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....

radical emptiness

there is a beautiful woman in my life, my dearest friend and soul sister, who is currently in the middle of watching her life burn down around her. she is about half thrilled and half mortified, and remembering that feeling, i feel honored beyond belief that i get to watch her burn. i think she is the most beautiful creature i have ever known.

the funny thing about spirituality is that it's not at all what we think it is, when we're playing little ego games and trying to create some superhero identity of holy wisdom or divine intent. genuine, real spirituality is not about building a single thing at all. it's about being brave enough to put down the mortar and glue you've had welded into your fists your whole life - shoring up the illusion of a separate self - and take off the fireproof suit. from there, from that first step, real spirituality can begin. it's not a path of icons and mantras and rainbows and inner children. it is a bloody, messy battle and the absolute worst part is that once the fire is burning you realize there's not a single damn thing you can do except learn to breathe smoke.

i am not in a place of knowing these days. i have unknown myself backwards into radical emptiness. there is not a single thing that can be known, thought, felt, touched, smelled, seen or otherwise that i would call my own. there is only this vast, vast, vast....................................... nothing. in all directions.

spirituality brought me here. the insane bloody deconstruction of two years of my life, and the absolute only time i have ever really known myself to be a creature of abject faith. because no matter how much it hurt, i just knew i was being drawn home. of course, the illusion of a gate looked rather like a black hole, and all the gravity was being squeezed from my veins and i was being flattened, emptied and otherwise crushed.... but i just knew in my guts that this was the most real thing i'd ever done in my life. and so i kept that sword in my hand, until it was just fused there, hacking away without me even trying.

and then one day, one sudden evening, the sword dropped from my hand because there was nothing left to chop away. i was empty. there was none of me left. of course, for a day or a few days, the mental gymnastics tried to gather enough strength to mount another epic battle. but it was done. i was done. there was nothing left to fight.

and today - without having anything of my own, all of a sudden the entire world is available to me. i can play or pout or dance or fall silent, because they all arise and pass away like clouds and knowing that i am only empty sky means i can lay and daydream on the shapes and sizes of the clouds all day long.

my girl, my best girl in the whole universe, sits at her house and burns furiously, and sometimes passionately, and sometimes petulantly, and sometimes morbidly and sometimes with colossal, unfathomable beauty. and i want to say to her that it's all perfect, that she is being drawn home. but she knows that already. she's the one who taught that to me.

so this is just a little dialogue from open space, from capacity into empty space.... a bit of high tech cheerleading to my favorite person, doing the only thing around that matters at all.

all i know is that i don't know

i have been participating in an online message board during the last few weeks. i think it's helpful to me so that i can begin to understand how to speak from this space, this formless i-dont-know open mind, instead of going off the cuff and tapping stock answers that are based on reference points, and thinking i know something. finding out there is no-self here running the show doesn't mean automatically i have any idea how to operate from this place - which is probably why the first couple weeks were so intense back-and-forth as the mind tried to reassert itself as the master of the house. it is not the master of the house, and i am really fascinated in how to speak and communicate from that.

the other fascination for me can be spoken in a metaphor my teacher used about sleep and dreaming. he said that since most awakenings tend to happen in stages, that sometimes there is this understanding of being awake inside of a dream - lucid dreaming as it were. you're aware that there is no self in operation, and so while the rest of the world goes about seemingly asleep, thinking they are an individual self, there is a sure lucidity within the dream itself. in this place we feel like the witness to all we see, we are the unseen seer, the awareness or capacity for the whole world. i feel that, i grok that very deeply in my experience. but something in my guts goes... hmm.... there still seems to be a sense of duality somehow. to quote my teacher again "i am still seeing two where there is only one" and so i am curious about that next movement he called 'further' - a collapse of duality that is when the dreamer wakes up entirely from the dream and gets out of bed.

