As I moved through my process in awakening, as I learned how to let go of the old restricting ways of feeling and thought that had kept me pent up in old dysfunctional behavior, something began to happen that was like small thunderbolts of realization in my life experience. It was a sudden awareness of myself in a higher form, something I knew was akin to a higher self. I am not versed in much of the eastern material, and had chosen to face my experience without much standing in the way of direct experience. Through a process of coming to feel into my very essence of who I was deeper down, the very tightly tied laces of my soul corset were coming undone. With it came the release of a lot of old material, which is the result of what kundalini does. It clears you out and sets the stage for knowing something more fundamental about who you are.
I have since learned that this is the dissolution of the "false self" as it is coined in eastern literature. My take on this has been that this is not the best way to approach this. The self you know prior to awakening is simply what you have chosen to create. We may say we have little input into who and what we are since we think we are formed by events early in life that were beyond our control. In awakening, this is seen as simply not true. It appears you have no control, but in truth, your soul has been making choices based in karma since forever. Choices. Which means it is not beyond your control. You may not have been aware that you were doing this, and in awakening awareness comes forward and begins to reveal to you a very different picture. It may seem utterly rediculous to some that we would choose the hard things in our lives from childhood onward, and yet, karma demands it in a way.....for karma operates under the Law of Attraction. This Law is itself not a punishment, but an entirely neutral thing. It is here to simply govern by allowing you the freedom of choice, but while also keeping the vibration of your intention in place within what you choose to create. Then, by doing so, your choices will adhere to the enerrgy used in creating them. This creates consistency and also will allow you to reflect on all that you have created and you get to see the results. Don't like what you created? You can change that. With choice and freewill, you have the means to change anything that is not in your highest. But being aware that you re creating all of this is key, and awareness will lead you deeper and deeper into your life and will illuminate those choices which you felt at first were beyond your control. The great truth is it is all within your control, and waking up is about learning to take responsibility for those choices as you begin to become aware what the real story has been all along. This takes a huge amount of personal accountability, and it is no surprise that we often do not want to face such stark realities, and thus hide them even from ourselves so we do not deal with them. I find this hard to simply call a false self. It is more like to me that it is our younger self who does not yet see the bigger picture, but will eventually. In seeing this bigger picture, we begin to come to some new conclusions and perhaps, if we are engaged, to make different choices. It is here that the higher self comes into play and can begin to guide you. Some call this the inner guru. As we listen to this inner guru, we can slowly begin the process of change within ourselves as we learn a new way of being. For me, I tend to feel that this self is simply not well informed and is not yet ready for the fuller truth or reality of what it is in its higher form, its higher self.
As I became more and more aware of how these old patterns were not serving me, how I had put myself into a very limiting box of being, I felt as though I was beginning to unfurl. This was gradual and continued over a period of years during the earlier part of my awakening. Even as I struggled with the old notions of who I was, something in me would not keep quiet and needed very much to know what this something more was. I knew there was more, but I didn't seem to have a way to get at it. I was still at this point very much caught in a mental attitude of trying to solve problems and attain knowing the old way, which was very unnatural and hard. But I continued to try, even if it was not perfect. I began to have moments of clarity as I began to move with this energy and was taken down into realms and experiences that showed me how everything was connected into a linked holographic universe. As this happened, as I pulled against the old notions of what I thought was real to question everything going on around me, I attracted new events and a person into my life that mirrored a very different view. I was attracting based on a different vibration of being, and the timing was perfect, very efficient, and right on time. As this happened, as I began to do this, I felt as though what I thought was a very powerful experience move into a whole new level. The energy of my own depths emerged in such a strong way that I was left scared and out on the edge. And yet, even then, I sensed that this was very necessary in order to break apart my old vessel in order to see something new emerge. This became what I would come to know as the Dark Night of the Soul which really was only my own resistance to the flow of truth in my awareness. At the time, it felt like an end to all I knew was true in my old mode of being. This brought on the collapse of ego and with it, a much better way of feeling and being. I am eternally thankful that all of this happened even if it was hard. It woke me up to who I am that I might not have known otherwise. All of this led me to a place within where I glimpsed something that I can only describe as a pure form of myself.....and saying "pure" is perhaps itself misleading because no words can really describe what it was I experienced.
