Do you think that having awakened there is still a process of embodiment going on?  For instance, "the breaking open wide of my heart" - that's a process, yes?  How do you view that?  I ask because I think of you as a pathless, direct, "boom" but I also don't think I've got that accurate.  And, it's this unfolding that interests me.

----

I want to give you a very honest clear response to these questions.

The breaking open wide of my heart is the way every moment is, now.

Back in November, my mind gathered itself and leapt into the possibility that 'me' was just a thought and had no real substance in the direct experience of life.  What brought my mind to that place could be called a process, I suppose, but when did that process begin? When my body was born?  When my mother's and father's bodies were born?

I'm not sure what happened between November and March.  I was trying to see what to do with this new realization.  I wrote stuff to you about looking and seeing and whatnot, and I wrote on the fierce freedom blog and generally felt pissed off at the lie of self...  In retrospect I was like an egotistical teenager running about going 'look what i figured out.  i got the answer!'

Come the first of March, it's like the Universe said 'well we will see about that'.

And then my attention was given the koan of death to focus on.  Without the confusion that there was a separate 'me' to whom the sickness of my cat was happening, I had nowhere to stand.  I had nothing to buffer the reality, and no position to argue from.  So the usual "why is this happening to me, what did i do wrong to make my cat sick, can i do something to make the cat well, can i arrange for a miracle from God, etc." just played itself out.  Every day of that entire month I gave the cat medicine and love and attention, knowing the entire time she was going to die at any moment.  I sat with my own programmed thoughts about death and I sat with a little part of the universe that i'd honestly loved more than pretty much anything else for the last 14 years and i watched that spark burn.  It had nothing to do with 'me'.  It had nothing to do with any imagined 'will' the cat might have had, either.  I saw there is no dividing line between life and death, even though humans like to think there is.  I couldn't find the point in time when the cat became 'dying' vs. living, you see.  Then, after the cat died, I got really really sick and I had to do the same thing with my own body that i had done for the cat.  I had to be with it, and wait.  I couldn't read or think or do anything besides sleep.  Obviously i didn't die, but I wanted to, i felt so crappy.  These experiences brought some glimpse into view of how absolutely without bearing this silly notion of self is on life.  And how amazing that life is aware of itself!  What is this thing we call attention?  What moves it?  I have no idea!

So now every moment is like this.  Nothing my attention moves to or with, lasts.  Everyone is dead and therefore infinitely precious in the moment that my attention is one with them.  I am walking dead.  And nothing matters anymore aside from sitting with what is, and loving it as it is, just here and now, without condition.  There's nothing to fix.  There's nowhere to get to.  Every moment is the last moment.  Emptiness and fullness at the same time...

I hope this makes some sense and answers your questions.

How admirable,
He who thinks not, "Life is fleeting,"
When he sees the lightning!

How very noble!
One who finds no satori
in the lightning-flash

Two translations of apparently the same haiku by Basho.  I find the comparison of thinking "life is fleeting" and "satori" particularly interesting, and as usual, the entire observation of these poems and the related thought and now the words and blog post, are all another arising of this very frequent serendipity/coincidence thing that happens 'to me' lately.

This 'thought of life being fleeting' is my constant koan, these days, and the more i open to it, the more i find only room for conditionless love to prevail in my experience.  everything fades in the brilliance of this permanent transience.  all concerns and expectations lose their potency.

This conditionless love, or unconditional acceptance of what IS, is the Emptiness.  It is the Oneness.  It is the timelessness and it is the Peace that passeth understanding.  It is Enlightenment, Liberation and Sat-Chit-Ananda.  It is Being.  It is Awareness.  It is Attention.  It is that which animates all of existence.  It is not a word.  It is what gives rise to any word description of it.  It is prior and beyond.

and i say to myself what a wonderful world

back in november i thought i'd figured it all out, having seen there's no me separate from life. i was high on this new insight and determined to find a way to wake the world up to it! i was full of rage at the delusion of separation that causes suffering and frustrated that i couldn't wake everyone up immediately. turned out this was a cute first baby step.

then in march my cat got sick and i nursed her for 30 days and she died. the vet told me she would not recover, but i did not want to choose the time of her death for her so we tried to make her comfortable at home.

i don't know about anyone else, but there's never been anything like caring faithfully and tenderly for someone i love, all the while knowing that they will die.

the thought of 'me' was only in the way of the experience and became silenced in the immensity of what WAS. i could not fight with what was inevitable. i could not bargain or find a story that made me feel better.

after the cat died my body's immune system was trashed from grief and stress. i got sick and was literally on my back in bed for 7 days. i could think about nothing. utter rest.

again, not speaking for anyone else, it is very clear, always here and now, that this is the condition of being at all times. this is the breaking open wide of my heart. there's nothing possible but conditionless love of it all, whatever it is, and loving it into death.

death is a gift.  death is essential.

how else would we awaken to the mystery of our being?

how else would we taste the juice of living?

life = walking dead

here's how it seems from right here.

this flow of being doesn't have a findable, locatable, separate ego-self-me.  there's no entity controlling and blamable for any outcome of events.  there's not even a particular event that can be confirmed as THE point of events.

there is no separate me.  there is only life, as it is.  to say 'only' may be to play down the complete enoughness of life, as it is.  after all, THIS is how it is, and to say it is not enough is also part of what is.

life seeks pleasure.  living beings seek pleasure.  this seems to be the case without exception.