the wonder for me right now is that i am not striving or trying to "get" to that place, that collapse of duality, because it has been shown clearly to me that there is no point in trying to assert a personal will. i cannot do anything about this but to just sit quietly and look clearly. and i'm really, really curious, so that seems a real blessing.

the reason i brought up the message boards is because i've been engaging in a storyline over there with various people who are from a sort of online confrontation group who have this mission to help people see through the "life of self" as they term it, or to basically show everyone there is no-self. they are very intense, very passionate, and their methods range from intellectual swordplay to childlike name calling. i don't participate on their website, but am part of another board where the members come visit and try to call out and engage older "spiritual" types who seem set in their ways. the whole thing is brilliant to watch.

one of the things that has piqued my curiosity is that the confrontation group uses language to indicate that their members become "enlightened" once they are aware there is no self. and then they go one level up once they begin to go around liberating other people from the "lie of self".

the thread i am a part of on the board i visit has all sorts of viewpoints. some love the confrontation group, some have been helped by it, some think it's silly, some are personally wounded by attacks that happen there, all sorts of opinions one way or another. my main fascination has been asking questions, asking everyone who is willing or able to engage with me questions based on the things they say. and then i watch the answers, in all the forms they arrive in. i have no opinion about the question, and no opinion about the answer, but i admit it's interesting to see people in all their various forms just doing what they do. it's actually deeply moving, and i find myself really feeling strongly affectionate toward my fellows there - no matter which side of the "debate" they are supporting.

my personal experience is that there is something beyond no-self. there is That Which Remains. and the seeming "problems" in the world are not caused by thinking you are a self, but by a lived experience of separation - living in a way that furthers the illusion of self and other. without the collapse of duality, there is no way to move beyond the good/bad dichotomy into a space where the manifested divisions that we see in the world that wound the people, and the planet. and what is actually going on is that we are moving backwards into That which is capable of holding all views (self or no-self, "the lie" or "the truth") and yet is essentially none of them. that is where we are being drawn if we are still and quiet and humble enough to admit that really, we don't know anything. what is actual, the foundation of all this that we see, must be like Franklin Merrell-Wolff said "consciousness without an object".....

or at least that is where i am being drawn. my only experience now is that i do not, and cannot, know anything for sure. even things that i thought i would know for sure once i woke up to no-self.... like the reality that there is no self. i mean, i feel that, i see that, and it is my fully grokked experience. but do i know it? no, actually. i don't. the space itself won't allow for that, because that is one side of a coin, of a belief. and That which i am can hold them both, and prefers neither self or no-self.

 as far as preferences go, well, knowing that i don't know is lovely because it means i can tend to the world in whatever way comes up, take no credit for it, not be involved in the storyline, but just love and love and love like a fucking tidal wave. it just rolls on. it is the life called angela manifesting itself in a lived way that is beyond separation, beyond self and other, right and wrong, and attachment to any opinions at all.

and that is grace. and there, i find real freedom.

more thoughts on borderland

i am currently quite fascinated by borderline personality disorder (among many other mental illnesses) and how it all relates to this reality of no-self and truth as i have come to know in the living of it. perhaps in the future my understanding can go past the specifics of how my own life has unfolded, and i can make more powerful connections in other areas, but for now, i have to stick with what i learned in experience.

so borderline personality means that the person suffering has a personality which is on the borderline, it is not well formed, they have a sense of self which is never fully functional. from where i sit now, the most gloriously odd thing about having had that experience is that it proves to me that this life has a more thorough continuity than i ever could have imagined. as a child, i was unable to glue together a sense of self, an individual identity that could shore me up in the way the world around me demanded. i can see now quite clearly that this thing which is so obviously true - that there is no separate self, that a "me" is a fiction - is something i always knew.

that's probably the most powerful sense for me, right now, in looking at all of this. for something to be true, it has to have always been true, and will always be true. something doesn't just become true in a moment of discovery. discovery and insight recognize that which has always been true, but was just unseen or unrecognized.