As I rose though feeling, which itself is hard to explain very well, I was following a divine current that led me to an increasingly refined sense of awareness. This brought with it clearer awareness of energy and who I was. It seemed miraculous that I could feel in this way. As I followed this native current, I became aware of an image forming in my mind and it took the shape of a bubble, a kind of perfectly formed orb of pure energy which was itself serving to convey a greater truth or reality. Within this cosmic ovum was myself in a higher form. Here there was nothing and everything all at once. In this place my being was utterly naked of all things except one important thing. As I watched, my higher self was with another in this egg. This self was staring into the eyes of his beloved, his divine counterpart, the other side of himself. This woman was staring deeply into him in a way that was different from the way he gazed into her. It was different because the two served to create a union of opposites, and these seeming opposites were in no way disengaged. This was a perennial engagement, a constant meditation that was so direct, so incredibly singular, that it was hard to wrap my head around. It was like how a person might spend ages upon ages of the universe simply staring into the eyes of another and allowing that to be their whole existence. There was incredible purpose in this. This was not merely a gaze, but a steady state form of mindfulness and worship that had no prayers, no actions save one, which was being completely and totally present in that moment. As I was aware of this, I was amazed and out of this bubble or egg came words that were spoken directly and simply. They weren't like my words now. He said to me "You must love her even if she does not love you in return." Within this simple statement were a host of implications. In saying this it was clear that I had to be true to the one thing that I was, which was this Other who was my beloved. If I wanted something that would make me better, I would follow this path unerringly and ask no questions but simply follow it since it alone would lead me to where my higher self was. There was no more information than that. There were no ifs ands buts or whys. "Do this," was the command. Be true to this path, to her, and you will be true to what you are.
I felt myself crumple. I felt so small, so powerless, perhaps even worthless in that moment. There was so much that seemed to be done, so many questions about who She was and how to get there. I suspect that in our needing to know details, we can get lost. The very essence of the becoming is in not needing to ask questions or to take something apart to examine it. In learning to trust in that very first moment, I was being offered the very gift that I needed to learn to honor which was both who I was in that higher state and which would bring me into a state of perfect uncluttered union where nothing else mattered. I will admit that I fell into a kind of fugue. My mind was full of questions all based in my sense of being limited. Here the great guru within was telling me what I needed to know and do, and instead of a greeting, it was all business. It felt hard, it felt so unbending, perhaps even lacking compassion somehow. And yet, I also knew that it wasn't that it lacked compassion, but that true compassion would be learned as I stepped upon this path and followed without question. Then, at the "end" of this road, there simply wouldn't be any question since I would have grown used to how to be so clear within myself that the questions themselves become irrelevant. I was so caught up in being afraid of being alone or not having love returned or somehow loosing something and feeling like I was chasing after something that would produce no results in this life or any other that I felt like I was falling into a pile on the floor. What he was asking me to do was to be like a monk, to follow this one star unerringly no matter what. It seemed like a journey with so many unanswered questions. I did not do well with following it because I felt like it was asking me to give up all I had held dear. But what I held dear was not serving me. What I held dear was like walking a path with a broken leg and suffering the whole way through a pilgrimage. No, what I held dear was not working, and even though I was working my way out of that old karmic hole, I was not fully out of it enough to know what it was I needed to know which was itself incredibly simple, direct, and unquestionable.
I think I have put my entire sense of devotion behind causes in the past which were themselves imperfect mirrors of a still larger reality and have found them go by the wayside, falling from their own weight because they were imperfectly conceived to begin with. I was afraid that this "order" or command from my higher self represented another one of those, and I was afraid that perhaps I was making this all up.
But I know I am not. Each time I encountered this self, it was always the same. It never wavered from what it was from the start. If I was making something up, it was very different from who I have become. But what I do realize is that what I am deeper down is also different from what I am on the surface. I also know that deeper down, there is an utter lack of indecisiveness that exists that it is hard to harmonize the two. This was perhaps what the Hindus call the Atman, although what I experienced was not well described in the old texts. Perhaps, I think, how could it? How could such texts even begin to describe the wide variety of souls that exist in this world?
