NowHere

[oboundless]

Burst into tears reading your post, and a minute later, laughing, looking at my image in the bathroom mirror.
"Cornered."
then:
"Relax, don't do it" words of a song
Pretty peaceful, here now. ("Deathly peaceful" says a head voice)
Sense of struggle in my head - can'tbethatsimple, angrybeesbuzzofthoughts....
If I just stayed here (now) there'd be nobody here. That looks terrible.
...and peaceful.
'On the mat', 'in the corner' - believing.
Here, now, not believing: ease
can't be this simple
down out of my head
there can't really be nobody

You are right, looking from my head for years.
Lot of activity here for nobody. Must be somebody, surely.

[kvotski]

Nope.

A body of parts yes, but no one home.

Just one of the living things, like the tree around the corner the bird, the spider...and the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets...just one of the trillions.

Welcome home.

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil, and just so you know, what you said yesterday about the silence, after the 'virtual separation' sentence, sinks in.

Everything other than that is making stuff up, at least, that is the obvious conclusion, and sense, from the difference between the silent-now relaxation -- and the tension and perturbation of I-am-this-thing-I-am-supposed-to-be.

Is giving up the belief/identity as the latter what you meant by '...surrender, quite often the essential last step' ?

Did you mean when you said 'decommissioning won't be the same thing (for everyone)' that this current process going on for me, which seems more gradual, is right, and the idea of fireworks one of those Hollywood-style conflations? Home is just 'things as they is' (Suzuki Roshi) or 'as it is' (a title from multiple teachers.) Pretty quiet, pretty much not rip-roaring, something of a miracle impossible to explain (from the frame of 'being separate'.)

When you say 'welcome home' a hiccup of 'Wait, wait, I haven't arrived anywhere!' -- a combination of 'This can't be over!' and 'What will I do now?!'....not that important, just saying.....

Thank you again.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

You don't need anything. Never have. All is provided for.

Just keep an eye on the pesky brain/mind as it tries to spin new stories and doubts. That is also its nature. A programming glitch, actually. It is supposed to be the general to protect the body by first taking credit for what is happening and then planning next step. In the process, it thinks it is doing it all. Just another story from here.

Some people believe in Grace, I have never seen her but whatever works to keep the bs from taking you on a tour of the latrine through a rose garden. I do meditate, it just builds that part of the brain that can keep questioning and spontaneously getting answers. I wish they put it in schools, kids will be brighter for sure.

If you want to throw more snow at me, go ahead. I will see if I can spot it.

The true test of this is to revisit some of your big guns and see if an aha lights up and you know exactly what they said not what somebody else's interpretation. Nearly all ancient teachings are lost in translation. My favourite target is the heart sutra, most translators didn't get what rupa means and are going through the world teaching "the form is empty"

Enjoy. If you can't you know you are making a mistake somewhere, look for it.

[oboundless]

Thank you Sunil,

So I'm looking at an absurd possibility: staying exactly and precisely now, where the goodness is.
This is "absurd" from the perspective of the future-anxious and past-ashamed time-mind.
"I'm looking" Is a metaphor — "being exactly and precisely (and effortlessly...) now" is the actual ticket — this is where the enjoyment is. Being exactly and precisely where I am....where no-'one' is, and only onlyness is.
Striking each time this is tapped into (another metaphor — "be-ed" would be actually the correct word) is not the peace, but rather the sheer intrinsic vibrancy of it.

You yourself may have entered the stratospheric realm of big guns, since I am checking experience in this present moment frame against your statements:
Enjoyment — check. [EXCEPT when instantaneous now is colonized by the idea of now, sandwiched between past and future]
This all seems too easy – check.
Free of weight — check.
Quintessential DE — check.
Only wisdom — check.
Surrender, of the show being run by the wrong generals — check.
All ideas about this just a fanciful idea — check.
Not a thing to get — check.
All mental affliction is entirely fictional as the one afflicted itself is fiction — check.

By the way, I may have given a thorough misimpression about the big guns, since for years now I only refer to them when they are correctly pointing the same direction in which my feet are walking. Anything else is to be ignored. This sounds thoroughly arrogant but it's the only way I know to not be completely confused and dizzy. So every big gun I've quoted here I've only quoted because the words resonate with my own experience. Sometimes I only know quite a bit later what makes the fairy dust sparkle on a particular remark — but when I know, looking down at the compass-bearing of my shoes I see they were telling the truth all along.

Chutzpah. Valedictory. Unwise. You'll regret this later. Some comments from the peanut gallery about this post.

[kvotski]

Yep.

It goes up, it goes down but it is always there.

Let me know how goes over the next day or so.

