This article is a companion to Standing Forth as the Self.
April 13, 2012
My agreement or soul contract is in part to go through Ascension publicly – the ups and the downs, the ins and the outs – but to express what I see and don’t see accurately and let the chips fall where they may.
It’s very difficult to find or use words to describe what we go through. I use the word “Self,” but that word is usually reserved for the “I” that’s known through and past Realization.
I just mean the “I-outside-the box.” The I-outside-the-box is relatively persistent. It can be covered over by stress and strain, by introjecting the down mood or automatic space of others. But as long as we don’t consent to go back inside the box of the constructed self, it seems able to survive.
Certain words trigger the experience of contact with that Self. “Emergence” is one of them. “Standing forth as the Self” is another. I don’t kid myself that I would be able to make contact with it if it were not for the rising energy. I don’t think I could. I expect that those energies are what allow it to emerge and re-emerge as long as I identify with it and not my act.
I honestly am not sure if it would be as easy for others to contact the Self or if the work I’ve done clearing vasanas at Enlightenment Intensives plays a part in this. I just don’t know.
But at some point the energies will rise so high that I believe it will be very much easier for all of us.
If we haven’t cleared sufficient vasanas to prevent the box or constructed self springing up in our awareness, I think we can still manage to stay outside the box by walking gently, mindfully. That may be what one meditation master meant by advising that we walk quietly around the dragon.
I expect at some point to reach a stable place with this but for the moment it seems necessary to stay off by myself and just allow the energies to do their thing. Fortunately I’ve sourced a fair amount of my loneliness so I don’t usually get lonely. Life is just neutral. Loneliness does not arise. I imagine that’s what would allow a Milarepa to spend three years in a cave.
My energies can be intrusive to others. I’d not be surprised to find that this is the phase of things that Zen masters describe as the time when rivers are not rivers and mountains are not mountains.
I’m struck with the apparent solution of how to leave the constructed act. Just as Alexander cut the Gordian knot to solve that difficult problem, so here success seems to come from utterly leaving the box, emerging from it suddenly and with finality. It doesn’t appear to be the case that the process needs to be logical, or even a process, or over time, etc. Another metaphor would be to think of using a samurai’s sword to slice through the constructed self.
– 30 –
As I walked down the street this afternoon, outside my constructed self, I looked at a man and woman walking together smiling. I found myself saying: “They shall laugh but not all of their laughter. They shall cry but not all of their tears.” (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.) I understood at that moment that that passage may refer to us inside our constructed selves.
– 30 –
Saturday evening, I had a remarkable dream. I’m coming from the place that all things that happen at this time are related and meaningful. Whether or not it’s true, it seems a useful tack to take.
I was in a room about the size of a railway car. (I now think I was onboard a ship.) A group of us were seated and talking with each other about the kind of subjects we discuss here.
A young man of about 25-30 suddenly began to speak. I was not aware of him having been in the room before. He was a little taller than we were and his voice invited listening. I suddenly asked if he was Archangel Michael and he said “yes.” I listened to him awestruck and then moved my things closer to the front to be nearer to him.
His face would change from one appearance to another, fairly subtly but clearly. I drank something that tasted like milk but when I took the container from my lips, I realized it wasn’t a milk container and probably wasn’t milk. Before I could find out what it was, two men entered the room.
I didn’t see the first one because my attention was drawn to the second. His eyes bulged in recognition and he said to me: “The formless representative has taken form.” I had heard a remark similar to this before and so was not startled by the remark but I didn’t recognize him and was curious to know who he was.
I felt a tinge of sadness and loneliness over something that had happened earlier in the day and suddenly AAM gracefully approached me and breathed into my mouth. I surrendered to the experience, breathed in whatever he was gifting to me. It lasted perhaps 30 seconds and then I woke up.
When I awoke the sadness and loneliness was gone, replaced by a feeling of stability and courage. Now perhaps an hour after that dream, I continue feeling deep calm and peacefulness. It’s as if I feel stably outside the box. Of course that could change tomorrow but it’s how I feel at this moment.
– 30 –
I’m going to wrap this up by saying the dream with Archangel Michael seems to have given me whatever is needed to make my condition of “normality,” of living outside the box, stable. I wouldn’t call it enlightenment. I’d call it a raising of vibration if I had the slightest clue what it may have been (I’m not sure I do). But whatever the case, I feel stably normal and natural.
That marks the end of this overall transition which began by noticing that I was coming from my act and routines, and not from my Self. I refused to live life that way any longer.
Thereafter I was hit by a discombobulating energy which carried me up and down, in and out, and finally ended with me standing forth as the Self, stepping outside the box of my conditioning. This was followed by a dream of Archangel Michael during which he gifted me with an energy that stabilized my remaining outside the box and restored me to a feeling of normality.