Letters from the Field: Following Life All the Way Home

Hello Fred,

At this week’s satsang, I really had no question. I actually found myself in the same state expressed by the first gentleman – spaced, just able to stay awake. I have had that experience many times in the presence of people who hold the truth or a ton of Shakti. Go in with questions and they just disappear.

I started out as someone who would have made a good yogi. I had discovered Eastern spirituality while quite young. At age 19, I learned Transcendental Meditation, and three years later, I spent 14 months helping to build a TM building and learning the siddhis. I had amazing mystical experiences. But there were some issues and I left.

Leaving was a pivotal moment, because had I stayed, I would have in some capacity or another become a monk. But life decided I would have two marriages over the next 28 years. At age 55, six years ago, my knees gave out after a lifetime of martial arts and 22 years of working with the criminally insane at the state hospital. Three months after surgery on both knees, my wife left me. I lost my house, kids, animals, job, and then, a year later, my last friend to cancer.

Life had decided that it was time to reclaim my silence. But despite my past experiences with saints, mystics, and travel to India where I went into a state of oneness for a period of time, when all this happened, I became extremely depressed. There was just so much grief and sorrow: PTSD from birth and childhood, and left alone without health or dental care. I was suicidal for years. I just didn’t want to deal with things.

This past June, I participated in a 10-day Vipassana retreat. The first five days were absolute bliss. I then got very sick, but I still didn’t want the silence to end.

I don’t really practice Vipassana meditation now, but for the most part it lifted my depression. In November, I saw your interview on BATGAP. I bought your book on awakening. Normally John would try very hard to see “THIS,” but this time I just thought, well, let’s see. Fred says he gets good results, so there is a chance, but let’s not drive ourselves crazy trying. And it saw me. Not me seeing it. That was the trick, I suppose. I have seen Gangaji four times, Byron Katie twice, including on her first book tour, wrote to Scott Kiloby for months, back when his first book was coming out, also Adyashanti, and have read books by lesser known teachers and emailed others. I had it intellectually down.

But with you it was different.

Currently, because I let everything go these past five years, I must file for bankruptcy, and found out I owe the IRS over $10,000 – lol! And I must give up my car. John was attached to that car. It was not fancy, but new, and although now I could care less about my image, I enjoyed the reassurance that at least I drove a nice car.

All attachments must be released, I suppose. My struggle is wanting to just find a place to go into a more or less permanent silence. I loved those 10 days of Vipassana meditation and hated having to come out of it. Most couldn’t wait for it to end, but I wanted to stay there forever. But I must deal with the relative world: save for and find an attorney who can do my bankruptcy and negotiate with the IRS, or do it myself, which is inadvisable. But I just want to meditate, to be silent just being what I am. So there is a contraction. If I didn’t have a little retirement to protect, I would be in India just meditating in a cave. But thank goodness, I do have it, as it is needed, and so I must dive in.

So you see, lol, there is no real question, no real asking for instruction, mostly just someone to talk with who is more awake than I am.

And to say thank you so very much for introducing me to my Self!

It’s funny, I had bought your book, The Book of Unveiling, a few months ago. I couldn’t remember if I had read it, but I started it again today. I had a few insights, and then, as if the clouds parted, the simplicity of it all was renewed. When “I” am pretending to be John and concerned about this or that, or worried, angry, etc., I am not free, not that which I know myself to be. So had you asked me amidst a contraction to tell the truth, I would have answered that, yes, I know I am that, I just got lost or whatever. But that is a lie. Maybe one fluctuates some in and out of what we are, but the simplicity is that we are that which sees, witnesses.

We just are. Here and now, being. We are not the person, not in the sense of it being a real thing, so we can never be the one working, stressing, getting angry, etc., but just clear silent being. Clearly seen, just as you have been pointing out. When this is seen, what can be questioned? What question can arise any longer that isn’t seen as a lie or one pretending to be asleep? There is a certain power in trying to remain in form, a certain joy, but it is infinitely less than the joy of knowing.  It is like the child that can no longer remain in childish slumber.

My humble blessings,

John