Cyclone

 

Cyclone

It lands in the center of my chest,

like a column of swirling wind,

a vortex of   howling frenzy

sucking away the quiet moments of my life.

 

The 'me' I once thought I was

is suddenly

extracted from the delusion

that I am securely rooted in the

quaking earth beneath my feet.

 

I reach out desperately for something to cling to

but atlas, all that I once knew to be real

vanishes like wisps of smoke

when I wrap my fingers around it.

There is nothing of form to hold onto

and my legs are pulled from beneath me.

 

I am carried towards the eye of the storm.

The force of  the winds  contractions

clutches my heart making

me cry out for the breath

that persistently eludes me.

 

Memories  whirl past.

I watch helplessly

as scattered moments of pain and frustration

bump into the fragile, broken parts

of my childrens' innocence,

threatening to destroy what remains.

I lean forward to protect it but

the gale force is too strong.

Its hand, placed aggressively on my sternum,

pushes me back and away

as  the cries for "Mommy"

become faint whispers of "I don't care anymore."

 

I see her face caught up in the storm's chaos.

 I want to get to her

so I can wrap my arms around her,

soothe her pain,

tell her how  I'll miss her

but the swirling frenzy inside and around me

leaves my limbs heavy,

making every movement difficult.

It keeps us apart.

 

I see the desk and  phone

I once occupied,

floating past.

The smiling  and fearful faces of those I lectured to

becoming foggy images before disappearing into the vortex.

They, like so much of what I identified myself with,

are  being swept up by the destructive

nature of the cyclone.

I am losing what I thought I was.

 

 

 

I hear their voices echoing through the moving air

telling me there

is no reason why I can't weather this storm better.

I reach down to the white coated figures with arms

heavy with fatigue,

my weak cries being drowned out by the howling wind.

They quickly glance up and duck away

but they don't see me.

They half-heartedly scribble something 

on their little green pads

as they talk back and forth amongst themselves about my case.

The pieces of paper get tossed  into the atmosphere's in drawing breath

with careless gestures.

I scramble to grasp the slips

in hope they are maps

showing me the way out of this mess

but atlas they are just meaningless markings

and useless trinkets meant to pacify.

Wispy figures of shame lurk in the storm's shadows.

They grab  me by the neck and wrists strangling,

pulling me away

from those I am told have the answers.

 

 

 

Then when I think I can bare no more

I am squeezed through the tiny

opening in the center of the whirlwind.

I am painfully pulled, twisted,  pushed.

All parts of me that do not matter

 are scraped from the surface in the process.

 By the time I am through this

small gap in space

I am raw and numb.

It is too much for my mind and body to bare and

I collapse into a state of nothingness.

 

When I awake I find myself  in a place

where there is no movement

or growling wind,

just perfect calm and stillness.

I breathe a  breath of real life.

My chest, with the heaviness gone,

welcomes the air,

drinking it up like a thirsty dessert traveler

who has finally found the oasis.

I am released from the hands of shame as

glorious light melts the shadow fingers that hold me back

into tiny drops of nothing.

 

 

For the first time in my temporary human existence

there is no quavering,

not even a rumble in the earth beneath my feet.

I  stand strong and stable

for doubt has been replaced by faith,

despair with hope

fear with love.

In the center of this storm

I find His perfect peace.

 

From this place

I realize

I have the power to make the winds disperse,

the earth settle,

the body  heal

and the pieces of my life to fall in perfect order...

His order.

And I need do nothing.

Copyright Dale-Lyn 2011

 

 

 

I wrote this back when  the symptoms of my 'condition' hit me like a cyclone and I was forced to go off work.  At the time I also had some scary maternal issues to deal with and a sister diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I felt so 'sick' but I couldn't find anyone to help me(clear diagnosis and support). It seemed like such an awful time...but I knew then, throughout all the chaos, that this cyclone  was taking me somewhere. It is taking me somewhere and I am so very grateful.

All is well!

Who is this Gentle Nurse?

 

Who is This Gentle Nurse?

 

Who is this gentle nurse,

who slips into the sick room

in the darkened corners of my mind,

when all is quiet and still?

 

Illuminated by the soft light of her lamp,

she shuffles by on

tiny slippered feet,

on feathers that do not make a sound.

 

With determined purpose

she goes from bed to bed,

offering  her gentle administrations

with selfless love.

 

She compassionately wipes the fevered

brow of fearful thoughts,

cooling the raging temperatures

until there is no more perspiration or chills,

just quiet breath and sleep.

 

She whispers soothing words of encouragement

to worry,

stopping the trembling with a soft hand on its shoulder,

preventing anxiety from taking over.

