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[thinknthots]

[thinknthots]

Gratitude

Today I awakened with this deep gratitude for living. Living as uncreated Awareness participating in the appearance of the Divine Awareness.

This feeling came to me even while I am feeling a little down, maybe from exhaustion, maybe from thoughts of the world as it is today...I do not know.

This feeling of thankfulness that seems to transcend emotion is the peace I crave, a certain poise that I crave.

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"From the moment that you see that every day you take yourself for somebody, that you identify yourself with your intelligence, capacities, talents and personality, and that you face the world and your surroundings from the point of view of this personality—when you really see what nonsense it is to take yourself for somebody that you are not really—then it will go away, you may be sure. One day you will be free from the person, suddenly free; that is a sudden enlightenment, to be free from the person."

Jean Klein - Transmission of the Flame (p. 166)

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Where is home?

For such a long time I have experienced a deep desire to go home, to where it is safe and peaceful, free of conflict and troubles. Today, in a strange flash, I understood that I am home....in the Awareness that I am. There is simply nowhere to go for their is nowhere that I am not.

[thinknthots]

The daemons

Within the last few days I have had a deepening desire to face the subconscious personas that seem in conflict with my interests. I lovingly call them daemons. My desire was to talk to them and to understand their motives and desires...to become friends with them.

Then, today, in a flash, I realized that these subpersonalities were me. Not me as a separate self. Is there such a thing? It was more than a thought, it was a feeling that I am that which is hidden from the conscious separate self.

In psychosynthesis a constellation of habitual patterns is referred to as a subpersona. I am beginning to feel that I am the universe within which these constellations appear. I am the Silence within which universes appear.

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An odd spiritual experience

Once upon a time, I chased esoteric knowledge and experiences. I theorized, that happiness was beyond the material and "somewhere else." However, as I go along, I have lost interest in experiences and have become more interested in the Experiencer, or more accurately, Silent Awareness.

A few nights ago I woke up in a panic. I thought I heard someone in my house. My heart began to beat wildly. Yet, rather than react, I simply watched the tsunami of emotion run through my body. As I did this, I calculated if action was needed. Then, I feel back to sleep.

This may seem odd to define this as a "spiritual experience," yet, I felt a stepping away from this dream world of waking life. I felt, in some way, identified with the Silence that I am.

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Fear of Death Resolved

I had the privilege to be raised in a religious tradition that helped me to fear death. You see, death is the day of judgment, heaven or hell. Very binary. Black and white. You is or you ain't. I wonder today who could really pass that test of morality. I have done many wonderful and altruistic things in my life; I have also done some fairly shitty things as well. Depending on the mood of the judge, I could end up in an eternal barbecue pit.

There were other factors involved in this fear, I will leave it to imagination to ferret that out. Besides, I can't remember all the reasons. The only one that seems to come up is the thought that caskets would be very confining and clashed with a growing feeling of claustrophobia.

In my late twenties I began a twelve step program. After doing the steps two or three times, I noticed some changes in my thinking. Shame, guilt, regret, and blame seemed to just disappear in great measure. Yet, the most surprising mutation was the I no longer feared death. This was not something I was working toward or expecting, I just noticed it.

For years afterward I asked myself the reason for this change in thinking. I had done the steps, but what exactly did they do. Since I am not so bright in the area of spirituality, I just accepted it and put it in a drawer of things to think about in the coming years.

This morning I was watching a Norm Macdonald tribute. He was talking to Larry King about the fear of death and King stated the problem very clearly: he was afraid of not existing.

A light went on in my head. I do not fear "not existing." Along with that, I have no fear of hell. By the way, I have accumulated an even longer list of shitty things that I have accomplished, yet, I have no concern. I corrected as best as I was able, the rest is baggage.

Now, I cannot exactly say what happened, but what I believe occurred was the beginning of an identity shift, of an expanding sense of who I am.

The Sufi mystic Balyani writes, "Know yourself or Know your being, because you are not you but you do not know it. That is, know that your being is neither your being nor other than your being. You are neither existent nor nonexistent, nor other than existent nor other than nonexistent. Your being and your non-being are His being, without any being or absence of being because your being and your non-being are the same as His being and His being is the same as your being and non-being."

I have, to some extent experienced this "neither existent nor nonexistent," this Beingness. I believe that the fear of dying was absorbed or resolved in this understood feeling. Though my body may disappear, I cannot not exist in Beingness, Divine Awareness.

I do not know exactly what all this means. If I tell you about the person you can see, I could only describe behaviors. Yet, that is not how I feel I am. I know that I am, that's just it. And what I am is really a knowing beyond words, yet, I know it, I know that I am, but it is not what I once understood. And, now, what I know I am seems to have revealed itself in my thinking.

This may not help anyone wrestling with the idea of dying, or the struggle with the loss of a loved one. I can tell you that within the last year both my mom and dad died, but to me, they could never die because who they are, I am. This is not a denial or their passing, their bodies are gone, but the peace and love I felt through them will never pass.

Blessings to all.

[thinknthots]

Self-Love

For some time, I am awful with duration, I have told acquaintances that I have fallen in love with myself. It is not unusual for me to blurt out feelings; I say things which I cannot understand its origin or logic. I have to spend time reflecting on the meaning of a passage that just appears in my head, or is voiced. Along with spontaneous passages, I am often given a synchronous event that helps me understand and give meaning to the words, or feeling.

