Working with Karma: Inheriting My Own Life in Post-Awakening
Working with Karma
Inheriting My Own Life in Post-Awakening
There is a circular phenomenon that occurs in addiction. One of the best comments on it can be found in “The Doctor’s Opinion” section of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Doctor Silkworth writes:
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
Page 3, Alcoholics Anonymous
What the good doctor is describing is a blind, or unconscious pattern. It’s a default conditioning, just like when I start up my computer and Windows, The Weather Channel, and my anti-virus software all open up. That will continue to happen until I either change the prompts or the computer dies.
They have a saying in recovery that runs, “If you sober up a horse thief, you’ll have yourself a sober horse thief.” In other words, you may have removed the crazy juice from that body, but you haven’t removed the crazy thinking from that brain. That takes time.
Those of you who are already awake as you read this will know that neither the unit nor the personality wake up in a so-called awakening. Awakeness wakes up to itself. Given that the character-unit doesn’t wake up, guess what? It keeps doing much of what it was doing before it woke up!
We call this “dancing out the dance.” The unit will do what it does until it does something else. We wake up to the dream, but we do not wake up from the dream. Once awakening occurs, however, we can begin to witness our life patterns. Some will be skillful, many will not be.
But by witnessing these patterns, by simply noticing them and being willing to be other than the way we are (this is often the hardest part), these patterns will begin to fade. Once we fully penetrate a pattern, seeing absolutely clearly that this is no longer beneficial, then that pattern will drop you. You don’t drop it, it drops you. This can take some repetition. Go easy on yourself during this phase. I’m 8+ years in, and I’m still in this phase. It’s all a matter of degree.
We could call these patterns karma. We could in fact call DNA itself karma. It’s the residual stuff that somehow moves up the unit line. We know it does, because we can trace every single one of our DNA lines back to Africa thousands of years ago. And what is DNA? A collection of patterns.
Ramana Maharshi said, and of course he had the Sanskrit names for them, which I do not, that there are three types of karma in post-awakening. The first is “carved-in-stone” karma, meaning that this karma is already cast, and it’s going to play out in the world, enlightenment or no, and that is that.
For example, you’ve been speeding down the same road, 60 mph in a 35 zone, for the last five years of your pre-awakening. On Monday you wake up, everything is perfect, and then you skid out in the rain, hit a tree, and go visit the intensive care ward for a while. Oops.
The second type of karma is what I call “modified” karma. This means that some lines of karma are still going to play out in the world, but due to awakening having occurred, these lines don’t play out with the full force that they would have had the being they are playing through not been awakened.
You’re on the same road, and you’re still speeding, only you are clearer than you used to be, and you’re starting to recognize that this is an unskillful pattern. So you slow down from 60 to 45 and only get a $100 traffic ticket for driving too fast for conditions.
The third type of karma is “negated” karma. You get in the car, but when your foot hits the pedal, it pushes the car to 35 instead of 60. You notice, “Wow, I’m driving much slower. I notice I feel calmer. I notice the neighbors do, too. Cool.”
We typically notice negated karma by its absence rather than its presence. Conscious Awakeness has simply restructured the unit in some basic, beneficial ways. As J. Krishnamurti used to say about his headaches, “They’re re-wiring me.”
So this is the way Conscious Awakeness can affect a so-called individual’s past karma going forward from vertical awakening. (Horizontal awakening includes all of pre-awakening, and post-awakening process. Vertical awakening refers to the event aspect, which most, but not all, will experience.)
Of course karma is only something we can talk about in regard to the relative plane. Seen from the nondual view, there’s no individual, and thus no karma is actually possible, but tell that to the cops when they’re hauling you off to jail for something Mr. Doesn’t Exist did some years back.
We will now move from the hypothetical to the empirical: my life, my karma.
So what do you do when you’re carrying a particularly heavy load from the past? Bring your helmet and skis, you’re going for quite a ride. One of the reasons I couldn’t quit drinking was that every time I quit I discovered that I was inheriting my own traumatized life. It felt like that life was such that anyone would have to drink over it, so it was back to the races.
Finally things got so bad that I had no choice. I wouldn’t have quit drinking if I could have kept drinking, but I couldn’t. I had shown a huge capacity for pain, but ultimately even I was surrendered. Being surrendered is when you tell yourself the truth: there’s no way out. I couldn’t drink successfully, and I couldn’t quit trying to drink successfully.