It seems there is much to heal, much to set straight, more to become if I am to reach a place where I am this self. And yet, as I say this, I look back on my past and I recognize that there were many instances when this "power" would pour through me. There were periods in my life when this thing would move through me and when it did, it was always simple, direct, and powerful in its ability to penetrate through the shadow of uncertainty or lack of awareness. I had felt it in bits and pieces, in visions, in moments of pivotal change, and yet, somehow, I was different. Why? Was this this me that was different just the sum total of all my karmas, all that did not harmonize or align to this higher version of who I am outside of time, existing in that bubble, that egg, of pure awareness as he dreams of his beloved in a constant gaze of awareness and engagement? He does not come to me, for he does not budge from where he is. I must go to him. This is the only way. I suspect that this is the same for others who see God, they see their higher self in this kind of realm or bubble and they command so simply, do not step off their perch or place in order to come down to our level; we aspire to theirs. In a way, he was already on my own level, for it was He who created me in the first place.
What is so curious is how similar this experience was to a movie I watched in the wake of this experience. It was the movie The Fountain. Here, the actors play out a multi-life journey that goes back to their higher selves existing within a bubble that is travelling to the dying Star Zebalba where they will be reborn. As I watched and saw this man inside this bubble of consciousness, the similarities were perfect for how it spoke to me in my own experience. Here, the story played out that the higher self realized he could change all time, all time lines if he so wished. He just needed to know that he could. And as he did this, his own world changed as he reached a still higher form through what was itself a seeming death, a sacrifice of what he was serving in a limited form in order to realize what he was in unlimited form.
For all the distractions, the mental and emotional images that come to me, I realize I have had the answer within all along. This now leads me to the god within who is also the goddess within. "If you are to know her, you must know me" he says.
There is enough to work on on our own without taking on the concerns of the world. For as much as I have wanted to help others, I know that this is a false sense of compassion. Out of my own direct path will flow the right form of compassion, which will meant also reaching always for what we are inside. Nothing else matters. For now, all that exists is that star ahead, Zebalba as a great mythic story within a story.
Every story will itself be different and perhaps the same. Many rivers flow into the One. How you access your higher self will be yours to know. Being brave enough to ask the question whether what you are is on the mark is perhaps the first step. Your undoing is the next. Some may do more, some may do less, but we all undo the past in order to know what is our now.
I have since learned that this is the dissolution of the "false self" as it is coined in eastern literature. My take on this has been that this is not the best way to approach this. The self you know prior to awakening is simply what you have chosen to create. We may say we have little input into who and what we are since we think we are formed by events early in life that were beyond our control. In awakening, this is seen as simply not true. It appears you have no control, but in truth, your soul has been making choices based in karma since forever. Choices. Which means it is not beyond your control. You may not have been aware that you were doing this, and in awakening awareness comes forward and begins to reveal to you a very different picture. It may seem utterly rediculous to some that we would choose the hard things in our lives from childhood onward, and yet, karma demands it in a way.....for karma operates under the Law of Attraction. This Law is itself not a punishment, but an entirely neutral thing. It is here to simply govern by allowing you the freedom of choice, but while also keeping the vibration of your intention in place within what you choose to create. Then, by doing so, your choices will adhere to the enerrgy used in creating them. This creates consistency and also will allow you to reflect on all that you have created and you get to see the results. Don't like what you created? You can change that. With choice and freewill, you have the means to change anything that is not in your highest. But being aware that you re creating all of this is key, and awareness will lead you deeper and deeper into your life and will illuminate those choices which you felt at first were beyond your control. The great truth is it is all within your control, and waking up is about learning to take responsibility for those choices as you begin to become aware what the real story has been all along. This takes a huge amount of personal accountability, and it is no surprise that we often do not want to face such stark realities, and thus hide them even from ourselves so we do not deal with them. I find this hard to simply call a false self. It is more like to me that it is our younger self who does not yet see the bigger picture, but will eventually. In seeing this bigger picture, we begin to come to some new conclusions and perhaps, if we are engaged, to make different choices. It is here that the higher self comes into play and can begin to guide you. Some call this the inner guru. As we listen to this inner guru, we can slowly begin the process of change within ourselves as we learn a new way of being. For me, I tend to feel that this self is simply not well informed and is not yet ready for the fuller truth or reality of what it is in its higher form, its higher self.