to know now, with absolute clarity, that there is no self, no little person here running the show, finally allows me to integrate the whole of the life experience before now. and the borderline personality "disorder" was not the burden i thought it was all these years. quite the contrary - it was a profound blessing. there was always a sense in my guts that there was something deeply wrong in this picture, in the way i was being asked to live. everyone around me had these seemingly solid, well buttressed selves, identities, and the fact that from the earliest of my days i was incapable of doing the same reads now like - well obviously! it wasn't true! i had the great and powerful grace of no matter how hard i tried i just was not capable of perfecting the false self during the first 22 years of my life.

in a bit of digression, but not quite, it seems fascinating to me that what i once considered healing, all the years when i was "getting better" as far as my behavior in the outside world, are the years when i became much, much better at creating an identity that was functional in the world. i was very thorough in piecing together a healthy, intelligent, capable "wisdom girl" identity - a self that was created directly out of the parameters set by everything that was wrong with me during the borderline years. and we'll not even get into the depths of the spiritualized ego created during those years - that's a whole other conversation.

anyway, knowing now as i do that the psychologically and mentally created "self" is an absolute fiction, i am suddenly very loving toward that little girl angela. she was so inept at playing a game that seems to me now to be the saddest, cruelest joke we play upon ourselves - and creates all the division and separation which leads to a world gone mad with destruction. and the compassion in me overflows for all beings who are unable to dig into the lie, who are unable to excel at the illusory self - a feat i believe only a very small percentage of people are actually able to pull off.

most people have a taste, or even just a small thread connecting them back with the truth, with the fact that their identities are a falsehood, with their lack of a separate self. this seems evidenced by the sheer numbers of mentally ill people in the world, and people who are unstable, maladjusted and generally freaked out and messed up. the truth, being true, has that on its side. it cannot be denied for long by an illusion. every single moment of stillness and silence, it is just there, waiting, obvious.... inescapable. is it any wonder our world gets more and more focused on business, distraction and the constant need to be engaged with anything but aloneness and quiet?

i am trying to see the ways in which i can talk about this, the ways in which i can think about this, and i am honestly happy to report that my mind is on fire in a way it has not been in years and years. i feel full of life and vigor here, and am looking forward to more dialogue about this, and more ways to find the connections.

the challenge, of course, is that even if people have had a taste of the truth, there is a poweful pull into illusion, shored up by the world and society, and family structures and entertainment and so on. maya - the hindu name for the goddess of illusion - has her claws sunk in deeply, and it is very easy to drown out the still small voice of truth, the intuitive knowing, in favor of all the busy, loud, chaotic insanity of the mind. the structures of the world are set up in such a way to support the illusion, and no one drops out of the matrix without getting thoroughly picked apart by society and friends and loved ones. they draw you back in with whatever means they can - because every one that refuses the lie, refuses to reinforce the structure means their walls are getting thinner. it sounds horrible to say but your family doesn't want you to leave the matrix because of purely selfish reasons. they need you to help fortify their own lie. (not that they don't love you, but from inside the matrix love is always all bound up with falseness, sticky lies and the need to perpetuate the illusion)

thankfully for me, my family is very, very glad i left the matrix. only by leaving the matrix can i come back in and visit and have a loving and enjoyable relationship with them. living in the borderland was what was very hard on my parents in particular, because the constant back and forth was impossible for them to bear.

i really want to learn how to speak and think clearly about this subject. this awakening is not obscure, it is not special, it is not obsfucated, and it is not an achievement. it is simply the recognition of that which has always been here, and always been true. and yet, not seeing it, being totally identified with the structure of self, it can seem "out there" or some difficult mountain to climb or something special or worse - some made up ridiculousness because "obviously there's a self here, obviously there's a me, sheesh, angela, shut up.... i'm right here! duh!!" and with that, the refusal to investigate, the lack of curiosity, the inability to be humble enough to question.... that is the deception in action. those very refusals are what stops that which is So Obvious from embracing us, and drawing us back home. and maya does a good job, because we've all felt so cut off from the world, and it makes us deeply, enormously sad, causes us pain like no other thing in the whole world. and yet, our every single action, our every thought, is more division, and keeps the pain train rolling. maya is so good at having us snowed in illusion we're actually not only the prisoners, but also the jailers. we ourselves build and maintain the prisons that keep us isolated and hurting.