This “I’m completely screwed and there’s nothing I can do about it” moment is charmingly called surrender. But it’s not something we do. It’s something that happens automatically in response to truth. With the collapse of the ego, there is finally room for something new to come in, for the blind pattern to be broken, and for something fresh in the way of change to arise.
When that ton of bricks known as acknowledged alcoholism hit me, I stayed down. I stayed cooperative. In fact, I moved from cooperative to aggressively seeking change, and I was willing to go to any lengths to get it. I could smell a rat in the house, and he was wearing my shoes.
So as I trod the boards of my karma’s detritus, I took no shortcuts. If the only venue where I could still play was recovery, then I would at least be a winner there. I would out-spiritualize the competition and rise to the level of sainthood, which is when I hoped the women and money would start showing up.
But a funny thing happened as I was taking all this action. As I moved from intellectual spirituality to experiential spirituality, I actually changed. I became a whole new human, just like they’d told me you could. I never really believed it could happen to someone who’d been a homeless drunk and an utter ne’er do well, but it did anyway.
I was so happy that I figured my new halo and wings would be noticed by everybody. They weren’t. People in recovery could see sweeping changes taking place, but people in my life saw the same guy with the same hair who walked the same and talked with an unchanged accent. This points to the tremendous benefit and power of a healing community.
They couldn’t see that I was a new guy, and I get that. I’d been a “new guy” before and then fallen back in with the devil, so to speak. And let’s recall that if I could have avoided becoming a new guy and just drunk myself to death, I would have done just that–so I’m not crowing for credit. But I really was completely changed by the action steps of recovery–somewhat against my egoic will.
Of course I still had some faults that were only slightly smaller than the one they call San Andreas, but the great news is that you can’t see all that when you’re making progress. Recovery’s greatest line is, “We are not saints. We claim spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.”
When I took all that spiritual progress out into the world, I found a whole lot of closed doors. Prospective employers, banks, neighbors, and family were all looking at one thing: the ugly pumpkin that was the walking, talking testimony of my ruinous and ruined life.
I didn’t get it. I was a very popular guy in recovery. People loved, respected, and trusted me. Finally I figured out why that was the case. In recovery, especially in early recovery, people were looking for and at the beautiful light that was shining through the ugly jack o’lantern. The rest of the world was still looking at the pumpkin.
Light will shine through any empty pumpkin you put it in, and I had become an empty pumpkin. And I was making a difference. From a homeless drunk to a contributing citizen. What a miracle. I can’t tell you how big that was for me. So I let the “normies,” as we sometimes called them, think what they wanted to think and did my own thing. They were going to think what they thought anyway, and there was no point in my suffering over it.
Six years after I sobered up, I woke up. I didn’t earn it, unless you count suffering as earning, and if you do, then I earned it many times over. No one earns awakening; it doesn’t work anything at all like that. And the Light of Truth, just like the light of recovery, will shine through any old empty pumpkin it lands in. It has its own rules of efficiency, and it could not care less about ours.
A flower will grow out of a littered Coca-Cola can or up through the cracks in a sidewalk. Birds will build a nest of trash. Life has no pride. It simply has a job to do, and it does it. It is beyond our opinions about it.
Now, I’m the first to agree, that I’ve got myself an ugly pumpkin. I cleaned it up as much as I could, but as I used to tell people in recovery, “If you start in a hole as deep as the one I started climbing out of, then it takes a long time just to get up to ground level.”
I didn’t say that out of modesty. I wouldn’t know modesty if it hit me in the face with a shovel. I said it out of accuracy. But I had a spade in my hand when I said it, and I was steadily filling up the terrible sinkhole that was my life.
After I woke up, I found out that I identified much more strongly with the nondual crowd than I did the recovery crowd. I stayed in recovery and basically translated nondual teaching into recovery speech, but there came a time when I simply had to declare loyalties, and I chose this path over that one.
So when I started teaching openly, I once again let the “normies” think what they wanted to think. I was busy waking people up. I was wearing a GPS monitor, and waking people up. It’s a little incongruous, don’t you think?
Yet the people I worked with didn’t give a damn about my monitor. They didn’t give a damn about the ugly pumpkin. They were only interested in the Light. And they woke up.