As I became more and more aware of how these old patterns were not serving me, how I had put myself into a very limiting box of being, I felt as though I was beginning to unfurl. This was gradual and continued over a period of years during the earlier part of my awakening. Even as I struggled with the old notions of who I was, something in me would not keep quiet and needed very much to know what this something more was. I knew there was more, but I didn't seem to have a way to get at it. I was still at this point very much caught in a mental attitude of trying to solve problems and attain knowing the old way, which was very unnatural and hard. But I continued to try, even if it was not perfect. I began to have moments of clarity as I began to move with this energy and was taken down into realms and experiences that showed me how everything was connected into a linked holographic universe. As this happened, as I pulled against the old notions of what I thought was real to question everything going on around me, I attracted new events and a person into my life that mirrored a very different view. I was attracting based on a different vibration of being, and the timing was perfect, very efficient, and right on time. As this happened, as I began to do this, I felt as though what I thought was a very powerful experience move into a whole new level. The energy of my own depths emerged in such a strong way that I was left scared and out on the edge. And yet, even then, I sensed that this was very necessary in order to break apart my old vessel in order to see something new emerge. This became what I would come to know as the Dark Night of the Soul which really was only my own resistance to the flow of truth in my awareness. At the time, it felt like an end to all I knew was true in my old mode of being. This brought on the collapse of ego and with it, a much better way of feeling and being. I am eternally thankful that all of this happened even if it was hard. It woke me up to who I am that I might not have known otherwise. All of this led me to a place within where I glimpsed something that I can only describe as a pure form of myself.....and saying "pure" is perhaps itself misleading because no words can really describe what it was I experienced.
As I rose though feeling, which itself is hard to explain very well, I was following a divine current that led me to an increasingly refined sense of awareness. This brought with it clearer awareness of energy and who I was. It seemed miraculous that I could feel in this way. As I followed this native current, I became aware of an image forming in my mind and it took the shape of a bubble, a kind of perfectly formed orb of pure energy which was itself serving to convey a greater truth or reality. Within this cosmic ovum was myself in a higher form. Here there was nothing and everything all at once. In this place my being was utterly naked of all things except one important thing. As I watched, my higher self was with another in this egg. This self was staring into the eyes of his beloved, his divine counterpart, the other side of himself. This woman was staring deeply into him in a way that was different from the way he gazed into her. It was different because the two served to create a union of opposites, and these seeming opposites were in no way disengaged. This was a perennial engagement, a constant meditation that was so direct, so incredibly singular, that it was hard to wrap my head around. It was like how a person might spend ages upon ages of the universe simply staring into the eyes of another and allowing that to be their whole existence. There was incredible purpose in this. This was not merely a gaze, but a steady state form of mindfulness and worship that had no prayers, no actions save one, which was being completely and totally present in that moment. As I was aware of this, I was amazed and out of this bubble or egg came words that were spoken directly and simply. They weren't like my words now. He said to me "You must love her even if she does not love you in return." Within this simple statement were a host of implications. In saying this it was clear that I had to be true to the one thing that I was, which was this Other who was my beloved. If I wanted something that would make me better, I would follow this path unerringly and ask no questions but simply follow it since it alone would lead me to where my higher self was. There was no more information than that. There were no ifs ands buts or whys. "Do this," was the command. Be true to this path, to her, and you will be true to what you are.
