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?

Let Katie Describe It

Double Nautilus
Originally uploaded by dbl nautilus

When you start to realize what Truth is, you recognize that Truth is not an abstraction, it is not out there at a distance from you… You discover that Truth is who you are without your story or script, right now… It’s not something you prepare for or earn or deserve. Awakening is a radical shift in identity. You think you’re you, but you’re not. You are eternal being.
Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing.

A “radical shift in identity” those are the operative words I’d like to point out just now. Adya says you don’t prepare for this, but I think that in some sense you must.
How else to describe the ego’s flight in terror?
How else to explain the grieving process?
Something in you can get a glimpse.

And the rest of this consists of excerpts from Byron Katie’s little book, Question Your Thinking Change The World, found in the chapter on Self Realization.

It’s common for me to speak from the position of a personality, from the position of mankind, from the position of the earth, from the position of God, from the position of a rock.
And I’ll call myself “it,” because I don’t have a reference point for separation.
I am all those things, and I don’t have any concept that I’m not.
I’ve simply learned to speak in a way that doesn’t alienate people.
It leaves me benign, unseen, unknown.
It leaves me in a comfortable place for people.

I would kiss the ground I walk on – it’s all me.
But to kiss the ground would draw attention to itself.
That’s what the first three years after I woke up looked like.
It’s subtler now, more invisible.
It has matured.

As closely as I can describe it in words, I am your heart.
I am what you look like inside yourself…
I am no one.
I am just a mirror.
I am the face in the mirror.

I am your heart.
I am the depth you don't listen to: in your face, from here.
It had to get louder, because your beliefs block it out from there...
I am the voice so covered up with beliefs that you can't hear it inside yourself.
So I appear out here, in your face –
which is really inside yourself.

I experience everything frame by frame.
It’s like looking at the comics…
each frame is a universe in itself, not connected with any other…
There is literally no time and space, no past future or present, even, no one coming, no one going…
There’s no meaning to it, no motive in it.
And finally you get to a place where nothing moves.
That is home, the place we all long for…

People ask how I can live if nothing has any meaning and I am no one.
It’s very simple.
We are being lived.
We’re not doing it…
Without a story, we move effortlessly, in perfect health, fluidity, freely, with a lot of love, and without war, without resistance…

The reason this speaks is because it does.
If I thought I was doing it, I wouldn’t be such a fool.
My only purpose is to do what I’m apparently doing…
if someone asks me a question, my purpose is to give my experience through my answer.
I’m an effect of their suffering…

It’s personal and it’s not personal.
It’s personal in that the whole world is me – a mirror image that I am and love.
Without it, I am bodiless…
On the other hand, it’s not personal, because I see nothing more than a mirror image.
Until God – reality- moves, I have no movement.
Every movement, every sound, every breath, every molecule, every atom is nothing more than a mirror image of God…

Whenever you speak, it’s God speaking.
When a flower blooms, it’s God.
When Hitler marches, it’s God.
I see only God.

Every word is the sound of God.
Every word is the word of God.
There is nothing personal here.
And everything is personal.
If the moon rises, it’s for you.
You’re the one watching it! (And that’s just a beginning.)

There is no this soul or that soul.
There’s only one.
And that’s the last story.
There’s only one. And not even that…

Even so-called truths eventually fall away.
Every truth is a distortion of what is.
The last truth – I call it the last judgment – is
“God is everything, God is good.”
Ultimately even this isn’t true.
But as long as it works for you, I say keep it and have a wonderful life.