When I got off of probation in 2011, I had already been teaching Nonduality here, in an informal fashion, with the few people I could find around here, and had been doing so for nearly a year. Once I was free to do as I pleased on the Internet, I started the original Awakening Clarity. I’d been restricted for a long time, and now I wanted to be involved.
A lot of people thought I was a nut. A good number of people have always thought I was a nut. Perhaps I am a nut. But I am a nut with a mission: I plan to live this life as happily and engaged as I can, regardless of its contents and conditions. Or, more properly, I plan to be as absent as I can so that Tao can live my life with the least amount of resistance possible.
So when I moved my teaching from my living room to the Internet, it never once occurred to me to get up there and announce what a shitty looking pumpkin I was. I talked about the Light that was shining through it. I figured that was what everyone wanted. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and my words never hurt anybody.
When I moved from just running the website to teaching via Skype, I have to tell you, once again it never, for one second, occurred to me to hang a shingle on my site pointing toward the ugly pumpkin. Hell, I’d already been doing having to do that for five years, and to a lesser degree I would have to live with that shingle around my neck for the rest of life–or until I don’t, whichever comes first. Call me naïve, or call me a con man, as some have, but I thought it was the present light that was the important part of spirituality. I still do.
Most of my clients work with me for about 2.5 hours, and I never see them again, or maybe I see them a couple of more times and then they’re gone. Many of them drop me emails, but talking to me is not cheap, and the whole point of my teaching is not to create a dependency on me, it’s to set people free. This teaching is not about so-called individuals. It’s about an awakening Tao.
I simply don’t believe that I owe these pass-through clients anything more than what they pay for: which is the greatest clarity that I can muster here (meaning the thinnest appearance of Fredness), so that I can hopefully help them muster that same clarity over there. I didn’t choose to be a spiritual teacher. Spiritual teaching chose me. I’m doing the best I can, folks.
Granted, some of my clients use me as a clearing tool, and those who do talk to me regularly. Some feel that my crowd should be shocked and dismayed at their choice of pumpkins, but the funny thing is they’re not. My active, regular clients have been keenly supportive of me and this teaching, regardless. I have not lost a one.
A client in Germany, a publisher of nondual books in German, told me today, “What you are teaching is the very nectar of Nonduality.” I confess to having been really pleased by that. I realize I should be above all that, but I’m not.
I have no sangha, and I don’t want one. I’m not even sure they’re a great idea. Community, yes. Community based around a person? Not so much.
I don’t travel. I wouldn’t live in an ashram with “a flock” at the point of a gun. I’m a married hermit, and so is my wife. A big night for us is an hour of TV holding hands before she goes to sleep and I go read or write or meditate.
I do not see how this unit’s karma has the slightest thing to do with anything else I do. For thousands of years in the West we have hung, burned, stoned, and crucified pumpkins for their pumpkin sins. And we get to busily ignore the light they carry when we do so, which is, of course, the strategy. “Leave us in the dark. We can’t see because we don’t want to.”
Here’s a quote from a supportive email I got tonight from someone well-placed in the nondual community. “Your particular situation makes very little sense to me. The whole point of this is that it is all about transformation. You would think that people would see you as a poster child for that. I can’t understand the harsh feelings for something that happened so long ago, and pre-transformation, either.”
We point outward so that we don’t have to look inward. It’s popular, but I’m not sure it’s productive. We are, in effect, calling God on the carpet, correcting her errors of judgment in her timing and placement of lights, and telling her how things should be. Because we are the ultimate benchmarks of the world, and we know.
I just can’t get my mind around all of this. I have a job to do. I’m to wake people up until I don’t. I didn’t cause that, and I can’t stop it. I don’t think criticism can either. From homeless drunk to contributing citizen. Wow. I don’t think I’m everyone’s teacher, nor do I ever imply that. In recovery I used to tell freshly sobering drunks, “The bad news is that you’ve got to be pretty damn sick if I’m going to be the doctor. The good news is, you qualify!”
That same thing applies in this field. I may not be much of a pumpkin, but to the people who are tired, scared, confused, lonely and suffering–and who are paying more attention to the light rather than the jack o’lantern, I seem to be at least reasonably helpful.
I am not in any way suggesting here that we give spiritual teachers–or any other leaders–a blanket excuse to do whatever they feel like, while pretending to bask in some special glow. I don’t mean that at all. We should all be held accountable for our actions. The idea that the unit is somehow not responsible for its own acts, however much that might be true on some lofty level, is a Universalist cop-out, and I don’t subscribe. Mea kulpa.
