Threading My Way Home by Julee Bergstrom

Intention is everything. The most important prayer you can utter is, “Help me to see!” I remember Jesus advocating this in A Course in Miracles. It stuck, and has been a constant prayer for me ever since.

You cannot do this. You cannot awaken. It can only awaken to Itself.

Personally, I am thankful this is going slowly – if this is what slowly looks like. My awakening, in my first conversation with Fred, was the first time I got it: that I am THIS. But I only got it on a surface level. So much of what Fred described, the mind pounced on and held fast. Filtering everything through thought was so entrenched a habit that most of what I got in my awakening session was a notional understanding, with some small experience of who I am.

This was no small thing! It was a huge stride in the right direction. At least now I was oriented, and knew where to focus my attention. A constant reminder of “I am This” was needed. Odd – when one is this….

Last night, the focus changed significantly. THIS saw clearly what it is (not!).

There is laughter, as only two nights ago, I saw that seeing without the filter of thought gives one the obvious view that there is no separation. Although it is not an emotive experience seeing this way, the initial clear seeing certainly shocks the body.

I can only describe a shifting of focus as I read a few words before I settled in to sleep last night. IT came into focus as ItSELF over here. The body lay awake as the download poured in. Uncomfortable, hour after hour. Sleep must have happened, but as I sit here, now, the download continues. It’s as if the body is in shock at the incoming updates. The heart feels blasted wide open. To run into this from a standing start could land one in an asylum, for sure. Over here, it’s uncomfortable, but manageable. And I’m happy to report that I seem to have all the faculties I need, which I also find really odd.

I literally am you. You literally are me. There is no you. There is no me. There literally is only one of us. Or perhaps, there’s not-two of us.

Everything a “spiritual” person strives for – loving kindness, serenity, loving all people, loving one’s neighbor as oneself – is impossible not to do when IT sees who IT is. There is no other. How do I not find you impossibly wonderful, since you are so obviously me? How do I not release you with love and gratitude if you wish to divorce me? My heart leaps with joy at the prospect of your happiness, if leaving me is right for you to do. The whole world is released into freedom as it is none other than me. Every “me” is doing what it must – the only thing it can do. How can I not love every shred of the me I see? Every thought you have is as important as every thought I have; it’s me after all! It’s all joyful selfishness! How can I not adore every experience I have in every form I pretend to be?

How do I not trust mySELF to be what IT needs to be? And to do what it needs to do?

My favorite author on enlightenment, Jed McKenna, analogizes the enlightened to vampires. Not in the sense of sucking blood, but in the sense of living in a paradigm that is impossible to see until you are one. The analogy doesn’t hold up in totality, of course, but I like it a lot. Until you’ve been bitten, how do you know, how do you embody vampireness? You can dress up and pretend all you like, avoid crosses and garlic and sunlight, but you still wouldn’t know – until a vampire bit you, that is – and your entire perspective changed instantly.

All the time, all the efforting, all the sessions with Fred, all the prayers, all the reading – every step is required. Awakeness waits in the eternity of now, watching itSELF battle to remember, over here. Over there. Every one of us spins a thread leading HOME, a thread for every other one of us to follow. I leave myself clues in the overall puzzle of the dreaming. As I gather the thread that pulls me from the dreaming, I shout in joy.

Julee Bergstrom is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. She lives in the UK.