Pain and Emptiness

Hmmm... that's a good question. Perhaps. It is possible that the strong trans-ego experiences I had during the intense parts of the pain "paved the way" for this realization. In looking back, ALL experiences paved the way for this realization, but maybe the pain issue was something that I needed to experience to get here -- Hmm.... good question.

When I was in that much pain, when all I could see were orange and yellow halos, I no longer identified with My Self, but rather had the experience of being all beings who had ever suffered. I was a man dieing on a battlefield thinking of his baby son; I was a raccoon terrified and confused on an interstate after having my hindquarters run over; I was a child hiding under a sink while soldiers broke in, pulled open the cabinet and shot me; I was a woman dieing alone in a forest somewhere after having fallen and sustained internal injuries; I was an old man with stomach cancer; etc., etc.. In the space of about an hour of screaming pain, I experienced it as millions of beings and could not, at any given time, told you which one of them I "really" was -- it just didn't matter. Some of the beings (many of them) were about to die -- others were not and would be enduring the pain for quite some time. I would have gone mad if I had tried to attach to any of them or to analyze the situation too much. Instead, I just let go, relaxed as much as possible, and just let the experience wash through me.

Was this experience a pre-requisite for experiencing emptiness? Maybe it was -- I didn't consider that before. It did give me a new perspective on identity and compassion, on what it means to suffer and the universality of that experience within samsara. I felt incredibly fortunate and grateful, even for the pain. Since then, I've also had a much more compassion-based relationship with my body and deep gratitude for what it can do, as well as a clearer understanding of karma and how it relates to / manifests in the body.

Searching4words

Mr. The Saw,


Quite true.

I've done the "expand until I and the universe are one" thing quite a bit -- I'd actually gotten to where I can walk around like that, feeling everything as the universe and/or as every being in it (i.e. the empty side or with form). The neural net and the universe are the same map -- I see very little distinction between my mind and the cosmos, in either a real or symbolic way.

If that is ego expansion / integration, what I've experienced now is ego annihilation. Not in a purely "destructive" way (though parts of it were pretty vivid in this sense -- I was grateful for the Chod practice / initiation I'd taken) but in the realization that I don't exist and never have -- there is no "I" anywhere. Everything I think, am, etc., doesn't exist, at least not in any absolute sense.

Of course that also means that everything is empty, including suffering -- if I am empty and so is suffering, then who or what is suffering? Where is this suffering and who is experiencing it? Poof -- all gone.... and of course so is everything else. Ahh, grasshopper -- that is the side of renunciation they don't mention until you find yourself doing it. Do you really want to transcend suffering? Really really? Are you willing to let go of it? Of everything? Do you really renounce it? Everything that causes it? Every thing?

The Tibetan phrase is "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." That pretty much sums it up, now that I'm here. It is the recognition on more than a cognitive level that nothing exists from its own side, that nothing is anything without any and everything else. Every thought I have is a construct; every THING anywhere is a construct that doesn't exist as anything more than a temporary pattern that disintegrates as soon as I touch it. It is quite liberating, but not how I expected it to be. By classic definition, I'm enlightened now. (The Great Compassion is part one; emptiness is part two. Put them together in balance and voila -- whatever this is.) I am finding it a process more than an event, largely, I think, because of my subjective reference as a finite physically embodied being who thinks of "instant" as being a few seconds rather than a few days or weeks or however long I'm in this totally blank state.

Rob assures me there's more, but just as with all stages of this path, he won't tell me what comes next so as not to bias my view or "rush" me toward the next thing. This is enlightenment, in the classic sense, but in another sense it is just the prerequisite for all other stages of enlightenment. I had, several months back, passed through all the classic states that indicate enlightenment is inevitable, but now.... well, now I'm here.

It's weird -- if my entire culture hadn't been stripped away in these moments of clarity, I would be all kinds of bummed out right now -- I can see why they don't recommend that people practice Tantra on their own without a guru -- there are a lot of places where one could go careening off the path, wildly, violently, with no hope of climbing back onto it for quite some time. It is / has been a bus that goes really really fast, regardless of how securely one is ON the bus. Sometimes it's been a fun ride as I sit in the seat, secure, watching the scenery go by. Other times I've been hanging by a strap from my ankle being drug under the bus, bumping along painfully, running over myself again and again, until I finally climb back on or let go of the strap. Either way, the bus does not slow down.