Responsibility must be placed somewhere, and it falls squarely on the unit. This is why I say this is karma. In the way that it plays out on the relative plane, it is the unit’s responsibility, and thus it’s the unit’s job to square it up. This teaching has never been about dodging, excusing, or transcending everyday life. That is why, in the early days, in pre-awakening, I did precisely what I did: I attempted to make amends.
I stepped forward, accepted responsibility for my actions, and acknowledged my misdeeds publicly. I at least offered amends. Three times. I have an ongoing living amends, of which this whole thing–including this very post–is a part. I accepted my punishment. I paid my fees, I did my time, I walked an incredibly difficult line for five years, and to a lesser degree, I continue to walk it today.
It seems to me that at some point we have to put things behind us or we can never move forward. For good or ill, yesterday is yesterday, and I’ve tended my karma as well as I can. As Byron Katie says, “The best thing about the past is that it’s over.” I’m moving forward. I invite you to join me. Thank you to those of you who’ve been supportive. Best wishes to those of you who haven’t.
This is the last I plan to speak of this.
All love,
Fredness
11.22.14
November 22, 2014 @ 2:22 am
Gee Fred, you’d have to be a quite fearful Ego to find you and/or your teachings offensive. Keep up the good work my friend, your bright, shiny pumpkin is much needed.
Greg.
November 22, 2014 @ 10:48 am
There is a lot of insight shining in this comment. Thank you, Greg!
In joy,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 3:32 am
Hi Fred,
If you are a nut then you are a beautiful nut. Thank you for your honesty.
Mira
November 22, 2014 @ 10:47 am
I love this! Thank you!
In peace,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 4:26 am
Thank you, Fred. I very much appreciate you sharing your story, your Youtube videos, and your admissions/perspective offered here and in the Glass houses post (both of which, I think, are very gracefully done). I second the person who sent you the supportive e-mail, whom you quoted in the post above. You have my support, too. It is hugely helpful to see someone such as yourself be as awake as you are despite all you’ve been through. It demonstrates that freedom is available to all of us, and it’s never too late. Mistakes from the past cannot diminish the light you share now. I look forward to more of your writing and videos, and I wish you all the best.
November 22, 2014 @ 10:46 am
Hi, Megan! Yes, freedom really is available in all circumstances. Sometimes we can think that awakening means everything’s going to go our way. It’s certainly not like that! Part o what awakening does is allow us to accept, and sometimes even embrace the adverse circumstances that are sure to occur as Life unfolds. We can argue that things ought or ought not to be as they are, but there is no argument that they ARE as they are.
Gratefully,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 8:01 am
Hi Fred,
I am a regular reader of your blog and books both of which I continue to enjoy. We had a session 18 months or so ago and I’m sensing it may be time for another.
First, thank you for your honest and clear response to having been outed. In reading your books and blogs I had always thought that your ‘sordid past’ was about drinking, money, gambling, stealing, duplicity, etc. It never even crossed the radar to do a google search.
I teach yoga and meditation at the local state prison. My most dedicated students are in the CRA section of the prison where CRA stands for Community Restricted Access. This is where the sex offenders are sent and anyone else who might be at risk if they lived in the general population. It is where you would have gone had you lived in this state and been sentenced to time behind bars and walls. This is a progressive prison. The CRA main room has the twelve steps painted on the walls. It is very much an active recovery program. The state realizes that every one of these men is going to be released eventually and transformation is preferred over recidivism. Nevertheless these men are at the shitty end of the stick in prison culture. They have a very small space outdoors where they can exercise, their time in the gym is limited. Other prisoners take the attitude “I may be scum but I’m better than them.”
As I said, the men from this population are my most dedicated students. I only know them by their first names and I have no idea of the nature of their crimes. I’ve no doubt they earned the right to be there. At first I was frightened (insert Bubba joke here) but within a minute of beginning class they became yoga students first and special prisoners a distant second. Not all the offenders take my classes. It is challenging, not merely the poses but because yoga opens and expands awareness of the body and it requires placing your body in positions that invite past stories to arise. I keep it moving and I keep it physically challenging. The meditation and reflection happens at the end.
I notice that when I share the stories of teaching this population, most people shy away (insert second Bubba joke here). I notice that in popular culture sexual predation and violence is expected to be part of the prison sentence. But I no longer have that privilege of prejudice because I know these men as people and as people in recovery doing the best they can and working hard.