Roberto Assagioli writes in his book, "Act of Will," "In the case of self-love, all depends on what we love in ourselves and how we love it. It is truly egotism if we love the egocentric and separative aspects in us, the craving of pleasure, possessions, and domination. But if we love what is higher and best in ourselves, what we are essentially, if we love our potentialities for growth, development, creative ability, and communion with others, then this love, devoid of egotism, urges us to live a life of higher quality. This love is then not only not an obstacle to loving others in the same way but, rather, a powerful means for doing so."

I like the word, "inkling." I have an inkling that I have fallen in love with Divine Awareness. Self-loathing and other acts of emotional sabotage have seemed to have disappeared; guilt, shame, regret, and self-condemnation have dissolved into this love.

I really do not know how meditation practices work. I have read much on the subject, and have been given different explanations, but at the heart of it, I do not get it. Nonetheless I see changes in my thinking and behavior that seem to correspond to an expansion of understanding.

Before I was thirty, I had an overwhelming fear of death. After doing some spiritual work, without intent, I noticed that the fear of death had dissolved. I was just unable to explain the reason, but the I felt the experience. I have an inkling that way back when, I was starting to disengage from the feeling that I was the body and mind. I feel deeply that I was never born, I will never die. Why? I wish I could give an exact explanation, but I cannot.

Of course, there are other behaviors that indicate there are some other things to do. Yet, I do not know what that something is, yet, I have complete faith that something will happen. It always does. What I do feel more confidently is that behaviors are more like symptoms than diseases. Behaviors are the barometer of the climate within me. Enough said.

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Disappearing ego

I do not call me spiritual anymore, although, what is looks like from the second person is that I am on a spiritual quest. I think, and this may sound odd, is that the mystic or the spiritual seeker is the simplest and most ordinary of being. I am on a quest for ordinariness; a simple peace of being, joy, and love. To wash all the seeming complexities of this earth life with unbounded love.

This cleansing process is not a matter of accomplishment, but more a letting go of an identity with the appearance of reality. This has come in stages, like chunks of quanta. I will usually notice it after it happens.

This morning I was reading a book called, "Know Thyself" by a Sufi mystic named Balyani. For someone new to non-dual teachings, this can be a bit of a shocker. He writes, "When you know yourself, your egoism disappears and you know that you are no other than God." You are not other than God! What a wonderfully strange understanding. I realize that this can be interpreted in many ways, some powerfully self-centered, but I see it as a realization of unbound joy and love that is shared with all beings. I am Love. I am Joy. I am. I am nothing other than Joy!

The salient meaning in that passage, for me, is the use of the phrase, "egoism disappears." My thinking on this has mutated over the years. I have related to the phrase "ego death," or "get away from the ego," or, the "ego is the problem." Yet, as I go along, the importance of the ego seems to just evaporate, disappear.

For example, after a great deal of self-reflection and testing, I began to understand that my persona was on the autistic spectrum. This did not concern me much since the diagnosis came at the age of 62. It actually helped me to understand some of my behavioral tendencies. I would actually declare to my acquaintances "I have Asperger's, I have Asperger's! That's why I.....!" My sister, a medical professional, let me know that the diagnosis was no surprise to her.

As I went along looking within, other sub personas would make themselves known. I carried them for some time with the belief that I was the behaviors. Then, one day I was doing something called Time Line Therapy and my identification with these constellations of behavior patterns just disappeared. It is difficult to explain what this feels like, but let me try.

When I was a kid I loved to play chess. I became competent enough to win most games I played in a chess club. Chess consumed me. I loved the game. Then, one day, out of nowhere, I just lost interest, and that consuming feeling never returned. It was just a game. Fun for awhile, then not so much.

That's my feeling. Balyani continues, "Whoever knows their self, knows their Lord and not Whoever gets rid of their self, knows their Lord." As I ponder upon who I am, I seem to open up to a deeper intimacy with Love. This may sound odd, but I am in love with my being, and I want to share that love with others.

So, egoism disappears, meaning, for me, the interest in the persona dissipates, and with it, a kind of silliness appears. I know there is more understanding, but this how I see it now. I am trying to get more comfortable with the appearance of the ego, in a way, I guess, work with it. How shall it serve as it becomes the emissary of Divine Awareness, my Lord?

[thinknthots]

A wildflower

Why is it, that a wildflower in my garden is perceived as a weed? Yet, in the meadows of divine nature, they are the beauty that is God.

And, in the garden of my thoughts, when wildflowers appear, in forms foreign to my understanding, as weeds, what should I do? Pluck and curse them? Or, gaze and look for the beauty that inhabits the meadows.

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Balyani

Balyani writes,

"It is as if a person who does not know something, then comes to know it. Their existence does not disappear, but their ignorance disappears. Their existence remains as it was, without being exchanged for another, and without the existence of the ignorant person being added to, or mixed with, the knowing person: ignorance simply disappears."

As ignorance disappears, the happiness that you seek, that is you, appears.

[thinknthots]

Even the shadow of God is brilliant, so brilliant, so much so even God has trouble looking at Himself as that… unless He is more disguised, hidden in illusion, hidden as He can be, in us.

Hafiz

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Is anything truly random?

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Randomness

A few days ago I stumbled upon an understanding. I was reading something about mathematics and the word "random" was used. For the life of me, I could not feel an understanding of the word, as though the quality of "randomness' could not, in any way, exist. For me, words have a texture, a taste, or a feeling that I am sure is derived from the personal narrative. As I continued to chew on the word "random" I realized its context had disappeared. I still cannot feel it. The idea seems silly. I am not clear what all this means, or if this understanding will change, but I have a feeling that language changes to image a new landscape of understanding. It is a map the morphs to reflect silence.