PoetKitty's Shaman / Enlightenment Blog

This is the post that the small part of me never believed I’d ever compose and share.  This is the part of life that I feared I would always be seeking.

And yet, here it is – the absolute Truth, unfolding within me like sunbeams reaching through the silvered windows of a prison cell.  I am breathing this life with new lungs, finally connecting to the source.  The real is-ness is awakening.

First, the story.  Later, the aftermath.  As that will be infinite.

Ten days ago, Orion and I went to Denver for a spiritual adventure.  We spent 1 day and 1 night at a retreat with Adyashanti, a magnificent awakened being who is now my primary teacher.  Adya had his enlightenment experience 10+ years ago, and has been sharing his unique view on the process for years now.  What resonates most is that Adya maintains that this liberated state of consciousness is right there for whomever wishes to grasp it.  I’ve previously held the notion that enlightenment is a near-impossible feat, rare and precious and just barely within reach.  Adya cries poppycock to this belief.  Just like he does all beliefs.  And that has been integral to the current openings.

After the retreat, Orion and I spent time with a channeler and his wife.  I received a kinesiology session from this woman too – she helped me own a few health issues and start holistically unraveling the key to balancing my body.  All in all, it was four days of intense mysticism, and we came home with exhausted but dreamy-eyed bliss.

On Monday night of last week, Orion followed his usual routine – he dove into the shower after a gorgeously connected pillow talk and entered a deep meditation.  Our travertine shower is his chosen haven for space travel – he’s had huge, huge openings in the last few months in there, and had come to rely on the consistency of his realizations.  This night held the biggest of them all.  Orion finally let go of the constructs of his mind and jumped deep into the Void – the home we’ve discovered is the birth of all existence.  He dropped his identity and completely Self-Realized.  

I felt it happening as I laid in bed, trying to meditate myself, waiting for his return.  I felt it happening and yet, I felt myself. . .if I had to describe it then. . .dying.  Imploding.  Falling in on myself in a mountain of self-destruction.  Even though I wanted so much to be happy for him, the contrast of his greatness with my own perceived falling-to-pieces starting kicking in.  And a wild ride awaited.

Orion emerged from the shower and lay next to me, quickly relaying this incredible opening.  I knew in an instance that he was achieving that which we both had been dreaming and striving for since we first said hello and partnered up.  I saw him soaring, heard the truth of his awakening, and at the exact same time, fell into the black hole of my own creation.

I called myself a failure internally.  The disdain for my slothish ways rose up and gripped my being, putting my head in an invisible vice as my angry ego spouted off her destructive thoughts.  Orion was waking up, and I felt myself fall further into the darkness than I had ever been.  And I didn’t want to go.  Oh my God, I didn’t want to go.

The days that followed increased and intensified our points of view.  Orion finally knew the truth in his entire being.  He was / is in the experience of knowing our world is just a glorious construct of our ever-powerful minds, and that we are one with the light AND the darkness.  That we are, collectively, as one, both the created and the creator.  And as he owned this with every word and action he displayed, I owned more and more the notion of my separateness.  Results in my life started reflecting these views too – health issues, conflict, fear, and a profoundly deep depression.  He was ascending out of the madness, and I was falling farther in.

Or so it seemed.  Apparently, as my enlightened angel-friend Pi would say.

On Friday morning, the perfect storm amassed.  Orion told me we were going to a special meeting on Saturday – our two enlightened teachers and the other hardcore seekers had agreed to assemble in order to hear Orion’s story of awakening.  That proved to be too much of an invitation for me.  My inferiority and perception of failure exploded inside of me then – the thought of hanging with the know-it-all boys and their incessant enlightenment ramblings enraged me.  I couldn’t be the angsty, little-girl-lost looming next to the spiritual powerhouse.  The contrast was killing me.

I used to do an outstanding job of masking my emotions.  But my years of truth-seeking has worn down the acting skills of my control-hungry ego.  The eruption that rose up in me in those moments with Orion was simply too much to hide.  I completely, utterly and totally lost my shit.  Demonic screams flew out of me.  I bashed my head against the wall without abandon.  I packed a bag and told Orion I was finished with him.  That I just couldn’t stand the pain I had found myself lost in.  I turned into a seemingly ugly, violent, destructive force.  And what did Orion do?  He laughed at me.  Repeatedly.  He didn’t believe a word of my rage.  And that made me. . .all the more rageful.

I had reached my new rock bottom.  It had never gone this low before.  Little threads of my higher self would sweep in from time to time, dropping life lines and wisdom nuggets that both Orion and I could use as tethers to reality.  He did all he could to help, when I would allow it, and even when I wouldn’t.  But I knew I had to dig myself out and I still didn’t know how.

Orion took off that day for lunch with Pi, and I was left to wallow in my self-disgust.  I balled myself up into our closet and tried to find myself.  What I discovered in that black hole of my soul was a hidden truth – I was dreadfully afraid of the emotion I carried because of an incident that transpired 14 years prior.  I lost control once when I was 20, and in a similarly dark daze, I overdosed on Valium and other narcotics.  7 minutes away from going to the true home, paramedics arrived and brought me back.  And ever since then, I have ceased to trust myself.  There have been many, many, many suicidal moments, but more akin to ideation than actual intent.  This time felt different.  Or at least, I was surrendered to allow it to be so.