So all that just to say I appreciate your continuing work and openness. You have touched a raw nerve for many people. It is no longer acceptable to dump on someone for their race or creed but by God you can back up the truck on a sex offender. I hope that you’ll continue to draw strength from people who actually know you, your work, your humor and your sincerity. We’re all God’s children. Blessings to you and yours.
November 22, 2014 @ 10:40 am
Hey, Philip! This is fantastic! Thank you, thank you! I read it to Betsy as we had some morning tea. Thankfully we already had this weekend scheduled to be off-work and together.
It is no longer acceptable to dump on someone for their race or creed but by God you can back up the truck on a sex offender. [Anything to separate “them” from “us”.]
What a line! There will come a time when this will be viewed as being akin to putting people in stocks and throwing rotten vegetables at them. Isolating a community, however loathsome the acts some of them have committed might be, is the surest path I know of to recidivism. There has to be a willingness to allow people at least the opportunity to heal, learn anew, and rejoin society in a positive way. We have to be willing to let the revenge factor play less of a part in our thinking. It’s in our own best interest. A lawyer friend just sent me this:
There are instances here in CA that upon showing of rehab, community service (good deeds done) that the court reduces the charges to a non-registerable crime and then the registration part goes away.
On we go.
Gratefully, with blessings,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 8:14 am
Hey Fred, just a quick note to thank you for posting. I so appreciate the authenticity, transperency, courage and vulnerability reflected in your sharing. May your Thansgiving be filled with moment-to-moment gratitude for the blessings that are yours. xoxo
November 22, 2014 @ 10:26 am
Hi, Irene! It’s always good to hear from you. Thank you so much for your kindness.
All love,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 8:16 am
Fred,
As a long time student of A Course in Miracles, this firestorm surrounding you right now is easily understandable to me. You could call it Karma but it’s just a little residual guilt that has to be uprooted and forgiven. You are handling it so well that you are still an inspiration to all of us whom you have helped along our paths to Truth. And since there is only one of us in the room, it’s you! Right? Thank you for all you do.
Mary
November 22, 2014 @ 10:25 am
Hi, Mary! Thank you so much for your encouragement.
Gratefully,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 8:49 am
Hello Fred,
This unit is French-Canadian. It’s from St-Bruno, Québec but it’s only part of the field. Boy! You’re the real thing although you’re only part of the same field. Your unit taught me who I am. I am the same way everything is. One boundless eternal consciousness playing the Chinese yin/yang game of life. Every single cell of this unit vibrates in unity and in total surrender. Timelesness, nothingness, freedom and awe, here and now.
I’m forever so deeply grateful.
November 22, 2014 @ 10:24 am
Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to hear back from Myself that the Light is spreading.
All love,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 9:11 am
Hello Fred
Thanks for teaching me who I am: one boundless consciousness playing the yin/yang game of life. I surrender. Freedom and awe, here and now.
November 22, 2014 @ 10:23 am
Thanks again, Andre!
November 22, 2014 @ 10:42 am
Hi, Leo! I certainly understand what you’re saying here. One of the reasons that I wrote this post last night–in a blur until the wee hours–was that Betsy looked at me and asked, “Are we going to let these naysayers win?” I told her, “No, we’re not.” Then I got up and went to the computer.
Gratefully,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 12:23 pm
Hi Fred,
I am sitting here in complete silence having just read “Working with Karma” Your honesty is beautiful.
I am full of happiness, grief, despair, enthusiasm and gratitude. I feel like I could write about my life forever , yet despite all those feelings I am at peace, or should I say life is at peace with itself ?
Over the last couple of years a lot of “non-dual” awakening stuff has happened to me. Including buying your book and I recognize and resonate with everything you say. You’re beautifully down to earth.
I would love to write something profound and meaningful and start a dialogue, but I just feel strangely stunned at the moment. Everything is OK just as it is.
Thanks for everything you do. Love MILES
November 22, 2014 @ 12:24 pm
Thank you, Miles!
All love,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 12:35 pm
Ok Fred, the post went through. Arlene
November 22, 2014 @ 1:39 pm
Dear Fred,
I have not had a clarity session with you nor do I know personally any who have but I have read, seen and closely listened to your message in all of your books, articles, postings and videos. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making a difference in my life by consistently reminding me ever so charmingly of what is really here.
