2 things … a few times

I am this moment
I am everything
Everything is me

I am nothing
 

It’s weird the thoughts I’ve had throughout my entire life.  It’s funny now, only because I’m delving deeper into the studies of meditation, non dualism, and consciousness.  All of these natural thoughts I had, far more prevalently in my younger years, when I wasn’t so chiseled into a finely sculpted example of societal norms, I’m learning (or re-learning, I should say) are the same types of thoughts people (including myself, now) aspire to in their quest for ego-death through meditation practices.  The more I read the more I realize what a sellout I’ve been to myself – to the true nature of who I really am – all the while telling myself I’d never become a victim to a belief structure that wasn’t innately my own.  I knew who I was.  And to a degree, if you catch me on a fairly average day, I still do.  It’s nothing I can explain, if I was ever asked to define it.  It’s a ‘knowing’ that’s indescribable.  I know who I am at the ‘soul’ level.  I know why I’m here – but I can’t put it into words.  I know what it means to “be” without being … anything … or anyone and … even though I lose track of that, more now in these adult years than ever before, I know that I always have.  I suppose that may be why I had this sudden and urgent drive, a while back, to put a word to the knowledge base I was seeking, for clarification of what this physical experience means in terms of the essence of who I am really am.

Two things about my childhood experience that seem to resonate with reason now, more than ever.  

1.  I observe – I’ve always had this innate knowledge that “I observe” because ‘this’ is not me, and the experiences of others – well, that isn’t them, their purest essence of themselves, either.  If I didn’t have to sit and listen to people’s problems all day long I probably would have finished that psychology degree and done something professionally along those lines. But, one of the more compelling reasons I’m sure I never went that way is because nothing lasts forever, not even your problems.  Not my problems.  Not the thing that’s freaking you out right now.  And not the thing I’m wanting desperately to change about any given unpleasant situation I may find myself.  I have a voice I listen to whenever I need guidance.  It tells me if everything will work out, or not.  It’s rarely, ever, wrong.  I learned to listen to it when I was very young and it has yet to fail me.  But, I don’t refer to it often.  Actually, I hardly ever refer to it at all.  The most important reason why, to me, is because it’s an extremely powerful connection to a truth I feel I shouldn’t have access to as a physical human being. (That’s how honest, reliable, and truthful this “voice” is) But also, because it oftentimes tells me things I don’t want to hear, or things I’m not ready to hear.  So asking, or the timing of asking, becomes a mental game where I challenge every possible reason for why I got the answer I did, and what I could have done before asking the question, and even after asking the question, to get a different answer – the answer I wanted to hear instead.  Is it simply ‘intuition’?  Maybe.  Is it my physical self, my purposeful physically calculating brain requesting information from my purest form – my consciousness?  I suppose that’s possible, too. But then again, that would be cheating at life, now wouldn’t it…?

2.  INFJ -  I’m an extroverted introvert because I don’t truly identify with either one. While I do identify with this physical experience I’ve always known, intuitively, that impermanence applies to everything.  Physical death has always been this intriguing subject because of what happens after.  I don’t mean ghosts and spirits, or anything like that. I mean, the ‘experience’ … and it’s so strange to say out loud, but… my inner voice always seems to jump to that word before I can think to rephrase it…  I say to you that death is an ‘experience’, but I’ve actually called it an ‘experience’ because that’s a societal norm.  The actual word that my inner voice has always used for death is “adventure”.  And now I shake my head at myself, and followed it up with “you’re so … weird. I can’t believe you wrote that” and then I responded to myself “Who cares. No one reads this blog, anyway, so just chill out… have an apple… proofread this entry… and don’t overthink it. It’s not worth it.”  See?  You see extrovert.  But goodness… that’s not entirely the case, now is it.  The thinking that’s not said.  The intuitive identifying with aspects of existence people spend their lives trying to understand (me now, more than most, I imagine), and the innate awareness – albeit after the thought has been had – that fearing impermanence is not something that comes naturally.  

