#post awakening
Well it turns out that nothing is permanent, at least for now. After swimming in the emptiness of existence for about a week, I felt pulled back into contraction. At first fear showed up, even though emptiness was heavy and lonely, I didn’t want to be pulled back into suffering. My ego was still trying to claim the experience. Then I realized that I probably still have issues to resolve and wounds to heal. Back in January when I had my first true glimpse of the truth, I proceeded to fall back into ego perspective and inevitably suffered. But in hindsight I realize that I was purging old emotions and unhealed wounds. This was not a mistake, this was exactly how it was supposed to go. And so this time I didn’t struggle as much when I noticed that once again I had left the state of transcendence.
As it turns out, I have “coincidentally” been in contact with an old flame for the past two months. And once again I cannot deny the obviousness and the beautiful genius of existence bringing me exactly what I need. At first I wasn’t sure how this reunion was going to unfold, but as the days have progressed we have again run into the same old familiar issues. I realize now that this is a perfectly timed opportunity, to close this chapter once and for all. However, saying goodbye is bringing up some sad emotions and I can feel myself resisting these feelings. There is the old ego voice, afraid of getting sucked into identification if I give into the pain. It’s like nowadays I simultaneously experience the perspective of the absolute and the relative. The old ego thoughts and patterns still come up and I can see them very clearly, which makes it almost impossible to lie to myself. But it also means that sometimes I feel confused, or I should say the ego feels confused by what it should think and do. And yet at the same time I mostly experience very clear guidance.
I know that this is what’s meant to happen and that we have been brought back together for proper closure. I also know that there is still a part of me which keeps running from emptiness. I have noticed for example that I have become quite the workaholic lately. I have a lot of energy and I just can’t seem to sit still. I want to constantly be moving or doing. It’s okay though, I know I will exhaust myself at some point again.
So as to where I am at the moment, it’s hard to say. Somewhere between ego land and emptiness. Sometimes there is a feeling of completeness and a whole lot of love flowing inside me. Other times I actually physically feel contracted and I am suffering. I believe these are the ego identifications being brought up and old wounds being healed to be able to completely let go into consciousness, god or myself.
For the past few months there have been many moments where I wanted to write, but I just couldn’t find the words to describe my experience. Up until a certain point I had control and I knew where I was going; towards enlightenment. I was seeking like crazy and nothing else in the whole world seemed to matter. Then during last January (2017) I realized that all of my seeking and running towards, was actually a running away from the truth. For a brief moment I let go of all my beliefs and expectations and the truth presented itself.
For a while I was living in bliss, experiencing life as the witness. There was a distance between “me” and experience, which gave me a huge relief and brought me peace. I could zoom out and realize it was all illusion. Slowly however, I started to feel myself leaving this space. It would scare me so much, because leaving to me meant going back to suffering. And so I tried to hold on. Sometimes the mind would get very loud and I would feel disconnected and hopeless. I struggled with holding on, until I got swept up by life again. I fell in love and let go of trying to hold onto truth.
Truth never truly left me and my life and my perspective never fully returned to the way it was. Yet my awakening was of the unabiding nature as Adyashanti puts it so well, meaning that it wasn’t permanent at the time.
Falling in love inevitably led to my heart breaking and I found myself suffering again. It was very confusing, because I couldn’t understand how I could be making the same stupid mistakes as before my awakening. The suffering got so bad and I found myself in a very dark place, also referred to as the dark night of the soul. I started to doubt everything, had I every truly experienced an awakening? What was the point of truth if it would lead me to even greater suffering? Thankfully the universe sent me guidance and it restored my faith. Faith helped me to open up and fully experience my pain and suffering. (I’m being very brief here because I want to talk about something else and still give you guys a short update.)
After the dark night of the soul passed, I found myself with a lot of kundalini energy. I would workout intensely in order to try and process this energy. It started to feel like I was running from something. I couldn’t sit still, I was constantly doing, meeting friends, working, studying, eating, shopping. I couldn’t stop. And at the same time I could feel that I was running. This kept going until I got tired, I became so exhausted with running that I started to slow down. Eventually I found myself crying out: I am exhausted, I don’t want to run anymore. Whatever is supposed to happen, please let it happen. If I need to die, kill me.
The next day I was walking around some shops and suddenly I felt myself sink into an emptiness, I had experienced this before and it had always scared me. Now finally I could let myself experience it and I found myself in an unknown place, an emptiness had washed over me and there was no me left. It’s so difficult to describe this experience, since it is so abstract to the mind. There were multiple things happening at the same time. I realized I was nothing, and so were all the other egos. I found myself mourning my own death. I had invested so much in this person I thought I was and I still loved the illusion of her. After a while I found myself also mourning the death of everyone around me, I realized that my parents never really existed and that my gurus didn’t either. I would feel grief and I would have intense moments of crying (I am still mourning actually). Sometimes I could feel the despair of my mind trying to recreate itself as a person, but there was simply no energy left to believe in the illusion again.
The experience of emptiness is a very lonely experience. When you realize that you don’t truly exist as an ego and therefore nobody else exists, you find yourself all alone in the universe. You can’t really talk to anyone about this, because most people would think you are insane and because you realize that there is no one else to talk to, since no one actually exists. Sometimes the mind would try to take me back to illusion and I knew it would be a relief to escape the heavy loneliness of emptiness. And yet I found myself continuing to rest in this place.
A few nights ago I was at a concert with a big crowd of people, again I found myself sinking deep into emptiness and I let myself drown.Then something new happened, for the first time this heavy emptiness expanded and suddenly I felt myself as everyone. I felt the true oneness of life. I realized that yes we are all nothing, but at the same time I am walking around in myself.I am the whole universe and the nothingness, for the first time I experienced this strange and magnificent paradox. I was walking around thinking about hugging people and at the same time I knew nothing mattered. Everyone is me and so I am complete. There is no where to go and no one to tell this to, since everyone is me. There is nothing outside of me that I need or that could bring me happiness. It’s all me.
