Yes, I do see you

Yes, I do see you.  The lines on your face, the evidence of your struggle, the hair out of place.  There’s nothing I can, want, or need to do about it.  You are held, guided, and loved by your own Divine.  I see, feel and appreciate your Divine loving you, guiding you, waiting for you.  My knowledge, comprehension, feeling of you can’t approach your Divine’s.  You think it’s me that loves you, touches you, encourages your tears, receives your angers.  It’s not.  I’m here, same as you, in this unfolding.  I’m a placeholder, a token for your own Divine.  I marvel, am honored, grateful, that your Divine has chosen me for you to experience, heal, yourself through.

Elephant

Back then, there was an elephant in my living room.  It was insistent, powerful, undeniable, relentlessly pushing down walls, terrifyingly clearing space.  Elephants have no concept of, no use for, reason, or reasonableness either.  For years I feared and cared for the stupid beast.

Now, my house is reduced to splinters.  The elephant is uncontainable.  It eats, runs, dances, crushes and builds.  The elephant has taken over my body, my heart, and my mind too.  It sleeps soundly, fully awake.  It knows my story from before I was born; the reason for my existence.  I often stand in speechless awe, being consumed.  So little of me remains.  The elephant has ancient wisdom.  It listens, and answers, to God.  I look into its golden eyes and expand, loved.

