PRIME POST: When the Shift Hits the Fan

Let me tell you about something I used to notice frequently, and can still notice once in a while today, 10 years after Conscious Awakeness began functioning through this apparent body. Everything would be going along just fine; I’d have a strong sense of spiritual connection, there were moments of bodily bliss and mental splendor. My precious, divine attention would be fully focused on the deep, still, silent, self-effulgent nondual “I” that I really am, and then the unit would stump its toe, and the whole damn thing would go to hell.

Ever notice that?

Let’s face it, most of us got to this present now, where we are surrounded by pointers and reminders of our perfect True Nature, only because we were first trying to avoid our True Nature at any cost. How in the world we thought we could somehow avoid the Oneness that we are, which automatically includes all appearances, including the one writing this and the one reading this, I don’t know. But we did. The most amazing thing about awakening is how obvious Truth is upon reflection. It’s clear as a bell once it is, but it’s not clear at all until it is.

Let’s assume here that you’ve already woken up. That’s a stretch for some of you, but it’s less of a stretch than you think for all of you.

First, what does “awake” even mean? It means that I know that I am this Now. I’m not “living in the now,” the Now is living in me, and is not other than me. “Awake” means knowing that I am all of manifestation–and more besides. “Awake” means I know that this present arising is how I’m presenting myself to myself in this so-called moment. We know that “big I” has already accepted it or it couldn’t exist, so can it make any sense for “little I” to now resist it? None whatsoever unless I’m simply a fan of self-torture.

What’s happening here, in “the world”–as if there was just one!–is that I’m showing off for myself. I’m entertaining myself. I’m playing hide and seek. Have I nothing better to do? Apparently not, because this is what I’m doing. It’s not a mistake, it’s not an accident. Nor would I say it’s a “plan,” but I would say it’s What Is, and What Is is a really tough thing to argue with successfully.

Impossible? Yes, I think that’s the word we’re looking for.

When awakening occurs, it is seen that there is no “real” Fred, or Donna, or Phil. It may further be seen that there is a character known to itself and others as Fred who is playing out a role on Stage Set Earth with a no-Donna and a no-Phil for no real reason other than Why not? It’s just a play! What a riot! And oh goody, nothing matters! (Until it does.)

We may then get lost in the no-personal-thing-going-onness of things and hang out there for a while, perhaps quite a while, or we may see further that the reason there is no Fred or Jane or John is that there is only Oneness, which is what we truly are. This second feature of our night at the movies, however, is not guaranteed. Sometimes we just see what we are not. Regardless, we will not be able to bring that alive seeing/being back with us in the form of a memory when we return to the icky, sticky dream of the relative world. (Which we inevitably will.) Yet we will have seen something we cannot unsee, and thus we are forever changed.

Perhaps ruined is a better word than changed. We are forever ruined for a life not focused around spirituality.

At that can’t unsee point we will likely have our head so far in the tiger’s mouth that there’s no pulling back. It’s seek or be damned, and it’s usually both. We are doomed to be seekers until we’re ready to quit being seekers, which can be a long, long, long time, even though in truth there is no such thing as time. Welcome to the weird down-the-rabbit-hole world of paradox, Alice. Welcome to Nonduality.

There is one point we universally forget in post-awakening. I have never seen anyone avoid this pitfall, and I didn’t avoid it either. At some point, sooner or later, or most likely both, we forget that Oneness doesn’t start on the other side of our skin! “Fred” was having a lovely afternoon spending time as his holy Wholeness, and then something happened–surely outside of his holy Wholeness, something over there just beyond the edge of Oneness, that is now bothering me, meaning the “rugged, individual, John-Wayne-cowboy me” that exists in addition to Oneness. Furthermore, if I could just get past that one wrong thing, I could get back to being happy and peaceful and attending to the wakefulness that I remember I used to have before this thing blew up in my face, which certainly should NOT have happened to a fine unit like myself.

Huh?

Do you recognize any of this? I’ll wear mine if you’ll wear yours.

In other words we, queen and king babies everyone of us, wake up to truth and are just fine until something doesn’t live up to the character’s preferences or expectations. Until we are somehow threatened, even while intellectually thinking we know the concept that the only thing that can threaten us is our own imagination. If you do actually know that, you will not know threat, simple as that. 

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

So long as things are going our way it’s easy sailing! Well, let me ask you, how long do you think What Is is going to show itself the way you want it to show itself. The last time I checked it was about 12 minutes, and I think even that is overstating it.

These very units themselves are conditioning. They are resistance to unconditioned space. And that’s fine. No resistance, no experience, and your whole divine point in having this dream is so that you, Awakeness, can experience yourself objectively and expand as Conscious Awakeness. In the absence of all the stuff these units gripe about there is no world. The yin and yang of this dream: the up and down, good and bad, left and right, black and white is the experience itself! Without both, there is what? No-thing.

