The Impetus to Act

I had a dream awhile back where I felt as though I was in a real feeling video game. There were different scenes that I would find myself in but I knew they weren’t real, that this was just a lucid dream and I could be in it but not get lost in it.

As the dream went on I began to care about what was going on. I wanted a certain jacket to not get dirty, I wanted to stop a family fight and I didn’t want to go into the dark cellar, etc. As I began caring about things I also began losing my lucidity. I started to forget that this was only a dream and quickly it swallowed my awareness up.

Caring about outcomes took away my lucidity, wanting things to be different or in a particular way sucked me up into the video game and I forgot that none of it was real.

Fascinating.

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So I’ve been in a dance with a part of myself that has a heavy karmic load attached to it.

It’s a piece that wants things. Recently it wants to have a few glasses of wine and binge watch a TV show. In the past it wanted to smoke pot everyday or eat things that barely passed as food. It has had a few different faces with the same underlying story of wanting.

It’s the part that has been able to control the mind and body to do its bidding for years, for lifetimes.

I’ve been studying it, watching it for a long time. It’s dense and opaque. I can’t see anything and the mind cant understand it. It’s tricky and elusive. It feels like it has power over me. It can control me. It’s been the thorn in my side. A source of a lot of suffering and confusion.

Or so the story goes.

So I’ve been watching it in earnest, looking at it with fresh eyes.

Making light of the whole game.

I noticed that it starts with a thought. “I want ‘x’.”

Then an emotion kicks in which I feel in the body. The thoughts loop and the emotion intensifies. 

The feeling of being compelled kicks in. An action wants to be taken.

It’s so strong and loud, I feel so weak. I cant say no. I have to do it. 

This is what a karmic action feels like. The intensity of it makes it so much easier to see.

It’s more challenging to experience but because it’s become so big it can be seen more easily once the awareness clicks in as to what is actually happening.

When a pattern picks up steam it has the ability to compel a body and mind to do what it wants.

When an untrained mind hears a thought it follows it unwittingly. Then an emotion which has a more sustained impact on the body itself compels that body to move and take action in its desired way.

The mind and body follow as long as the awareness remains limited.

The impetus to act then comes from the identity who wants this or that.

The person feels like a puppet on a string, unable to change their actions. Lost to whatever addiction or obsession is pushing or pulling the person to partake in.

It’s not so much about what this part wants specifically but more so about the dynamic behind the action that being taken that’s important to see. It’s important to see what freewill does to the Chita or the mind of God.

This part wants to keep coming back into separation for the experience.

And the only way it can have the experience it wants is through control of the mind and body.

So I’ve been watching this in myself for years. Watching the whole fight and give in and looping patterns of negotiation.

But like I said lately I’ve put a new spin on it. I decided to have fun with it, to take the dread away and add some neutrality to it. I could watch from a space sans definition. 

From a state of innocence, a state where I don't know anything and whatever I attached to this pattern in the past is wiped clean.

Its dissolved away, let go of so that I can come in fresh.

I’ve given it so much space in observation mode that I’ve finally been able to see…. “Ohh I can wave my hand right through this, it’s completely empty.”

So what happened? A second ago this felt solid and real and daunting and now it’s a ghost?

A finite experience goes vertical when you bring awareness into the equation. The energy that was stuck in the loop becomes transparent, it becomes a passageway into all of creation.

It literally goes from an expected chain of events into the realm of all possibilities.

It goes from a finite pool of things to the open road of all, where there is no path, no grooved loop to gravitate towards.

You’re in the 3rd nervous system, an infinite well of life exists here.

The silent mind, which is full of awareness, can see that the identity behind the scenes pulling the strings is not an entity, it isn't anything at all.

It’s just phenomena that vanishes with the scrutinizing gaze.

It’s comes and goes and who I really am remains.

The impetus to act in ways that don't include your full awareness dissipates. 

The action no longer comes from an identity that wants this or that but instead from the one who remains.

Lucidity stays intact and there is a sensation of being in a finite experience AND in full expression of Self. You are in it and not of it.

Chita will act naturally when the impetus to act from a pattern subsides. 

If Chita is told to act differently, it will. Always accommodating whatever Will is in charge.

When the identity is seen for what it is the action comes through You rather than from (y)ou. It feels effortless and natural. 

Every move is for this clear state. Every turn a singeing off of old tendencies.

Until we are aligned with the light. The angle just right. 

And then the light shines right on through.

Rewriting Hierarchy

One of the most experientially impactful codes to rewrite in the neural networks of the mind are the ones written about hierarchy.

I’d say most of this lifetime I thought of God as the big man in the sky. He was something greater, obviously, than a human and he was the one who judged my sins.

Oh Catholic school….

It was so deeply ingrained in us everyday that there was little to no question otherwise. We just took it all in like sponges and it was our truth.

We feared him and prayed to him and worshiped him. We did our best to make sure we would make it into heaven by confessing our sins to the Monsignor, who acted as the middle man to the big man.

So to reverse the truck out of such a dynamic it takes a lot of looking at. 

I’ve noticed that as I slowly began to embrace my humanity I was able to really see more clearly that not only is that whole Catholic story a complete lie, obviously, but I could finally know not only how crucially important and necessary my humanity is but also that thinking it is less than God in any way was the biggest lie of all.

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In Kashmir Shaivism tradition, a branch of tantric hinduism, the baseline understanding is that in Reality there exists a trinity; Shiva, Shakti, and Nara which is consciousness, energy and humanity (consciousness in form).

It holds the view that the world and everything in it is Shakti, the original sound of creation.

Essentially that this is already the Kingdom, we just need to clean our windows to see it. Meaning we need to go beyond what we think we know to see what’s already here.

And that the body is the very instrument that consciousness needs in order to know itself in this way.

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A few years ago I had a spontaneous 2 day experience in cosmic consciousness. It was the sensation of complete bliss, no matter what I was doing or not doing it just pervaded ceaselessly. 

It was a taste of what the subject/object collapse feels like. It was a direct experience of my true nature, of awareness itself without the borders of separation. 

Soul and consciousness as one.

This is our natural state and it’s replicated when we reach meditative samadhi states of absorption.

When we let the breath take us into our central channel the bliss takes over.

The perspective of separation dissolves. 

And hierarchy goes too because how can one be greater than the other when there is no other?

This all makes more tangible sense, in the day to day, as parts that no longer serve dissolve. This occurs as we allow forgiveness for distorted perspectives and soften to our humanity.

The reality is that when you are open to the flow of life through that complete embrace of your energy you start to feel all of creation in your body, as your body.

The pain of separation fades and you feel the wholeness that you already are.

This is a sensation beyond time and space and yet it completely changes your experience here.

That feeling of wholeness is what makes us happy for no reason. There is nothing here that can add or subtract from that innate happiness because we don't find that feeling in anything “out there”. 

When you have the experience of all of creation within you, as you, you feel boundary-less and you know there is nothing more natural than that.

All is equal, all is God and the Kingdom gets clearer as we rewrite old stories that have no foundation in your new experience expression of Reality.