Last night I was graced with crystal clear seeing of the twisted lie that is the separate self. It, as usual, came on the heels of hell night.  

Yesterday started with a big bang – a body shock that set my world reeling. It was not the device implanted in my chest. It was this body I call mine behaving in a wildly shocking manner, giving me as big a shock as I have had since this whole story began. As the electricity continued to course through my body, it was a short walk to full mental engagement. After all, I didn’t want that to happen again.

I felt my body going into reaction, the story building, the defenses going up and didn’t think much of it until I attempted to go to bed and sleep. In order to sleep the mind must stop but when it has been in reaction mode all day that’s not an easy thing to do. Add to that the shocks come as I am drifting off to sleep – this body seems to require relaxation of focus in order to set itself to the task. The big one rolled through as I was drifting back to sleep around six in the morning, less than 16 hours earlier.  

You can tell yourself to relax and as most of us know, it doesn’t work. You can tell yourself to walk right into the middle of the sensation, the dread of another shock, and when you are all balled up in a knot, you don’t know where to start unraveling to get to the core. It was quite the experience, and while it wasn’t what I’d call fun, it did tender a look at the hidden anxiety I’d tucked away that would have remained shrouded without it.

As I poked into the crevices and cracks of my well built vault I found a motherlode that shocked me – not literally. All the unmet anxiety from Kenny’s illness and his passing – the loss and grief , not just from him but from my mother’s and best friend’s exits, the ravages and remnants of my short lived relationship with a narcissist, my heart attempting to jump out of my body and everything since. Good lord! I can no longer deny that anxiety is here.  The shocks I’ve discovered are part of the anxiety, a PTSD reaction. I didn’t know that anxiety can cause a body to shock itself. Things you don’t know!

I found myself caught in the story – of course I did. When you are dealing with your own body revolting like I am, it is pretty darn hard to look past the decades of separate self programming. How do you feel that experience completely and not get lost in it?

I got lost for a while.

I can’t imagine going through life’s breaks without the training I’ve been blessed to receive, without the deep and abiding recognition of my true nature, of what reality is, of what death truly isn’t.

Breathing took over, one deep breath at a time. After a bit I could sit and meditate without this mind going on a new rampage. I sat and remembered what is real and slipped into the spaciousness, the grace of forgiveness, of giving all my perception, all the feelings and sensations back to Source.  

That’s when I saw it with absolute clarity – the walk of Buddha, the temptations of Christ. I found myself sitting beneath my own Bodhi tree. As long as a separate self remains it will maintain and perpetuate an incessant tug-o-war with fear and desire. The separate self is created and maintained by fear and desire and uses fear and desire to continue its existence. There is no escaping fear and desire as long as the belief in a separate self remains in any form. This is the nightmare world, the world of suffering, what Buddha saw and shared. There is no. escaping. It. There is no life of happiness for the individuated being. Being separate from Source is the definition of unhappiness and believing in that lie guarantees the craving to find something to fill the hole in the Whole.

I have delved deeply into True Nature. I have seen the fallacy of separation. I have spent days at a time without a self and yet, always returned to an identity – less intact, but an identity nonetheless. I think there was something within me that was holding out for ‘enlightenment with a surviving me’ scenario. That seems ludicrous to me, understanding what I do and yet, there it was. I had met my shadow, peered into every dark corner I could find and still had slyly constructed a gilded monument to my undiscovered  and unmet fear and buried it deep within the center of my solar plexus. Gotta give her credit. Amaya is one tricky bitch.

Wowser! You just never know what you don’t know.

Today a leaf fell from the Bodhi tree. There’s always more going on than a mind can comprehend. Sometimes I think life wears me down completely just so I will break apart and accept its sacred peace offering. I know it did just that last night. The leaf held a couple sentences ushered forth by Francis Lucille, Robert Spira’s teacher. Mind blown! A few simple words, strung together in a way I had never heard before. They are still at work unraveling lifetimes of pain filled misconception and self-flagellating misperception.  Guess I was ready.

“You. Cannot. Fail. That is out of the question, for Source cannot leave any of itself behind, and that includes you, wild child! Once you can accept this grand design, life softens, enlivens, and feels less hostile, more benevolent, which changes everything. Imagine – holy imaginarium that you are – a life where doubt and anxiety vanish, and the chronic inability to trust your experience falls away, taking with it all your reference points for limitation.” Card #40 Implacable Imperative – The Wild Child