Interview

Q:  You’re awakened?  What does that mean?
A:  It is subtle, quiet, and extremely powerful.  The stillness is palpable.  Mind chatter of the past is gone. There’s no fear or worry for the future, no resistance or internal conflict, just living in the present moment, tapped into what is before me.  It is beautiful and it continues to unfold.
Q:  That sounds really nice.  How did you achieve it?
A:  I didn’t.
Q:  But you just said you said you were awakened!
A:  Ha!  Yes.  Let me explain.  I started out thinking I have some control over my life, and that if I find and apply the right rules, discover the secrets, find the knowledge that my life will work.  All I need to do is to be more disciplined; more connected, or think really positive.  Digging deeper, it became clear that I had painful issues, hurts, charges, if you will that needed to be resolved.  I learned authenticity and courageously began ‘doing my work’ to clear those charges.
Q:  Explain.
A:  Charges, as I’ll call them, are incomplete experiences, usually from childhood or other sources.  Something happens that is too painful to bear.  So, the experiencing of it is halted, and the sensation is held in the body.  Then the mind attaches a story to it, complete with reasons, justifications, and a hence polarized perspective.  This becomes part of our identity.  Since the hurt wants to be resolved, completed, life will create situations to do that, to bring it up again.  So we end up with recurring patterns, which are recurring opportunities, to complete those experiences and discharge those charges.  Life wants to move forward.
Q:  So you worked on a bunch of charges and got awakened?
A:  No.  But working on charges is very, very powerful.  Each time I completed a charge, more energy, or life force, or kundalini, flowed through my body.  Things brighten and I became more whole.  More and more projections were removed.  I began to have awareness of the whole process of charges: the creation, fear, storage, patterns, eventual facing, and discharge; then the increase in awareness, health, prosperity, openness and love.
Q:  Is that the release work you mention on your presence-ing.com website?
A:  Yes.  This includes modalities like meditation, body centered therapy, breath work, constellations, somatic release, NLP, voice dialog, sexual polarity, spirit releasement, regression, various yogas, presencing, EMDR, parts work, NVC, trauma release, etc.  Over decades, I’ve cleared truckloads of charges in myself and am a spacious facilitator for others.  I’ve been doing that kind of work with people for years, with powerful results.  It’s gratifying for me and transformative, freeing for them.  It’s very beautiful work.
Q:  But none of that caused you to become awakened?
A:  No.  Clearing charges made me more available, more open, more capable of receiving.  And it raised the kundalini, or life force.  If the kundalini isn’t moving, a person won’t awaken.  Another thing clearing charges did was to make my mind’s ruses and strategies super evident to me.  Eventually I could see things, charges and issues coming, identify it, and let it quickly pass through without too much resistance.  For example, an issue that took, say 7 years to resolve the first time through, when the charge is completed was reduced to 7 weeks, then 7 days, 7 hours, 7 seconds.  My assumption about awakening was that once all these charges get cleared out and nothing sticks, you’re awake; you’re finally able to be here, present.
Q:  That’s not it?  Being cleared of enough charges to be present with whatever is going on?  To be here now, as they say?  That’s not it?
A:  In my experience, no.  What that is, is me being there with whatever arises.  I’m sitting here witnessing whatever comes up, letting it go.  I’ve gotten out of the way, am cleared enough, to see it all happening.  It’s the result of a lot of practice and hard work.  And it is a very cool state to be in.
Q:  So what kind of a state is the awakened state?
A:  Awakened is not a state.  It is easy to go into a state:  drink a few cups of coffee and you’ll be in a state.  Runner’s high is a state.  The infatuation phase of a relationship is a state.  Take drugs and you’re in a state.  They’re all nice.  And they’re all created by changed levels of chemicals like serotonin, for example.  Awakening is not a change in one’s chemistry.    |
Q:  You’ve told me lots of things it is not.  How would I know when I’m awake?
A:  You can never be awakened.  Let me explain:  Common to all of these states is you.  You’re having a state, some kind of experience.  You’re thinking, you’re witnessing, you’re experiencing, and you’re seeing something.  For an awakened person, there is no “I” to be a part of any of that.  Things just happen. You, the experiencer, is not there.  Things just happen.  Things happen by themselves.  Thinking, seeing, doing, all that happens by itself.  You are only a concept.  I as a person don’t exist. 
Q:  Okay.  So you’re telling me you’re awakened and you don’t exist.  You look real to me, mister!
A:  What does exist is a set of functions, or automatic processes in a bag of protoplasm labeled Brian.  These processes have nothing to do with me.  They’re independent of me.  Me, Brian, arises out of a fast coordinated relationship between these automatic processes.  Slow things down enough and I disappear. 
Q:  So this awakening happened to you because you slowed yourself down enough so that you, or the appearance or concept of you, disappeared?
A:  No.  In my experience it is impossible to do that.  You can become super aware, finely tuned in, way slowed down, and see what’s actually happening.  But there’s still an observer there.  To get rid of the observer would mean getting rid of the self.  So it is asking the observer, me, to abolish myself.  Does anything want to die?  My self certainly did not.  The job of my self is to protect me from hurts and danger.  So the self would not only be committing suicide, but abandoning its job of protecting the bag of protoplasm, its home, me.  That doesn’t happen.
Q:  So how did you awaken?
A:  It cannot be done by the self, for the reasons I just explained.  The only possible way this can happen is as a gift.  I had to become receptive to gifts. 
Q:  And who gave you this gift?
A:  God, my Personal Divine, Presence, Love, whatever you want to call it.
Q:  You must be really religious.
A:  No, I’m not.  It’s not about religion, beliefs, dogma, practices or any of that.  It’s about relationship.  A personal, individual relationship with the Divine, Presence, All or whatever you relate to.  Maybe that’s Jesus, for example, for you.  Whatever you experience the Divine as.
Q:  So you’re saying your Personal Divine awakened you, and you’re not religious.  Okay.  What’s it like, being awakened?
A:  There is no I anymore.  Since I don’t exist, there is nothing to attach anything to.  Suffering, for example, still happens.  But it is not personal.  It is simply happening in this body.  I'm a conduit for it.  Once it is complete, that's it.  It's done.  The same with fear, hurt, anger, grief, loss and sadness.  Afterwards it is empty, complete.  In addition to these sensations, there is often causeless joy, wonderment and unconditional love.  Everything is happens by itself.  Nothing is personal.  There’s deep silence.
Q:  Wow.  I feel something; kind of open and spacey, especially around my heart area.  And around my head too.
A:  Yes.  It’s contagious.  You will be awakened, too.  There’s nothing to learn, believe in, practice, buy, join or remember.  There’s nothing you need to change about yourself.  Your Personal Divine loves you exactly as you are.
Q:  I’ve really tried and struggled and learned and fixed and strategized, done all that stuff, long enough. 

