One of the challenges of realizing or awaking to the reality that “You” are not your ego, you are not your body, you are not your thinking, you are not your emotions… is a detachment from life. If I am no-thing, no-thing matters and as you mentioned that is the Ego attempting to identify it self with an experience of nothing mattering.  If “I” am no thing “I” am nothing, and things only matter when “I” matter, when I am ego. – I remain my ego even as I “know” I am not my ego and around and around we go.

On one level this is a problem of language. How can we reflect one our experiences, explain them to ourselves and other without referring to “I” even though we know the Self is not “I. The result is more often then not that instead of a healthy detachment to experiences we fall into indifference to our experiences and depression.

You had the realization that “taking things personal does not make sense” a kind of detachment that isn’t. What you are describing of your experience is not detachment but indifference. If you (the “I”) don’t care (indifference) about an outcome why bother working towards any goal – your ego asks.

It’s a challenge. The Art of Detachment is to be fully engaged in life, working towards goals that match your truths (as you know then to be in the moment), while not attaching your sense self and identity to the actions or outcomes. i.e. I am a good or bad person because I do this, I am a good person because I hit what I was aiming at, a bad person because I missed.

You can and get to care about the action and outcomes; however, the outcomes or actions do not define you. In this way you open yourself to play. Sure, what you understand as your truths today may change and with them the direction of your actions – learn better, do better – you get to laugh.

In the problem of opposites, which we must come to terms with, is how we measure, judge, divide and doings so make conscious (awaken) is that reality that the opposites don’t exist. Opposites are not independent sides of a coin that can be separated. As we become conscious of detachment we become conscious of attachment. Awaking to the light is also an awakening to the darkness. True Light will always defeat the darkness however light requires energy – movement. Keep moving. The intention of a practice is to not practice, the intention of seeking is finding (yet how many “seekers” would ever label themselves finders).

Once you ask a question you cannot unasked it. Ignorance is bliss but you can’t go back. Frankly life is easier when we identify with our ego and suffer. Righteous anger and taking everything personal can really get the juices flowing. Sure, in the end its exhausting and unhealthy but it can feel so good in the moment. You awakened to the realization that you are not your ego and can’t go back. It’s a loss, even if it leads to becoming more authentic, every loss needs to properly mourned.

Did any of that make sense?

Hi Jayde

I very much relate to being in the gray area as I find my self torn between wanting to fully engage in life and retreat from it. I suspect all things have their time

Like Joseph Campbell I suspect my “religion” is underlining books. I have always found the right book showing up when I thinking about some question.  The book I’m currently reading is by Eric Weiner called ‘Man Seeks God’. He is a travel writer that sets out on a quest to answer some of his own questions he has about his own experiences, or lack of experience. He ends up spending some time in various communities around the world asking some of the questions you may be asking.  It very well written and funny. The humor is self deprecating as he is very respectful to others thinking and experiences.

I wonder if you might also enjoy the book. The writer doesn’t go overly deep but he is very well read so there are a great number of passages to underline 🙂 … Why do I think you might enjoy the book… I think like me your wondering where you fit. Where you might feel as safe to be yourself as you are when your with your boyfriend. And why it is you find your self annoyed by those that don’t get it and those that seem to have all the answers. Just a thought

Really like your intention of doing something you truly love each day and fulfilling your soul’s needs. I suspect that will take you were you cannot yet even imagine you wanted to be.

There’s a lot of shit talked about awakening, but nevertheless it isn’t a path you want to be going down if you want a normal, comfortable life. I’ve been going through it for five years and it doesn’t get any easier. At times I have the most intense anger and could easily murder someone. There doesn’t seem to be an endgame in which you suddenly ‘get it’. Gods and goddesses like to mess around with the minds of poor mortals, and they like to keep you hanging with subtle signs you know aren’t just coincidental, yet neither is there anything tangible to hold on to. So you start to wonder if this is all the product of a broken mind. That’s the conclusion I am coming to now. I am DONE with spirituality and I am DONE playing mind games. It’s sad really. After all this time, this awakening could still be nothing more than a complete mental breakdown.

Fuck spirituality Fuck ascension. Fuck kundalini. Seriously.

Best wishes,

Tannhauser

Honestly, I’ve gone through a huge spiritual awakening and I was convinced I was losing my mind. I felt so detached. My ego was suffering. Just like June mentioned above, I became moody, introverted, my life changed and I viewed the world so much more differently. I still do. There isn’t any going back. Once you have this information the world – your world – truly changes. But don’t feel fear in it. Use this as enlightenment. You have become aware. You know more than most people do.

My apologies to any I may have offended. To me awakening has to be worked upon to bring it to maturity. Hearing the lack of guidance and pitfalls, it does not align with all that I learned about awakening to the truth of ones nature. The experience of the mind fallen away. The sense of being whole like finding one’s head was attached to one’s body all the time one was lost.

Anita,

Sorry. May be something I read long time ago?

Personally, still on this journey.

Still practicing, meditating. Still learning.

Tommy

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Tommy.

Dear Anita,

I apologize because you do so much here to try to help people. And, I can not even answer your post correctly.