I gave up the desire to fight with myself.  Instead, I rose up in a surrendered haze and grabbed my various exit options.  Pills.  Orion’s gun.  Knives from the kitchen drawer.  Lots and lots of options.  I sat there staring at the line-up, and something unexpected happened.  The destructive beast that had taken over me started to retreat.  She had an excuse for every option.  She didn’t know how to load a gun.  She was too afraid the pills wouldn’t do the deed.  She was sure the knives weren’t sharp enough.

And so started the epiphanies.  Oh my God, I realized I had given this angry-self way, way too much credit.  She didn’t have the guts to do any damage whatsoever.  14 years ago had been nothing but a fluke.  There was no destructive intent – there were only empty threats.

I put all the weapons away and went back to the closet to cry.  I didn’t feel better – I even felt a little worse.  There were no more options.  If I couldn’t end things, then I had no escape from what I was feeling, and that made me all the more insane.  The pain felt insurmountable.  All the work I had done to build up the awareness of the higher self – it felt meaningless in those hours.  I was being split in two.

Orion came home and coaxed me out to the bed to lay and talk.  I did so, finally resigned to at least listen to him.  I had no fight left.  As we discussed things, I heard him give me advice again on how to go into the pain, rather than continue to run away.  I kept insisting, previously, that I didn’t know what that meant.  Yet, I knew exactly what he meant, and I was finally tired enough to actually do what he requested.  I went in.  All the way in.  I went to the place inside me – in my power center, where the solar plexus is – and found the fear.  I heard her voice, I felt her touch, I tasted and smelled and willed myself into her essence.  The tears flowed like a fire hose.  I started to scream and emit with wild eruptions.  My body rocked and seized as I continued to release.  I saw light, I saw darkness, I saw all of creation dancing beneath my eyelids.  And when I felt there was no more to let go of, I slowly came back to myself.

I felt so. Much. Better.  I smiled at Orion and felt the sparkle come back.  That which I feared the most didn’t come close to killing me – it gave me back my power.

“That place inside me.  The place where the fear lives.  Oh my God, Orion, she’s my best friend.  My homing beacon.  I now know where to go to find the Truth.”

That was my revelation.  So simple, so luminous.  

My transcendence found her momentum then, and life as we knew it resumed.  I reveled in my newfound “feeling better-ness”, and devoured Orion’s descriptions of his new perspective.  I could finally be ecstatic for him, for the state he had reached.  No longer consumed in my own silly story, I could be happy for the man I love for reaching everything he was searching for.

Our meeting on Saturday was wonderful.  I heard another friend, RPS, tell me that the key to all of this was believing that you were already enlightened, and had nothing to achieve except acceptance.  That resonated too.  I owned that.  I took on that perspective and finally felt that I, too, could have this.  I HAD this already.  We all do.  We, the collective God.  For only God could create a lie so real the He/She would believe it.  Temporarily so – and this is what I started feeling.  The temporary-ness of my psychosis.

Orion continued to open up and take on new elements of his awakening.  We had a beautiful night together, eating Indian food, having beautiful passionate sex, and doing what we do best – supporting each other.  We slept in a bit on Sunday morning, and then woke up to our trademark pillow talk.  About enlightenment, as always.

The subject of beliefs came up.  We started discussing how integral our agreement some months back to dismantle our beliefs actually was on our path.  For a long time now, we have sought to disprove all the many beliefs / stories we had told ourselves for all our part of our lives.  Everything.  I let go of angels and Tarot cards.  He let go of logic and reason.  We both let go of everything we once thought defined us.  And as I started to say, wow, it feels good to not have to have a false belief in anything. . .

That’s when it happened.  I was flooded.  Absolutely FLOODED.  With knowingness.  

I placed my hand on his chest and closed my eyes, emoting and smiling and falling into what was happening within.  I knew an expansion had begun.  All I could feel was what I finally KNEW – not believed.  Not ascertained.  Not THOUGHT.  What was flowing through me was much, much higher than thought.  This was divine grace.  I was waking up.

I owned with every cell within that this life experience is just a dream.  There is no reality, only what we perceive.  I felt this and knew this and burst out laughing.  It’s the most amazing cosmic joke imaginable.  That I should believe this is real.  That I should believe *I* am real.  I understand that from the personal perspective, of course everything seems real.  But from the God Mind, the place from which we all spring and ARE, it is only an illusion.  I saw the Void clearly with eyes open.  Home.  Utter and pure awareness, and nothing else.  

I’ll share the rest of this unfolding as it continues to reveal itself – this is already a lot to take in.

Thank you to the Great Grace that has taken the me out of me, and brought me back to Truth.  Thank you to my teachers – Pranananda, Pi, RSP, Jim, Adyashanti, Orion.  And thank you to myself for the allowance to die before we die.

“We are dying into the river of existence.”

-Adyashanti

Tags: Adyashanti, Awakening, Awareness, Enlightenment, Self-Realization, Waking Up