Joy

Joy:  It has a different quality than anything I’ve experienced before.  When it happened, there was no cause.  I thought ‘What is this?  There is nothing that’s changed, nothing I’ve done, yet this feeling is flooding through me.  Wow, is this that ‘causeless joy’ I’ve heard about?  This is cool!’  Then I tuned into it:  It has a silent core.  Colors and textures are brighter.  There is an essence that is oozing, flowing, out of everything.  There is no meaning to it; nothing to understand.  There’s a sound to it, a vibration, like the sweetest, longest inaudible cosmic violin note.  It is not happiness.  It is not pleasure.  It is not feeling good about something.  It is not related to success or accomplishment.  It is not security.  It’s not something that can be tuned into.  It’s a gift, like rain falling into my open palms.

Silence

I’ve long been sensitive to noise.  Some people could live near a freeway.  Me?  Never.  My ear plugs are one of my most precious possessions.  I’ve got a special pair I’ve coveted for more than a decade.  Going into the desert, where the smallest sounds can carry amazing distances, where hearing becomes really acute, is a fascination and a delight.  The quiet becomes deafening there.  It feels like a pressure valve has been released.  I like the sensation of being in a sound booth that’s especially designed to absorb everything.  There’s no return path to my ears for anything spoken.

But none of these is the silence I now experience.  It is not the absence of sound, as wonderful as that is (to me).  The silence I’m experiencing is an infinite container.  It holds both sound and no sound with equal grace.  If you took away the sound, and took away the sound of no sound, both of those are held in silence.  This silence expands.  It is also completely still.  It pulses and flows with love.  It accepts and caresses.  Everything exudes this silence.  It’s right there in the middle of a traffic jam, or a rock concert, or an open field.  Slums and mansions, muck and polished jewels, all are bathed, carried, in this silence. Atoms, molecules, stars, planets, ocean, sky, and life all arise directly from it.  It has no history.  It has no opinion, no position, and no direction.  It didn’t begin.  It does not continue.  It does not have an end.  This silence is the sound of this exact moment. 

Don't ask God

Do not ask God to end your suffering.  Instead, ask your Divine to be with you fully as you open completely to the unbearable.

A persistent lack of morals

I used to try to do the right thing.  This involved consideration of me, you, and analysis of the situation.  I’d try to see things from your point of view, and honor that.  I’d acknowledge that my perspective is created by my history.  I’d search for a universal truth.  I’d look for what created the least pain, the most good, and go with that.  There was a fundamental morality, a goodness that I tried to honor and to align my actions with.  I thought there was a sensible code of conduct, a universal morality that I felt reasonable and loving people would agree on.  If people wouldn’t violate the rules, we could all get along.  If people would tune into their hearts, we’d have fewer problems in this world. 

Now, none of that really matters.  I don’t think about it.  It’s much simpler.  You are me.  I live in a house of mirrors, and my reflections are you.  There’s nowhere to go.  Nothing can be hidden.  Everything, all my truths, are exposed, brilliantly lit, in these mirrors, you.  If I were to hurt myself, all those reflections would be hurt, and feel the pain, too.  When a person is completely loved, how can they, would they ever, consider hurting themself?  It doesn’t happen.  I am that loved.  My love for ‘you’ is automatic.  I have no morals anymore.

Truth and Consequences

It is nearly impossible to lie anymore.  My truth is right here and it comes of its own volition.  This is usually light and expansive.  But sometimes, it’s not.  My truth can hurt others.

When my truth does hurt you, I now feel your pain, your wounding, all that’s touched in you.  I feel it clearly, brilliantly, vividly, searingly.  I feel it in me, physically.  I let, invite the hurt, your hurt, to come and be felt by me, to know it.  I see, and feel, the consequences of my actions.

When I know your pain, your suffering, compassion happens naturally.  My brutal hurting of you evaporates. 

All truth is for good.

Lover / Lovee

It feels great to love, to do kind things, to be the caring one.  When I bring you your morning coffee, give change to the homeless, or help another relax I feel good about myself.  I can even work on selflessness and humility while I do things for you.  I feel warm and peaceful inside.  I can calmly, expertly, be there for you.  It’s reassuring to me.  Or really, to my ego. 

To receive is so difficult.  There is nothing in it to support my ego, bolster how wonderful I am.  It is so incredibly vulnerable.  It is exactly those parts of my identity, my self, that must let go for me to receive love.  Presence, God or whatever you call it, patiently waits for me to step aside so It can give me much greater gifts.  Like the gift of seeing my 'good person', letting it have its way, letting it do what it does.

I grow much more in receiving than giving.