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"