Postby kgreenbank » Sun May 17, 2015 12:47 am
OK, so I am home now and can write a more considered post. I am using “I” as anything else would just be weird and phoney, and it feels totally appropriate anyway.
Only one thing has fundamentally changed. The belief in a separate self has gone, because it is seen that it is not there as a real ‘thing’ and never was. I thought that it was something I had to get rid of. I thought I was going to have the sense of losing something and would be changed for it. But something that is not real can not be lost. It was a belief, that’s all. Just a belief. The belief is no longer there. That’s all that has happened. Looking at my various component parts - my thoughts, my feelings, my senses, it’s obvious that they don’t add up to a real separate entity.
Thank you for pulling me back to first principles. That’s all I had to do: examine this belief and see that it is baseless. So incredibly simple once it’s seen through. Honestly, what a DRAMA I have made of this. The rest was a snowstorm of fears / hopes / expectations which in retrospect seem completely ridiculous:
I thought this might result in being catapulted into a “state”, mystical or otherwise. Something like pure beingness or Oneness or bliss. I have had those experiences before, but then I was completely loaded with psychedelics… Silly girl :-)
I thought my perception might change radically - dissolution of boundaries between senses / objects; becoming The Witness; observing myself operating on autopilot in a weird disconnected way.
Don’t need to tell you, but none of those things are true. Everything is pretty much the same. However there has been a sense of incredible freedom and joy today, like being a kite flying in the wind. Clarity. I was outside in the spring sunshine for much of the day and the openness of the sky, trees and outdoor space was incredibly present and intimate. Almost ecstatic at points, and a sense of something like surprise at what I was saying and doing at times. Being indoors in confined spaces lessens this somehow. I have been with friends, chatting all day. Not about this – it has been a private unfolding. But I have felt fluid, expansive, unusually articulate, loving, very connected emotionally, liberated, more “me” somehow. The 'flow' I have heard described before. My friends commented more than once that they have never seen me look or sound so well. So true! A soaring sense of freedom and joy at times. And the neurotic “I want it, I want it, where is it, what is it?” feeling has completely gone.
Back home sitting in my kitchen this is far less pronounced. Almost feels like nothing at all has happened. The belief in the entity Kate feels like it is trying to reassert itself again. However if I close my eyes to look, there’s nothing to see. And how can you look for something that doesn’t even exist? What a joke!
I almost don’t want to go to bed because I don’t want to wake up believing in the separate self again. Here’s hoping....
Thank you for your generosity, giving up your time like this. I thought this was going to be the hardest thing of my life, a huge battle and surrender. Just a false belief. That’s it. Amazing.
Love and gratitude and a huge, huge hug
Kate x
