Fear, Grief. Ego, Self.

Falling leaf
Originally uploaded by dbl nautilus

I may have excerpted part of this before (from Adyashanti’s, The Impact of Awakening), but it’s worth repeating.
And it moves me deeply.

…the human condition contains within it the unconscious need to struggle. Why? Because by remaining in a state of constant struggle we maintain the boundaries that create the sense of a separate self… And even more shocking is the discovery that… we want to remain separate… by remaining separate we maintain the sense of being someone different, special, and unique…Struggling only ceases when you passionately inquire into who and what you truly are…

With nothing to oppose, the false sense of self evaporates into nothingness… Your identity is cut loose from all that is familiar and known, and you find yourself floating in a vast expanse with nothing to grab hold of. This groundless expanse is the foretaste of liberation, but few choose to remain in this unknown territory…

This is not the liberation that most people envision when they start out… most people envision a freedom that they can attain and possess…What I am describing is the experience of Self void of any sense of selfhood, a timeless and uncaused condition which is constantly birthing manifest existence into form.

To have a glimpse of this profound freedom requires very little, but to live it requires the destruction of every concept of self you have ever held…

And it was these last words that must have rung so true to me, for here, I burst into tears, that ultimately reduced me into a cramping belly full of grief and sobs.

What is the truth you truly want, yearn for, desire to tell yourself?

We are back to that word I spent yesterday in vain trying to recall: “yearning.”
That was Allan’s word last week for me at meditation group.
He said that I had done so much, but still there was a “yearning.”
“Longing” was what Adya spoke of and I blogged just a bit ago.

I look inside to see what it is that I so long for.
What is it
that my belly aches for and for which my heart’s on fire?

I look inside and I see nothing.
Nothing.

How very strange: to ache into complete collapse, for absolutely nothing.

One of these days I shall have to just
let go.
And go.
Into nothingness.
How impossible
How absolutely terrifying.

Long ago, Marianne and I stood silent, holding our insect collection box.
We had caught a butterfly and popped it inside, then waited for the mothballs to take affect.
Came the time to peer inside and as she carefully lift the lid
in a whisper and with awe, she uttered words I had never heard before:
“death grip”
And I knew Immediately and was chilled.
The butterfly, in those last moments, had wrapped its legs desperately around a twig
as if by holding on with all its will would
alter the inevitable.

Seems I recapitulate those efforts
every moment now.
I hold on, grasping at my self
in my own version of a death grip.

Fear.
I thought (having read–up on the process) that that was the ultimate in barriers.

But now,
right there is also such deep, deep grief: to lose my self,
to lose “She who I do love”…
yes, Love
even if in ignorance.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.
The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning.
I keep swallowing…. For in grief, nothing “stays put.”
One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.
Round and round.
Everything repeats.
Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.

Whom do I grieve?
What do I fear?
“She who has been with me all along”
or
“She who I have been this eternity?”

The loss of ego,
The loss of Self?

The pain of incarnating- Self becoming lost in self?
The pain of awakening- self giving way to Self?

I think it must be both.

And am I going in circles, or am I on a spiral?