The Unbecoming ~ embracing fully this human experience
Feb 27, 2020
brian wilcox. 'when the world becomes quiet'
"I did this" or "I did that." "My nose" or "My ear" or "My job" or "My depression." "My husband" or "My wife" or "My partner" or "My lover." "I am this" or "I am that." "I was there" or "I am going there." Who questions, "Who is this 'I' that claims so much?"? The need is not the annihilation of this possessive 'I,' but to know what this 'I' is, so this 'I' can relax into loving surrender with its Source of being.
* * *
A woman, who had attended a talk of the Sage, visited him a few months later. She looked agitated.
"I listened to your evening talk some months ago."
"Well," replied the Sage, "interesting. Welcome back."
"I enjoyed the talk. Then I tried to follow your teaching on dying to ourselves. It didn't work for me. Maybe I'm just too weak."
The Sage laughed and said, "It couldn't work for anyone."
"Why, then, teach it?" the woman asked.
"So, in trying to die to yourself, you will discover that the you that tries to die to itself does not exist to die to itself."
* * *
On another occasion a man approached the Sage. He said, "I've tried to die to myself. I seem unable." "How odd," noted the Sage, "a self trying to die to itself by that self trying to kill itself."
* * *
A visitor grumbled, "I'm exasperated!"
Asked the Sage, "Why?"
"I've worked hard to let go of the ego, and failed."
"Very interesting, indeed, the ego working hard to let go of the ego and the ego failing to let go of the ego. Sounds very sticky to me."
* * *
And... A man, a new convert to Christianity, exclaimed to the Sage, "Sir, I'm so excited! I've become a Christian!" "When did this happen?" "Last Sunday." "And who were you before then?" "Well, of course, me." "Oh, my," spoke the Sage, "can't you see, my friend, that that that cannot become cannot become anything?"
* * *
A felt-sense of wholeness and harmony does not arise from the self that is an illusion. This self cannot say rightly "I am," for the self that is "I am" is, that self does not come and go, appear and disappear. "Is" is not "becoming," so is "not-becoming."
* * *
What is the self that is, so is timeless, motionless, yet moving within time, even as time moves within it? What is the self that can wear an identity without becoming an identity, can welcome change without becoming change or being changed by change? Can one be, for example, Christian without being a Christian? Be Buddhist without becoming a Buddhist? Can fulfill the role of husband or wife or friend without becoming any one of these? What were you, before birth? What will you be, following death? Were you born, or did you experience birth? Will you die, or will you experience death? What experiences aging, without becoming aged? That you are.
* * *
When you awaken from a dream, you realize the dream was a dream, you realize you cannot live that dream in waking consciousness. If you are to go cook breakfast for the family or get ready to go to your job, you cannot try to stay on the lovely island you were sunbathing on in the dream. The dream was an illusion, a real fantasy real in the sense of a real dream, nevertheless a dream. If you tried to live such a dream, persons would give you a diagnosis of psychosis and you would need medication to live sanely among others or you might be put in a hospital to live with others who cannot escape their dreams. Yet, you would all be living in different dreams, each thinking his or her dream the one, real dream. Would that not be so?
* * *
The person, so personality, believed to be you and its stories believed to be true is at best a good dream, for some it is a bad dream, for most a mixture of both.
You watch a movie to experience the movie and what it evokes, maybe, too, to spend time with others watching it. During the movie, if you needed to go urinate badly enough, you would get up, leave the movie, and go urinate. You, then, would re-enter the movie. You would not go urinate, thinking you were still in the movie. You would not sit before the movie, thinking it real, and pee all over yourself, would you? That peeing would awaken you, "The movie is only a movie!"
To awaken and see the dream as a dream, even while it reweaves itself, is to live wakefully. The way to live in the dream, as to how to watch that movie, is to dive into the dream, live the experience fully. That is integrity. You do not have to abolish the dream. By knowing the illusion to be an illusion, you can more enjoy the illusion, the human-dream-world, and you can invite others to do the same. I have enjoyed watching movies with other persons; likewise, we can enjoy together this dream we are experiencing by choosing to embrace it wholly. In doing this, as persons, we sacralize it all.
* * *
Knowing you are not a mere psychological self, a personality, which is a collection of thoughts and feelings, may be the greatest gift you give to others. This waking up does not make you holy in some religious sense or make you some enlightened being ~ when you wake up, you have no interest in being an enlightened being ~, but you share through Silent Presence the beauty of Life living in and through and as you, and, so, you emanate into the world a quiet luminosity. You might become, also, a little weird to others, for you know longer seek to fit-in, for that you are is free of needing to fit-in.
* * *
Awake, you are not trying to be anyone, including yourself. How could you become a version of your self? The moment you try to be someone, that is not someone who would be you. Being does not have to try to be. Being sees Itself in the mirror of the myriad-Things, is in union with the spirit-of-All, while being the Seer of it.
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Video is accessed on original site via below upper-left artist-title