 

She skillfully runs a line on another desperate patient,

offering sweet replacement to anemic thoughts

of scarcity and doubt,

filling the empty spaces of hungry vessels

with sure  knowledge of  His abundance.

 

She gives medicine to the mediocre

in the form of 

life enhancing corrections,

that are offered in little white paper cups.

 

Providing dignity and grace

she  gently rolls over those

who are still clinging to the past.

Using soapy, cleansing clothes

of forgiveness

 she washes away

their shame and guilt.

 

 

The heads of those who are thirsty for more

are lifted

and she places glasses of cool, quenching water

to their parched lips.

 

She calms those who are striking out,

 at the shadows of the night

as they spit out their anger and blame,

with her sweet reassuring voice.

 

Windows are opened,

so fresh breezes can blow through

to comfort and soothe,

to give life back to the dying.

 

The stench of brokenness is lifted from the room.

 

as she works tirelessly,

effortlessly

and lovingly

throughout the night.

 

When the morning hours come

and the sun is casting glorious golden light

in  on the once weary faces of her charges

it is seen that all traces of sickness

  have been washed away.

All suffering

has disappeared along

with the shadows of the night.

 

All there is left in this room is peace

encased in His precious golden light.

 

Though no longer needed,

she will remain where she is,

where she always was,

a reminder of His Presence.

 

Who is this gentle nurse

Who has been with us for so long

And whom we  still can not quite see?

 

Truth...

I am told,

by the healed voice within me,

her name is...

Truth.

 

Dale-Lyn August,2011

The inevitable and bumpy journey to "I am"

There is only one thing better than "I am bad" or "I am good" and that is ''I am".
-Adyashanti, Welcome to Awakening

Enlightenment doesn't always feel good!

Many of us have this 'idea' that enlightenment is supposed to make us feel good about ourselves.  We assume it will be like one of those ego quests we go on, the kind I wrote about in the previous blog: "I will feel good when I wake up, find God and discover who I truly am."

I don't know about the rest of you but I am not having a whole lot of fun right now.  I am not feeling good! I am a mess and I am not even there yet. What will I be like when I do get there and recognize who I truly am?  I have a feeling that the closer I get, the less fun it will be? 

Enlightenment, I am discovering the hard way, isn't going to make me feel good about myself. It is going to make me realize just how insignificant this idea of 'feeling good' is and most awkwardly,  how insignificant this 'me' is.  Feeling good about the self is just an idea. "Me' is just an idea and whatever I thought me was...is crumbling into a thousand pieces around me.

It feels awful, most of the time.  I am confused, disorientated and trying desperately to make sense of things.  It is like I am stepping off a plane in a foreign country with massive jetlag. I have some place really important to get to but I don't know how to get there.  On top of that I am trying to communicate to others that I need directions but the language I came off the plane with doesn't work here. Nothing I brought with me, works anymore.

Getting there

Still... I have to go through the activities of daily living until I figure out how to get to this place. It is like starting over. Everyone and everything is so strange all of a sudden.  I am so strange. People are looking at me like I am more than a little 'cra-cra'. lol

I want to turn around and hop right back on the plane that took me here but I know I can't.  I have come too far. I have  no choice but to make my way through the strangeness to this inevitable destination.  That's it too...the destination is inevitable. 

Adyashanti in his video Welcome to Awakening, teaches that "Enlightenment is a sealed deal. It is inevitable." At some point we are all going to have to face the truth of who we really are.  There is no escaping true Self-realization and that is the destination we are all headed in whether we know it or not. So I can't turn back even though part of me wants to.  The airplane has already left the tarmac.

So what do I do?  What do we do when we get this far and can't go back?  The lessons from ACIM tell us what we must do at this point.  We do not need to take another step. We just wait for the Destination to come to us.

 

No step remains for time to separate from its accomplishment. For now we cannot fail. Sit silently and wait upon your Father.  He has willed to come to you when you have recognized it is your will He do so. And you could have never come this far unless you saw, however dimly, that it is your will.

-ACIM-W:Part II: Intro:5:3-7

 

 

We really have to go no where.  We do not need to strive towards being good (more spiritual and enlightened) or push away from being bad (egoic and sinful).  We just need to be. And in being, everything else is irrelevant

 

Peace to my mind.  Let all my thoughts be still.

-ACIM-W:221

 

All is well in my world!

 

References:

 

ACIM

 

Adyashanti Welcome to Awakening   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJx12H9TxM

Don't Wander Too Far

Let me not wander from the way of peace, for I am lost on other roads than this.
-ACIM-w-220:2

Why is it so freaking hard to get a little peace around here?