Since I was very young – probably around 12 years old, or so – I started telling my mom 2 things about my future:

1.  I would never conform because non-conformists know who they are and conformists are nothing short of hypocrites.

2.  I would die of some really rare disease.  I would die young.  And if it was a disease with treatment options I would not pursue them.  You know – the exact kinds of things mothers want to hear from their kids.  My reasons were pretty simple.  While I didn’t want to die, I reasoned that things happen for a reason that didn’t necessarily have to do with God, or Jesus, or whatever religious line of thinking that goes along with that whole mentality (remember, I went to a French Roman Catholic school until I was 14. Nuns and all…), but that I must have somehow chosen whatever affliction, I’d come down with, before I was born.   True Story.  Don’t ask me where this thought came from.  I couldn’t tell you.  I have no idea.  But it was real, it was mine, I owned it in every way, and I felt pretty attached to it without having given it a 2nd thought and without having spent much time at all mulling over the insanity of it, let alone the fear that type of circumstance should have struck in me.  Don’t misread me, either.  I was a kid with a lot going for myself.  I went to private school, was getting a great education, my family life was strong and dependable, I was busy every day of every sports season until the day I graduated high school, I got good grades, belonged to a bunch of clubs, had hobbies outside of that, and managed to maintain a pretty tight social life on top of it all.  I had plenty to live for and I knew it.  But that thought that I would die young and it would be ok was just something I couldn’t tell you why, but I was comfortable with it.  I never feared my innate and intuitive belief of it.  

Now that I’m old (hah!) … ok… older… than I thought I’d be when I thought I’d die “young”… I realize a couple of things:

1.  Sometimes what I think I know … is just a pile of inexperienced bunk.  Right?  I mean.  We live. We learn. We grow as people.  And I’m not so insecure to admit that sometimes what I know, and what I think I know, are 2 entirely different things.  Doesn’t matter if it comes from that sourceless voice in the essence of my being, or not.  Sometimes, I’m sure I’m getting it wrong.  I’m hearing what I want to hear, or I’m not hearing the right thing.  Or, I’m asking so many times that the voice just starts telling me a different answer – something I’m sure my subconscious has something to do with, which makes it so the answer doesn’t originate from the voice, at all.  So you get what I’m saying right?  Sometimes… you think you know, but you don’t. Because you’re young, and you’re stupid.  (insert toothy grin here, because you know as well as I do, ‘young and stupid’ is at least half of the struggle in this lifetime. I don’t care how old you are.)  We all die young … and a little stupid about one thing or another.

2.  Sometimes … circumstances change, and that changes everything.  See – when I was young I had no plans to marry or have a family of my own.  I had my life all planned out.  I would travel the world for my job, bouncing around from city to city, moving far away from my home state. I would remain single.  I’d never have kids (Gyawd, No.  NO KIDS!).  And I’d die young.  Not rich, but not poor, either.  And then came my husband.   See?  Things changed.  And then came his son from his first marriage … and now I had a kid in my house. And … you can probably imagine how dying young wouldn’t really work out in this situation, right?  So things change.  I was well on my path before I met my husband.  I had a Geology degree and was heading to work for off-shore research consulting companies down South.  I was set to begin a career working on oil rigs and marine research vessels, flying from state to state, and working in remote oceanic locations or remote land based operations.   I mean … I was on my way, and he wasn’t a part of that plan at all.  But I met him within just a few months of setting off on my life’s grand plan, and the rest is journaled in 20 years worth of home videos and photo albums.  It’s not destiny, but all of us are in our physical forms for a reason… for a purpose… and that purpose is allowed to shift.  I took a different road than I intended – than I ever even figured existed, and an early death didn’t work on that path.

So … when I sit in any given place at any given time and I look into myself I realize a few things about ‘me’… about this physical experience I refer to as “mine”.

Yes.  ‘I’ am this moment.  Without thought.  Without action.  Without physical being.  ‘I’ am this moment.  
‘I’ am everything
‘I’ am everything and everything is ‘me’ (but not … me… or I … and I don’t know how to put that into words so just imagine me staring at you with an utterly confused look on my face, appearing to be … almost … ready … to say something… at any moment now, but … I don’t… because I can’t find the words… so it just turns into this really… long … awkward… gaze … of bewilderment)

So … ‘I’ am … nothing … I’m not even ‘I’.  And even though I have no idea how to express that in words, I understand it in a way that’s so ethereal it could be wiped away into oblivion the moment I try to define it.  So I won’t.  How something so powerful can be so delicate at the same exact time… it blows my mind.  … … but maybe that’s the purpose of the design.  

And… as fleeting a revelation as it usually is for me, it can be kind of a liberating thought, to a degree – after the initial confusion about owning the fact that I’m owning nothing at all, not even myself.  And despite living in a world that demands you own everything about yourself, and your place within it, or you’ll surely disappear – I still find peace with the principle.