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

Enlightenment vs the IRS

From Linda:

So, a few weeks after seeing through the illusion of self—for real, not just as a high level
concept anymore—a notice came from the IRS of an income tax audit. For anyone not in the US—
the Internal Revenue Service has been a boogeyman for me and most folks here. It’s a
huge, dark, sticky thought form.

The initial experience was FEAR—total body contraction FEAR.
I couldn’t even actually read the letter for a period of time.
Then came a barrage of images & stories from the real & imagined past:
Linda getting caught for shoplifting in 6th grade; Linda being sent to principal’s office in
grade school; Linda caught cheating… you get the drift.
Next came the onslaught of projections of humiliation & misfortune: Linda inadequately justifying her existence, Linda exposed as a fraud & cheat, Linda undergoing years & years of tax audits, Linda destitute…

Now the interesting part-- the thoughts arose, “who is afraid here?” , “who is this happening
to?” And then the experience of dropping into calm awareness, right here, right now. The
words aren’t right, but the fear was gone.
I’d love to say that it has not resurrected itself, but not so.

That night I woke up around 2 am experiencing fear throughout the body. The questions
came again, and fear remained. Awareness of contraction, awareness of stories, awareness
of the space these things were happening in.
It seemed like two levels of experience, I suspect it was a flipping back & forth, from identification with self, to remembering no-self, or from TIME to PRESENT AWARENESS.
This lasted for about 2 hours, then the fear faded out & I slept. This process re-occurred several times for shorter duration in the last 2 weeks—a snag with the tax process is hit & the story RESURRECTS ITSELF.

What I notice is that the story of ME arises, beckons, and there is following or attachment for some
period of time. Then not. This must be the unwinding that is talked about--all the pictures
& stories that have been claimed as ME needing to give it another shot. Are you THIS? What
about THAT? It reminds me of the saying: ”the devil knows not for whom he works”.

Each story involves time, the past or future. There isn’t the active “letting go” of story that was
always the quest of the seeking ME, more like a relaxation, but even that word conveys too
much effort. Life lifing, to quote Elena. Come on, fear; come on stories; come on LIFE.
What a trip.
Laughter & gratitude.

Linda