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.

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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.