Letter from the Field: Who’s Asking?
Hi Fred,
I recently read your books Awakening Clarity & Book of Undoing, and believe i had some sort of awakening event while doing so. Thank you first of all for writing these, they made me stop chasing some future goal of awakening and relax.
However, i don’t fully relate to the eternal and infinite nature of the sense of being. I don’t connect with feeling the sense of being in the past/future since the exercise seems to be in realm of the mind (memory) and don’t connect with the infinite nature of my awareness either since i feel it is only concentrated around my head.
This is all i know from my experience:
1. There is a sense of being, which i cannot seem to locate. It roughly seems to be located behind my head and to me it seems maybe infinitesimally small (hence cannot locate) rather than infinitely large.
2. Every time i become aware of this sense of being, the mind stops its chatter and the world (the space, to be more precise) appears different (can’t put it in words).
3. I can’t vouch from my personal experience that this awareness or this sense of being, is the one thing that exists.
I have 2 questions:
1. It seems easier to become aware of the sense of being, when my eyes are open and i can easily look at space through my head rather than from my head. Do you know of any technique to connect with awareness with the eyes closed?
2. I would like to be able to see the Oneness (the one thing) in the world. I feel this would help me “see” my partner in a different light and be able to better deal with the usual reactivity of household life. Do you know how one can do so?
I would be grateful, if you can find the time to comment on the above.
Thanking you,
R.
.
Who is it that “can’t see Oneness”? The seer would have to be outside of Oneness in order to see it from afar, meaning that when we say “Oneness” we mean “twoness.” Well, we don’t. There’s only One Thing Going On. Given that, is there anyway possible that you arenot it? Do the Math of One on your fingers. 1=1.
September 3, 2016 @ 5:14 pm
Plus time! The urgency behind the questions WAS part of the problem (what/which problem? – pick one. or the uber problem, that created them all, that there is “problem” at all. for further info, please see hypochondriacs). Now, I am grateful for Fred’s reinforcement that My creation of time, I now use in a kinder/gentler way. Such as in affirming that Awakening is happening perfectly. Or a concept from A Course in Miracles, that time is friendly when turned toward Awakeness(ing) – or short hand, time is a friend!
Because the Sense of Being I primarily relate to FROM recognizing that time comes out of It. I don’t even know what the Sense of Being is, but on practicing inquiry there’s a Peace when I directly consider how time only occurs out of Me. Anything else I still get some mental activity from, such as considering any “sensation” itself. I finally did an isolation tank session, and I was surprised how much internal bodily sensations are still present! But, I guess surrender is another great reinforcement we give each other – just this arising. So for each of those bodily sensations, for each arising question about the Sense of Being, I remember that it is “I” that is aware of them. That was a long road before, and still a lot of friendlier time now, that led to me accepting they’re Alice’s rabbit hole and that it REALLY is possible to not pursue them (very far!).
I like R’s #3. From my metaphysical framework, THAT IS the primordial rabbit hole. So that again just lends to giving a sense of compassion to time for dissolving eons of conditioning. My framework is that the universe IS the dream experience of All That Is wondering “could there be something else than this?” It’s funny because even the childish taunt “could God make a stone too heavy to move” proves to me we’re in this matrix-like dream. Not even questioning the sense of separation in THAT question, that somehow leads to a dream experience where that IS the operative sense of this dream universe, is … well, what it is (or is not?)
And the very practical level of domestic life, I’m they’re with R too! And I’ll start to add my reinforcement to Fred’s, that the dream-life-that-seems-so-real is being taken care of just fine, and sometimes I think better than fine. I used to hear that in AA but it never clicked there. It is to the degree I recognize I need do nothing that any “progress” is made (but ah, pretending to get that is still “doing” something!). I had an image occur to me yesterday of not “struggling” to steer a bicycle and even learning to ride hands free, maybe even joyfully up in the air! I would heartily recommend a leaning toward Fred to become a faith in the Oneness and Awakeness loving through there: You becoming not-You. Just I !Just 1 .
So much love, through the Mike