the two years since the shifts in seeing started in earnest, since the major awakening in march of 2009, i rather lost the kind of heartfelt connection i had with the divine. not entirely, as the grace was always the underlying character of everything that was moving. and the trust and faith in the dismantling would not have been possible without the ground of trust and faith in god. they were the same movement. but for about two years, i had to hone the mind somehow, i had to learn inquiry, and learn negation, and learn philosophical thinking - mainly so i could see through all the mental structures, but still, it was a dramatic shift away from the heart-centered life i'd lived up until then.

at the end of it, i surprised myself by telling god i was willing to give up my heart. by november and december of last year, things had grown so stale, so meaningless, so unbelievably empty it was hard to bear. for a little while i got mad at god, but the beauty there was god sort of whispering "i don't care if you're angry, it's just nice to hear from you again" i felt that i'd been removed of everything, everything that i'd ever cared about, and nothing had come along to make any of it make any sense. about three weeks before christmas i'd spent a whole evening screaming and crying at god, mad beyond belief, dismantled beyond repair.... and in the course of it there i'd said those words of surrender that come back to me again and again in this lifetime, and have always been the grace of my existence "Fine! I surrender!! I give up!! I can't do this!!"

in the moment there i knew that i was willing to give everything, absolutely everything, even the relationship, the heart, the soul of my life. to never feel again, to never have anything ever again. i was willing, because i saw clearly that i had no more faith in "me".... my only faith left, my only trust, was that god was wiser than i could ever be. and after some final emotional purging, and a clearly philosophical weekend whereby i investigated the remaining belief in physical objects and a me who was separate from them (experiments in perception, you could say).... christmas came along and i popped backwards out of my life, and knew myself as awareness.

now, it would be lovely if i could report that was the end of the road. but it wasn't, as this blog is a standing testament toward. these are the weeks of..... hrmmm..... ????..... uuuuhhh..... yup.

the weeks of a mind that still tries, and has to be pinned again and again into surrender.

the weeks of a personality that still believes it can "get it" and has to be removed of all power to do so until it relaxes.

the weeks of a habitual efforted seeking that has to be undermined by the reality that i can never reach what it is that i seek, because in fact, i am the only thing standing in the way of its realization.

and again, and again, and again, there is naught but surrender. the bodymind wants to keep seeking, because it realized that this is a sort of halfway house here - this knowing that there is no self, there is only awareness, but also not having the full understanding of unity the way the heart sort of intuits to be true underneath everything else.

and every few days, the seeker tries for a few hours or so, to get a good path built up again. and it's funny because the wisdom of the heart, which guided me for so long, and was never, never doubted at any other point in my life, is experiencing the ways the mind can and will try to doubt. the heart knows, clearly and without failure, that this is heaven. every movement, every morsel, every gorgeous drop of every moment. but the mind, doesn't know. and moves and moves and dances and contracts and doubts and flails about - trying to find what is Only Ever Right Here.

and it's beautiful, and sad, and amazing to witness. and every time i am drawn back to the heart, to the place that whispers to god "oh my beloved, i trust you, i know you know what is best for me, and i give up, again and again, in your true embrace..." i cannot express how grateful i am.

i am grateful god is so wise, and i am so small.

i am grateful that god lets me forget over and over again and yet never forgets me.

i am grateful each time the seeking fails, and i am drawn back to right here, where i never left.

i am grateful for these constant lessons in surrender.

i am grateful that in the end of all things, it is this heart, this true heart, that was always the only real thing, remains the only real thing.

right now, i am mostly grateful that by the willingness to give up claim on the heart, i discovered it was never mine to begin with, and in that grace, it has grown outside the scope of things, and space, and time, and yet still intimately loves every single breath of every single atom now and until infinity.

so, this halfway house, where i am being removed of my seeker, is strange. because the mind, built up over two years, in order to help see through beliefs, has become strong in that time, and wants to negate to such an infinite degree, that it wants to negate this heart, this grace, and this inner wisdom, because to do so keeps the mind fed and active. and the illusion of choice, or a do-er at all, keeps the life in a tail chasing high speed run. i am being relieved of my seeker into the trust and faith in the divine, which i always said i had, and always felt, but i am being drawn into it in such a dramatic way it's hard to even express.