I felt myself crumple. I felt so small, so powerless, perhaps even worthless in that moment. There was so much that seemed to be done, so many questions about who She was and how to get there. I suspect that in our needing to know details, we can get lost. The very essence of the becoming is in not needing to ask questions or to take something apart to examine it. In learning to trust in that very first moment, I was being offered the very gift that I needed to learn to honor which was both who I was in that higher state and which would bring me into a state of perfect uncluttered union where nothing else mattered. I will admit that I fell into a kind of fugue. My mind was full of questions all based in my sense of being limited. Here the great guru within was telling me what I needed to know and do, and instead of a greeting, it was all business. It felt hard, it felt so unbending, perhaps even lacking compassion somehow. And yet, I also knew that it wasn't that it lacked compassion, but that true compassion would be learned as I stepped upon this path and followed without question. Then, at the "end" of this road, there simply wouldn't be any question since I would have grown used to how to be so clear within myself that the questions themselves become irrelevant. I was so caught up in being afraid of being alone or not having love returned or somehow loosing something and feeling like I was chasing after something that would produce no results in this life or any other that I felt like I was falling into a pile on the floor. What he was asking me to do was to be like a monk, to follow this one star unerringly no matter what. It seemed like a journey with so many unanswered questions. I did not do well with following it because I felt like it was asking me to give up all I had held dear. But what I held dear was not serving me. What I held dear was like walking a path with a broken leg and suffering the whole way through a pilgrimage. No, what I held dear was not working, and even though I was working my way out of that old karmic hole, I was not fully out of it enough to know what it was I needed to know which was itself incredibly simple, direct, and unquestionable.
I think I have put my entire sense of devotion behind causes in the past which were themselves imperfect mirrors of a still larger reality and have found them go by the wayside, falling from their own weight because they were imperfectly conceived to begin with. I was afraid that this "order" or command from my higher self represented another one of those, and I was afraid that perhaps I was making this all up.
But I know I am not. Each time I encountered this self, it was always the same. It never wavered from what it was from the start. If I was making something up, it was very different from who I have become. But what I do realize is that what I am deeper down is also different from what I am on the surface. I also know that deeper down, there is an utter lack of indecisiveness that exists that it is hard to harmonize the two. This was perhaps what the Hindus call the Atman, although what I experienced was not well described in the old texts. Perhaps, I think, how could it? How could such texts even begin to describe the wide variety of souls that exist in this world?
It seems there is much to heal, much to set straight, more to become if I am to reach a place where I am this self. And yet, as I say this, I look back on my past and I recognize that there were many instances when this "power" would pour through me. There were periods in my life when this thing would move through me and when it did, it was always simple, direct, and powerful in its ability to penetrate through the shadow of uncertainty or lack of awareness. I had felt it in bits and pieces, in visions, in moments of pivotal change, and yet, somehow, I was different. Why? Was this this me that was different just the sum total of all my karmas, all that did not harmonize or align to this higher version of who I am outside of time, existing in that bubble, that egg, of pure awareness as he dreams of his beloved in a constant gaze of awareness and engagement? He does not come to me, for he does not budge from where he is. I must go to him. This is the only way. I suspect that this is the same for others who see God, they see their higher self in this kind of realm or bubble and they command so simply, do not step off their perch or place in order to come down to our level; we aspire to theirs. In a way, he was already on my own level, for it was He who created me in the first place.
What is so curious is how similar this experience was to a movie I watched in the wake of this experience. It was the movie The Fountain. Here, the actors play out a multi-life journey that goes back to their higher selves existing within a bubble that is travelling to the dying Star Zebalba where they will be reborn. As I watched and saw this man inside this bubble of consciousness, the similarities were perfect for how it spoke to me in my own experience. Here, the story played out that the higher self realized he could change all time, all time lines if he so wished. He just needed to know that he could. And as he did this, his own world changed as he reached a still higher form through what was itself a seeming death, a sacrifice of what he was serving in a limited form in order to realize what he was in unlimited form.
For all the distractions, the mental and emotional images that come to me, I realize I have had the answer within all along. This now leads me to the god within who is also the goddess within. "If you are to know her, you must know me" he says.
There is enough to work on on our own without taking on the concerns of the world. For as much as I have wanted to help others, I know that this is a false sense of compassion. Out of my own direct path will flow the right form of compassion, which will meant also reaching always for what we are inside. Nothing else matters. For now, all that exists is that star ahead, Zebalba as a great mythic story within a story.
Every story will itself be different and perhaps the same. Many rivers flow into the One. How you access your higher self will be yours to know. Being brave enough to ask the question whether what you are is on the mark is perhaps the first step. Your undoing is the next. Some may do more, some may do less, but we all undo the past in order to know what is our now.
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