What else? Nothing. In the absence of yin and yang there is still the No-thing you are, but you don’t even know that you are! Experience requires contrast. If I’m suffering more than I’m enjoying, then this promise may be a beacon of light and a call to the seeker. If I’m enjoying more than I’m suffering, that beacon of light is the headlight on a train! Says ego. Can you hear it?

“Wait, wait, wait, not that, not now! Not to me! Oh, poor, poor me, this is just wrong. This simply shouldn’t be happening. How do I know? Because I don’t want it to happen! I finally got most everything lined up just right–the sweetheart, the career, the money, the car and house and future and all that wonderful stuff and now you’re going to continue changing just like it’s not about me? Unfair! I’m out!”

After all, this is not the deal we cut with God, is it? Our deal was that we’d meditate, recycle, eat only vegetables and give to the poor in exchange for feeling good about our ever-increasing-but-not-quite-there spiritual progress, bragging rights to intermittent spiritual experiences, and a lovely, secure, and above all, unruffled life. That was our deal, and now we get this! What’s up with this?

I’ll tell you what’s up with This. This is Life, and it couldn’t care less what “we” have in mind. It’s not about “us,” it’s about It. This is just Life-ing. It does what it does when it does it, how it does it, and there are no rules anywhere. What do you do when it does what it does? Do you cooperate with the inevitable, do you surrender, or do you fight the “good” (insane) fight?

Let me tell you something. The end result is going to be the end result. You can’t make anything happen, and you can’t stop anything from happening. It is what it is and you get what you get and that’s the open truth we so like to hide.

Life doesn’t need your surrender; it’s perfectly happy to actively surrender you. And it’s willing to take this you that doesn’t really exist but sure feels like it, down just as far as you need to go in order for it to get that localized sense of attention to pay attention to itself. If this sounds entity-driven, that’s just the limits of language; hopefully it’s obvious that I don’t mean anything of the sort.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by Life getting your attention. It’s old, and most of you will be familiar with it, and probably tired of it, but it’s the one I’ve got, so here goes.

I used to have a very high threshold of pain. Remarkably high. Years ago–18 of them, to be precise–Fredness had to go all the way down to living as a bum, coughing and shaking and dying in the bushes of a city park before I would accept even that I might really and truly have a drinking problem. Huh? Most people don’t have to do that. They see where the alcoholism story is heading and they jump off before their life catches fire. Me, I had to wait until there was nothing left of mine but ashes. Ah, the wonders of a high threshold of pain.

Just for the record, I now have an amazingly low threshold of pain. If I notice suffering, I immediately do inquiry until surrender is engaged. Except for the times when I don’t, when the appeal of being right is so sweet that I take on suffering in order to taste it. That won’t last long.

Do you have a high threshold of pain? If so, I quietly suggest that you to look again at your life strategy, if for nothing other than the sake of having a happier dream experience. However, far more importantly, if you don’t lower your threshold of pain, the apparent you that doesn’t really exist but sure feels like it, will nonetheless probably not clear enough to abide and be embodied in this lifetime. That’s hard news for some of you, but it’s true news.

Several years after the park, when I had been clean and sober for four years, I fell through the freshly opened trap door of my so-called “rock bottom.” There is always a trap door to a bottom. If you want this bottom to be your bottom, then stop digging. It took an arrest, two plus years of terror followed by incarceration and public service and humiliation before my negotiations with the divine dropped away to the point where I said, “Okay, you win. Anything but this. Do with me as you will; I give up.”

And that, in a nutshell, would turn out to be the moment that made the difference. In the absence of haggling, in the giving up of any negotiating position, I was effectively surrendered, awakening occurred, and a whole new life began. When I first woke up I saw that the awful set of problems that existed prior to awakening still existed in post-awakening. But they were Fred’s, not mine. I knew, “I’m not Fred!” I don’t have to claim what’s isn’t mine, nor do I have to suffer from that which goes unclaimed.

I am the animating presence that is the background, midground, and foreground of all happenings–consciousness among them. If I don’t claim a problem, I don’t have to suffer from it. If I do claim it, then I’ll suffer for my position until I let go of it–all through the magic and courtesy of vicarious experience through my avatar, “Fred.” Insanity does not beget serenity. These thoughts appear automatically, as default conditioning rises to meet changing circumstance. While the unit-character’s default setting is to believe these thoughts, I do not have to believe them. There is a way out.

The only thing I have found that has a direct, immediate relationship to my clearing out the dust and rust of a unit-character is rigorous self-inquiry. It is the philosopher’s stone which activates the alchemy of changing confusion into clarity, fear into loving acceptance, and “me” from a miserable little man that I thought I was into the unspeakably beautiful, divine vastness that I know I am. This same transformation is available to you, but it comes with a steep price.

You must offer your full attention to attention. You must be willing to live peacefully, which is not nearly so easy as it sounds. In order to accept all arisings as they occur, you must first accept this one. Yes, this one–as ugly as it is, as wrong as it feels, as bad as it seems. Not something else later. This very arising!

Accept this one fully and you’ll come (albeit slowly) to embrace all those which follow. It can only be done right now.

All love,

Fred.ness June 20, 2016