Probably because most of us don't even realize it is peace we are looking for.  We are searching, reaching, wanting, and waiting for something to fill us, make our dreams come true, and our lives as exciting and wonderful as all those glamorized  lives we follow on social media. We are told that in order to 'get that elusive something' we have to work hard, struggle, fight, be better than or at least as good as those we follow or creep. We need to accept chaos, destruction, disruption and a lack of harmony in order to get there but it will all be worth it in the end. We wander far and away from what we truly need and want. Achieving happiness, then, becomes a competitive struggle.

This type of happiness ain't peace!

This search for  externally derived happiness is not the way of peace and it is not what we are truly looking for. What are we wanting to gain from those external, media-sensationalized things we strive for anyway?

What do we really believe they are going to give us besides an 'idea of happiness or success'?  Ego will tell us this struggle will eventually give us everything we need...well at least what is needed to survive in this cruel world of separated individuals and never ending defense and attack. Is ego speaking the truth? 

It is true we are looking for something but that something is not out there and that something is not as temporary or fast changing as the profile pics that pop up on our screens.  It is in here...and it is unchanging, and everlasting. What we truly want  is not temporary pleasure or 'ideas' of happiness that never feel like happiness for very long. We want peace! Yet the more we travel toward external happiness, the further off the path to peace we are. We are lost on any other road.

The difference between external happiness and peace

External happiness isn't real!  It is just a two dimensional idea.  Just like the photo shopped  images we see of smiling people living perfect lives on Facebook are just tricks to get you and the provider to believe  that the struggle is worth it, ego tricks and deludes us into following its path to something we will never ever reach.

The external pursuit of happiness is just an ideal, an ego trick, a path to nowhere.  Sure when we attain one of these things ego tells us we need to be happy...we will feel pleasure, a certain happiness for a while but it will not last.  If we get the job, the car, that big house, graduate, or find our 'soul mate' we believe we are happy for a while.  That thing, however, will not last or the pleasure it provides will not last.

 Nothing in this physical world lasts.  It is subject to change, deterioration, loss and death. And when we lose it or the feeling...we will have to go on a search for some other thing further along ego's path, to something else, something better. "This didn't work but if I get this next thing I will be happy."  We  find ourselves living in a constant state of, "I will be happy when..." but like all future projections, when never arrives.

Peace, on the other hand...is a different path.  It is a path inward to the eternal,  never changing Self.  Peace is not dependent on external things.  It doesn't wax, wane or fluctuate as the things around us do.  It is constant and real. It soothes and calms.  It connects and expands us as we follow the truth of who we really are.  Is that not what we truly want?

Peace doesn't require struggle or a fight to make it.  It is effortless involving nothing but a letting go. Peace is already within us and all we have to do is let go of all the illusions and distorted ideas that have fallen like a veil over it.  Peace is here and peace is now and  we just need to wake up to it.  That simple!

There is nothing wrong with going for that job, or that purchase or that degree, recognition or person....but just know that it is not that external thing that will bring you the peace you truly want.  It is something far greater, far more permanent and everlasting that brings peace. 

Peace out trumps external happiness every time and all you have to do to discover that...is to let go of this idea that you need external happiness. You already have all you need.  You already are all you need.  You have peace, you are peace. 

Instead of wandering aimlessly on these roads that go nowhere,  go home! You will find the peace you are looking for there, where it has always been.

All is well in my world!

Not the Body or the Mind.

I am not a body.  I am free.

-ACIM-W-219:1

You are not the body, you are in. 

Do you know that?  I mean truly know that?

I think if we knew that, knew that we were so much more than confined to these physical forms we would feel the freedom ACIM, Patanjali and so many other wise masters teach about. We would realize our unbound nature...and understand that it cannot be confined to  a finite vessel anymore than space can be confined in a map or the ocean confined in a glass of water. How do you put 'physical limits' around something so immense?

Yet so many of us feel trapped by these layers of muscle and bone that we call our bodies. We believe we began when the body took that first breath of air and that we end when it takes its last. We believe that who we are ...are these physical forms with marked expiration dates.... nothing more.  Because we see, hear, smell, taste and feel with the body's senses we believe our experience through it is all there is.  How can that be? 

You are not the mind that controls the body

Our sense are always bringing us things that keep changing and they are deluding us into believing it is all real. It is not the body that truly limits us then...but the mind. We prepare for that expiration the moment we perceive that these bodies and minds are limited by time and space.  If the bodies are limited, and we are the body, than we are limited too.

The notion of time and space is just a mental construct, an idea ...not reality.  If time and space are not real how can we be confined to these forms and limited by them?

Yoga can help to take us to this understanding.