i am really moved by this subject, as it has always mysteriously animated my life, and pulled me toward what becomes more clear every day. there is such a deep Knowing in my veins that it finally evidences a thread through my whole life. the "self" or separate me is a fiction, a lie that wounds deeply and causes so much suffering. seeing this for ourselves is the most important thing ever, always was. it is even moreso now, looking around at the world gone mad with division. it is just the only game in town. it's the only thing going on. i hope to learn how to write and speak about it with even more clarity in the future. and i'm going to shore up my knowledge of borderline personality "disorder" because it is a sense i have that everyone in the world is on the spectrum of borderline, and it would serve us to our advantage to begin to understand how that operates.

waking up to my own lack of self is the greatest gift life has ever given - a truth that has always been here, just waiting to be seen.

the body is a truth meter

okay, i'm going to be honest about something.
 
i have not always been the most honest person in the world. there. i said it.

on the one hand, there was a lot of the good stuff in the form of "lies" - the sort of tall tales and mythologizing that i said i did in order to entertain people. and people were entertained, sure. but also, let's not forget the dark side, whereby i had to create a world and i dreamt up identities so big that the only way to support them was through telling half true epic tales. the truth is that lying came as easily to me as breathing, stories would flop out of my mouth without me even thinking about them, and it is only because of my excellent memory that i was able to keep track of them later. (oddly enough, i never really got "called out" on my tall tales, i hope it's because people were intelligent enough to know they weren't true??)

the funny thing is that in all reality i have lived a life that is, well, chock full of enough adventure to fill a novel or two. i didn't really need the stories, you know?

but the stories came out of my mouth going back as far as i can remember. and then when awakening started, it began to be increasingly uncomfortable, not just emotionally, but actually in my physical body.

i should also mention at this time that i have had a tendancy to be a shoplifter also in the past. not from people or local/small businesses (as if that matters?) but from corporate chain type stores. i have always been financially poor (rich in the heart!) and when i needed an expensive holistic tincture for my winter sicknesses i didn't hesitate to steal what i needed from the overpriced natural-chain-grocery-which-shall-remain-nameless.

so, since my brain first blew up two years ago this march, i began to notice that as the storytelling would start to come out of my mouth, i would notice it, i would be in a rather detatched witness perspective and, watching myself, i could also see the body start to flood with adrenaline and see how the eyes got shifty and the whole body itself seemed to cave in upon the telling. after a time, the stories just sort of gave up.

since christmas, in this last week and a half, i have exaggerated one time, not even a storytelling, something along the lines of "i read 14 pages of the chapter" when i only read 9. i didn't even think about it rolling out of my mouth, and then when it did, my body felt like i'd been dipped simultaneously in boiling hot and freezing cold water. it was highly, highly uncomfortable.

then yesterday, at that same nameless chain grocer, i had to refill my water gallon from the spout, and wanted a new gallon also since i had only one. when i went up to the cashier she was only going to charge me for the water itself (29 cents a gallon) and not the gallon jug (6 bucks) and for about one hundredth of a second i thought, oh yeah, i will save myself 6 bucks. and then i was flooded with such a powerful, terrible rush in my cells and bones that i felt like i had ground glass pouring through my veins. i said "don't forget to charge me for the jug too, honey, i just picked it up" and *immediately* the glass in veins sensation stopped.

