In the first part of this article we saw that there is never an independent unit born. We don’t have to investigate this mystically. If we accept that “all is One” and we recognize that Oneness means only One, then we can investigate it with simple logic to arrive at this obvious but ever-overlooked truth. In our last post, we also learned the math of awakening, which is one equals one.

I will not go back over what’s already been covered in that first half, but if you haven’t read it, you would be wise to do so before tackling this second half, because we start this post precisely where we left off the last. Having punctured both the myth of our birth and the myth of our death, let us look into what is born and thus what it is that eventually dies.

There is a sense of Fred present as I write this. Now, I have looked more deeply than all but a relative handful of people on this planet, and I can tell you with complete confidence that there is no Fred to be found. We can easily find a story of Fred, we can find a collection of mental, physical, emotional, and even spiritual patterns that we can agree to call Fredness, but zero actual evidence of any separate being. We can find a unit. We can find hearsay and agreements, yes–plenty of both. But real proof of a Fred? None.

In Awakening Sessions I take people through quite a long and involved process in order for them to see this total lack of evidence with their own eyes. It does precious little good for you to hear what I know about you and your True Nature, or what I, as either Fredness or Oneness, have experienced. If talking about enlightenment worked at all well then millions of people who are not awake would be. Show-and-Tell is what works consistently and predictably.

So if there’s a sense of Fred, but no actual Fred, then what is it that’s really going on here? Let’s look.

Let’s go back to the the birth of the apparent-but-not-actual separate unit. First of all, when did that birth begin? I’m not getting in the middle of a bunch of dream-state foolishness about when did “life” begin; I’m talking about when did birth begin? There is only Life and it has no opposite. Birth and death certainly are opposites, but they are both stages of experience for dream-bodies which occur within the One Boundless Life.

Life was here prior to any appearances and it will be here when they have all disappeared. Experience most often has absolutely nothing to do with reality. That means “your” experience, too. Don’t get me wrong, it is all about You, but I don’t mean that sense of you that you think is you. I mean it’s all about the Real You.

In general, human birth–that which holds the potential for the experience of a human lifetime–begins at conception. That’s a really simple, apolitical statement I think you’ll find difficult to find fault with. When egg and sperm come together then a certain potential is launched. That event may not result in an experience of human lifetime, but it could.

So, when someone asks me when I was born, if I’m going to answer that question as a unit, then instead of reporting October, I should instead say that it all began on a cold night in January when the unit’s parents were feeling their oats, as it were. Thus the patterns we call Fredness are older than I claim, and so are yours. The good news, however, is that if I answer the question as the Fred character, I am quite a bit younger than I claim. See how much fun this can be?

The Fred story was invented on the day that this unit left its mother’s womb, but I find it impossible to state that a Fred character was born until the unit agreed to go along with the trap that was laid for it. This trap began to be sprung at about the age of two, when self-awareness began to dawn on the star of everyone else’s Fred story. Oneness posing as an adult pointed to Oneness posing as a child and said, “You are that single being.”

“Oneness posing as the child looked up at Oneness posing as the adult and asked, “I am?”

“Yes, you are that limited being, and I am this limited being.”

You might imagine that Oneness would be a quick study, and you’d be right if you did. Immediately Oneness posing as the child pointed back at the child unit It had just been told was Itself and repeated what It had just learned. “I am,” Oneness said, referring to the child unit, and the trap was neatly sprung–yet again. Oneness may be a quick study in a lot of areas, but it ain’t much in the memory department.

What is actually born is the sense of individuality. Indra’s Net has come to believe that it is merely one of the jewels. Put another way, Oneness, which has never not been, declares itself to be an independent speck of modestly sophisticated space dust generally referred to as Fred and believes that Its existence hinges on the fate of that single speck. It’s whacky, it’s crazy, it’s absolutely insane, yet every unit on the planet subscribes to this madness unless and until Oneness in the guise of a limited person has a “spiritual awakening,” wakes up to the dream-folly of its misidentification, and begins consciously appearing as a specific unit.

To start with, misidentified Oneness quickly discovers that it absolutely loves Being, but then the poor thing immediately sees the yang side of this wondrous yin of existence: “Things are not going like I, the Center of the Universe, want them to. Furthermore, these pesky ‘other people’ are not doing what I, the Center of the Universe, want them to do. Damn, I have to live in a non-cooperative, indeed, a hostile environment and then I die and I don’t get to Be anymore.”

“MY life sucks,” said the Fred character.

“MINE too,” said another, starting to pout.

“I see,” said the Bard. And then he quickly wrote down these lines that we’ve quickly learned not to pay attention to. I told you Oneness was a quick study!

~

As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world’s a stage]