Recovery and Enlightenment

OK, it's time to give a shout out to the recovery community. A couple of us are (coughs discreetly) members. 

After you sober up and look around, you realize you are going to NEED a spiritual programme. To stay alive. To stop harming your self and others. 

This adds urgency to the spiritual search, which is, frankly, wonderful. You whip right past New Age marshmallow fluff, heading for meat and bone. 

You begin to sort out available spiritual offerings. Some people are lucky enough to go back to a childhood belief system. Others have no beliefs, and some just have a lot of unquestioned crap.

You look around to see if there is someone less confused, more peaceful, not full of crap. You lurk around a group, seeing if there is evidence for spirituality having any visible effects.
Otherwise, why bother?

You stay sober long enough, see the same people for a while, and you realize some people are not shitting you. This Higher Power thing is working for them. 

Really.
Alcoholics and drug fiends are not lying to you. 

So you keep working at the Higher Power thing-y (described as something larger than your self), while watching how, for at least one of your group, B., the higher power thing has completely subsumed the personal self. She has, entirely, turned her personal will over to God, and is no longer running the show.
In any way.
You blink, because Christian is your least favourite flavour of Higher Power. 

But she speaks with utter honesty about her experience. It is straight up and no frills. You are floored that enlightenment looks so ordinary, and yet has the specific gravity of Earth. No robes, no glow, not a single claim to be special. 

But proximity to B. does not mean that her courage, honesty, or work rubs off on you in some magical fashion. You have more work to do. More looking for a way to get out of self protection, self concern, self-centeredness, and the delusion of personal will. 

There is not an ending to this story. 

I got "enlightened" going through the Ruthless Truth process of extremely pointy pointing to the illusion of self. Search abruptly stopped. Life is ordinary, dear, and not personal. Nothing else stopped, and nothing happened except that the illusion of self was seen to be just that, an illusion.
Talk about obvious. 

So, watch this blog for B.'s story. It won't sound at all Ruthless Truth-y, but this is an enlightened collective, that is the criteria. Welcome, all.
Love, Elizabeth

Linda's Story: She was looking

Linda

I’m 62 (or there abouts)—that qualifies me as a geezer, no doubt. In my 20’s, after more than several attempts at happiness through creating a lifestyle that matched my picture of happiness (land, garden, goats, boyfriend, no-boyfriend, you get the picture), I stumbled upon the idea of happiness through psycho-spiritual growth—i.e. self-improvement. Thus began decades of miserable seeking. I tried most everything that came across my path: all sorts of new age extravaganzas in the early years, then 12 Step programs (very helpful for living), various meditation practices, Sufism, Advaita, all of which point to “relief from the bondage of self”.

I knew all the words—said them often (often to others)—“you aren’t who you think you are”, no-self, only oneness, Unity, False Sense of Authorship…the intellectual understanding was present, but I never really experienced freedom from the sense of “me”. The “me” was still (subtly & secretly) expecting a big experience of Silence, or Unity (that “me” experienced & derived mystical benefit from), or at least something different from the ongoing unfolding of life.

A friend (we’ve been floating around the same seeker circles for some time) sent me links to RT, CompleteHumanity & a few others. I really related to CompleteHumanity—RT felt angry & harsh to me, though I read a few conversations & it got me started on fierce looking. From the reading & looking, I began to see that the sense of “me “ was just a thought form—I could see it arise & attach to most any situation—my feelings, my actions, my plans, my qualities etc. It took me a few days of reading to ask someone to work w/ me individually to get beyond the last sticking places of “me”. It was invaluable to have someone who had clearly seen through the illusion of a separate “me” point out my rationalizations & conceptualizations, and most importantly to keep me going back again & again to the question, “is there really a “me” here?” LOOK LOOK LOOK

I think the thing that popped things open or solidified the understanding was:

“The reason that you don't get the big emptiness you were looking for or expecting... is that 'I' has always been a thought. Nothing actually changes. It's ALWAYS been a thought. All that is different is that it is seen AS a thought.”

Good news & bad news, hahaha.

So what’s different, now? More relaxation, not taking EVERYTHING personally or self-referentially, more excitement about seeing life unfold, relief in really seeing that life will do what it does. I still experience the “me” thought arising & attaching, then the attachment slips away again, over & over. I still want to throttle people from time to time. I still have most of the same thought streams running. There is a softer seeing of all this—more spaciousness around whatever is arising, maybe. And there is humorous surprise that “it” is so ordinary, so no-big-deal, and yet so shockingly profound.

So…geezer? Definitely. Enlightened???? Not me.