I am likewise fortunate in that Rob agreed to / made himself into the Teacher I'd need for this ride -- I do not know what I would have done without him. He achieved this state almost a year ago... or rather got there again. He's been here off and on for the past seven years, but I had a lot of karmic / conditioned stuff to process through before the field would be clear enough to clear it ALL the way off, bulldozer style.

Now I'm clear. I'm empty. I have no..... nothing. No stories, no identity, no dreams, no goals, no agenda, no bias, no dichotomies, no rights/wrongs, no attachments, no.... nothing. Rob asks how I feel -- feel? I feel different chemical components flowing through my neurochemistry. I could tell twenty different stories about how I "feel" at any given moment, creating a story to believe in to give my reality weight instead of "quotation marks." How do I feel? Vaguely.

But oh -- it is such a relief. I've been on a strong limbic system ride for SO long, have pushed the levels of "self aware" to such proportions as to have no peace at all inside of myself -- for every experience I had I had seventeen perspectives attack each one and analyze, evaluate, judge, categorize, etc., etc.. Do I like this? Do I agree with it? Is this what I choose? Is this right? Extrapolate to simultaneously doing this with twenty different minute tiny thought patterns at once ALL THE TIME for YEARS. Blah blah blah until I just couldn't take the din in my head anymore. I said enough. Silence. No more chatty chatty. No more bias.

And there was none. It was..... well, whatever it is that I still haven't quite developed words to describe. I'm just used to being able to describe some pretty abstract states, and I think I'll be able to describe this one, too... and perhaps I have, at least the first part of it -- just not in conventional language. Hmm... if you read that blog, tell me what you think.

Thanks for sharing and for being one of those highly nonbiased people to start with -- I feel comfortable and accepted by you whoever I end up becoming. Thanks for being witness to all the heads I've worn and for seeming to find me entertaining even though those heads continue to come off and/or change.

Be well and stuff,

fMom

Some thoughts on the body:

Dear Ms. P-------.

Though it is made of form and therefore impermanent, it is still a temple, a place for expressing gratitude for human (re)birth. Thus, even though a temple is made of impermanent materials, would one be any less respectful or polite when walking in its hallowed corridors? I mean, when I go into a temple, even somebody else's, I'm polite and reverential, yet I've largely treated my own like it was made out of cowdung and covered in leaves ~ a sacred structure, yet somehow warranting disgust and guilty avoidance.

These are my cultural referents for "body," no wonder I trained myselves not to be in it.

I have realized that just because I feel a boot on my neck doesn't mean that somebody else is standing on my throat. It is dichotomous nature to want to give that boot a name, to attach a head, a will, an intention. But there isn't any -- it's just a boot; that boot is powered by habit. That boot is empty.

Damn. I felt silly there for a moment when I realized that. (And here I was feminist, caught flailing about dramatically on the path wearing a skirt, no less, holding this empty boot on my throat and thrashing about dramatically. The audience knew the whole time that the boot was empty, but I did not. Thus that uncomfortable moment when I "wake up" and realize, oh, none of this is happening. So…. how do I get up and avoid embarrassment at this point? Oh -- I can't. ((Though once your friends have seen you tearing around your own house stinking drunk mostly asleep in a dream state destroying everything, wielding a metal closet hanger bar around at an invisible intruder, screaming, throwing ink, you figure -- yep -- those friends would probably tolerate seeing you in just about any state. Thus, you write to them when you realize you've experienced Wisdom Realizing Emptiness and have no idea who you are when that is the case.

(ring! ring!) Hello? I'm god -- and I don't exist! hahaha! Isn't that funny?

I mean, if I crash around my house randomly now putting on hats and wearing fingerpuppets on my hands, you'll probably just say "At least she's not wielding knives," and go with it. You've seen some unique things all these years, being my friend, so it's not like more unique things would come as a surprise to you. I mean, me not existing isn't going to effect our relationship.

It's weird, taking off cultural referents -- I want to make sure my friends won't laugh at me when I realize I don't exist. (Oh, silly -- they're saying -- we've known all along that you didn't exist -- we were just watching you thrash around with that empty boot on your throat. Nobody wanted to go near you, thrashing like that. I mean, think about it -- do *you* want to be the one to tell me when I'm thrashing like that that none of it is real? 'Course not, 'cuz projection is the whole name of the game in the "Little Drama Of The Boot," thus any head I see might be mistaken for the Head at the End of the Boot. Nope -- nobody with any sense would sign up to be the head I saw over the boot for very long. Seriously -- as much fun as I am to visit, I don't know many who'd'a'wanted to live with me for these past years as I "de-Samsarasized."