can i surrender my need/desire/thoughts about ultimate freedom? can i accept that this is beyond my control, in any way shape or form? can i let go, and let god, and trust enough that the divine is going to do what it is going to do, as it ever has done, and weather or not full awakening happens here is fully not up to me? at all? do i want this supposed freedom more, or do i want to rest in the cradle of faith that is the only thing that has ever been real - the understanding that i am a dust speck, a nothing special, a nobody, and god loves me enough to do in this life what is best?

how much faith do i really find here, and how much surrender?

well, now. only god can really say.

thank you, and amen, dear, sweet Beloved....

the freedom of (no) choice

i am thoroughly surprised each time this little morsel pops up on the screen. and then again, i am not surprised at all. it would have to be this way, it just would.

after 34 years of storming the gates of heaven demanding my freedom, right here at the end of all things, the only freedom is in constant surrender to the reality of no choice, and the end of personal will. literally - the *only* freedom. i can try to do it another way, and since christmas the mind has done so, three separate times. and each time i suffered enormously for the several hours that my mind was trying to get it's way, holding up a tiny candle of illusion against the ongoing grandeur of reality itself.

the last instance was built up the same way the others were - something was happening in reality, the truth was living this life in the way it sees fit - and the mind cut in and created a big I Dont Wanna storyline around it, and the suffering i experienced in those moments was incredible, just beyond belief. two days ago the mind created an I Dont Wanna out of a certain situation in my world right now, and from about 6pm until i fell blessedly asleep at 10pm, the mind clicked and clicked and over and over went the inner narrator with the storyline of how things should be different. i even woke up at 4am, hours before i had anywhere to be, and the story kept going.

as an aside, but not really, the recent investigations i've been going through have to do with personal will and choice, the illusion of a do-er. because while the thoughts, feelings, body and world seem to arise in awareness, the illusion of a do-er tries to make itself out to be something other than an arising. it tries to be this ethereal entity called "me" and it tries to live in such a way as to not seem like every other thing in the world as an object inside of awareness. i have had a feeling at the edge it would be this sense of choice, do-er and will that would be the tripping point as the next movements unfold - and i even wrote a note to myself of such inclination and put it up on my wall. (and didn't see it at all two days ago when i was in the middle of the story!!)

so, here i have been, with full knowledge that i am not the do-er of this life, because of the vantage point here as awareness, i watch actions unfold and watch the body go about it's business. and the paradox here, the really tricky stuff - is that it doesn't come down to a question of choice or no choice. that's a duality. it's neither, it's both. the question just doesn't have any validity in the reality of things.

however, in the lived experience, having gone at the world the way i have gone at it in the course of this lifetime, the investigation of a world beyond my will is a powerful lesson indeed. it's mandatory, and an absolute grace from god to have experience that points out clearly that there is no such thing as a personal will anymore.... so there i woke up, 4am, and mind ablaze and clicking and sticky - and i was watching it, certainly, but confused as to why it was so, so captivating, why i was so invested in the storyline. and then long about sunrise it arose like grace in my heart, a simple question:

"what if you had no choice here?"

ie: what if this was just how life was rolling, and you were in it, without any moment of consideration that it could be any different?

and the entire storyline collapsed, and my mind relaxed, and my muscles relaxed, and it was like warm water being poured over my whole body. it was over, and i was free.

see - i had been praying for the last week or so to have some teachings arise in my life so that i could learn about choice and will and the do-er, having realized that those illusions lingering are the very sense of "me" left that pull the awareness out of heaven, as it were, and back into the sense of duality and separation. i needed to see it in action in my own life - mainly because i am really laid back with how life rolls, and don't have much inclination to argue with anything going on. i tend to just roll with life. but having prayed for grace on this, it was beautiful when i saw the whole thing as was it was - another lesson from the universe about how easy it is to suffer, based on any bit of argument with what it.

this, right here, in front of us, around us, in and through us.... this is heaven. this is the divine. this is everything. and every motion of the mind to run away from here, to move away from this grace, to deny and jet off to wonderland in the mind is literally saying to god "you're not good enough. no thanks. i want something else." and the immeasurable pain of leaving this precious reality fuels all the suffering of the entire world.

i was given a massive gift in the hours of suffering, because i got to see yet again that it is that illusion of do-er, the parts that don't believe in surrender, that cause the whole mess.

and the irony is that the freedom here, for me, is found in accepting no choice. every belief in choosing some other way, some other life, is a fresh prison and is torture beyond measure. to be removed from the light of god by lingering in the hallways of the mind is a kind of hell that i can no longer bear.