Sweet and bitter, hot and cold, sun and earth, the whole objective universe of matter and energy does not exists independent of the mind  and senses. Even time and space are nothing but the power of the mind. There is nothing to limit man in time and space if there is no mind.  All limitations and barriers disappear with the disappearance of the mind. - (Swami Vishnu-Devananda; 1988, page 257)

If we can put aside our over identification with body or at least be willing to see beyond it, we will become aware of these delusions created by mind and we will sense an awareness, a quiet, still awareness that exists beneath it all that doesn't change like our sensory information does.  That awareness, that consciousness is who we are and it cannot be limited by physicality or by time, space or mind.

When the mind is still, there is no idea of time and space, which means there is no external consciousness except an awareness of self where there is no change. ( page 277)

You are not your body and you are not your mind.

Mind cannot exist independent of time.  Nor can space and time exist independent of mind. Mind, time and space are like the three points of a triangle. - Swami Vishnu-devananda; 1988;page277

And how do we live outside the triangle? How do we find this never changing Self that is not limited by body, mind or this idea of time and space?  We 'Be still" ....

Be still, my mind, and think a moment upon this.- ACIM-W-219:1

All is well

References:

ACIM

Swami Vishnu-devananda (1988) The complete Illustrated Book of Yoga. New York: Three Rivers Press

Sleepless

And how but through salvation can I find the Self to whom my thanks are due?
-ACIM-W-217:3

It is five in the morning and I have been up for a while.  A little life circumstance, a changing body and a whole lot of mess around me with the slow DIY my daughter and I are partaking in, goes a long way to disrupting sleep, let me tell ya! Put on top of that a perceived physical condition that reacts to stress and humidity and I ...on the outside...am pretty much a pile of fatigued mush.  :) I feel heavy but not trapped in that heaviness...if that makes sense.

Besides the fact that I am anticipatory grieving  the loss of my very best friend, my beloved dog, who is reaching the end of her days...other things seem to be turning around.  I am so grateful..so very, very grateful for that.  My house is looking better and will be much easier to sell when things are complete. I am unexpectedly witnessing hope and better choices in my loved one and I feel such wonderful relief. My youngest is all set for university financially thanks to some wonderful programs my province/country provides so I do not have to fret too much about that. I am already more than halfway completed my yoga teacher training. (The theory part anyway...only have 4 more essays to write...the practical exam is another story...having some issues getting the body to do what I want it to do...but it will! lol I am determined).  And I had a lovely evening reminiscing with my sisters and childhood neighbors and friends.

Of course that is all just 'story'. What is really important is that everyday I get closer and closer to fully realizing my own completeness.  That is most important to me now...all other things seem to pale in comparison.  I don't know how to explain it and I wonder if that is  why I am here at five in the morning when I should be sleeping? What is pulling me here to my office, this corner, this computer, this blog and to this page?  I don't know really but here I am. 

I will just sit here in this glorious quiet and listen for an answer.  If it comes great...if it doesn't, that's okay too.  It's all good!

Why I shared that with you, I don't know.  :)

Patience and Hope

Patience is the calm acceptance that things may happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.
-David G. Allen https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/389209592783310299/?lp=true

The 'Personal' Reason Behind Yesterday's entry

I was thinking about a future event when I wrote that yesterday.  I was hoping a little life milestone would be achieved by someone I love who has been struggling so to achieve life milestones and feeling pretty down as a result. In fact, depression and life destroying  numbing choices were ensuing And I had hope that this small achievement would help to inspire hope in him. 

Hope I knew, could pull him from darkness...up into higher life affirming emotions. From there he would be able to step into faith...in himself and in life in general.  No matter what I said or how I said it made little difference but 'experiencing' good, success etc would inject hope  more than my little words could. So I had been hoping for him to reach that milestone.

The Selfish Side of Hope

I wanted it for him but I also wanted it for me.  My heart had literally been aching for him for weeks.  I have been worried, anxious, sleepless and so very afraid. I felt his pain and I felt totally helpless to do anything about it.  And I mean it...my heart was aching...literally...for him.  I have been very brady, dizzy, ankles swollen at night, eyes swollen in the morning with a heavy chest for as long as my concern for him began. I too had hope that this achievement, as minor as it was, would make a difference in him...would do what I felt helpless to do. ...for both our sakes.

The Impersonal side of Faith

I had sat down, right as he was being tested and began to write my blog entry yesterday and as I do every morning I read my lesson from ACIM which spoke of putting the future in God's hand. Serendipitous right? I was thrilled to read that I could put it all in God's hands.  That God would take care of it so I didn't have to worry anymore. I was filling my head with hopeful images of his success and his turn around.   