if this is truly the case without exception, what is experienced here, is that giving unconditional love and acceptance to all 'other' manifestations of life... to all living beings...  to this-what-is...  is the absolute best way i know to gain pleasure.  

therefore, to love 'myself', i 'choose' to forsake myself for love of all that is 'other' to 'me'.  truly, this was never a choice, but instead, it is grace to see life this way.

life is intelligent.  a self-loving being is not proof of a separate someone who loves.  this is simply the case for all living beings...  for all of life...

the flicker

i kissed the head of a sick frail cat
i kissed the head of a dead cat that i loved

i kissed the forehead of my sleeping lover
i kissed the head of a baby chick
i kissed the shell of an egg

formed and shattered in time

each born and bloomed
then changed and gone

what is this

which kisses these fragile
empty all too soon
spheres

what is this
which loves?

the kiss
the love
the leaving

everything comes and goes
the source and the destination are the same

drugs and alcohol seem to make the illusion of a controller of experience seem more real

the sun doesn't go down... it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

i can say
be at rest within
there is no way
there has never been a possibility that things could be any other way than they are
just as they are
right now

this seems thoroughly marvelous to me just now.

there is no findable experience of no separation, because there was never separation to begin with.  so really, all experiences are of no separation.

there is no findable experience of union, because nothing was ever apart.  all experiences are experiences of union.

separation is an idea.  a thought.  a notion.  a belief.  a misconception.  a lie.  ego.  self.  me.  you.

even these ideas are not separate from what is.

there is nothing separate from what is.  everything has to be just as it is, for this to be as it is right now.  the proof is that this is what is.  it's obvious. 

nothing can tear that apart.

what is, is constantly changing.  nothing can stop that.

the end of believing
that the thought of being
an individual me
is proof that there really IS an individual me,
does not leave nothing. 
it leaves everything,
rushing in.
it leaves singularity.
and it leaves innocence. 
unconditional love. 
all that is necessary is seeing
there's no separate you
to hold knowledge.

notes on haunted universe by steven norquist

"its power: the animation of existence"
a person can live only so long in this dream before a nightmare must emerge...
once that nightmare emerges and dominates the field of consciousness the urge to awaken manifests
who am i? why am i here? is there a god?
as waking from a nightmare in sleep is when the dream world vanishes, waking from the nightmare of life is when the dreamer vanishes.
the dream (the world of transient experiences) never ends.  the fabric of reality does not dissolve, but the self vanishes.
the brilliance of the world (transient experience only available now) increases as the individual fades
all that makes you uniquely you fades
true nature of reality = no you
there was never an individual dreamer
the universe is empty of self
void of persons
silence=no self
there is only the spontaneous manifestation of life
yet nothing is random and all that emerges does so precisely and perfectly
this is only known in direct experience.  it is felt.
the hum of the machine, working endlessly, blindly and perfectly.
the substance of this emergence is consciousness
universe = consciousness
the barrier to ultimate truth is a personal desire for meaning or value
all that is (you are) that which moves = mindless + intentionless
lose the hope for affirmation of being
there, is the peace and release of the void
the suffering comes from the belief that there must be meaning or purpose to live.  love, success, hope, recognition.
there is no final feeling of freedom from delusion or freedom from suffering
singularity = black hole, irresistible void, abyss... central to all manifestation... the origin of all things
life does everything in its power to return to death
the instant the human ego tries to assert itself... the void opens... suffering, flames, destruction, annihilation, peace - in that order
you become the void, the emptiness
you are unable to 'buy in' or see meaning in anything
you become a flaming force searing meaning and ego and hope
the art of automation
a shell following its programming
the universe is in charge
this is the way it is
there is no need to change or be something other than what has always been
to see the centrality as void changes nothing
you has always been a mindless, soulless, animatronis character in disneyland with music and dancing and singing and flashing lights and absolutely no one ever in the park to see or experience it
...there has only ever been enlightenment
actionless, motionless, and as destructive as a 2 year old child
you are no longer constrained; you expand outwards and fill all that is

en
light-ened!

the load of self is lifted the load is lightened the load of self is gone.
the yoke is easy and the burden is light. 

whaddoiknow about enlightenment?

i know i got my answer it was my answer because no one else was asking the question.  i couldn't verbalize the question because it formed from conditioning like a snowball into a giant snow boulder over the years.  i held the question close and it leaked out through all the holes in my facade in the false structure of separation the conditioning created. 

when i say the conditioning i mean the way my mind grew to believe something was wrong, out of place, missing, lost, lacking with my life.  the conditioning of my mind said i had to behave right versus wrong and find salvation for my soul so i looked for the salvation for a long time until someone mentioned i might consider looking for the soul. 

lo and behold all the great sages were right and there is nothing separate.  the wholeness of each moment is never not here.  even in the middle of a great movement of mind to exert the sense of me of self into an experience, there is never not wholeness.  its funny how all the fancy and previously confusing descriptions about this make sense now.  they never lit my way before.  they only made me hungry for the missing piece to be found. 

there is a very subtle click in the mind, when it is seen that there is no missing piece.  there is a moment by moment, now by now, just-being-ness that has always been, but can now be felt directly, since the veil of separation is seen through.  i listen to opinions and i feel less and less of an urge to pick one.  opinions seem silly now.  how could it possibly matter if i say 'this!' or 'that!'?