The Beauty of Choosing Illusion
La belleza de elegir la ilusión
A conversation about the terror that can arise in deep spiritual opening, the fear of ending, and how the dance between illusion and wakefulness is itself an expression of love.
The Beauty of Choosing Illusion
A conversation about the terror that can arise in deep spiritual opening, the fear of ending, and how the dance between illusion and wakefulness is itself an expression of love.
I had COVID and then fell on my face. It was a bad day.
Yes, it was. Let me say a little about what happened, because it's relevant to the things we were talking about not long ago, about facing fear.
She was basically having a very profound opening, and the terror became too much. It happened to me several times as well. In my case, I spoke about this before: I used to kind of blank out, lose consciousness, but I wouldn't physically pass out. Later, when I would remain conscious, I would end up collapsing to the ground. In her case, it was more similar to what happened to me earlier, where my mind would shut down and I would fall into a kind of dream world. For her, it was literally a body shutdown. Very scary for both of us.
The reality of fear in this process
I wanted to bring it up because it's part of the process we're talking about here, and I really don't want to sugarcoat it. I don't want to scare people either, but it's actually fear itself. And on facing that fear, we react in all kinds of ways. We are constantly managing that fear, because it's basically the fear of ending, the fear of death, the fear of going crazy, the fear that the reality I know seems to stop or end or not be what it is anymore.
I wanted to share something directly connected to this conversation. I have relatives visiting from out of town, and one of them has a progressive debilitating condition, a kind of muscular dystrophy. It's terrifying to see him. He's about my age. But he's absolutely wonderful with it. He's like a poster child for how to be with a terrifying condition. Watching him and seeing his vulnerability, I can't help but see my own vulnerability.
I was thinking about how this whole path, this process, is all about opening to that. So of course there's going to be resistance, because I've been working on this identity, this persona, my whole life, so painstakingly, with all of my efforts. Now I'm going to let go of it? Are you kidding? This is all I know. I'm hanging on to a cliff. It's raw terror.
What I was getting in touch with was the inevitability of the resistance and the fear. I took a walk and the wind was blowing, and I thought: that's it. Each one of us is a gust of wind. It moves, it's dynamic, and then it's gone. There's nothing left, no trace. In Hebrew, the word for wind and spirit is the same, and I don't think that's by chance.
This group is so great for me because it helps me not only get in touch with this stuff but also gives me a context for it. Even while it feels like free fall, there's some support I don't even know how to put into words. Maybe it's because I want this more than anything, as scary as it is, because it's the best thing going. Something like that.
Only what we know can end
The key thing we can look at is that only what we know can end.
Do you agree with the metaphor of paying off a mortgage? You can either pay one big installment or you pay lots of little payments.
We'll give you a loan. Maybe that's what this meeting is.
Maybe. I don't know how much I have left to pay.
It always feels like more than you can afford, until it's done.
But I also want to normalize and naturalize this, because I find that if one isn't in touch with somebody who has gone through this very personally, or who shares the story more personally, people are very surprised that the process would have this level of challenge. I think that's a disservice, because one starts having the idea that if there's a challenge, something wrong is happening. Something's not well, something's not right, I'm going the wrong way, and it's me who's doing that, there's something I'm not getting. Actually, it quite possibly depends on the kind of thing that's going wrong, but usually it's a positive part of the process.
Can I share one thing that helped me a lot in that moment? As it got more and more intense, I was thinking about something you had said about how you can't choose this, you can't want this. Something about that really helps, like another layer of surrender. It's okay if I'm absolutely overwhelmed and not okay. It's bigger than me and I can't deal with it. That was actually really helpful.
Surrender is not a choice
It's as if you're going down a roller coaster and you don't have control. The surrendering is not something you do. You can't really surrender if you're surrendering by choice. It's not a real surrender.
I'm not saying this for you to prepare or plan. I'm just highlighting that when things really come to that edge, everything that you know will be trying to stop it. All of you that you know will try to stop it. And then in the surrendering, something else comes in.
What can happen is that you ultimately let go of knowing what you are, because that's the only thing that can die or end. You can even have a philosophical debate about this. If you want to take it to a very rational place, it's straightforward: the only thing that can end is something you can define as a thing.
The beauty of this process is that it highlights you aren't the thing. The problem is you believe you know what you are, and you can discover that this is an illusion. By illusion I don't mean that what you are doesn't exist. I mean it's not what it appears to be. It appears that we are limited by the body and by the mind, that we are contained in the body and the mind exclusively. The pointing here is that this is not true. It is a belief. It is an illusion. And you can't turn this into another belief; it just won't work. What can happen is the discovery of that.