Yours in Unconditional Love,
Kim from British Columbia.
November 22, 2014 @ 3:37 pm
Thank you, Kim! I so appreciate your thoughts.
All love,
Fred
November 22, 2014 @ 3:06 pm
Lol. I heard about this in an unusual way, but I`m not surprised it has blown up. Maybe the Bill Cosby thing will distract people from it! But seriously, anyone who knows their ass from their elbow can see that you are no longer “that man”… But the people who are still sleeping cannot see that. I have great compassion for them. And great Love for you. You are the `real deal` & that is very evident for those that have eyes to see & ears to hear.
November 22, 2014 @ 3:37 pm
Thank you, Cheryl! You are echoing what Hamsa said.
Gratefully,
Fred
November 23, 2014 @ 5:07 pm
Hi Fred,
Been awhile since our very successful session. I continue to follow your blogs and appreciate the truth I find in your messages. Those truths continue to remind me of what I am. You are very much appreciated.
I really find that I don’t give a rat’s ass about who you were. I really do care about your offerings, and your offerings smack of truth. Your messages helps me stay engaged with life. If your future messages no longer have the ring of truth, then they will not serve me and my attention will move on.
The sad part of this whole exposure thing is the glimpse into our insane world belief that we are our history. I am a nutty as everyone else.
With Love and appreciation,
Norb
November 23, 2014 @ 5:11 pm
Hey, Norb! We both loved this note! It gave us a laugh on a day we certainly needed one! 🙂
And thanks for the session plug! I’ll keep doing what I’m doing until Oneness lets me know it’s over. I’ve gotten several bookings since this happened, so I imagine I’m going to continue to be an annoyance to those who DO thing we are our history for quite some time.
Love,
Fred
November 23, 2014 @ 8:00 pm
Hey Fred,
We did an Awakening Session a few months ago and it is still an unfolding event. Thanks much for the words on karma, it’s something I think about a lot what with mine and the collective past that is. Lately, for what it’s worth, I’ve come to see my past lives as being a moment, an hour, or maybe ten or a hundred years ago. It manifests in the present and shapes the future. I can pretend it doesn’t but that is not the experience. Behind all that everything is OK but it sure can seem real. Life takes a lot of courage for everyone, and beginning to see clearly can really take a lot of courage. Hang in there, we are all with you.
November 23, 2014 @ 8:03 pm
Hey, Paul! It’s great to hear from you and I very much appreciate your support. And you’re exactly right–awakening never ends. Only ego wants to graduate. Conscious Awakeness has been functioning here for more than eight years, yet I just had a major insight this week, thanks in part to this pressure. Oh that Vise of Suffering! Thank you again.
In peace,
Fred
November 23, 2014 @ 9:12 pm
Hi Fred, another beautiful post, thank you. I can definitely sense the Light coming through loud and clear in this post and the previous one. As well as so much of your writings. Fredness is a charming unit but there’s no doubt that something else is doing the messaging here through Fredness. This is why I love your work. It is so beautifully clear and at the same time humorous and very direct when it needs to be. But, yes, also obvious that the Light or Awareness or Consciousness or whatever we want to call it, has found a clear channel through the unit. And I, for one, am relieved you’re not sitting on silk pillows in an Ashram in India somewhere with acres of devotees surrounding you (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course). Your (Big You, as I think you say in your writings) style is accessible and, right now, I think the world needs more accessible and less intimidating so these messages are easier to find and digest. Your accessibility and your ability to relate and be brutally honest about your past also helps immensely, especially for units like me.
As a recovering alcoholic myself and someone who most certainly was fundamentally transformed on a spiritual level by the 12 Steps despite my own best efforts NOT to be, I completely identify with what you wrote. And also, of course, the resonance with nonduality that happened, too. Don’t know if recovery laid the groundwork for that or whether the near total destruction of the personality/unit allowed for my ego to shut the hell up long enough for Awareness to peek through but, no matter how I came to it, glad I am here.
Look forward to our session next month and thank you, as always, for a beautiful post.
November 23, 2014 @ 10:44 pm
Thank you, Patti! Our Awakening Session will be a last minute holiday gift to yourself!
I love what you say here. 🙂
In peace and gratitude,
Fred
November 24, 2014 @ 9:00 am
As seen from here, the degree to which we focus on “other people’s business” is the degree to which we ignore our own. Thank you for sharing Fred.
