Letters from the Field: Delayed Reaction (It Comes When It Comes)

I just got this email from a guy I worked with yesterday. He told me he was 68, had been studying nonduality for decades, and had yet to have so much as a glimpse. Nothing! He contacted me because he’d read that I had a lot of success with folks in his situation. I said, “Yes, with just a little luck you’ll be awake by the end of the session.” We didn’t get that little bit of luck.

Steve was one of the unusual cases who didn’t wake up with me. I could nonetheless sense that the job had been done: I knew Oneness over there had clearly heard Oneness over here, and I told him, “You’ve got it, you just don’t know it yet. You may experience a delayed reaction. It could be an hour from now, a week, a month, there’s no telling. But Truth has been seen.”

I’m often wrong about stuff, but I wasn’t wrong about this. I Undid my ex-wife over a long lunch a couple of weeks later, and it took two weeks for Truth to seep in enough to wake her up. I’ve had a couple of these overnight delays, and some others in between. It does what it does when it wants with whom it wants when it wants. Our dream characters are not part of that equation.

Steveness still has its work cut out for it, but he was walked through the Gateless Gate. Notice the absence of fireworks. This is more common than not. Had they occurred, they’d probably be over by now, and they would have left Stevenness more confused that he is now, which means it might well be harder for him to clear. We attach to what is interpreted as the “dream character’s benefit.” It’s just habit.

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An interesting thing happened – I’m not sure what it means.
I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. At 12:45 a.m. my eyes popped open and two things were happening.

My mind was working in the opposite way as usual. Instead of the continuous chatter with an occasional break, there was continuous silence. A thought would pop up
and run its course, then the mind would return to silence. I was not doing any practice or technique. This was happening by itself. The silence seemed to be the
default state.

Also, the body seemed to be almost entirely uninhabited, but not completely. The lights are on but nobody’s home – but someone might be peeking through the window.
It was a strange sensation. Not frightening or disturbing in any way, just a very curious feeling.

I got up and walked around for a while, just to see if it would continue, and it did. I went back to bed at 1:30 a.m. When I awoke at about 5:00 a.m. it was gone.
Back to the mental chatter. I wonder how long it would have continued had I stayed up and not gone back to bed.

None of this was flashy or spectacular. There was no sense of seeing through the dream or seeing god in everything. It was all very subtle.

Was this a first tiny baby step? If so, it makes sense that it would happen this way. I have 68 years of inertia built up. Maybe the only way It can happen
is when I’m sleeping and the conscious mind is out of the way.

Or is all this a bunch of hooey and I’m wasting your time and mine?

Steve