[oboundless]

Thank you so much Sunil,
My temple seems to be the woods, where I wander easily amidst a bunch of beings that just are, and are content. Wandering in the woods, struck by an insight, I often pull out my phone and dictate a short recording that I later transcribe using dictation software.
I have hundreds of these pieces of writing, all of them circulating around 'the great matter.' When I read the transcription of them later I'm never particularly astounded by them, but many times, astonishment and marveling is their root nonetheless.
In the woods today the first of these came with recognizing that the exhausting anguish — of seeking for what I've found in your company! — is entirely relieved by the rediscovery of there being nobody separate at all — nobody separate to be seeking, and nothing to be found other than exactly and precisely what is, right now.
This insight, of vanishing, is so nonlinear that there is no way for it to happen without it simply happening: then all comes to rights, immediately. No words are adequate to this whole-marvel.
The second insight and recording came with recognizing that now is the natural state — the mind split into subject and object is the dictatorial colonizing of this naturalness by, to use your phrase "the almighty thinking machine" — and, yet, the naturalness beneath the machine's gear-grinding is unstinting, and unceasing.
Lastly, an instantaneous moment, spontaneously occurring, of absolutely no desire, no seeking, no going anywhere or any-when whatsoever. And a glimpse, in that moment without duration or cessation, of what Alan Watts used to call "inevitable ecstasy," the kind that will be known through insight before we die, or as we're dying, when time stops. It is, of course, the natural state — and the absence of anybody separate — and here at all times beneath all pursuing, getting, having and effort.
That's today's check-in. I feel so grateful for our dialog, and for the easeful generosity you have extended to me.
Glenn

[oboundless]

SO grateful.

[kvotski]

All seems perfect.

The ecstacy is the lack of, want of ecstacy. What a feeling to not want or need anything at all.

Can you believe it?

Let's touch base again.

[kvotski]

How's it going, Glenn?

[oboundless]

Thanks for checking in Sunil.

I have mostly been well since we last corresponded, aware of a sense of something having shifted through our dialog. Brighter, simpler, easier -- mostly....

But I can't describe today any other way than to say it's been/I've felt emotionally rather awful. Triggered into abandonment feelings by something my girlfriend said last night (which she said rather casually, and non-abandoningly...,) going to sleep upset, waking up ditto, and heavy-hearted all day, to the point of taking a nap and having a sense in my sleep of an aching in my heart that I could not in any way escape. I'm not being dramatic, nor complaining, just describing. Apparently, I still suffer, sometimes rather achingly. A periodic emotional illness, or some-such, perchance?

Knowing I am definitely 'making a mistake' because I'm suffering/not enjoying doesn't help much. There remains nobody here in now, but the weight of feeling through the day is unfortunately very fun-free, although I know from experience that tomorrow will be different.

When you checked in my first reaction was shame, because so much input and loving-kindness on your part in our dialog should surely have shifted me for good.....but that's a 'should,' and unhelpful.

Thanks for asking: I don't expect any help with this since you have given so much already. 'Everything changes' anyway, and so will this. These kinds of episodes have been part of my experience all my life, mostly outweighed by a decently cheerful disposition. But some days just are heavy-feeling, and today was one of them.

[kvotski]

You are not alone in this, Glenn. We all suffer. But it becomes more like hitting a pothole when driving, it feels like the car chasis will hit the ground but we drive on.

Is there a way to stop it? Sure, we can leave those who upset us but only to find others who can do the same. No, it is the apparent recepient of the apparent hurt must see through. No other way, dude.

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil,

I actually meant to add a PS yesterday, to say that at the start of the upset it was as though I was on two parallel tracks, one of which was laying down a bunch of habitual-feeling upset, while in the other track, nothing at all was happening, other than some astonishment at the gathering accumulation of distress being laid down, essentially, by thinking.

I'm unsure of my capacity to "see-through." I'm certainly not going to get rid of my girlfriend in order to get rid of the upset — but sometimes my only resource is to return to now, where there transparently isn't anybody.

And I want to check on something you wrote to me, almost casually it seems, a short while back, when you said "You don't need anything. Never have. All is provided for." This completely flies in the face of a very familiar narrative about survival (how absurd! the only, only guarantee is that this body won't survive!) — yet reflects my experience of now. As well, it accurately reflects, that desireless moment in the woods as well as other times in my life of feeling expansive generosity without cause. BUT the narrative is so intense about needing to work/scheme/plan/be cunning/get ahead — even though the bigger chunks of life itself have never once unfolded according to any kind of plan. I suppose it's like those two tracks again, one of which is completely at ease and the other of which is full of garbage about effort and cunning. Full of somebody, trying to get somewhere, but never here now.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

You understand it well. And no it was not in passing.

If all unfolds as it should, what is there to fret about? The plans are part of the natural course as they are based on causes and conditions. Sometimes the body makes an error as it acts without sufficient information or even makes an obvious mistake. But that too is inconsequential to life. It may even hurt the body or may even end life. But that just hastens the inevitable.

It sounds nihilistic but it isn't. Because even inaction is an act.

[kvotski]

There is nothing wrong, Glenn. Except perhaps a thought or expectation that it should be different. That's an excellent and welcome thought, spurring you to act, not something to make life heavy.