I am glad to have a friend who isn't shocked when I walk outside of my parenthesis, who is willing to have fun erasing the culture. We are some funny characters in some funny, funny story full of intergrammatical personshifting -- I liked going to the lighthouse with you and taking along your eye. You are the kind of friend one writes to with a fountainpen, metaphorically,

I feel comfortable knowing you ~ I feel very free with my punctuation. Relaxed. Which is what I'm finding it's all about. Relax it and move it all the time, grossly and minutely. The body is motion ~ it is when it holds still in time that it gets stuck there overmuch. The gross (See, maybe this is where it happened, or at least expresses it. By "gross" I mean "heavy enough to have weight, as in, matter," but what my culture translates is "ooooh, icky".) expresses fully the …. nonform, the flow, the movement itself instead of what it moves, the space…. if the gross relaxes enough to let it continue its already effortless flow through the universe -- now the consciousness is just aware that it is doing so, and thus relaxes and lets it, effortlessly, part of instead of thrashing about against, embodied, impermanent and eternal intertwined, beautiful, divine. I mean, this body is really neat once I actually climb fully into it and start feeling around a bit.

There is a cultural referent, a mirrored posture that is effected by breast carriage, which is largely effected by our attitudes about carrying them around. I sometimes experience people as a manifestation of their posture -- the way we arrange these things largely expresses our cellular level beliefs about them. (How do you feel about your gross matter?) I understand and imply the shoes when I note the pelvic carry. (No wonder women have more csections in this culture -- look at what their shoes and ergonomic lifestyle does to their pelvic tilt -- it's a wonder they can walk, much less have babies.) How women hold their bodies, to me, tells me what they believe about areas of the body that people in this culture associate with sexuality, and thus what they believe about their own sexuality. Are they accepting? Open? Supportive? Joyous? Energized? Strong? Confident? Engaged? Or closed, distorted, pained, constricted, cramped, ashamed?

Once upon a time there was a boot, and perhaps, once upon a time, that boot more often than not had a foot in it, could actually force tyranny and influence upon someone else's free will. But now, the boot is largely empty… filled, mostly, with habit. (Habit is strong, but finitely so. Free will, once applied, is infinitely stronger.)

Me'amiche said once that the health of a society could be largely predicted by assessing the posture of the women in it. I am thinking that as we learn to stand up tall, straighten our spines, strengthen our cores, be *in* our bodies, driving around these temples consciously, then we'll have ourselves a party. Reclaim the boot from my neck, put it on my foot and dance. With fingerpuppets. (And maybe eventually knives, but only when I'm awake…. and not drunk.)

Maybe I could call it "Particle Feminism." -- : -- I'm no longer a wave.

Be well,

fMom

Yo, SasquactchyBoy ~ 'sup?

I'm....um.... I don't exist anymore. There. I've said it. Out of the closet quickly, so to speak. I've discovered my nonnormatism and embraced it. Metaphorically. Symbolically. Really. (Those things are the same thing and they all are empty.) See why I can't leave the house? I'm.... impulsive. For lent I detached from empatterned suffering, from Samsarically conditioned impulses. (I am happy to have a nonbiased life.) Now that my impulses are no longer Samsarically conditioned, the universal foot on my ass often kicks me and says "NOW!" as soon as I have one. As I don't exist, I feel it inappropriate to try to stop this.

My Self has disintegrated -- I am not my values, my feelings, my relationships, my past, my conditioning, my body, my patterns, my etcs.. I isn't anywhere -- it does not exist. This is.... unexpected, even though they told me what to expect. (Ego identity -- poof! gone.) I feel.... unknowable, alien, empty. I don't know who I am or who I'll be, only who I was, which no longer exists. There is only now -- the rest is potential. The past is not the present unless I recreate it to look alike. (To view samsara most believably, walk backward through life, hypnotized by the past or glancing fearfully at the future, and ignore or miss the now. Objects in mirror are emptier than they appear…..) Free will only exists in the now -- it is alive, dynamic. To cage it in stories is to take away its ability to act. Culture is about hiding free will, about enclosing it, caging it, shaming it -- whatever it takes to get it to not act, to not be itself. If it acts, all suffering ends. Now.

