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.