What we discover is not a new knowing
The discovery where it's completely known experientially is not that we know what we are. It's that we see so clearly that what we thought we were is not true. And there's a cosmic beauty to this, because the creation of this universe seems almost designed for this process to happen.
If I had the gift of poetry, I could communicate it in the best form. Before, it seemed like torture. It seemed like I was put in a process that was excruciating, and there was a sense of unwillingness, a sense of being the victim of a bad joke because of the difficulties. But I see it now as such a beautiful process, such a beautiful journey. It feels like the whole creation is designed for illusion and waking up. That journey of illusion and waking up, illusion and waking up, makes it very worthwhile. If you only had illusion or you only had waking up, it would be a tragedy.
I'm trying to feel into what you're saying. Illusion and waking up, illusion and waking up. Yesterday I was with a client who is having such a hard time loving her partner. She's terrified to love him because she got hurt in the past. She loved a man so much and he ended the relationship because she wasn't from his religious and ethnic background. I was talking to her about how that's so much smaller a love than the love she wants and is capable of. She thinks she's not capable of love, but it's the opposite: she loves so much she's terrified. Maybe it's not true for everybody, but it feels like this life is for learning to love. I don't know if that has anything to do with what you just said.
The dance where loving happens
I think it's very related. Because in pure illusion there would be no love, and in pure wakefulness there wouldn't be any love. It's in that movement and in that dance that the loving happens.
You mean because there's a choice? That you're learning to love because you have to face into complete unknown and terror and pain in order to love?
Yes, but also: let's call pure wakefulness consciousness, or God. Without the knowing of illusion, there would be no sensitivity to it, no compassion. It's shown well in the parable of the prodigal son. The son had everything. He got so completely lost in illusion and arrogance. From the point of view of the father, he's much more lovable when he becomes humble again.
It's referenced in many ways. Carl Jung wrote about it in his book Answer to Job. It's a beautiful interpretation where he points out that God learns from Job, because God didn't know how bad it was. From the perspective of the absolute, from the perspective of divinity, it's all okay. And that's what we can recognize. But if that's all there is, there is a loss. There is beauty to the experience of limitation, of separation, of suffering. I personally remember choosing that. And that was part of the process for me: to remember that I chose that.
Separation?
Yes. And it started to erode this sense of victimhood.
The shame of having chosen
Something comes up for me when you say that you chose it. What comes really strongly is a sense of judgment and shame. That would be very difficult to face, how much shame I would feel at having chosen that. Isn't it original evil to choose separation?
No. Evil would be how you act within that illusion. As for the shame: the original sin, you could interpret it wrongly, as meaning we are guilty. But you could also see it through the origin of the word, which is actually closer to "mistake." So you could see the original illusion as this belief of being separate.
It does bring about a lot of shame. In my case, it brought absolute shame, and you saw me go through that. But this is where I'm at a loss for words. I see the beauty in all of it: the beauty in choosing the illusion, the beauty in choosing the contraction, the loss, the sense of limitation, the suffering that came with it. In a sense, I would do it again.
Take your time
When I speak about the sense of emergency some people might have, wanting to get to that place of liberation, I address it by saying: sometimes, take your time. Because what you're experiencing right now is being chosen.
Isn't what you're describing what has been said about how we are first unconsciously unconscious, then consciously unconscious, then unconsciously conscious? First we're in the suffering of separation without any perspective on it; then we're in it but with perspective; then we are conscious but unconscious of being conscious. Maybe that moment of choosing would correspond to the second stage, where we are consciously unconscious.
That's a stepwise process, and it's related to what we're talking about. But what I'm saying is slightly different. All of the suffering, all of the unconsciousness, all of that is chosen.
Even when it's unconscious? Even in the midst of it?
Even when it's at the worst, it's chosen. But it's chosen by our true essence. And by that I would say it's chosen by God. The problem becomes what Christ expresses on the cross: "Why have you forsaken me?" He's speaking to God as if God were an other. The sense is: I am a victim of that which chose this for me.
But the realization, which is what I believe happened to him, comes in the instant after, when he says something like "Thy will be done." That, to me, is the realization that there wasn't a God other, choosing this for me at my expense. I chose that. There is only God's will. And by that, there is no me separate from that.
There is no such thing as God and me
I can speak to this very directly and clearly, but it will be difficult not to misinterpret, because there is no such thing as God and me. I know that is the same for all of us listening. You can say God doesn't exist, but the only way that would be correct is if you also say, "I don't exist either." To claim the non-existence of God but to claim the existence of myself is a mistake. I would call that a sin. And vice versa: the non-existence of myself but the existence of God is also a sin.
