Happy New Year

I have been noticing a change in me over the Holiday season.  I guess it all began during the tumultuous time that began to hit in late October and early November for me.  There is a certain point in everyone's path where the final outcome becomes readily apparent.  For me, this has meant a simple deepening in understanding that spirals deeper and deeper into me.  Occasionally, what I really want, which is simply truth, is at odds with the thoughts and thought processes and deep beliefs that litter my mind.  I cannot be dishonest and hold thoughts that are truthful.

At every step, I have experienced one of the two reactions to what comes up in my mind, fear or ecstatic union.  Both show me something.  The fear shows me that I have something that I am continuing to hold onto, the ecstatic union simply a glimpse of what is possible.  In November, my life began a reorganization yet again.  It seemed as though the stability that I had come to count on was being challenged at every level.  A relationship that I had broke, businesses tanked, and much of my thought could not be counted on.  Thanksgiving was a time of reconnoiter of my own mind.  Much had already happened, and I knew, from past experience, that this was merely another adjustment.  What I didn't count on was the depth of this particular adjusting.

The reason things break is that they have become at some level deeply unsatisfying.  Once the decision is made to begin the journey, the rest follows... step after step.  This is a process that I can only delay, because I come again and again to the same point - Nothing means anything without Truth.  The mind, once it sees the goal... once it really sees the possibilities and experiences liberation at any level... can no longer hold onto conflicted goals.  It is an impossibility.  It can become stuck, attempting to reconcile the temporal with the eternal, but it is an exercise in futility.

The one thing that keeps me going through all the supposed death of my former life is the amount of newly found joy that I discover after the step has been taken.  The fear is usually immense at the beginning of the step.  Things seem completely random, completely out of control, completely chaotic.  I always feel that I am being taken apart piece by piece.  Identification at every level with what I think I am has to be peeled away, like an onion... getting smaller and smaller at each paring.  Identification with monetary goals, victim and fear-based roles, stories that I wish to tell myself about who I am, the past... all have to be stripped away.  It is the only way, and every single time I feel that I am losing myself, sometimes even losing my sanity.  It is amazing how deep these things go.

I was standing out on the back deck of my sister's house one morning, when everything broke.  I just gave in.  I realized that all of the past month or so... the challenges to what I thought I was... could never really affect the Truth of anything.  It is difficult to explain the light that floods me when a step or a point of no return is reached.  The mind grasps the totality of the worthlessness of the supposed problem or conflict.  The only statement is then, "This cannot contain me.  Nothing contains me."  There was no ecstatic union this time, although that would follow in due course... but there was a sense of peace surrounding all the issues that defies explanation.  They just simply stopped being issues.  There was no issue.  There was nothing there except the empty shell of the issue thought system.

Only one thought remained, I cannot right now consciously see reality... therefore, Thy Will be Done.  It was a letting go again of the reins of my life.  There is a certain relaxing when the mind learns that it cannot control the outcome of the senseless.  The mind yearns to be integrated, to have integrity in and of itself.  It cannot find meaning in the meaningless, and there is nothing more important than discovering meaning.  Identification with what I am not is always meaningless... one cannot be what they are not.  Even the very statement defies reason at a very deep level.

All during the Christmas season, there has been the birth of something new.  The birth of the Christ child is an apt analogy for it.  Born in the lowliest of places, in the dirt and the squalor of the ego, a savior comes.  I am both the squalor and the savior, the jailer and the liberator.  In letting go, somehow, in a bone deep way, I learned that there is nothing here that I truly want anymore if the cost is my own joy, my own inner connection to All That Is.  One can play in the dream, but it is still a dream.  The Truth is not affected at all by it.  Reality in no way cares about a dream, just as one waking realizes that everything that took place was all in their heads and nothing really occurred.

No real bangs have started the New Year... there is no ecstatic union, spiritual bells and whistles... merely peace.  I have had really nothing to say since this happened.  It seems like the whole of my life is not worth comment.  It is getting to be an effort to talk in a lot of ways.  It always sounds old the minute it leaves my mouth.  Apparently, I am still able to type.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful celebration this holiday, and I hope the New Year brings you a lack of delay and a willingness to take every step.