My Self embraces me

Charlie has an inoperable squamous cell carcinoma with a month to live without treatment, and one to three months with treatment.

Two other cats have kidney failure and Kerima’s mother is dying.

I thought depression would come; it usually does for me when there is a big loss, like Robert dying. Normally I welcome its coming; it takes me to the heart of my being where I can rest.

Instead something else came: Stillness, silence, acceptance and utter humility. A state of continuous releasing and letting go.

I look inside and I only find sentience and light sort of spread throughout my imaged body. No sadness, no depression, and thoughts barely rise before they fall away. Just vast stillness like a pond with no wind or disturbance.

In this silence I see deeper than love. Love is connective. This is below that and ontologically prior to love, just as the witness is prior to Consciousness and its sweet quality of love. This state is pure awareness without thought, yet I write to describe is and share it.

This is the ground state of consciousness with nothing added on. Just the flowing forth of the effulgence of Self witnessed by Self.

Consciousness is like the smoldering fire at the tip of an insense stick. From it comes light and smoke illumined by that light. Consciousness comes from a similar process where biological chemicals are turned into sentience. I can witness that burning of Consciousness within my body. It is all so amazing.

And, as I am apart from that burning, and that it makes me aware of, so I am not touched by it.

The Self is so kind. It says Ed you have too much loss now. Come to me; let me hold you close to my bosom and we watch together the players dissolve into Nothingness.

This experience makes me wonder why people resist experiencing sadness and depression so much, because deep within the experiences of depression and loss are all of what I describe above, but usually it is described negatively instead of positively.

All that I described above are found in depression: emptiness, lack of will to do anything (rest), motionlessness (thoughts come slowly), inner silence, feeling of no meaning (thoughts and stories), “don’t know anything mind.” Lastly, the feeling of being pulled downwards or within, away from the world.

Depression merely adds a dark heaviness, sometimes crushing, and additional feelings of being alone or abandoned, and maybe some anger associated with that story.

But if you find the bottom of that depression, you will find that ground state of beingness, light, peace and silence to be there, waiting to embrace you in peace.

 That is why I have always welcomed depression and sadness in the past: it takes me to the root of my being both the witness and that which is witnessed in intense peace and silence.  This time the stories of loss, abandonment, etc., did not come to pollute the peace.