so. whatever else there is to report psychologically, spiritually, awareness wise or whatnot, i have been shown something that i knew all along. if the body says something isn't right, by giving out these stress feeling, guts in a knot feelings, the glass in veins feeling etc.... listen.  the thing  about the truth is that it is always true, and never wasn't true. so our bodies know what is real even if we don't think that "we" do.

i'm not even making a moral judgement here on shoplifting, or telling tall tales. it's just that from where i live, i don't find it to be honest behavior for me. and if my deepest prayer is for truth, so much that my heart shines in commitment to truth, then doing something dishonest is just.... well, backwards. off track. not standing fully in my truth.

my beloved teacher adya says that our bodies are truth meters and after these two moments this week i see with absolute clarity what he means.

when there clearly is no choice

the event of "popping out" of my life was wonderful. at first. and still is, when i watch the world unfold from a place of curiousity, with no mental overlay toward outcomes or desires. it's life of a whole different order of being.

and then there are the moments when i remember the remnants of ego, dangling there, left with absolutely no choice, no control, and only the vaguest space of witness in which to hang out and i am hit like a ton of bricks.

it's all fruit and flowers to talk about not existing as a separate self and unity and oneness and freedom. but when the mind has to face that reality, boy howdy...

to say "i am the awareness" is false, because the statement and the thought come up in the awareness itself. but the feeling is of that calibur right now, because i know i'm not the body, the mind, the emotions etc. i watch the hands and feet move in the world, watch the thoughts and feelings come and go, and it's all a pictureshow. the only space left to hide is the witness, to have a vague identity as "the one who watches this" and that is where the minds last shards are wrapped up and tangled.

so, considering i conceptualized this lack of a self for almost two years now, i guess it seems strange and surprising how much it wounds me to know it is so. i don't think the mind could have it any other way - it remains afraid of death until the end. but then, what's equally fascinating is how vastly i feel absolutely not a single thing about any of it. i could well be the most batshit human being right now (loveable too in all that silly glory) but also there is just this neverending space for all the world to happen. and what is happening now is angela is going mad, and the awareness just accepts that for what it is.

okay.

it rolls this way, and its fascinating. if i had any strains of wisdom girl left in me i would be ashamed to write this, to expose that i am looking at this dark, dark place....

but it's clear. there's the situation called "i'm done" which i hit on christmas. the death of angela as a separate self.

but "ITS done" is something else.

and until i stop batting about the silly notion of having some choice in any of this, until i accept the fact that the only way to live is in a freefall of unknowing, this borderland will be what i experience.

so. waking up. sounds fun, huh?

without the wisdom girl....

so. once your identities are gone, where do you relate from? no, really... where do you relate from? if every relationship you built over the last several years was built upon feeding a certain identity, and getting your needs met in that area, then without it, what do you do?

well, you go out for coffee, you act like a spaz, drop your cup on the ground, laugh a lot, physically shake in your guts from the mind's reaction to what it means to really Not Know, and generally let the world flow as it flows.

my last major identity to go was wisdom girl - the spiritualized ego, the girl who was going to Help You Out. now, that is not all there was, because the love is deep and unending and genuine as can be, but wisdom girl co-opted everything and she was A Lover! she was The One Who Loved! and now that i know i am not running the show, and the wisdom girl identity has hit the dust for the falsity it always was.... i am left in each moment without a game plan, unable to know what to do, where to come from, or how to relate.

it comes, of course, naturally as it is wont to do. but without any knowing, without any plan, without any ownership on my part. and that is odd. the body reacts in terror at the unknowing, the guts get tight, the mind tries to formulate a plan, but none arise. and so there is just one moment after the next, in extreme unknowing....

and like all other things, while i am still even one iota stuck in the illusion of personal will, while i have any fight left in me about any of this, any belief that i am the do-er of this life, the moments of tension will continue to arise.

but the love flows, and takes care of itself. it's lovely to know the One Thing that can ever be known, and in that i am finally done with the struggle. but living it, well... living that knowing is a whole other magnitude of expression.

thy will be done.

