FROM THE ABSOLUTE BEYOND NOTHINGNESS, I HAVE COME ALIVE!!!!

EMAIL TO ME:

Hi Ed!

I'm having a bit of trouble, but first I will give you some background information…

I've been practicing this for years unknowingly, as you did as a child. When I first found the " I AM-ness" I thought I had reached enlightenment. However over the course of a few months of continued practice, I realized that there is an awareness watching all of this happen; watching the I AM be, and therefore there is something more fundamental than the I am-ness.

However, I feel myself searching. I can't get over the problem: I know that I am the ultimate subject. I feel that and I have felt it before, but if that is the truth of who I am, then who is this person seeking the truth? Who is the person even asking that question?

Some days I will be tormented by this sort of thought process all day, spending hours intensely thinking, and sometimes it leads to spontaneous Samadhi, but it is inconsistent and unsustainable…

I also find myself beginning to reject values of the self. For instance, I am beginning to find my mind rejecting or suppressing being excited or feeling lust or even feeling affection or interest or expressing creativity. However as soon as it happens, I recognize that rejection - the inclination to suppress or resist those things - as simply another form, no different than the original impulse itself. I suppose I am confused, but to even say that is confusing, for I cannot help but wonder who is confused, and then, who is the one wondering who is confused?… Please help! I'm becoming exhausted from this constant conceptual circle.

MY RESPONSE:

Dear W.

You truly understand: You are both the manifest Self, the I Am, Atman, and also the Witness, the Absolute, Parabrahman.

So what is the problem?

You are both!!

As long as you are alive in your body you will be the Manifest Self, living, emotional, desiring, rejecting, thinking, feeling, working, struggling, and also potentially in endless bliss and joy knowing you are God incarnated into a body.

You are also Shiva, he who witnesses all this, and who is not touched by any of the Play of Consciousness.  You have not identified with that part of you yet, and it bothers you, thinking that is more real than your present body/mind/existential state.

All you have to do is when the doubt and tension arises and the strong need to search for anything, rather than just search, go into the doubt and tension that is driving you to search.  Go into that pressure, accept the feeling, love it, let it into your heart and gradually you will realize that all of this is you, both the manifest and the Absolute.  So just enjoy both.

Feel the divine energies arise in you as bliss, struggle, and pain, then settle downwards into emptiness and bliss again. Feel the show totally; exalt in the energies of the Life Force, and know you are ALSO THAT which witnesses all.

You cannot find THAT; you can only BE That, and you are always THAT already.  But THAT is being offered the ability to come alive for a brief period of time, whether 15 years for a cat, or 90 for a human.  

Think of it this way:  You as the Unmoving, Absolute, Witness has come alive briefly.  It is up to you to know this and then thrive as a Life Form while your body is alive.

Ed