Transcription
That's that's non-dual realization. So, um, so I can I can talk about it from my own experience if that's so. What happened for me that happened very quickly for me. It does happen for some people, but it's not super common where you'll have like these shifts in a row. And this did happen for me, though.
The second, the the night that I had that that opening, I described that the profound peace, um, and it did feel like everything was made out of everything's made out of consciousness. The whole world is consciousness because every every way that I had thought about the world before was through thought. So all of a sudden it was all like this, this ubiquitous open spacious consciousness. Um, and the thing I overlooked about it was that it still felt very much like an experience I was having, like a seamless, infinite experience I was having. But I was so dissolved in the experience, I didn't realize that. That's the best way I can say this, but I'm going to contrast it to what came after.
The next morning, actually, I woke up, took a shower, had to go to work, but I got up early so I could meditate. And I took a shower. I don't remember what was going on. And my mind was probably very quiet. I'm sure it was. And I sat down and dropped right into that that blissfulness. I dropped right into that clarity, that oceanic nature of everything just being this whatever this is, you know, call it consciousness, call it awareness. And then I dropped right in. And then all of a sudden something else happened that I I could have never expected. It's not expectable. There's no way your mind could even begin to understand what this is like. But it's it's like the the it's really like the physical form of reality itself disappeared. Physical form like the room, like it's still this way. So the room I'm in, I'm using those terms conventionally, but my actual experience is not being in a room. My actual experience is not being having a body or having a self structure that's apart from anything that the the it's formless. It's truly a formless reality. And not only is it like that, it's not an experience. I realized that the experience of form was an experience. This is experienceless. You need a a person experiencing form to have the form. So you have this relationship between subject and object going on all the time. And that can actually stop. And there's no language to even describe what that's like because language is based on distance and time and me and you and the the speaker and the receiver of language. The whole thing is based on that. It's impossible to talk about this. I can use poetic terminology. I can try to describe what went away, but it's rather a trip. I mean, it's sounds good. Yeah, it is. It's It's really not It's not in any category. It's not good or bad. It's It's But it's so natural. It's so obvious. It's profoundly I'll say this. It is profoundly peaceful beyond even that first shift. Way beyond when there's no shadow work to do. when there's shadow work to do. That same lack of boundaries, that same lack of form that makes it so that there's a seamless experience of um just textures appearing of sound and sensations and colors that are all interwoven and intermixed and don't exist in any time or space. That whole thing sounds so beautiful and it is beautiful. But when shadow material comes up in that, you have no boundary anymore. You can't push it away. You can't think your way out of it. You can't justify anything. You you feel it so fully that that can be surprising too how directly you feel things. But that the good news about that is that's the only way you can really process it. And more importantly, that's the way you process resistance. And then the resistance starts to settle. And then over time, especially if you're willing to do good shadow work, more and more that crystal clarity, formless, non-dual nature of everything is just there all the time. And it's very peaceful. So that's the second shift that happened. There was even another one after that, but go on. We're on you're on a roll. This is great. I'm loving it. Please carry on.
You want You want the last one? Yeah. Go on. Um, the last one is even more subtle. Um, and I I I sometimes give a disclaimer when I talk about this because it can be unsettling to people, but all I can tell you is I promise for me it was not unsettling. And for anyone I've ever seen go through this shift, and I've seen a lot of people now um go through it, this this big one. Um, for some people it's very very unsettling for a short time. like the most unsettling thing they've ever gone through for a really short time like a few hours or a few days if they really fight it like a few weeks maybe. There's something about it that is such a massive loss of disillusionment that it's you're actually grieving the loss of disillusionment. It's very strange, but for me it was awesome. I I I just kind of chuckled at it. Um, and so this is what it was. It was a I feel like it was a couple weeks after it's been a long time, but it felt like a couple weeks later. the non-dual, the formless and boundless nature of everything was clear all the time. Um, and then all of a sudden something else actually left that I couldn't even have fathomemed could leave. And it was the very fundamental fabric of being a self at all. The possibility to be a self in any way, in any form, a universal self, a conscious self, it just suddenly just disappeared. And it and like everything else, I know like everything else, it seems like that would be bad or something, but it was just obvious like, oh yeah, it'd be like a loss. It's not a loss, though. It's it's just a dispelling of an illusion. But it it definitely it definitely changed the quality of experience as well in that beyond that it was less of this infinite formlessness and more of momentary appearances that are both formless and empty and also very bright and and illuminous and intimate. just appearing, appearing, appearing, appearing, going, coming and going. That's my reality. Um, very hard to talk about that though.
So, yeah, it's almost like reality itself starts to be staccato. It starts to fluctuate in and out like it doesn't like maybe there's nothing existing at all, ever was, ever could be, not even consciousness. So I don't want to freak people out because it's actually fine when it happens but it's uh it's it's a it was a radical shift and it was al in some sense it was very subtle in some sense it was very radical but I remember very clearly thinking like most people don't want this because not that it's bad and I mean it's not not that it's a bad thing but most of what people are doing in the way they identify with who they are through thoughts they're actually trying to avoid this most everyone including spiritual people I knew it So there was that weird like insight about it as well. It was more like an insight of the gravity of this of like being careful how I talk about it and so forth. And you know I didn't mention it to anybody ever until like 15 years later when I started talking about this and wrote a book and stuff then I started mentioning it. Um, so that that was the final shift in terms of anything to do with any kind of personal identity.
Okay. How can there be potentially nothing? I mean, like nothing as you've described it and yet we're having a conversation. Mhm. Just trying to imagine, you know, people probably like like what? You know, you sure about that? If you look closely enough at anything, you'll find there's nothing there. And this this this jives with physics. this from what I understand I'm not a physicist I know some about physics I do know some about it but I don't know the math of it but from what I understand the quantum field theory is the most um wellsupported physics theory of any kind meaning there are still problems with the the particle physics right there's still certain problems with like gravity particles there's things that need to be worked out but there's nothing contradictory in in quantum field theory apparently it it actually looks about as accurate as anything can look as a a model and that jives with my experience. Quantum field theory essentially says the same thing. It says there are there's an electron field. There aren't ever particles called electrons. There's expectations in a field, right? And there's fields interacting with one another and those create somehow an appearance of something. Right? Okay. I feel like I live in that world. I feel like I live in that world where I can simultaneously see absolute nothingness. I am absolute nothingness. And at the same time, it's it's easy and fun to play the game of being in these textures of the relative world that doesn't actually exist. It only relatively exists. It's just like a it's like wearing a It's like wearing a costume or something. I don't I don't know. It's hard to explain it because again, language this is so far beyond language. But I but what I will say is it it's it feels so real.