Strange Farewell

[SoulSail]

How could I not have? You taught me everything I know.

I'm thankful AD has you. Always have been.

[Eyeswideopen]

For me having Soulsail share his awakening experiences in the now has been more than interesting. Apart from enjoying this thread I have splintered off looking at others journeys. There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to experience myself authentically, always yearning for something that I know is home. But I don't know if I want now to experience a long period of time of feeling disassociated from my body, what does this do to ones life and close relationships. Is this my fear talking, I guess I am not 100% sure but I do wonder why I am in the dense tangible world wanting to experience myself as everything. With a feeling that when I am everything am I somewhere queuing to get back down here to experience through the senses like we do. Life is a gift so why am I yearning for an ethereal experience that could to others appear I am in the middle of a mental breakdown. Perhaps this is my fear talking as I do realise that tasting the I Am vicariously through Soulsail is right now far more stable and safe, my risk curve is retreating.

[SoulSail]

There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to experience myself authentically, always yearning for something that I know is home.

Looking is rough business, especially when awareness goes looking for itself among that which it's aware of. It can kill a body.

But I don't know if I want now to experience a long period of time of feeling disassociated from my body, what does this do to ones life and close relationships. Is this my fear talking, I guess I am not 100% sure but I do wonder why I am in the dense tangible world wanting to experience myself as everything.

My disassociation was brief. Intense, but brief. A couple days of not knowing where I was located, whether inside the brain or outside. But that's over. Nothing lasts. Resist nothing.

Life is a gift so why am I yearning for an ethereal experience that could to others appear I am in the middle of a mental breakdown. Perhaps this is my fear talking as I do realise that tasting the I Am vicariously through Soulsail is right now far more stable and safe, my risk curve is retreating.

You have no risk curve. What you do have are stories about what might be lost, and even these are not your own. The story of what's happening in life is being played out in the center of your true self, which is no self at all. You don't have Buddha nature, you are that. Andy, after all his searching turned out to be nothing but a madman holding enough psychic pressure to force him toward truth rather than enlightenment. Had he been forced to a choice, he would have chopped off an arm. Spared nothing. Nothing noble about it--madness. The end of 43 years of misery and games to find out he'd never experienced anything directly or even existed.


Let me tell you a secret. When the dreamer wants out, the dreamer gets to come out under one condition: the dreamer ceases. Nobody will change the dream, ever. It ends with the false "I". I will tell you that there was considerable fear in realizing this. Under the sudden reality of endlessness, emotions surge. You stop. You watch. Nope, not your emotions either.

Then, you get ice cream. Then you get to chase conscious exploration all you like knowing you can never die and nothing can destroy you. As the Buddha said, "Merging with the deathless are all things. Terminating in Nirvana are all things." CE is best done from this angle because the element of risk is gone. You go see what there is to see and that is all unless you want to watch form play out the dream from another angle. Perhaps sometime I'll share my encounter with a demon in this process. Now that was enlightenment.

Face it. You're home already. You are the deathless. All reality ends in Nirvana.

[ButterflyWoman]

Looking is rough business, especially when awareness goes looking for itself among that which it's aware of.

This is the key. The whole thing is not about "you" or "me" or "I" or "mine" or any of that. It's about Consciousness becoming aware of Itself. This "you" convention is just the means by which Consciousness does that. Nobody becomes "self-aware" (though we may use the term) because your "self" is a shell of automated habits and functions with a story-spinning machine that is your mind, animating it all and making it think it's an independent, autonomous entity acting on some sort of will, usually perceived to be free. That's the illusion to which Consciousness wakes up. The ego-self, being a story-telling machine, then incorporates that into its own story, and can tell it, but it's never actually about "I-me-mine". It is always about Consciousness.

My disassociation was brief. Intense, but brief. A couple days of not knowing where I was located, whether inside the brain or outside. But that's over. Nothing lasts. Resist nothing.

*nod* But the thing is, it happens as it happens. It's like giving birth. Labour starts and it continues until it finishes. It's messy, it's inconvenient, it's potentially dangerous, and every birth is unique. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's extremely difficult, usually it's somewhere in between. And so it is with every awakening.

[wstein]

Thought I'd step away from the New Agey stuff and speak logic in few sentences...

1. Truth must exist. To say it doesn't would be asserting an absolute truth, thus forcing its existence.
2. Truth is All. Absolute.
3. Consciousness exists.

Drink your tea.

Sadly truth can't force anything nor can assertion. There is no 'exist'.

May as well pretend to drink your tea and pretend to enjoy it, 'cause that's all you got.

[ButterflyWoman]

May as well pretend to drink your tea and pretend to enjoy it, 'cause that's all you got.

Indeed. I went through a fairly lengthy period of existential angst about this, and eventually came to the point where I thought, "Well, I'm here, in whatever capacity "I" and "here" exist. This dream of "reality" is continuing. So I may as well engage with it." And so I do (again, "I" being a construct).

[IA56]

When I look back at my Life I have gone through so many phases as well faces
There was a period I was so afraid I will never feel a thing ....I was in a Place where I could look at all horrors without feeling nothing, and it was nessessary to be able to sort painful things out in small portions to digest and get out them of my system..now they are only memory of my Life story...nothing more...
And when I then ended up in the NOW and really feeling to be in this vertical energy..I call it because I can find it when I Think...from up to down...like drawing a vertical line...and when thinking of my Life as horisontell line...as it is like thoughts...if I let them intrude it will never end...it is on going useless in terms that if I let them in again I will start over like a Wheel ...round round round....but I can stop it at will because I have a clear Picture of my Life story...but thoughs are so intrusive and sedusing...so I at least need a firm line to bring me back to the NOW.
But it has really bean many sleepless night´s and oceans of tears.

Love
ia

[Osiris]

I've seen, done, and felt alot of ugliness and goodness, Im not so sure I'd change a bit of it, It has enabled me to see the beauty in Others as well as in myself. I hope it does the same for you brother. Dont be afraid for a second to break away from those things and ideas you once held so closely, all that glitters is not gold, as they say. The portrait that is your life is full of many colors , ever changing and often times full of despair and disappointment but it is always tempered with warmth of shade and tone.
The seeds that you have planted here will, I think, bare fruit for you down the road.

[LPCF]

I remember you so well, Soul! I have watched your evolution from negative entity possession (as you perceived it then)...to this profound state of ultimate awareness. I'm not sure that "I" agree with "your" perspective totally, but it doesn't matter. (Oh, no! Do I have go through and put speech marks around every "I" and "you"? Can't be bothered!).

Soul is such a good nickname for you. May your soul remain always enlightened and full of life. I will miss you on this forum - even though I have been absent as much as you. I'm afraid I'm not ready to give up helping others yet, even if it is all an illusion.

Many, many blessings to you, dear Soul! You will be sorely missed. My love to your boy and your dear dog. I know that you will take good care of them, even if they are illusions, too

[eyeoneblack]

Good-bye, Andy.