Thanks for your love and commitment to the light.
Love,
Rob
November 24, 2014 @ 9:58 am
Thank you, Rob! Great to hear from you. As Byron Katie says, “There are three types of business: mine, yours, and God’s. I notice that when I’m busy running your business, and God’s business, that there’s no one here running mine.”
We point out so that we don’t have to look within. “I am separate, and I am superior.”
Love,
Fred
November 24, 2014 @ 1:35 pm
You say:
“We should all be held accountable for our actions. The idea that the unit is somehow not responsible for its own acts is an Absolutist cop-out, and I don’t subscribe.
“Responsibility must be placed somewhere, and it falls squarely on the unit. This is why I say this is karma. It is the work of the unit on the relative plane, and it’s the unit’s job to square it up. This teaching has never been about dodging, excusing, or transcending everyday life. That is why, in the early days, I did precisely what I did: I attempted to make amends.
“I stepped forward, accepted responsibility for my actions, and acknowledged my misdeeds publicly. I at least offered amends. I have an ongoing living amends, of which this whole thing is a part. I accepted my punishment. I paid my fees, did my time, walked a difficult line for five years, and continue to walk it today.”
I appreciate the fact that you continue to leave a little room for spiritual misinterpretation. I certainly do. One day, you may see this in a totally different light. Or you may not. Here is the view from ‘here’, ‘now’.
The fact that you think the way you do, including taking some responsibility for ‘past actions’, is part of Fredness, one aspect of the divine perceiving this aspect of itself. Fredness could not NOT do this differently. To say that the unit is responsible for anything is like saying that a car has some responsibility for an accident. The unit is the receptor, the sensor; God or the Infinite, or whatever the name, is the perceiver. The perceiver needs the sensors, some limited view in order to perceive a particular aspect of itself and it needs all kinds, billions and billions and billions in this world alone, all different one from the other, from the ‘lowest’ life form to the most sophisticated. That limited view is done through the sensor, the unit, and it also has its homing device. In this game, at this tiny level, God forgets its unlimited infinite Self in order to perceive the limited but the homing device secures its way back home. Every part of God is home-bound, sensing along the way. You can see it in all of humanity, even in its darkest shades. Without time and space, it all happens at once. With our view of time and space, there are linear events, karma; one death is like one night and it continues. Seeds from one aspect generate crop in another, etc etc, not linked to the individual unit at all. All God’s. This is the simplicity of it all, as it is perceived at the level of this unit. There is no way that a unit without a sense of responsibility could ever feel responsible for its actions, unless or until it is in its basic ‘structure’ to do so now, always in the now.
And of course, this is all a projection, a movie that seems so real…
In love and awareness
Monique
November 24, 2014 @ 2:18 pm
Hi, Monique! Thanks for writing.
I completely understand what you’ve said, and what you say is absolutely true from the Absolute view. However, for me to have presented that view as either explanation or defense would have been way too convenient self-serving, and insincere on the relative level, which is where all apparent experience appears to be taking place. From the relative view I stand by what I wrote, while fully appreciating what you’ve said from the Absolute. Be well.
In love and awareness,
Fred
November 26, 2014 @ 3:28 pm
Hi Fred
Your journey with all its ups and downs and all around
My journey with all its ups and downs and all around
Opposite ends of the same stick
Love pours forth for both our journeys
Support floods in for both as they are one
At its so called end of seeing feeling knowing being
Much Gratitude only
No why me
why you
why why
For a moment I looked at the word I spelt out – why –
and it couldn’t didn’t register
I shook my head
to kinda bring it back to focus on the word
Just a Word
Much Love and Light To You and Me
Lana
November 26, 2014 @ 3:30 pm
Thanks, Lana! I think you’ll like the next post I’m going to get out for Thanksgiving. 🙂
All love,
Fred
November 26, 2014 @ 4:06 pm
Feed
I like what you said about on the relative level
And
which is where all apparent experience appears to be taking place
And If not from there it dismisses This happening to either
End of the same stick
And on the Absolute Level – only now with nothing attached to it
Lana
November 28, 2014 @ 5:27 pm
Man, I wish I’d said that. I’ve spent time in “those rooms,” too, Fred. This was a great meeting. Thanks.
November 28, 2014 @ 10:05 pm
Thanks, George! Good to hear from you.:-)