Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
Enquiry by its very nature means to step out of our comfort zone. To look beyond or prior to the status quo.
As such, sometimes it can be extremely uncomfortable and at this point we are presented with a choice. Forge ahead or retreat. Conditioned responses are such that many of us choose to retreat right at the moment where just allowing ourselves to feel truly uncomfortable would mean the feeling would simply disappear or transform into another feeling. What keeps many of us from really feeling is that we do not like to feel uncomfortable for any length of time such is our conditioning and coupled with an inability to sit with anything for any length of time, due to a twenty-four seven culture which tells us to keep moving. Makes being present with our feelings nigh on impossible.
It was uncomfortable and yet sitting with it and being fully present to it,
she witnessed it transform and stated she felt, “Everything was love”.
An attendee of talks recently narrated a story to me in which confronted by an overwhelming sense of fear instead of retreating as her conditioned responses would have dictated, she chose Instead chose to sit fully with the fear. It was uncomfortable and yet sitting with it and being fully present to it, she witnessed it transform and stated she felt, “Everything was love”.
In that meeting, emotion fully and eliminating the barrier, the duality that exists between the experience and the experiencer ends separation. The search is no more. What then is experienced is being experienced by no one and yet words such as, everything was love, or it is all one, can arise. Seemingly as a witness and a reminder and yet no trace of a witness or reminder remains. If at all there ever was one. In this singularity the purpose of why everything exists make perfect sense and an acceptance occurs. In which comfortable or uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and emotions are simply accepted as life happening as is.
The emotional charge we experience dissipates and the play of life is seen as simply that. A play. The ebb and flow of life continues. Emotions come and go and yet there is an equanimity. A oneness with all things. How could there not be. For how could you be separate from the very thing you seek?
The Silence
I have seen my work change radically over the space of a couple of years and as life has taken me on this journey, I have seen myself move from speaking about meeting emotions fully to Non-Doership.
I feel another change occurring now as I find myself moving away from Non-Doership, feeling that I have adequately covered the subject and falling more into silence. So how then to communicate that which has no words? It is an interesting conundrum and yet from that silence words appear. And I feel as if more will appear. But not from a place of Non doership but something so much more profound.
The silence.
Everything appears calm and still and yet activity is still occurring.
The waves are still rising and falling and the whole play of the ocean being the ocean is happening and yet there is no reference point to it.
I recently completed a series of livestreams in which this idea of silence kept appearing. I was in Devon in the United Kingdom at the time and if I were to visually represent my understanding of this silence. It would appear as a moon lighting the night sky with its reflection across the water.
Everything appears calm and still and yet activity is still occurring.
The waves are still rising and falling and the whole play of the ocean being the ocean is happening and yet there is no reference point to it.
Similarly, the exact same thing is happening in our lives. Despite appearance there is this same calm which underpins all things. It is in this place that we truly are. Glimpses of this place are generally known as awakenings, accepting this place is Realisation.
It is our natural way of being and as such requires no journeying to, no practise, no methodology, no pointer. It simply is. It is known and yet not known, choosing as it does to embrace both sides of the coin. Any attempt to codify or turn it into some structured teaching always collapse and yet this attempt to teach although failing still provides us with a glimpse, a roadmap.
This constant unknowing, this singularity
in which the idea of another cannot exist, holds every idea about it and no idea about it.
Ultimately though even glimpses and pointers must be let go of. Indeed, the one trying must be let go of. This exposes the so-called story as an illusion, as unreal and a natural letting go and a natural recognition occurs. In this recognition the ideas that have formed about what this is are put down and life is seen as is. This constant unknowing, this singularity in which the idea of another cannot exist, holds every idea about it and no idea about it. It is random and non-consequential and yet intelligent and purposeful. It appears in a myriad of forms all pointing back to itself and yet it is not separate from any pointer of it. It is immediate and yet even time or words cannot capture its true essence. They are merely a mirror reflecting that which is no longer needed when the singularity is accepted. If indeed even an acceptance is needed. It is simply this and even that is a complication.
And yet sometimes this singularity wishes to be known and starts this journey back to itself. It is the lover looking for the beloved not realising it is the very beloved it is looking for. A divine play, a silent mystery. A question constantly answering itself with no one asking the question and no one answering the question.