(thanks meg and kimberly, the first two people i've spent time with this week, for your grace and beauty in the face of my spastic unknowing. you are as beautiful as beauty can be...)

the going gets strange

chewing over the sense that perhaps there is some last thing to *do* - a construct of the mind if ever there was one - i come to the only perfect clarity on the subject. it is the sense of will, the last vestiges of the little brain-cluster that thinks it is doing any of this.

after christmas, i have been watching my life, in a very odd way as i may have mentioned: it is like i can see angela, but she cannot see me.

and watching the world is by turns strange, fascinating, mysterious, ineffable and if i were to think about it too long, stark and a bit scary.

i find my heart to be the one who saves me from the fear, because my faith in the order of the universe lights the way, as i watch angela, and realize that those actions, and all the thoughts that go with it, are not decided upon by me. i am not directing it, i am watching.

and so, the going gets strange. and all i can see is that the sense that there is anything left to do, is in fact the deathknell of the do-er. i thought a few weeks back i had come to the end of personal will (and that's what i get for thinking!) but this is of another order entirely.

it gets very, very surreal right here. the Seeing takes over large chunks of the day, and angela is spread very thin indeed. i know myself as no-thing but the engagement of that mystery by the mind produces tightness.

i am looking at my fingers as i type this entry and i am awed, absolutely awed into deep silence, by the realization, the Knowing, that i am not animating the movement. the mind's ownership of the action seems to arise as quickly as the action itself, creating the illusion of someone here doing something. but that is not the case.

and so, for now, the going gets strange, watching all illusion crumble that i ever really existed at all. the faith of the heart and the love of god/spirit/mystery is the draw into the surrender, and i am grateful, so grateful for the movement there, which keeps me grounded and full of love during what is proving to be a very strange week.

a note to robert cergol

((i cut and pasted this from an email i wrote earlier today. about two weeks before christmas, things were heating up intensely, and i wrote a note to robert asking for help with understanding the meaningless i found myself trapped in. his reply helped spark, along with a thousand other things, the synchronous timing to have the christmas event-out-of-time. i think this email says things very clearly from where i am today.))

hello robert,


when i wrote the first note to you, i had been in the middle of a very intense culmination or synchronous period. each day, each hour, something new presented, was seen accurately, and fell away. my main issue was struggling with the meaninglessness, which now i recognize as fighting against the death. and also, there was something left in the sense of separation between me and the world that i didn't yet understand. through a series of beautiful intuitive guided moments i discovered a video by greg goode that allowed me to finally bypass the mind's version of what i was seeing, and to really See for myself, from the "ground" of absolute spaciousness and no-thingness... and it answered my question about what the Seeing is. it became clear that the Seeing, the awareness, is, yes, all that remains. it's difficult for me to type it, but the experience is that the Seeing is in fact what i am. as it has rolled this last week over and over again all day it is clear that everything happens *after* the Seeing, and the Seeing contains all the whole world. i find my experience to be capacity for the world, not a thing inside of it.

i had an initial awakening in march of 2009 that very simply showed me, as i was walking past a fountain, that the water, the sound, the listener, the listening, the air, the street and all else was all the same thing, and the mind is the only thing that can (seemingly) divide up what cannot actually be divided. after that, is when the Seeing shifts began in earnest in my days. i know now it was evidencing itself and was the guide as my life as angela was dismantled. it was grace, those reminders, because although i suspected in my guts that the Seeing was the only thing real, there was a lack of real Knowing. and so the shifts happened, all day every day, back and forth, and i was drawn into radical surrender, which apparently i was grateful to do.... up to the point when i felt trapped in utter meaninglessness and the hollowness of it all. that is when i wrote to you, and to several other people, and during those few weeks i had a thousand synchronicities if i had one.

