PRIME POST! Rebounding from Limbo: Waking Up AGAIN
More and more people are coming to me who have had an “awakening experience” at some time in the past, whether a month ago or forty years ago, but who now know—or strongly suspect—that they are not presently awake. No individual is ever awake, including this one, but in recall it may feel like he or she was.
What we call “waking up” is an event (or a number of events) within an overall awakening process that was going on prior to the event, and which will continue beyond that event’s conclusion. It is a vertical spike appearing on a horizontal line. Quite simply, awakeness wakes up to the truth of itself and its invention—the character it’s playing—the Fred or Sue or Bob that it’s pretending to be in order to experience itself objectively.
Herein lies the rub. As seekers, we want to experience Oneness objectively; everybody does. That might be okay if we were not already experiencing Oneness objectively! When we are confused seekers, we are hoping to reach Oneness. Awakening is discovering that we are Oneness. We can’t discover anything outside of Oneness in order to have an objective experience of it. There is only subject. Objects merely appear to exist.
Everyday life, the dream, the movie, call it what you will, is not merely an experience that we, as human beings are taking in. It can just as truly be said, even more truly be said, that being human is an experience that Oneness is taking in by pretending to be a unit, as it plays the role of our character.
When conscious awakeness begins to close back down after that initial spike of clarity, which happened to me and pretty much everyone I’ve ever worked with, memory will tell us that it was the character—Fred—who woke up. He had something special, but then somehow lost it, fell out of it, or forgot it. And since Fred lost it, guess whose job it is to “get it back?” That’s right, it’s Fred’s job. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if there was a Fred hiding about somewhere, but there’s not. Thus the belief in the one tasked with rediscovering awakening is in itself the only impediment to awakening.
Yes, it can be confusing. At the end of that round, we are left in a state where we are not awake (so to speak), yet neither are we where we were prior to the blessed/cursed event. We now know something in our heads, but we can’t quite remember what it is. A footprint or imprint of awakening remains, but we are bereft of the thing itself. We are lost in limbo, and we can stay there indefinitely.
That we are in limbo can be a hard truth to tell ourselves, but there seems to be a creeping new willingness for rebounders to come forward and address their situation honestly. This is great news, because just as we rebounded from clarity back into cloudiness, so can we rebound back into clarity, and this time we might even stay there—mostly! True stability takes time, because the nature/nurture patterns of DNA and post-birth conditioning will roll on until they don’t. My ceiling fan continues to turn even after I’ve cut it off, and so did my blind patterns. The unit does what it does until it doesn’t.
I cannot say often enough that enlightenment is all about right now. What we have “seen” or experienced at some time in the past is essentially incidental. If we are not presently being that which was “seen” in the spiritual experience that the unit’s memory thinks it accurately recalls, then we are not—pardon the phrase—an awake being. We are not dancing, we are being danced.
This arising—this very arising, precisely as it’s being known—is the way that you are expressing yourself to yourself in this so-called moment. There’s just one thing going on, and that happening just happens to be you. If we know this at this moment, then we are awake. If we do not, we are not.
Some of this is simply languaging. If I have a client who woke up with me a month or a year ago, and they are not awake to the current arising, I may refer to them as “awake, but cloudy.” By that I mean that conscious awakeness has stirred through that body, and is now on “stand-by” instead of simply being “potentially conscious,” which is the state of the mankind generally. A potential flyer can be miles from the airport. Somebody flying stand-by has their bags packed and they are sitting at the airport awaiting a call. It’s quite a big difference.
However, the more time that has elapsed between the Big Day and this day, the further we’re probably going to find ourselves and our baggage from the exit gate. I can, should it prove necessary, generally bring someone who was experiencing brightness two weeks ago “back to brightness” a lot faster than someone who woke up a year ago. The latter is probably going to entail a whole new Awakening Session, whereas the former is likely to be just a matter of a few tweaks.
If we come to brightness and then dim, you can bet dimness is going to be painful. The longer you’ve been out of the dream, the tougher it’s going to be. We may become like a drug addict, only instead of heroin, we’re looking for another hit of clarity and possibly the bliss which may accompany it. This is simply circular conditioning running itself empty and then refueling itself. It’ll happen until it doesn’t. My “doesn’t” happened 3 ½ years later, and only then because I finally got myself a teacher.
I wish you the best of all things.
All love,
Fredness, 2.6.15
February 6, 2015 @ 11:02 pm
Good thoughts…….
My experience is that l do not feel that much attached anymore whatever is happening.
February 6, 2015 @ 11:08 pm
Hey, Tony! Good to hear from you!
Who is that doesn’t feel “that much attached anymore?” That’s what I would take a look at. 🙂
February 7, 2015 @ 1:34 am
It is not this character but a feeling of being more carefree.
February 7, 2015 @ 6:49 am
I do notice how quickly the moment of clarity becomes the story of my achieving clarity. My conditioning is to savor my stories and organize them into a meta-story called spiritual progress. How silly is that? If you don’t have a sense of humor about all this it can drive you nuts. I simply can’t believe how simple it is_ literally can’t believe it. So I practice sitting as awareness.
I will be calling you to set up a date for a talk.
February 7, 2015 @ 8:42 am
I very much look forward to meeting you!
February 7, 2015 @ 6:52 am
Done.
February 7, 2015 @ 8:42 am
Hey, Philip! Thanks for the booking! 🙂
February 7, 2015 @ 8:45 am
Try reading “A Day in the Life of Awakeness,” a post I wrote a couple of years ago. My experience has changed a bit since then, but that post is still relevant. I frequently refer to my experience in posts, I just don’t dwell on my experience. In the end, who really cares about MY experience? It’s YOUR experience that is the concern here. 🙂
February 7, 2015 @ 5:38 pm
Sorry Fred,
I just took the time to read your above article again. I must admit I did not understand some of it.
Cheers
Tony
February 9, 2015 @ 12:26 pm
Dear Fredness,
Laurelness thanks you for this brilliant post. Totally, completely, embracing this magnificent One Thing that we are. Gratitude. XXOO
February 9, 2015 @ 12:30 pm
Hey, Laurel! Thank you so much for your encouragement.
February 9, 2015 @ 6:34 pm
Thanks Fred!
I get caught up in thinking that I have too many problems right now to wake up. I hold onto the idea that when things are going my way, then I’ll wake up. Then it will be easy (and so much fun)! As if it wouldn’t be fun or pleasant to wake up while I have all these (fill in the blank) problems going on, because then I’d be awake, but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it!
You help me see that this is a pretty convoluted reason not to welcome awareness at this very moment, at any moment. The truth is that awareness presents me with the exact circumstances needed in each moment to achieve full realization, which means it’s always easy to wake up. And of course it would be fun, because the “problems” would be irrelevant.
February 9, 2015 @ 8:50 pm
Beautiful. We come to see that the thing that’s “in the way” IS the Way.
GROUP QUESTION: If you dropped the demand that this arising show up some way other than the way it is presently showing up, would you still remain convinced that you’re not already awake? The conviction that we are not already awake is what makes recognizing and accepting our true nature so difficult. That conviction is simply a story. Where did it come from? Who made it up? Can you think of a profitable reason to continue to believe it?
February 9, 2015 @ 10:49 pm
Thank you – I will use that as a mantra: what’s in the way, is the way!
I think the “profit” in feeling unawake is the ego saying I won’t wake up, unless I can be the subject who is waking up. The ego says, “Don’t leave me behind!” And yet because it can never wake up, it only manages to stop me from waking up. At least as long as I keep identifying with it.
February 10, 2015 @ 3:33 pm
Perfect.