i am grateful, beyond description, for realizing this.... freedom of no choice. or more rightly, the freedom to choose that which is actually most important, most real - the choice of this moment, god, right here, right now... choosing to let god choose and live this life and the blessed surrender and peace offered by that movement.

i've said it before and i will say it again..... not my will, but THY WILL BE DONE.

just a little thing....

there is nothing left in me that can take seriously the antics of mind for very long. the mind will try to rile up some forces, to create some identity, but it literally collapses within an hour or so of any attempt. it can't get a seeker going, it can't tell the sob story of it's demise.... not much, really. there are lots of little wall-building thoughts that arise such as "i like chocolate more than vanilla" - simple, mundane things, but tactics to create a person here, a being that has separations. i am investigating these in the grace of awareness and have found some funny stuff.

over the history of my life i always knew my body was actually a good guide for me. it's not real, and exists as an object like everything else, but it's also the way that the awareness dances in the world of form, so i think writing it off as a dream is sort of advita double-speak.

i have been surprised to find in the last two months that i am meditating a whole lot, twice a day for about 45 minutes each. not because i have to, but because i long to. it is very nourishing, that silence, that stillness. so sitting there, i don't find a whole slew of angela crap to sort through, the way i used to. just these simple thoughts, these little illusions of separation, a story of "i am this, and not that". and what i find also, right alongside of each one, is a movement of the face muscles that coincide. as a thought catches hold, the forehead, temples, jaw and throat seem to tighten around the thought, as if to create a person here, to follow the thought out into the world. each time grace arises, as the awareness i know myself to be presents itself in obviousness, the thought collapses at the same moment as the muscles release themselves.

i noticed something along these lines a few weeks ago, before christmas, but i wasn't ready to see it fully, just yet. apparently today, i am. it's just another one of those little things, those little teachers, that i am so grateful for in the living world around me.

it's everywhere, or it's nowhere at all.

this heart....

this juicy pulp in the chest
this senseless adoration of all things
this serenity
this fear it is too big to bear
this humanity
this absolute freedom
this surrender
this narrative
this touch
this sweeping panorama of the mountains
this world and all the darkness
this decimation of all separate sense
this undying gratitude
this depth
this sinking feeling in my gut
this sufering and storytelling and falseness
this cyclic spiraling of all things
this rapture
this terrified scrambling of the mind
this childlike wonder
this pristine empty vastness
this poetry of god
this reminder of here and now
this mirror of beauty upon every surface
this nightmare illusion of separation
this unending grace of right now
this that murders me for all isolation
this suchness
this teacher, beloved teacher
this heart, right here,
     big enough to be everywhere and nowhere,
     to be the center of it all.

love, and love, and love....

it has been my guide and my grace, my guru and my god for more of my life than i can even recollect in rational terms. peppered inside of all the damaged behaviors of my past, serving the life around me in the healthier years of stability.... there has always been this current of love. love as big as the milky way. love the likes of which there aren't enough poems to express. love without reason.

and i find myself here, in the nearly 3 1/2 weeks since christmas, since the grace of god showed me that the contracted space i thought of as a self is just a playground, and it is not to be my prison. i find myself here at the edges of a love that is so unfathomably enormous that i think it may whip me off the very face of the earth and steal me away into the depths of space with it's power. i may be drilled down to the molten core of the earth to find a heat that can even whisper a rivalry to the intensity of this love. i may have to be flayed, skin, muscle, nerves and bone, absolutely shredded in some sacrificial gesture to indicate how perfectly desperate the comprehension of this love is to the mind.

i am ruined as a separate being. i am decimated as a singularity.

i have died for this love, lain down before god and prayed again and again to be a vessel and an instrument and the great wonder of it all is that You heard my call and gave me the greatest gift imaginable. you took away my choice, you took away my logic, you took away my life and left me hollow enough to begin to hold You.

good god if only words could suffice to explain the marvel and mystery of this Love, pouring forth and forth and forth from the depths of forever. i am not poet enough to speak it. but by the grace of Your touch, that i may be servant enough to share it....

very curious

one of the most difficult things about waking up to what is really going on is all of the ridiculous mass of information out there about truth, enlightenment, awakening etc. there is no clear picture of what exactly is going on here, and a lot of the teachings even seem to contradict themselves. having twirled around with this subject matter for a couple of years, i am by no means an expert. but i did learn along the way that the best, most lucid teachers won't actually tell you a single thing. they will only ever point you back to your own experience, your own nature, and your own curiosity.
 