I wrote the entry with that hope  and was just about to sign off when this thought dawned on me as heavy as the feeling in my chest right now.  "That doesn't mean things will turn out the way you think they should.  Your idea of good for all may not be God's. Maybe this bit of suffering is necessary for some greater joy later.  Trust...even when things are not going the way you think they 'should'....that God knows what he is doing.  That's faith"

I went back to the entry and wrote about trusting God's knowledge of what is 'good' over our own idea of it. I knew I needed to do that.

Things didn't work out the way 'i' Hoped

For about one hour, I was all the things I had thought I was somewhat beyond experiencing.  I was anxious, pacing, wringing my hands, expecting, 'shoulding', doubting, bargaining etc...all the things that tell me I am not yet where I want to be.

I discovered at the end of that very ego dominated hour...that things were not going to go our little way. He was not successful and down he went into the spiral of some dark space I couldn't follow.  I stood above him and sang out my support, my love, my concern, my fear and yes even my anger(which I had hoped I could rise above). He was too far down to hear me and all the pain just settled in my chest where it so loves to curl and down I went physically.

Trust God; Trust Life

I have to remind myself that Life knows what it is doing.  If things don't turn out the way that 'I', in my small little ego dominated mind, think they should... it doesn't mean that it is not happening the way it needs to...to ensure the greater good.

I stepped aside, later that day, away from my numbing busy work. I sat outside with the sound of bird chatter, buzzing insects and the breeze through all the trees that were surrounding me...and I allowed myself to feel two things...love and gratitude.  Those two emotions consumed me and somehow eased the feeling in my chest.

Ironically...I wake up today (after allowing myself to sleep in until 11)...to this lesson from ACIM

Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

-ACIM-W-Lesson 215: 1

 

I feel peace.  I feel a calm acceptance.  I will be patient. How cool is that?

 

 

All is well in my world.

Have a Little Faith: Placing the Future in God's Hands

The past is gone; the future is not yet.  Now am I freed from both. For what God gives can only be for good.
-ACIM-W-214:2-4

Looking into the future, what do you see?  I would assume that is more of the past, right?  If you have been struggling recently with financial debt, illness, loneliness or whatever we humans call 'problems,' you may see the same in the days ahead.  Even if you affirm, visualize  and intend all the things you want...memory will sometimes paint the future with the experience you are familiar with.  And if you see a  continuation of some form of despair in your own little idea of 'my life' what will you see for the world at large? Hmm!

Ego Plays with Hope

We read and hear about the power of intention...of changing our lives with a change in our thoughts. We hope for that change. It is easy to hope for things to be different but having faith that they will be is an entirely different matter. Hope is a conscious  thing but faith operates much deeper, into the subconscious. Ego plays with hope but shrinks with faith. So we need to replace hope with faith.

What's the Solution for putting more faith in the world's future?

Let go!  That's it...just let go! Let go of ego and its manipulations that bring doubt.  Let God take over for a while.  Place the future where it can only prosper...in God's Hands. 

It is ego that deprives your future of good...God, on the other hand,  can only give good.  Know what you want for the little 'i' and more importantly for the bigger 'I' ...for the world...and then let go of it.

Inspired Action

Let go!  That doesn't mean you put your feet up and turn a blind eye to the areas that need change.  It simply means that you allow faith to guide you and inspire you.  Allow it to inspire your action and your next step.  Inspired action requires little effort and no struggle.  Inspired action brings joy in each moment.  Inspired action takes the focus from the outcome and makes each step a grace filled one.  Inspired action can change our own lives for the better and it can change the world for the better.

Let go! Having faith doesn't mean things will always turn out the way we think they should. They will turn out the way God knows they should. We may not see the blessing in the circumstance we encounter...with our tiny little perspectives but God does. God sees the whole picture. Trusting that Life is doing exactly what is best for all is the key to peace.

It all starts with a little bit of faith.

All is well in my world!

Depersonalizing Life

In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche, there exists a second psychic system of collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals.
- Carl Jung (from The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious)

Say what Carl?

Carl Jung, a renown early 20th century psychiatrist who studied under Sigmund Freud, is telling us there are two levels of consciousness: One superficial layer that most of us believe is the only layer and a deeper layer that only few of us will ever truly experience in this life time. 

The superficial layer is ego dominated.  When we operate from this level life seems very 'personal'. We see our selves as separate from each other and from the divine. We are defending and attacking, attaining, maintaining, loosing and occasionally winning. For the most part we are struggling. We see this as the only way there is when it is nothing but a smoke screen.

In the  deeper level of consciousness things are different.  There is no separateness but an identical nature existing within all. There is union of all things (yoga).  There is peace and love and joy without struggle. This is where we truly are. Getting to the 'experience' of  this psychic level is a process, one we often call awakening.