Tommy

per the OP… who never responded to anyones’ posts~

After my awakening, I was kinda clueless what to do about the suffering associated with it – the Ego fought back with creating an identity around the subject “life was pointless.” Taking things personal does not make sense to me anymore. That is probably the reason that everything I tried in order to control the process,  like exercising, meditation felt useless. It made no sense to “get better”.

This is the kernel …and the proof, that absolutely nothing is gained by complete perfect enlightenment. If something were gained, it wouldn’t be enlightenment. Actually, that the palpable takeaway is a feeling of loss, proves one’s authentic experience beyond the created, the incremental— by a selfless absorption into nonorigination, hence its selfless (objective) knowledge.

Nevertheless, of all those who see Essence according to their inherent spiritual potential, even of those whose powerful experience constitutes the Absolute, and know that limit, and witness the stages prior to the dichotomy of the creative (Change), also realize that reality has never fallen into the creative; that awareness as your own mind right now has never moved from where it hovers, on the brink of going into action in perpetuity~ what would one hope to fix? It is already thus.

The ancients have all admonished those who, having stumbled into such a wonder through no effort or will on their part, to take up the path of self-refinement at once, or else squander an opportunity of inconceivable proportions. That “…ego fought back with creating an identity around the subject “life was pointless”, constitutes the work of gradual practice in the aftermath of the sudden. It is clear that any notion of depression, self-pity, apathy, malaise, melancholy, et al, are all just the psychological acrobatics of ego unable to hide— yet hiding none the less by insinuating itself as depression, self-pity, apathy, malaise, melancholy, and on and on. It continues to masquerade under any pretext or rationale in the face of its great lie.

The work of self-refinement in the aftermath of the sudden is the work of a lifetime with the caveat that Real Knowledge of selfless nonorigination beyond any notion of personal absolute identity is a potential deal-breaker for our friend ego. Taoism says that the first trip is short (has an ending): this is the sudden. It says that the second trip is long (is endless): this is gradual practice in the aftermath of selfless sudden realization where it becomes apparent that there is nothing to know, there is no one knowing in terms of awareness being void of voidness constituting the nature of awake, being a selfless inconceivable capacity never having begun. This is who we are. This is the basic experience. It is not special, per se; simply uncommon and beyond convention. What is necessary, over a course of years (Gautama Buddha was no different), is to quell one’s biases and inclinations to arrive at a point where one simply accepts one’s function, takes the forward step, and shares oneself freely with open hands.

In the aftermath of witnessing the Great Cycle, it should be expected that one’s return to “normal” would seem impossible. But normal is simply seeing what is as is without interjecting the psychological momentum of one’s lifelong biases and inclinations relative to the pattern-awareness being the false identity of the knower, thinker and liver of life. It is possible to go through life’s karmic situational evolutions without bringing up self-reifying tags relative to one’s personality identifications— and that’s not just after the sudden. Why? Enlightenment is already your own mind right now. It’s not a different mind: it’s just not your mind. It’s you, you are not it. Just don’t use your mind. Not using your mind is your own mind right now without entertaining notions of the knower, thinker and liver of life.

The reason it is so, not to mention that such is possible to carry out naturally in the midst of delusion, is that such is natural. It’s just not expressed relative to the person, or anyone else’s knowledge. Even so, this is carried out in the open because awareness is already impersonal, objective immediate knowledge. Potential is awareness being itself. There is no cause. That awareness being itself as oneself is ever-ready potential awakened to reality all at once without having to begin. Just this doesn’t refer to mystical experience or its aftermath relative to recalcitrant ego-tantrums admitted as evidence by the OP, it is so by virtue of having a body. The spiritual function not being the person, per se, is just the way it is and no one knows why.

Self refinement, whether practiced gradually before or after the sudden makes no difference. Simply failing to exercise self-reflective consciousness unawares is self-refinement. Following thoughts unawares is delusion. Mind is one. The light of Creation is karmic bondage; turning the light around, self-reification becomes selfless wonder on the spot. The light is one.

Selfless authentic practice is carried out unbeknownst to anyone by seeing reality by virtue of delusion. I hope it is obvious that selflessness has no moralistic connotations relative to self and other, good and bad, right and wrong, or even before and after. Buddhism calls such practice subtle spiritual adaption in mutual response. This means that one’s selfless adaption to conditions is precisely and naturally perfect accord with the situation according with the inherent potential of the situation itself. Discriminatory consciousness and deliberation relative to the person has no place to act. Seeing potential is immediate knowledge based on awareness void of personality distinctions. Obviously habit-energy’s psychological momentum based on ordinary necessarily functional pattern-consciousness is a hard nut to crack. The function itself is not faulty. Habituation to its use relative to the person to the exclusion of fluid, open awareness is where the fault lies. Ego isn’t the perpetrator. THERE IS NO PERPETRATOR. That’s why there is no “getting better.” What would there be to get better? The notion of suffering relative to the OP’s classification is just the ego-antics of the thieving impostor of all time expressing self-importance as self-pity.

Self refinement, either before or after the sudden, is a perpetual process of refining away the human mentality as it reverts to naturally serving one’s enlightening function which accords inherently with situational evolution throughout endless transformations. Just this is inconceivable accord in reality entering the profound mystery. By virtue of having a body, it’s not the person. How wonderful is that?

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by deci.