It Can Carry Me the Rest of the Way Home…

I have a good deal more to unpack…perhaps its not too soon to hear from me again?

First I wish to modify and expand the quotes I provided from my Teachers. Terms like “apathy”, “high indifference”, and the “discovery of not giving a damn”…these terms are modern day language for an ancient concept known as non-attachment, or detachment. I suspect both of my teachers use these fairly provocative, and somewhat shocking terms, to express the certainty that you cannot have the clarity and whole sightedness, of your true nature as Eternal Awareness, and at the same time remain attached to your quite personal preferences, passions, hopes, dreams, and opinions. You must either choose the pendulum swings of grasping or avoidance that was conditioned into the development of your egoic mind structure, or be willing to burn them unto death, so that your unique and embodied freedom may arise within you. (I wanted to clarify that, rather than run the risk that you might interpret “not giving a damn”, as the avoidance half of the grasping/avoidance cycle of expression, which is what comprises the entirety of the personal self.)

It is either the life of suffering born of the personal, or the freedom and expansiveness of the everlasting impersonal. It is not a both/and proposition. It is not easy to develop this correlative or unitive vision, (whole seeing), in which there are no distinctions between good and bad, nothing and something, success and failure. The Upanishads describe it as the path of the razor’s edge, a balancing act on the sharpest and thinnest of lines. It is that razor’s edge that is coming into view in my life, at this moment in time, and with the strongest, cleanest, and clearest, access I have ever had to it.

As my creative efforts continue being dismantled, my gladness at their leaving expands almost exponentially.

I think I may have the first glimpses of why this is so…

The woman I am working for has been in my life for more than 25 years. We have not always had close contact, but we have always had the exact same form of relationship…one that has required of me a deep evolution, that is just now coming into full flower.

She has a very magnetic personality and a large and quite committed following. I knew her before the crowds came that now surround her, but I suspect the reason they are drawn into her sphere, is a very similar reason for why I was also drawn.

Her bearing, capacities, talents, mode of conduct, vision, and process all produce a subtle and tangible form of promise. A perfume of potentiality that makes you feel, and even believe, that being near her, with her, following her, will help you to create the dreams that drive the conditioned mind’s very existence.

In fact her business’s motto is to “do your dream”.

And that is not only fine, but also wonderful…as long as you continue to believe in the concept of dreaming and the desire to fulfill those dreams…

I have left that place behind me. That does not make me better, more spiritual, more or less of anything at all. It, however, does mean that I have fully committed myself to the death of the personal in this my current “lifestream”. Here is how Eli Jaxon Bear describes this bloom of the impersonal self.

“Freedom is the only real choice in a lifetime. All choices made from fixation are mechanical and predictable, having neither weight nor free will. The choice to be free is the only true, and final, choice that arises in a lifestream. Once freedom is chosen, the fixated life is surrendered. This surrender is the giving up of following choices driven by fixation. Then life is without choice. When freedom is in control, there is no one choosing and nothing to choose. Personal control has been surrendered, so that personal choice has no real meaning. Life then flows without choice as a divine expression of love.

True desire for freedom is the last desire of the ego. Before this desire arises, the fixated ego is lost in myriad desires and fears. Spiritual maturity is the willingness to put all desires into one final desire for freedom. This final desire leads the egoic mind to its surrender in the face of something huge and unknown. When the ego is willing to die for freedom, it will eventually face its death and die. What remains is what is untouched by death, and the deathless soul realizes itself as immortal consciousness. This is the end of the search and the beginning of true love.”

I have come to this “last true desire”, and my relationship with the woman whose gifts help so many to pursue their dreams, is a central component of my having finally made my way to this last most valuable shore.

I have been, and was perhaps, her first follower. The weaknesses in my heart and mind, the fears that were born out of my childhood, the unknown that scared me senseless, were all modified by her presence in my life…as I suspect they are for a great number of people. That she can provide that service to others is a good thing, and I would not consider trying to take that from a single soul who desires it.

As for me, our long journey together has allowed me to burn through the last remaining dependencies I was in bondage to; on her, on dreaming as an idea, on hope, the future, winning, success, fame, recognition, applause, approval, and much much more, that I may not even be aware of. I have come into the full weight and heft of this most poetic of descriptions from Lao Tzu:

“Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations

Arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.” ~ Lao Tzu

I have fallen in love with that “darkness within darkness” and its gateway to all understanding. The last and final desire for freedom has arisen, the total willingness to leave behind the protection of the bastion of believing, and move ever deeper into the unknowable depths is the only thing left in me.

