stopping the world

Self is a byproduct of being aware because you are a flux of awareness and from this state you separate events into objects and recognize self. Recognizing this awareness that you take for granted is quite the experience. Sitting in silent contemplation allows you to be the observer and realize the interconnectedness of everything. Diving down further into this awareness then brings up the question well just who is this doing the observing then? It's a multi-step process to get to that point. No amount of intellectualizing will allow you to grasp this; it is a need to experience this mental state. Start with the recognition that you are putting a spin on all input, then stopping the spin. Then comes mastering the ability to just observe with a pure mind. The pure mind is like a clear lake at dawn before the wind stirs it up. Step back from this and well then just who is this observing? Did I ever tell you you're it? Everything.

I have written before that we attach priority to things we perceive as coming first or that we can dive down into and claim well this is the fount. By this I mean awareness punctuated by desire describes the newborn and gets us close to who we think we really are. However I used the metaphor of a flower to debunk that notion. This modality of thinking steers us into believing the flower is not real because it is the seed that is the true expression of the essence of the plant. The problem is revealed because instead of viewing the process as a unity we looked for an origin. Priority does not equate with some abstract notion of a true self. Continuing to view it as a separate process of different stages is the problem instead of treating it as a whole. It is where all our problems start. We add time to the mix and put everything through a prism that refracts and separates. What I am getting at it is the wholeness of a flower that involves being a seed to a beautiful expression of the energy contained within the seed. All of it is a connected happening unable to be without the total sum of its parts always being one and coming forth and then returning. We only see the stages instead of perceiving the whole. It’s the same with our psyche. Meditating and reducing it into parts will give you clarity which we can process and reduce to separate pieces of the psyche but these parts don't exist without each other and it gives away the unified truth of the matter. Awareness fuelled by desire will give rise to a flowering of the cresting energy that is so vibrant it becomes a field of self, much like the sun, before that energy wanes and returns to the cosmic ocean.

This cosmic ocean is where everything comes from as it is the energy at rest; the trough of the wave. We and everything else are whirling energy. Periodically we rest either on small scale sleep or the big scale of death. We are and we aren't. It's paradoxical. As a whole we are everything and we are an individual come forth. It took me a long time to understand that, especially the preached esoteric concept of the individual self not existing and being able to conceptualize that. It was the plant medicine teacher and great revealer Vilca, along with my great friend Parker, that dispelled me of that notion. The truth is both. It’s true we are one and you and me are conceptually everything but it is also true perceptually that we aren't. We come forth by day into the cycle of appearance and shine individually like the sun. Then we tire of that and return to the all, back to mama, and rest, and then rebirth, and here we go again! We are the ocean and the wave and it all depends on how you want to look at it. We want to define ourself as one or the other and that's where the difficulty comes from. The great wave allows you to think you are separate because you are so far from home. The Tao bequeathed the gift of perceiving individuality and being given freedom to do with it what you will. I really feel separate. Then the wave, the great Tao, takes you back home and you become whole again.

We don't really have an ego, superego, and a base id. We pinpoint when they form in a developing human and then classify and separate. But I ask you: is the flower different from the plant? We are the flower. I am a self that came forth from this process. The energy crests and here I am! Look at me! Where you find creative energy you will find expressions of that energy: flowers, selves, and lightning strikes! We intellectually are snapshots in time and assign our truth to them. This is a flower. But wait, that flower is always undergoing change and pinpointing it is an unchanging expression as such is dishonest. Same with you. So I am and I come forth as a self and then return to unity and become all once again. Always on the move, I am elusive.