Dying Layer By Layer

 You must die to be reborn.

Michael A. Singer

I am dying.

Well not literally but I am dying in order to be reborn.

(Though that quote is often believed to come from Jesus ...I cannot find those words anywhere in the bible.  It is true that many times Jesus talked about "dying to self" in order to be reborn into the Kingdom of Heaven and I gather it has the same meaning as above. He didn't, however,  actually use those words.)

The point is, the meaning is the same: We need to let go of all we thought we were to be what we can be. The death is the death of the ego and all its defense mechanisms. It is the death of  personality with its likes and dislikes. It is the death of  our reliance on  mind stuff, concepts and stories  that keep us stuck in the head.  It is the death of the "separate little me" focus. It is the death of hope and expectation that something in this outer world will bring us to where we want to be.   

The rebirth is the re-emergence of the True Self when the egoic me is no longer in the way. It is the releasing  of Shakti flow when all the things we stuffed on top of it are no longer blocking it. And it is  the rebirth of uncontaminated Love and joy when fear is no longer in charge,  

There truly is a death of "me"ness and a rebirth of "Oneness" in this process of awakening.  We give up the sleepy half conscious self for the fully alert and awake one. Heaven is our goal but we need to stop clinging to earthly things and old patterns of thinking and existing that just don't get us there...in order to truly be here, where we always were and never truly left.We have never left Heaven...we just built a "mental concept " of  hell around it. 

Dying is more of a scraping off of old useless  layers that we once used as protection but that were always just layers in the way, creating a hellish type of suffering. Having these layers that we once thought were a part of us...felt we needed...and under which we hid in these pseudo safety zones ...removed...stings  like the dickens. With each layer that gets peeled off we feel more and more raw and naked ( without the Fig Leaf) and more and more vulnerable. 

I heard my great niece (now seven) recalling what it felt like to have her soother taken away years before..."I felt so scared...so sad.  My throat was choked up every morning and my nose was full of the snot of my crying [her words]. I was mourning.   And though I really really wanted it back because it made me feel less afraid, I knew I couldn't grow up to be a big person with it in my mouth."

We cannot grow up to be big fully expanded human beings if we continue to cling to this false sense of security these unreal selves we created give us.  We need to let that die...so we can be reborn.

Sigh! I  am dying. And dying, isn't fun! It seems to be a slow and painful death. 

I am watching myself slowly die and I am at the point where I am standing back with my hand on my chin saying, "Wow!  This is really happening." Though it isn't a lot of fun right now, a certain "curiosity" has led me to bend over and observe a little more closely the process as it occurs. 

I wasn't always this curious and accepting. So many unhealthy  protective layers have been stripped off me by life circumstance over the last few years.  I fought and I struggled and I cried out "No!" clinging with all my might as each layer was pulled away. Pieces of "me" were being painfully amputated against "my" will.  I was angry and resistant when my professional identity , the  career I told myself was "me" and the income got pulled away. Even more ferociously, I clung and struggled to redeem the reputation I worked so tirelessly to build when it was being pulled off 'me' by  "other assumption". I fought against the reality that pulled away my "good mother"identity and this false notion  that I could fix or "save" my children from the choices they were making ( that was a big and very painful stage of dying for me...probably the biggest). There were many layers pulled away. So many of the top layers got pulled off me against my will and it took me a long time to accept that.

 As I look closer now,  I see the perfection in it all. I  can see how I actually created those top layers to protect the layers beneath them. They were not healthy...just hiding more unhealthy layers beneath them. Even more layers??!! It was the exposure of the layers beneath the surface that I was trying to avoid with all my clinging.  They were layers of redemption I built over my broken bits..but Life said "Nope!  Time for you to be reborn...so the layers on top must die to expose what is underneath. " My outer personality ...that image I built to show the world that I deserved to be here had to die first.  So layer by layer it began the process of dying. It is still dying but thanks to Life, a lot of it is already gone.  It is a strange sensation not to have those layers of "me" to hide behind anymore.  I mean, I see how "unreal" they all were, how superficial...like building a house on sand. I tried to redeem the little self by building something grand in my mind and then by projecting it outwardly.  I can see how arrogant, self righteous and self centered  this "me" was when in the layers beneath, this "me"  was so frightened and unsure. I see how it was all a show...to make me seem like something other than what I was underneath...broken. The confidence I was expressing in the socially approved roles I selected was an "act" to hide the anxiety and the sense of unworthiness that was such a part of my life . I built self-esteem because I was conditioned to believe it was a good and healthy  thing to do that and in so doing I built layers of unrealness over what is truly real. When those layers crumpled or were stripped off...I was left to face the broken me. The broken me was never real either ..and I didn't know that  until now. It was just another layer that had to be peeled off.  I am slowly working on that.

 Beneath the "broken me" there is still a lot more dying to do. I am excavating right down to my samskaras. That  is the layer I am looking at now. It is dark in here and when the light shines  on it a bit I can see it isn't pretty and easy to look at. I feel that darkness and that pain in every cell of me though I can explain none of it.  I still have the overwhelming tendency to want to pull one of those removed layers back over it.  But I don't.   I am not going to look away any more.  I am committed to this process of dying to be reborn....one layer at a time. 

I am no longer resistant to the layers being pulled off "me"by life circumstance. Though I am still scared, I say, "Bring it on!"  I am ready for all the layers to come off until there is nothing left of this "me" . I am not sure what will be there when that happens but If you pull every layer of an onion off ...do you still have an onion? I want the "me" gone so  I can get to what is underneath, if anything. I am putting myself in situations where the remaining outer surfaces will get scraped off and the inner stuff will be exposed. I mean...I am already so vulnerable in this naked, exposed state with most of my old layers gone...so most experiences are uncomfortable and samskara triggering anyway. There is still a tendency to avoid but  with a great deal of curiosity I just watch that tendency and I watch what happens when I do not avoid.  I watch myself being triggered.  I watch myself  reacting or responding. I watch the  remnants of old layers flapping around on me. I can pick up those old tendencies to hide, pretend, stuff, run etc  so quickly in me and I just watch them as I move about doing what I am doing.  I feel the stuff inside me coming to the surface and sometimes it is absolutely awful. But I experience it all. It is terrifying, depressing, exciting and amazing as I observe! Ten years ago this would have been crazy making. I would have run and hid behind any layer I could find.  Now I am committed to facing the pain. I am aware of what is happening.  I am willingly observing it, experiencing it and learning from this discomfort. I am more than willing to look at that inner stuff and release it all. I am willing to die, for the rebirth of who I truly am to occur. I have faith that it will be worth it. 

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( May 21, 2023) Exploring True Compassion. https://tou.org/talks/rove