A student describes the overwhelming experience of seeing life from an entirely different, unconditioned perspective, and the teacher speaks to the painful transition between identification and freedom.
A student describes the overwhelming experience of seeing life from an entirely different, unconditioned perspective, and the teacher speaks to the painful transition between identification and freedom.
It feels so unknown. So much of what I see and hear, whether people are talking to me directly or just the news and everything around me, this is something else entirely. It's not taking a position. It's not trying to solve anything. It's just watching. That's what it feels like. There's this ordinary level, and then there's something completely different, and yet it's totally connected. I don't even know how to put it into words, but it's such a different way of being. It's like a quantum leap.
It is. And that position with regards to life, if we're not identified, is free to respond in the best way. Compare that to a position that's conditioned through identification. The conditioned position says, "Whenever this happens in the world, I must respond in this particular way." There's a conditioned response, because what I am is attached to that response. When you're attached to a position and something occurs, you can only react in one way. When you're not attached to a position, you can respond in different ways.
The pain of deep conditioning
I think it's this deep, deep conditioning that's hurting so much. I can feel it. That's the suffering. I want to get free of this conditioning more than I want oxygen at certain moments. That's hell. I feel that. And so it is a leap, because there's nothing in between.
That's exactly right. There is a transition, and in that transition there is nowhere to go, nothing to hold on to. It feels like it's the end of me. But it ends up being the end of what I thought I was. The experience, though, is the end of me.
It's the pain of the conditioning and then the end of me.
Willing to risk it all
Exactly. And in that back and forth between those two, at some point we are tired enough of the known, of the suffering, of the contraction, of the hell of the mind, that we're willing to risk it all. And it's not a decision made through a thought process. It's a very deep energetic where something just says, "I can't contract anymore. I can't do this anymore."
There's not even a thought. I don't even know what's happening. All I know is that sometimes I feel these shifts, like I'm being catapulted. I guess it comes back to the watching, just watching it all happen.
The more you see this, the more the undoing accelerates.
It's amazing to hear you say that. I didn't even know what I was going to say when I started talking. What I was thinking before I opened my mouth was, "I'm so afraid I can't express what I have to say because I feel so overwhelmed." And then it all came out. Where did that come from?
Your openness, your vulnerability, your deep desire to see. Thank you.