I weep in gratitude…

The woman for whom I work, and I, have had a very unconscious, (on my part), yet very active contract. I would provide her, sometimes with great resentment on my part, with my time, talents, energies and commitments, provided she continued to provide me with that perfume of the belief in my potentiality, that I spoke of above. As I began the slow and plodding process of awakening from the slumber of a better and dream fulfilled future, our exchanges were often fraught with great and ugly and awful tensions, (my side), and frustration and exasperations, (her side).

As I awoke to the realization that the future does not exist, as that realization found its way into my body and began rearranging the molecular structure of my cells, she was consistently providing her part of our bargain…while I was moving ever farther afield.

The one thing we could both count on was the exchange of my talent for her protection. The destruction of the evidence of my talent, in her environment, is an out picturing of the end of that unconscious contract.

It is so good for us both, for that to come to an end. I notice as I move through the building how many people wish me to talk about the intrigue of the dismantling that is taking place. Interpersonal intrigue is the glue that binds all egoic transactions, the “he said, she said” dramas, that pass for relationship are as alive and well in this work environment, as they have been in every public situation I have ever been a part of. Several people have come up to me and with a subtle non-verbal cue, have given me the signal that they would be compellingly interested in the drama I must surely be feeling as my work is destroyed. I see it in their eyes and in the moistness of their bated breath. Particularly so, in a few that I have known for a while. I am suddenly invited into circles heretofore un-open to me for the same reason.

I understand it. You need only watch one night worth of TV, to be made aware of how juicy is the “dish” of personal relating, as depicted on “reality” TV that passes for entertainment in our soul starved culture. I have no argument with their desire to hear me cast her in the role of manipulator or fiend, but it simply is not so, and no amount of their desire to have their own resentments validated, will draw me backward into that form of relating. Even as we work to formally end my dependencies upon her capacity to weave dreams, my only reaction is one of humble gratitude.

Some years ago, my Beloved Teacher introduced me to one of his favorite authors, a man by the name of Manly P. Hall. The tile of his work is called “The Lonely Ones”, and in it he depicts the journey of the solitary ones as they move from the drama filled life of the personal, into the “darkness within darkness” of the deep understanding available only to the impersonal life.

We, in our innocent ignorance, assume that “awakening” and “enlightenment” will be something akin to popularity on steroids. Everyone will know us, will want to be with us, and will hang upon our every word. We will heal the masses, feed the multitudes, and turn water into wine… and be celebrated for it on every talk show coast to coast. But that is the distorted lens of the egoic mind’s conditioning, suggesting to us that awakening will solve all our infantile demands for attention, approval, and acceptance. Never once do we turn our attention to the other half of the Christ story, where we will be betrayed by those closest to us, cast out by those whom we are attempting to serve, and finally crucified as was necessary for Impersonal Freedom to make its way onto the planet. No sirree bob!!... we want no part of that type of awakening. No lines are forming around the block for that form of “enlightenment”.

And yet, it is the perfected picture of what is required. Hall’s “The Lonely Ones” is the story of that specific form of enlightenment. That to truly be free from the egoic drama of the personal self, one must be willing to actually die. I find that willingness within myself, so completely, that it has transformed into a sort of sweet sorrow. A willing release of the personal and all its pseudo pursuits, in favor of the lonely path to non dual and non separate existence.

I will end with this passage from Allan Watts, who said: “You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate “you” to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real “you” is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For “you” is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.” This is the only version of “me” that is left now, an eternal coming and going, a manifestation of the universe looking at itself from a billion points of view.

And from Lao Tzu, this, “The utility of a house depends on the empty spaces. Thus, while the existence of things may be good, it is the non-existent in them which makes them serviceable.” Lao Tzu

I have found the non-existent within me; it has no personal agenda, no grasping, and no avoidance. It can stand in the face of a man/child’s attack, and remain unmoving and unmoved. It can witness the destruction of its creative energies with total non-involvement. It can free itself from the seduction of dreams, dream makers, and the hopeful wish for a better tomorrow. It can breathe the free air, of the fresh perspective, of the ever arising Now.

It can carry me the rest of the way home…

Adayre R. Miller

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