on christmas, the Seeing changed calibur. the video from greg goode allowed me to get over the "block" of the physical world, the sense of objects having inherent existence, and to rather "pop backwards" and see that this Seeing is all there is. i cannot verify objects, i can only verify the Seeing. it lined up with what I had learned a few months before from douglas harding - the only written work that was able to help me make sense of these Seeing shifts that happened all day. so on christmas, in the middle of my gloriously loud and amazing family's party and wine and trivial pursuit and all.... i popped out of my life.

so, this week is very different than any other week, and yet it is exactly the same. i am not surprised that this is what is, and i am more than a little amused by the absolute obviousness of the obvious. i guess i am interested that the mind still is doing what it is doing - and i am even more interested in the writing of yours that i found about your own version of popping backwards and being able to watch robert going about what he did. i find that to be the case here. i am watching angela, and honestly i have to say i've never found her more loveable which seems strange, and she's just doing what she does and her mind goes in all sorts of directions. it's like i can see her but she can't see me, which is very odd indeed. yet, living it, there is so much space, in my body and even the muscles on my face, and deep resonance with the world again, with being a human being. these last two years since the first Seeing, i have been very serious and introverted, i have given up my entire life, i didn't have a whole lot of fun during that time. and now... well, i am going roller skating soon!!

i should like to say that i am confused or have a question about the mind's ongoing chatter, or the mind's attempts at identification or putting the seeker back together and does that mean that i'm not "done"... but honestly, those thoughts come up after this Seeing, they are contained within the Seeing.... and i can't seem to find any way around that obvious fact. also, i guess it's curious that the Knowing part, or the remembering what i am, is not constant throughout the day. i am doing something and i forget anything else, and enjoy my activity, and then when i am done with it, the Seeing remains. and it seems clear that the Seeing was watching the activity, it just wasn't watching the activity and also aware of itself. so that may be another question, but it also tends to get a bit fuzzy when i am *being* myself instead of *thinking about* myself.

it's also fascinating that the things i've read this last week, which are about this subject, are all of a sudden far more clear than they were before. there was this sense of obscurity somehow, like... how does that person writing just Know what they know? as my brain tried to figure it all out. but now, i Know this Seeing, and somehow the writings have a deep heartfelt resonance and beautiful flow and that is quite lovely.

so. reporting from where i am, that is what this letter is for. i don't know how to ask a question from you, because i don't know what questions i have that you could possibly answer, because from here it seems to be more and more subtle into my own experience. spontaneous questions from the inside that have come up for me are about the sense of inside/outside which i know is false, but for now the Seeing feels like i contact it when i "go in" and then bring it "out into" the world. i know that's false, but i have to do the math on that one still. also, the sense of angela is such a profound mystery, because if i'm not running her, wow.... what is?? that's a gorgeous and juicy question. she seems to be just going about her business, mind and all, and i'm watching it happen in absolute wonder. i don't yet feel like i really grokk the reality of how life goes on without a mind involved. i am watching it happen, but i'm like... woah. and so that bears more witness and wonder. and also the sense of being unified with the world escapes me somehow. it feels like a gate, which has swept inward to remove from me all sense of being a thing, and now i am no-thing.... but the gate maybe has to sweep back outwards to include the whole world. but that could just be the mind talking, saying "this can't be it"... i don't know yet. i don't feel separate, at all, i feel in my guts like the capacity for the whole universe is what i really am. but the experience somehow lacks a cohesion. i don't know if that comes or not, and i don't find myself chasing it, i am only curious.

i know this is a long letter. but i don't have a lot of people to talk to this about. i don't really have anyone. i want to come to the eastern coast there and sit with you folk rather badly at this point, because it's just a whole other calibur of stuff than what my friends are talking about. (although i am back in boulder, and surrounded by naropa.buddist.hippie culutre and self improvement and growth oriented psychology and such everywhere..... it doesn't actually seem to be all that useful in this area)

thank you, so much for your time, and your dedication to helping others with this. my prayer is that my life is also used for love in that way, as i find it already is, and remain grateful for every waking moment.

with many blessings,
angela