The Realization of the Impersonal Nature

My last few entries expressed this realization I have been having.  Thanks to Adyashanti, mooji and Eckhart Tolle, whom I have been listening to in hope their wisdom would guide 'me' beyond this seemingly 'personal/maternal crisis' I have been perceiving, I realize that what I think is "My life" is really not my Life.  I am seeing (on a purely intellectual level at this point),that there is nothing personal about Life...though it seems to be so personal. What I perceive to be happening to me as a mother and to my son is not happening to me or to me son...it is just happening.

The Stage

All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.
-Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act II, Scene VII 

We need to think like Shakespeare did and see Life as a stage. Most importantly we need to see our minds as the stage producer, ego as the director and the little' me' or "I" as the star. We have to see the impersonal nature of it.

What difference does that make?

What difference does it make to think like that? Well by removing the "my' from life, story or problem I am no longer the star in this drama that seems so personal. I am just a person watching it.  I do not have the 'pressure' of remembering lines I am expected to remember, emoting and feeling in the way the director tells me I should.  I am not putting all this energy in to the production to stay in character. "I", I am realizing, am not the character.  I am so much more.

Watching from this state of so much more is so much easier than being in the play.  It is such a relief! I am in a sense distancing myself without closing my eyes to what is happening around me. I am still aware but not overly attached or lost in the part ego and society expect me to play. My mind stays clearer that way so I can respond rather than react.

That doesn't mean I don't feel the pain, the grief, the fear...but as long as I am watching I am feeling it as a witness rather than a sole player.  It's not just 'my' pain, 'my' story...it's universal.  It belongs to no one and at the same time it belongs to all.  This situation and the emotions I am feeling are  just  expressions of life ebbing in and out of consciousness. It goes from one act, one scene to the next.  It isn't personal!  It truly only becomes "Pain, suffering, struggle" when I attach a "My" to it and jump up on stage to start acting it out.

The Threshold

I realize there is a deeper level of consciousness from which to perceive life but I am not yet fully living from there.  I find myself  on the threshold between true realization (experiencing, feeling, knowing this to be true) and perceiving from the first psychic layer of consciousness which is ego dominated. 

Most of us are still on the stage...not knowing, not seeing that we are simply playing a part ego tells us to play...thinking this play is real and all there is.  We are lost in the character and the drama. We don't see the audience watching us. 

That audience of course is the second layer of consciousness...the collective unconscious, the Atman, the soul, or the Self.  There is just One audience...every expression of it  claps at the same time,  laughs at the same time...hisses and boos at the same time.  Though there is a form sitting in each individual seat...each member of the audience is identical...an expression of the One greater audience, the collective, universal, impersonal nature .

Realization of the Audience

Once we know there is indeed an audience...everything changes.  We say to ourselves, "If there is an audience watching me...then I must be playing a part.  What am I doing here?  This must be an act.  It must be  a drama created by my ego.  It is not real...nothing but stage props and other actors.  Man?  Why am I playing in such a terrible drama? " We begin the detachment from the act and thus from our over identifying with the superficial layer of consciousness.

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the thinker.

The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.

You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought,

that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.

You also realize that all the things that truly matter,

-beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace-

arise from beyond the mind.

You begin to awaken.

-Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now)



I am at the point of my waking up where I am realizing I am playing a part and starring in some drama.  I see the edges of the stage and see glimpses of audience in the darkened theatre.  Every now and again...just for the briefest of seconds...I even wake up in one of those seats and watch what is going on up on stage.  The witnessing  doesn't last long...but while I am sitting there things are so peaceful.  Things are so clear. Life is so impersonal!But before I know it I am back on stage.  

I am still spending most of my time on stage and though sometimes I even forget that I am acting, I am for the most part aware that I am acting and that there is an audience out there watching me act. I know now there is me as a character and me as an audience member.  Life is so much easier as the audience member. Why? Because it isn't so personal. It is not about me!

Life Isn't Personal!

We can depersonalize life by leaving the dramas we are playing in and sitting down to watch life .  Life circumstances are just that circumstances...scenes in a play we do not have to star in. The true living occurs in the seat...as part of a greater consciousness.

All is well.


References


Jung, Carl.  The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.  (https://books.google.ca/books?id=hmXfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=In+addition+to+our+immediate+consciousness,+which+is+of+a+thoroughly+personal+nature+and+which+we+believe+to+be+the+only+empirical+psyche&source=bl&ots=TUg9ErW21t&sig=7uu5klACIOxbxuL8eW_nfi6KFQ4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJktHMi8LcAhWH3oMKHaW3CbEQ6AEwBnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=In%20addition%20to%20our%20immediate%20consciousness%2C%20which%20is%20of%20a%20thoroughly%20personal%20nature%20and%20which%20we%20believe%20to%20be%20the%20only%20empirical%20psyche&f=false

Tolle, Eckhart.( 2004)  The Power of Now. New World Library.