I never imagined that this would be enlightenment, for a long time I was seeking to be special, to be unique. And spirituality would bring me there. But spirituality took away my self and simultaneously my need to be special.
I am still processing everything and I am still mourning my own death and the death of everyone else. It’s a sad place having to conceptually say goodbye to all of my loved ones and my cherished gurus, but I understand that there is no way around it.
PS. I do not write with non dual language, I refer to myself as me and I, because it’s just easier. After all we also live in the relative world and I think you all understand what I’m saying, which is what matters.
About a month ago I decided to stop dating, because I realized that I kept repeating the same dating pattern. Even though I felt ready to share my life, I kept meeting emotionally unavailable men that were not interested in a real commitment.
So, here we are about 4 weeks later and some interesting things have been happening. About a week into my non-dating challenge, I noticed that I was thinking about several of my exes. I caught myself looking at their social media and even hoping to hear from them. These are exes that I no longer have any feelings for whatsoever. And so when I noticed this I was quite surprised, why the hell am I interested in this person again?
I realized I am interested in them, because I can’t have them. Since they had also become off limits, they were suddenly interesting to me. And then it hit me, I have always been obsessed with either a goal, an object or a person. All my life I have been chasing something, with the hope that it will bring me happiness. As long as there is something I can chase, I can keep fooling myself that happiness is something to strive for. And THIS is the reason why I can’t let go of Alex. This is why I can’t let the hope go, that he is going to come back and profess his love for me. I keep hoping, because I honestly believe that I need to keep chasing something.
Suddenly I became aware of how false this belief is. I looked back at my life and at all the things I had obsessed about, that I eventually got. The time when I was 13 and obsessed with buying a Haley Duff album, my first boyfriend that I was obsessively in love with for months before getting together, all the pairs of shoes I had obsessed about before buying, my obsession with being skinnier and the time I lost about 15 kg.. and the list continues.. I looked back at these experiences and I understood something: the fantasy happiness that my obsessions promised, had always remained a fantasy. The Duff album had made me happy for a week, my first relationship had become “normal” very quick, all my shoes had become just another pair in my closet and my “new and improved body” was no longer something special. In each and every case, the experience I had obsessively chased quickly became yet another normal experience. Everything had always lost its initial joy and I had always returned to my habit of chasing something new.
No person and no object has ever brought me true and lasting happiness. And so I saw very clearly, that my obsession with Alex is just another fantasy. I think he will make me happy, because I am addicted to the chase. It’s based on the false belief that happiness is something I need to chase, something in the future and never here and now.
Seeing this belief clearly, instantly helped me to release my obsession and all of the hope I was holding onto. However, seeing through this core belief also sent me into a short depression. For about a week I felt a certain contraction in my stomach and I had no energy to do anything. I just wanted to lay in bed and be by myself. If there is nothing worth chasing, what am I supposed to do in life?
I am so used to chasing, that when this mechanism fell away, I felt like there was nothing to live for. I wasn’t depressed in a suicidal kind of way, it felt more like an energetic resting. It was like I needed to process my new understanding and almost like I was mourning my old ways of living. Since the self-realization in January, I feel very guided. Often, I will go through a specific experience and at the same time I will know why it’s happening. This time I also knew, I need to give myself some space and the next step will become clear with time.
After a week of processing I started to feel better and my life energy was returning. Then I saw Alex again on several occasions, because we have some mutual friends. The first few times I felt fine. Sometimes I noticed I was still thinking about whether he was looking at me, but it wasn’t too obsessive. Then after seeing him a few times, I noticed he started to like my social media stuff again and this rekindled some of my hope. After that, we met again during another mutual friend meeting, where I didn’t expect him to be. And to my surprise I noticed I was very aware of his presence again and whether he was paying attention to me. This made me so frustrated, why does this keep continuing even though I clearly see the belief?! And then this knowing that has been guiding me whispered: perhaps the belief has not yet lost all of its power. It’s being triggered again so you can really let it go. And it’s true. I must admit that I have started to pursue things again, because somehow the here and now doesn’t feel enough. This can’t be it, happiness must be somewhere out there.
It’s so ridiculous to admit this, because intellectually I realize that it’s not true. But as with all of my beliefs and life lessons, I have learned that the first step is always to become conscious of it. Then, only after seeing the dysfunctional mechanism for a while, the real change will show up in life. I realize that for now I am seeing this belief and that it might take me some time to completely let it go. As frustrating as that is, I need to accept the way things are. What other choice do I have really? Reality is already the way it is and fighting it only creates unnecessary suffering.
No longer chasing things for happiness, means we get to do things for the pure joy of doing them. It’s not about any desired outcome. It’s like how an artist sings a song just for the pure joy of singing, he isn’t singing to get to the end of the song. I feel something in me is still fighting to let go of this belief because it wants to keep chasing. It’s the ego that keeps fighting, because it can only survive by struggling and chasing. If there is no struggle and no problem that needs to be fixed, what remains? What remains is this moment, right here and now.
For now I see this mechanism, and I know that it doesn’t have a lot of time left if I can see it so clearly. After awakening the ego and its beliefs still have momentum, but this will slowly come to a stop. On the one hand I can’t wait for the struggle to end and on the other hand “I” am terrified of completely stopping here and now. I know that letting go of the constant chase, means that the ego will really die. There will be nothing left for it to hold onto.Regardless of how I feel about it though, the process of the ego eroding away has started and I know there is no way back.
I hope you are doing well, wherever you are on your journey.