You can say there is only I, or there is only God. In Hinduism they say atman equals brahman: I equals God. Or non-duality. But I think it's prior to non-duality. It's not that there are two things that are equivalent. It's one, and it's not a thing. Atman is the self and brahman is divinity, and it's expressed in a very mathematical, logical way, but at the level of thinking, that is reality.
I feel like I'm meditating while I'm listening to you. I have to go very soon, but can I share something briefly? I really love what you're talking about, the choosing and the decision. Now that I hear you towards the end, I think it may be different from what you're describing, but I feel this lightness, a lighter fear in a way. Something in me that was always seeking, seeking, seeking, trying to get somewhere has subdued a lot. For a while I was scared: did I give up? Did I forget? And then I sit here and listen to you, or I go to satsangs, and it's just all this love and joy of doing it when there's joy to do it. The love for the love. It fits back into my sense of what this is right now: being alive, in this separation, and in this joy of investigating freedom when there is joy for investigating freedom. Listening to you today really put me in contact with that again. I celebrate it. It's really beautiful.
My pleasure.
Let's do a meditation.
The word "I" points to it. The word "reality," "consciousness," "love," "freedom": all pointing to our true nature. It is that which feels like it is at the center of something, at the core of what is experiencing right now. Even if there is contraction, even if there is identification, thoughts, stories, struggles, none of that touches it.
What is awake is always awake. This recognition is possible now. No time, no process, no preparation, no integration. It is the emptiness that is full of experience. The emptiness of divinity experiencing its creation, pretending to have a center, pretending to be separate.
Where is the center? Where is this I? You will find thoughts, concepts. Thoughts do not need to stop. Discomfort does not need to stop. Trust this more than anything. Nothing needs to change. It is already given. Nature cannot be earned. Only destruction can be achieved.
The beauty of forgetting
There is beauty in forgetting this. We choose to forget this. We come to forget this. We love to forget this. In fact, a lot of our struggle is when we begin to remember. Part of us is still holding on to the forgetting. The forgetting is also bliss. Remembering brings the conscious suffering.
It's happening now: reactivity, depression, frustration, fear. Notice that all of that is fully awake, fully free, right now. Your thoughts: what is noticing them? Discomfort: what is noticing it? Whatever is happening: what is noticing that?
The answer comes as a sensation: I, me, this here, this that I am, this sensation, this thought. What is noticing that? What is noticing isn't anywhere. It's empty. No form, no place.
Empty. Sensations come and go. Thoughts come and go. The known construct of "I," with its sensations and thoughts, comes and goes. Experience comes every morning, then it goes. What remains cannot be formed and located. All experience stays in this emptiness, soaked in its aliveness, dancing in its energy.
Illusion and wakefulness are the same. Before your birth or after your death, what we are is not of the realm of life and death.
Notice time. Notice thoughts. Notice this world, your body, sensations, emotions. Your past known as memories. Future worries, hopes, dreams known as thoughts. All of that appears to something. What is that?
Sink into that. Feel spacious, empty, vast. It is never gone. When there is a thought or a sensation, you are there. When there is illusion, you are there. Never gone. You are never gone.
What do you love?
What do you love? What do you love now? A direct experience. Finish this as a discovery instead of a process of choice. Let yourself discover. What do you love right now, of what is happening right now?
Is there beauty in breathing? Is there beauty in thinking? Is there beauty in sensing the body, tingling sensations in the hands and feet, the skin? Is there beauty in the sense of seeing, seeing itself? The miracle of sight. The miracle and the immersiveness of sound, sound itself, no matter what sound. Is there any beauty there right now?
Is there beauty in having memories? Is there beauty in emotions? What if we love everything that is happening? Why would we have to let go in order to discover that? Could we be holding on to something in order to veil that beauty and that love of everything?
Looking. Where is the beauty? What do you love? Notice the temptation to choose and reject. Be open to discovering the love of everything. Life itself. Beingness. Pristine and clear and awake, fully awake, undeniably awake.
Slowly, gently, come back to the group in your own time.
Something happened to me towards the end, when you were asking "What do you love?" An image had been appearing since this morning. I read something in a newspaper about a forty-two-year-old engineer working in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Someone came up to him and stabbed him to take his phone. He had a four-month-old child. Towards the end of the meditation, that story kept coming, and I was feeling this pain quite intensely.
The thing that I think was different, strange to say, is that I felt I loved the pain. My whole life I've been fighting against what I think is quite a lot of sensitivity in this body and mind, with all these conditionings that it's bad to feel pain, bad to suffer, bad to be dysfunctional because you're feeling pain. The difference was feeling, I don't know how to describe it, feeling privileged that I could feel pain for a complete stranger. I don't know if there's any help in it, but the sense was that it was a privilege to feel pain for a complete stranger, and even compassion for my own fears. As if pain is actually good.
I understand. You're smiling.