'Not about me' and freedom

The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is stop struggling, striving, seeking and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you do not know who you are; you lose your boundaries; you lose your separateness; you lose your specialness; you lose the dream you have lived all your life. eventually you lose all your mind ever created and awaken to who you really are: the fullness of freedom unbound by any identifications, identities or boundaries.
-Adyashanti

The Words that Keep us stuck in struggle

Nothing, absolutely nothing, that happens in Life is about 'me'.  I tell myself it is by over using the words 'my' and "i' and 'me'. 

I describe things in my head and through my mouth  as "My Life", "My problem", "My happiness [or lack of]."My story" or "Not my fault!".

 I am constantly referring to my separated state with things like"I am here."  "I am this and I am that."  "I have this and I have that." Adyashanti encourages us to listen sometimes to a conversation someone else is having and count the number of times we hear the word 'I".  Or most eye opening...listen to how many times we say it. It would probably blow us away.

And the use of the 'me' word is addictive.  "You don't understand 'me".  "You don't listen to me." "It is all about  me".  "  Sometimes we will say things like "You like me, you really, really like me" but usually that 'me' has a melodramatic self pitying connotation to it. "You will never guess what it happens for me." "Poor me"

The Story Ego Writes

Man...our sense of suffering is derived from this idea that Life is about us as individuals. As long as we are spouting off the 'I',' My' or 'me' in the conversations that go on in our heads or to someone else we are caught in story.  As long as we are caught in story we will suffer because ego is the writer of that story, not the Self we really are. Ego writes about struggle not the peace it is afraid of.

I mean there will be lots of good parts in our stories. The writer wants to hook us. There will be joy, adventure, romance and laughter.  there will always be suspense, anticipation and a longing for more  but there will also be a lot of struggle because that is what we want. We are constantly seeking for something that makes us flip through the pages of life so quickly we do not appreciate what is on each  page...we will be looking for how it ends, wanting it to be 'better', more 'exciting' full of things we gain, achieve, cling to in order to make the story better. And these things will be written off again and again.  We will lose just as quickly as we gain.  We will have unexpected twists in plots.  As long as it is "My Story", we won't find true joy and satisfaction, we will suffer.

Do we want to feel good?

Yes! we want to feel good but we also want to suffer, to struggle. We want to struggle to feel good. The 'I', the"My' and the "me' need the struggle to stay alive.

True Joy

Adyashanti, in his beautiful yet simple description of true joy explains how we do experience it from time to time. How in an unexpected moment we find ourselves feeling it, smiling or laughing for no apparent reasons.  How sometimes something beautiful catches our eye and its like"Awe!" or we look at someone we love and our heart feels full, we witness an unexpected kindness and we feel warm all over.  In these moments  time stops...we feel satisfaction and joy.  We are not suffering. Why?  Because we are not thinking!  We are not  telling ourselves a story.  We are not identified with that "My" "I" or "me". We in our tiny little egoic forms disappear.

 It is, in those rare fleeting yet blessed moments that we all experience from time to time, so much more than that.  What brings us true joy is the presence within us that speaks to the "us"  of all things.  We are experiencing Life as who we truly are.

If we could just stay there...get there and stay there, there would be no need to suffer because we will not feel personally attacked by Life in a story ego is writing and narrating.  We will simply feel and Be Life!  That is what experiencing the true Self is all about. It is not about me.

Our freedom comes from the thing we fear the most...the absence of the little self, from knowing and feeling: "It truly is not about me."

References

Adyashanti (1999) Why we struggle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvJ9hrGN0UE

Adyashanti: No Self .  From the Inspirational Quotes and Videos site http://inspirationalvideosandquotes.com/hp_wordpress/?p=103

Choosing Joy instead of Pain

I choose the joy of God today instead of pain.
-ACIM -w-190



Pain is my own idea...(ACIM-W-210:2)


Pain is a choice.  Suffering, dukkha, feeling dissatisfied with Life ...whatever you want to call it..is a choice. It is something we created in our heads and something we cling to because it gives us something that we want.

Say what, crazy lady?!!!  Who would choose pain?

I know, I know.  It sounds bizarre but it is true. It is not that we choose suffering  fully consciously but we do choose it on some level.  It serves a purpose for our egos.

Specialness and Separation 

Egos thrive on this idea of all us little 'i' s  struggling in this big bad world. It convinces us we are all separated and alone and the only way to make it, is to become special in our own eyes and some one else's. We need to become special...see our special talents and gifts...recognize how special we are and become 'special' to a select few of others. So we try to attain, gain, achieve in order to meet that requirement of separation . 