Free will is renunciation ~ I use my free will to no longer participate in samsara. It is my choice; I exercise it. And if I exercise it every day, I get to keep it.

But anyway, back to me -- I don't exist. It's disconcerting every time I remember, which is often. (Remember, I'm exercising!) I am a collection of intellectually rationalized parings of dichotomies -- the tension was the only thing holding me together. Once I relaxed and let go of all the conflict, I just sort of……. expanded. Disappeared. I have not yet found an end to the emptiness.

Doctrinally speaking, I'm enlightened now. (Not just because of / as indicated by this, but because this was the piece I was missing, or rather set aside while I worked on all the others.) It feels…. not at all even a smidgeon how I expected. That is part of the point -- it can't be expected because it is wholly new.

Beginningless time; karma. Let go of self; empty. Huh. That's…… new. Nothing. Wow. After all that build up and it's…. empty. Just like they said. Wow.

It is… open. Unconditioned. Nonbiased. Empty. Within this space can I enact freewill, can enact Now. No wonder my wheels would get stuck in the muck -- it is the nature of the muck, the nature of samsara. ( -- it's here to be sticky -- it's all it does -- it does it very well -- since beginingless time -- it's developed some pretty complex stories -- we're one of them -- ) Let go of the muck; let go of the stuck. I am the wheel, time, spinning. I let go of the wheel -- for suffering to be empty, I must be ~ would I be willing to give up my self to end suffering? I already have -- it had become unbearable.

That's another thing -- I didn't expect enlightenment to be the thing I squeezed into when pressed against a wall too tightly in samsara. I didn't know if you just pushed on those walls hard enough, they'd totally crumble -- poof! -- just like that. It's good to know, though -- it's a handy tool, that "popping outside of samsara when it gets too intensely samsaric" thing -- it's helped me many times, though I largely forgot soon afterward. If I couldn't do that, hell -- I'd'a'been crazy. This is one crazy head I'm wearing, let me tell'ya. I think everyhead is this crazy -- it's just that I've become aware of the myriad infintessimal refracted reflected parts of this head and can see them all spinning in slightly different realities, pretty much all the time. It's… dizzying at times, especially when I remember that me, this me who's talking, doesn't really exist is just a poof! thing that was/is for a moment and then blinks back out of existence.

It's just blinking, but that first (it's not even really the first but those in samsara aren't freely given this information so they don't know that) time it feels like extinction. And it is. It is in one sense, but then the blink completes. In anything that exists as form this is true -- it shares an unendable relationship with emptiness, with nothing. It is nondichotomous pairing, and when one can see that instead of paradox, well then one has on his steppin'outshoes, my friend. (taps; bows; whathaveyous;)

Anyway, I'm finding it challenging to translate this state in a verbal medium, though because I am me, I am trying. (I'm too weird for words, and I mean that in the Norsist of senses.) If I write post cards along the way, will you read them? I don't know where I'm headed on this wacky road trip, but I'm taking along your friend (or rather we're taking turns taking each other) and I'm not sure when we'll be back. I'm afraid if I don't start describing the scenery now it will be incomprehensible as the desert becomes more….. empty. (Oh the things that grow on the fringers of life where the niches are uniquely shaped…..)

Feel free to comment. Or not. I support the exercise of free will (use it or lose it) and trust in yours. I am currently holding rather still as mine expands and expands through empty space. In a sense, moving into this state is instantaneous; in another that instant has lasted more than a week now and shows no signs of ending. The place where I stand viewing them both as nondichotomous union is Now, moving, steadily, through time. I surf. I check out the waves. I remain unbiased.

Unbiased -- it washes through all the space where I used to be, erasing my values, my judgments, my evaluations, my dichotomous thinking, until I see the space where I used to be, empty, unconditioned, unbiased. It is empty and I am in it; I am in it and I am empty.

Postcards. No edges. (Having an empty time; glad you're here!) Paintbrush. Noodles.

I would paint you a picture but it would be empty -- can you draw that? Emptiness? I am wandering in emptiness…. not even wandering, just holding still watching it expand out toward everything and encompass it. (empty.full.empty.full.) Thank you yee holyhairyone -- your gentle acceptance and asymmetrical growl give me metaphoric comfort here, in the midst of nothing.

pease. with butter.

fMom