and in this, in every way possible, it has been my curiosity which has been the biggest blessing.

i am emptied of self, and watching the world happen. that much is clear. but i also see that by sitting and feeling myself as empty or without self that i am in some way accepting a non-identity kind of identity. and is it actually true - true that what i am is empty? in my heart/gut/intuition combo the answer rings clearly that no, any defining of a self, even one that points to emptiness, isn't entirely correct. it's a paradox to the mind to even talk about, but since i trust my guts more than my brain or my language, its obvious i have to listen. there is clearly no self. but thinking that i am no self still shows evidence of a self. and therefore, more to investigate.

i have said before in this blog and elsewhere that i can see how tricky it gets right up in this space, and i'd wager that this emptiness accounts for all sorts of the half-awake teachers out there peddling enlightenment that doesn't always look very holy or feel free of self. they've emptied themselves into nothing, and finding the freedom and joy and humor in all that, it's time to just get along and peddle the wares. but without being truly free of any identification they will always be in some subtle way sharing a teaching that "knows" instead of the real teaching of unknowing back and back and back until the curiosity kills the cat.

i am grateful to not feel incomplete. i am grateful to not be seeking. i am no longer exhausted, miserable, or in any way positioned at an argument with what is going on. however, there is the sense that if i were to lose my curiosity here, it would be a drastic mistake. the sword is gone from my hand, because i no longer need to hack away at gross manifestations of a separate self. the vision of the other afternoon of absolute unity shows itself as that which is always, always present and couldn't possibly not be present. it is not something to chase, in any way. it is just a matter of being passionately curious about what is already here, what is really going on, and not settling for anything other than the joyful unknowing as a place to call home.

thy will be done

there is naught but surrender.

anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something. even if it is your very own self, run away, and quickly. give up, give in. you have no choice anyway. in this, beauty and love, all the wonders of the world, and the death you have been afraid of since you first realized it was coming.

there is nothing in this for you.

not my will, but thy will, be done.

a taste of absolute unity

on christmas, i was emptied out, backed up beyond the image of the separate self, and hit a point of the seeker being just totally done. the bloody sword that had been fused to my fist for the last two years dropped, much to my surprise, and i was just left blinking at the vast, unending space i found in all directions. the mind wasn't sure what to do with such emptiness, and there remained these strange questions about the things i'd heard from teachers over the years of this process..... the seeker was gone, but the answers to certain questions alluded me.

i was still wondering:
"how exactly is emptiness is dancing?"
"what does it mean that there is no death?"
"how can everyone be awake and not know it?"
"what about this unity thing? what does it mean to see something as yourself?" 
"what does it mean that nothing has ever happened or will ever happen?"
"what does it mean that form is emptiness? emptiness is form?"
"what is it that there is no inside and no outside / that there is only Just This?"
"what on god's green earth does I Am That mean???????!?!?!?!?"

all these questions were based on various teachings that i'd heard over the two years of my demolition process. they were the kinds of things that the mind races and races to answer, and finding no answer, gets really even more bummed out than ever, and goes even more mad and crazy and spiraling out into the furthest reaches of elasticity.

so, after being removed from myself into emptiness on christmas, i kind of sensed that something was just around the corner to take up the slack here, and this afternoon it did. the truth moved up and revealed itself, the most sublime and perfect sanity, beyond imagination....

reality revealed itself in this ripe, luscious, luminosity the likes of which i could not summon enough poetry to explain. all the clarity in the world was offered because i finally saw this for what it really is - what is actually going on here - and the simplicity and obviousness of the truth, the inescapable reality of the truth.

simple:

1) she hears the phrase 'be what this is' come up from the depths
2) she dances, stretches, moves and prays
3) she lies down, watches for a moment the inner chaos of the mind
4) she sighs. she knows then it is time to die.
5) she is surrendered.
6) she stands back up, looks around.
7) the world has become her.

"well of course!! everything is all one thing, hanging together like fruit, dangling on the breath of You!!"

and i have spent the afternoon and evening checking in with a few audio tapes from my teacher Adyashanti, because i want to be sure that, yes, this is obviously it.... because it holds up with what he is saying.... and i have sent some notes of gratitude to the beloved pointers along the way. and i took a walk. and i hugged my dog. and it goes as it goes, dancing on, as it ever has, without a point or a meaning, but with absolute freedom as the very nature of its dance.

even if this is just a taste, to have a glimpse of absolute reality totally devoid of any self whatsoever, is the most amazing vision of what is possible....