The Rewards of Struggle

The more we do so against unfavorable odds (Life!)...the more special we become.  And even if we do not achieve...we can gain great 'special recognition' through the amount of struggling and suffering that shows up in our lives.  We can gain special status  as winners and we can gain special status as losers (victims to the struggle of Life). It really doesn't matter which, does it?  They both lead to the same outcome.   The more we struggle, the more we suffer...the more 'special 'we become.

Society fosters this and rewards suffering.  "Look at the adversity she had to overcome to get where she is at. She is so special."  Or we try to build self esteem in others ( build ego separation) by affirming and encouraging others to affirm how special they are.  "I am special.  I love myself.  There is only one person in the world like me.  I am unique and I have special gifts to offer." We become conditioned to believe a 'specialness status'  is what we need to make us happy. We, at some level,  want to star in some melodrama and reap the accolades and rewards for doing so either as heroes or victims.

So we are choosing pain...we are choosing struggle in our lives.  It adds to the great drama of human existence that poets and playwrights write about.  Suffering  becomes the fabric from which our culture is woven.  The more we  struggle ...even if we don't overcome our struggles...the  better the drama...the more badges of honor and stardom our little 'i' receives.  The more 'separate' it becomes. We want to star in our own drams, don't we? 

Why?

We choose to struggle to maintain our separate "I" identities. Egos are narcissistic to the core. As long as we are identified with the little 'self', the little 'me' we will suffer. The little 'i' always has a story to tell...an act in a play to perform and a struggle to endure. Because the little me maintains its separate stardom through struggle.

I have been perceiving 'struggle' and suffering in my own life lately.  A parental concern has become a legitimate serious life circumstance that I find myself helpless but to do anything but watch it unfold before my eyes.  I am 'worrying' to the point of not sleeping at night.  I literally feel 'sick' when I confront it or think about it.  It...the life circumstance I am observing...feels so real and all consuming.  'I' am suffering, struggling in this life drama that feels so bloody awful. I am struggling against it, resisting it like a drowning victim resists the water. 

And 'I' am watching myself doing it.  I am seeing myself in some form of a drama and man am I good!!! I am gaining  'special' status for the part I am playing in all this.  People are awed by the character's struggle and I am gaining added specialness for adding another great struggle to an already big and dramatic life story. "Look at me and what I am going through...now!"  I hate it but my ego loves it! 

It Doesn't have to be this way!

I am choosing pain because it is what I know but it doesn't have to be this way. We do not have to suffer or struggle.  We do not have to play this part or live this story.  There is another way.  There truly is one solution for every problem and it is a spiritual one. Most steps toward enlightenment begin with this desire to get past ego's need for pain.

We can choose differently.  We can choose joy, our natural state of being that God has created in us instead.  If we put down ego's dramas and the scripts it tells us we need to play in order to survive we will see there is another way.    When we choose the "Self" over the little 'self/me' ...there is no need for drama. When we put down our need to be 'special' and separate which is not who we are and see ourselves as Who we really are (One Self)......struggle just goes away.

Life circumstance may not change but we will!

Life circumstance doesn't necessarily get easier. What I am witnessing with my physical eyes may not change. Life will be life with its ups and its downs...but when we are ready to choose differently...we will approach life circumstance differently. We will respond to it without ego's drama.  We will see that we do not need  'specialness' and that even at a deeper level we do not want it. 

When we return to experiencing the natural state of joy beneath all these mental modifications...we will be able to observe the ups and downs of human experience peacefully.    When we put away the 'I' identity and experience Life as the Self...all misery goes away.  It is the story the mind clings to about who we are and whatever is going on in our lives that causes the pain...not the actual life circumstance.

Everything the little "i' identity clings to will create misery at some point.  In its narcissistic ventures to maintain specialness...it will never find joy.  But when we swap the "me' for Self- which is everything and everyone...we no longer have a selfish need for struggle. "Now we know that selfish thoughts bring misery and selfless ones leave us in peace." (Satchidananda, 2011, page 11).

Hmmm!  Now that is something to think about!

References:

ACIM -workbook- Lesson 190, 210

Sri Swami Satchidananda (2011), The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Integral Yoga: Yogaville.

Excuse my rant yesterday.  :)  I had a lovely birthday surrounded by family.  I appreciate all the kindness and well wishes shown to me.

I just realize every now and again how different I am....how different I am from others and how different I am from the person I used to identify myself as.  I am also surprised to discover what makes me excited and what doesn't.  (Well not 'makes me'...but you know what I mean :)).  I prefer ordinary peaceful days that hold no obligation or expectation.  I prefer to be rather than to do.

It's all good.  A little high on paint thinner and have a chest full of paint sand...but it is all good.