Simply put. It is this…
The Impersonal Personal
We are afraid of our greatness and yet our greatness is who we are.
We shrink back from the possibility of us as we truly are and choose instead to live lives of quiet servitude. In many cases our conditioning impairs us from realising our true selves.
Who are you to be great, to be magnificent, to shine in all your glory? Who are you not too?
You are created in Gods image and as such this greatness resides in you.
But let me before I continue clarify what I mean by this greatness. It is not the traditional idea of greatness, of heroic deeds or attainment. It is that resting in what we truly are. A singularity a vast expanse. In this expanse an idea of you appears.
Things happen, tasks are achieved and this idea of you appears to be very real and yet as real as it appears, it is known by who or what, we do not know that I am not this story. That I am prior to story, to subject, to object and apparent form. That my natural state has never known the temporal and yet witnesses it and experiences it as this vast expanse and as individuality. All manner of experience, ideas and form appear in this expanse and yet it is free of it.
Such is this greatness that all apparent opposites and paradoxes are calmed and resolved in it. It is effortless, existing as it does. One without another. It is the centre and basis of all that is and yet it itself cannot be encapsulated. It cannot be understood, adequately explained and any explanation attempted collapses at its very attempt at explaining. It cannot be known and yet offers invitations at every instant to know itself. It is that silence that has no one to witness it.
It is your infinite greatness. It is you.
If
If we can put down the limited idea of us,
those binds we have so expertly used to tie ourselves down. To be anything than what we truly are.
If we are fully present, if we are fully aware, if we are fully here. If we can silence the noise, the machinations of the mind, the constant chatter, the need to know, the need for explanation.
If we can favour simplicity over complication, acceptance over resistance. If we could just sit, just be here, however uncomfortable that may feel. If we can sit in our pain, our misery, our tragedy. If we can be honest, radically honest. If we can put down all that defines us, those stories, those ideas that we believe ourselves to be.
If we can put down the limited idea of us, those binds we have so expertly used to tie ourselves down. To be anything than what we truly are.
No longer a drop
But an ocean entire.
If we can accept that terrifying idea that we are not this story. That this pain is not real. That we can be happy. That the holy land exists in us. That the kingdom of heaven is within us. That the destination is in fact us. That we are the answer to the question. That every scripture, every prophet, every saint, every sage came to us, to remind us of who we are, and if this in turn can ignite the question:
Who am I?
And if at every instant
The question can answer itself
Then we can be home
We can be free
To realise
I am home
I have always been home
I am always here
A reality with no one to witness it
No longer two
Just one
No longer a drop
But an ocean entire.
Why Are We Afraid?
Why does that which is in our minds eye frighten us so
That shimmering possibility
That expanded sense of self
Why are we afraid?
Why does that which is in our minds eye frighten us so
That shimmering possibility
That expanded sense of self
That living openly
That Living freely
Why does it frighten us so?
Why do we expend so much energy keeping the nightmare alive?
To keep that suffering going
To keep that story alive
Is it because we do not believe?
Is it because we lack faith?
Have we forgotten our innate greatness?
That created in Gods image we are capable of so much more
That to live in quiet servitude is not our lot
That to release this fear is to release the world
From the bondage of separation
From what holds us back
Relax
Take a breath
Breathe
Really breathe
And…
Fall apart
Let the story go
Cry
Scream
Regret
Feel it
Really feel it
Collapse as the story leaves
As that mass of energy leaves
Collapse
Sleep
Sleep like you will never wake
Feel the tiredness of having held onto a lie
For so long
For so many years
Tired carrying this burden
Sleep
Lose the sense of self
Lose you
STOP…
Something stirs
Like the dawning of a new day
I rise
I open my eyes
I stretch
I yawn
I am not me
At least not as I was
A rebirth?
Something differs in me
I am not me
As the day dawns
A new possibility stirs in me
I want to say so much more
I want to do so much more
To make a difference
To be
Now I can
Now I can
The ghosts of the past are gone
I have so much to say
The open road beckons
Will you travel with me friend?
Will you hear my stories?
My musings
My thoughts
My heart laid bare
My truth finally revealed