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This is so good to read. To feel less alone. It resonated so much. There is not only the shock of realising you have spent your life asleep, but that jolt every time you discover you are STILL sleeping. Even seeing the whole horror show 'out there' still did not enable me to see issues closer to home, that were so entrenched in what I used to call 'my life' ha ha. Sometimes I look at those still asleep and I envy them and I ask 'why me'? and other times I am filled with gratitude and I ask 'why me?' It is often deeply uncomfortable and for the first time in my life has left me completely without words, speechless, on many occasions, because what I can see and feel is beyond my ability to describe. It would not shock me at this point even to discover that I come from another planet ha ha ha....

The ground shifts beneath me constantly and I cannot even agree to previously held beliefs of 'this way is up', 'that way is down'. Phew.... what a journey, what a ride!!

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Hola, April.

Wow, I'm so glad that my essay has helped bring the connection to the awakening ones as the sense of resonance confirms. And the resonance of being awake is so much stronger and powerful, while being lighter and more joyful at the same time, than stuck in delusion. As you are experiencing, I'm sure, you can see that there is vitality with the awakening process and enervation with being a sleepwalker! It is a fascinating process that has been, for me, becoming stronger and more vital.

And you have well articulated the _mind's_ desire to be distracted into illusion as if that will be helpful, and then swinging back to heart awareness that expressed as gratitude for awakening. And OMG! it's hard to just about impossible to tell the asleep that their not living a joy - full life! Delusion needs smallness to succeed, and so the deluded want everything locked down and controlled, packaged into safe pill-packets of dogmatic whatever. Fascinating and astounding once we start seeing it because it is so obvious! Well, obvious once you see it.

And from another planet is possible, of course! At this point, I have pretty much removed all _dogmas_ from my sense of probity. Really, WTF do I really know? Well, in a nutshell, what I now think I know is that my body is in the present and is the actual spiritual expression of something that has simplistically been given various labels which it turns out are mostly distraction. How did I read it? [Went and looked it up.] "It is amazing, sometimes, how far away the name of a thing lands from the thing itself" by David James Duncan. I think from his ****BRILLIANT**** book, The Brothers K.

What a journey, what a ride! Yes, yes, yes, to quote and extend Joyce's ending of Ulysses. What a ride.

“O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes" (p532-3 Ulysses by J Joyce.)

(No, I've not read it, only bits and pieces! I love the ending though!)

Good night from outside of Oaxaca City!

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Ahhhh..... Gibraltar.... sigh. Memories. I 'escaped' from my life and ran away there for a while in my younger days and worked there and lived in Andalusia (La Linea) and oh yes found passion and adventure too....

Where was I? Oh yes, that made me laugh the "WTF do I really know" , as I experience this all the time. To have to chose a 'belief' or a 'side' or even to decalre myself to know anything seems quite hilarious now. I was always so good at advice and now I can only laugh .... I wanted to 'save' those I saw as more important to me, to 'teach' to 'show' to 'awaken' . It was a moment of sadness to accept that it isn't my damn business and also that I am deflecting my own energy to achieve that lofty goal out of my own fear at a) being alone on this journey and b) being scared of the next step into unknown. I guess it is time to stop begging people to come with me and get on with whatever is next.

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Wonderful! A wonderful yes, indeed, to jump on board with us seekers. (I think a more accurate phrase than wakers(?). Although wankers might fit! LOL!)

Have you seen your moment of sadness become THIS moment of joy? If not, you are in for a real treat!

All the best.

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ha ha - one of my favourite very British swear words!

I have glimpses of that Guy and those glimpses are expanding but I appear to be quite stuck in a fear stage so I revert to the sadness stage quite quickly. I am starting to observe myself doing this and therefore that has enabled me to see what the triggers are that make me 'fall asleep' again in this stage. A few years ago getting out of bed in the morning was the bravest thing I did in a day, and now here I am still going, still trying. What an amazing thing!

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🙏🙌❤️🙌❤️🙌🙏

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I think I know what you are describing here. We tend to jump out of one illusion and right into another! Like the dream Guy describes.

Yes, it's a helluva ride and exciting and scary, and everything else.

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Nov 29, 2023·edited Nov 29, 2023Author

Yup.

And this is where the yogis point out that... everything is illusion! Does that mean that waking up never ends, or hasn't ever started? Okay, now that is a bit freaky. And goes to this odd thing I like to couch in 'nuance'. I'm curious to see where my fingers will take me on the next essay.

Night!

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Yes. I imagine we all see and therefore describe it differently which is why it is a thrill to me to read someone like Guy who describes it in a way that 'clicks' with me. I am not sure I jump into the next illusions or not? For me I feel like I have lived under so many that each time I peel away a layer I find there are more. I started off thinking "Hold on a moment, my government appears to be lying to me" and then a few years later my whole concept of History has collapsed! I feel I have been given a huge gift (even though I often still feel terrified - another illusion creating that somewhere inside me) and I have spent so much energy trying to share it so that I am not alone, only to discover that I can't. We can read someone's words and understand that they are also somewhere in this

space, yet we also know that we are facing it alone. Fascinating.

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What a rich and beautifully expressed post. Not an easy subject to capture - the nature of reality

"And even that unanswerable gnawing feeling of, now that I see that so much of what I thought was true or at least close enough to true is absolutely false, how do I know, now, that what I’m seeing isn’t just another layer of dreaming?"

Familiar with that question, and the seduction of what I call the lure of 'as if world' where even when even when we know, we behave as if we don't. So many subtleties involved. So many opportunities too in all the discomfort and inner reconfigurations that go on.

Thank you. Will re-read.

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Nov 29, 2023·edited Nov 29, 2023Author

Yes, the lure of the 'as if world'. It is a rather interesting dynamic of life, that being childish as an adult is to live marginally, because it seems that 'as if' creates a childish delusion of firm reality and the possibility of a controlled outcome — 'as if' that is what is important. And yet, the awareness as an adult of the illusion of life is to return to child'*LIKE* joy and simplicity because the 'as if' has been replaced with 'now as'.

It has been observed that the eyes of enlightened people have a clarity and openness that not even children's eyes have. Something about awareness seems to bring out the true beauty of sight, seeing and being seen.

Great comment and I am happy that my writing has been beautiful to you and inspires a 2nd read. I appreciate that that is a great connection we have made with each other in these expressed ideas. Gracias.

good night.

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