Sitting down to write these words, my heart is in explosion-mode — my God have I missed this space.   There’s no where else I have had the courage to be balls-out honest, in every way – and really, as I have learned so well, that is one of many keys to this spiritual ascension we are all so hip to.  Evidence that perhaps the ego has had her lazy way by hiding.  But at least I’m here to spill.

Hi.  I have missed you.  I have missed this opportunity to surrender.  There has been no lack of effort and intent on this end to unravel, and the results have been insanely successful.  Rather than a play by play of circumstances, I will just tell you the Truth.

There is a space outside the mind so vast, so infinitely beautiful, it terrifies many of us to get there.  “I” was blessed to slip through the eye of the needle in November, during an insanely amazing Ayahuasca journey.  In a nutshell, it went like this:

- Girl spends five years climbing the spiritual mountain, taking any manner of sacred substance to exit stage left, studying with a myriad enlightened teachers, marrying a spiritual powerhouse and perfect mirror, and engaging in brutally honest self-inquiry.

- Girl takes part in ump-teenth ayahuasca ceremonies in November – three in a row.

- The first is a marvelous re-introduction — an opportunity to unravel the mystery of fear, and the realization that fear is the opposite side of the same coin that empowerment lives on.  Girl chooses empowerment, and transcends fear of the unknown.

- Girl has a hilarious night 2, thinking in fact that she won’t even drink aya that night, that instead she will just be of service to those who are Going Big.  The shaman instead pours a 3x the usual dosage and tells her to “trust.”  What the hell.  In she goes.  And it is AWESOME.  Heinously powerful.  Yet the shift she had been dreaming of occurs – the ability to be in multiple spaces of consciousness at the sane time.  The ability to have the massive personal experience, and be very, very present in the room.  Hands are held, heads are caressed, tears are shed with others – all while the internal revelations are revealed.  Absolutely epic.  A true shamanic step UP.

- Girl then resolves to go very, very big on the final night.  The only intent is to surrender – seriously this time, with no fingers crossed behind the proverbial back.  No expectations of reward either.  Just this desperate, sincere request to the medicine that She help girl just Let Go, at long last.  Girl does just that.  So much so that she dissipates – goes into the ethers of the Void, and does so with complete awareness.  No more I.  No more anything other than Everything.  It lasts twenty minutes or so.  Then “she” comes back.

- Girl takes a while to figure out what the hell just happened.  Then it starts integrating, revealing its mysteries.  Girl can’t really describe what the new state of consciousness is – the same, but vastly different.  Personality has returned.  Animation has returned.  As has the awareness that this is a magnificent, profound dream – created by the Source, which is anything but personal.  And officially, and always for every more, All Is Full Of Love.

So where does that leave “me”?  The exact same place I was before – but this time, with a heart-spaced knowing.  I look at the world of people now and see masks that attempt to cover the Oneness, yet they are all so transparent.  I don’t see the egoic “me” everywhere, but I do know the essence of ALL is US – separation is an absolute joke.  Finally, the awareness of my celluar being has caught up with the wisdom my heart always knew.  I wish I could dole this out like mashers at a shelter.  I wish all egos would drop for just an instant, so all apparently separate beings would know who the unified WE really is.  Oh my goodness ya’ll, it is BEAUTIFUL.

My own work has just begin.  Knowing is not an end game, not so long as my spirit takes a body.  There is a newfound urgency around life, along with an awareness of the lack of meaning – at least in the way I used to hold it.  Yet there is strong awareness that the part of this consciousness that thinks itself real will always do so, and gets to be honored in this space.  It is play time, in the highest sense.  Time to be love, in every way possible.  And that is an infinite learnign process.  Good thing, or I would fear getting bored!

And so I can’t help but ponder as 2012 has now tackled hugged us all – how will this story continue?  I foresee a billion and one awakenings, the majority shifting into oneness consciousness.  And with that, a helluva lot of destruction and chaos.  That’s the rub of duality – it’s the structure by which our balance depends on.  You know the old saying – Take the good with the bad.  Well, I would add to that – see the bad as good, too, and you’re literally in heaven.

As I lay in bed the night after the unraveling, an image appeared to me in my lucid state – a mirror appeared, and in it I saw my smiling face, with a beautiful red dot in the center of my third eye.  That red dot represented Enlightenment.  It was always there, not under, but above my nose – waiting to be rediscovered.  As it is for us all.  There is nothing to seek, nothing to wish for, nothing to find – just your true self waiting for you in every moment.  And while there is no formula by which this is revealed in all it’s glory, just know it is possible, for all beings.  This seems to be the year for us to realize that, too.  Why not, ya know?  God placed this burning desire to Know Ourselves in each and every unified heart – seems silly to postpone the inevitable

Happy New Year.  What an unspeakable joy to ascend with you.

Just when I get accustomed to the harmony and flow of life, a curve ball smashes a dent in my figurative skull.  Several.  Big ones.  Fast balls, see.

Last week, Orion, Hijo and I jetted off to LA for a mixed-bag adventure.  On the menu, in a primary sense, was a visit with Zen, Orion’s younger brother – the one written about lovingly here, in reference to his battle with lymphoma. We stayed at his cute 50′s style cabana in Reseda, and it was my first in-person meeting with Zen and his really lovely wife.  Out of the gate, I loved them both, energetically and in that what-a-cool-human sense.  But because Zen is deep in the thick of his battle with cancer, there is such complexity brewing – every word, every emotion feels loaded and fragile.  It was, admittedly, hard to talk to him.  My issue – I wanted so much to wave a magic wand and feel his soul melt into life and his being feel light and happy again, instead of toxic and doomed.  I had hoped to come in with some tools of assistance, but I felt an immediate barrier.  Even still, the first night went really well.  I gave Zen several gifts – one a juiced-up power object (tourmaline, the shaman’s stone) that has been sacred to me for some time now.  Our dialogue was open and deep, and I felt so honored to have this immediate connection.  But by the next morning, that dissipated.  The reasons, in a relative sense, were twofold – 1) Zen was feeling like poo that morning, and ended up back at the hospital for most of the following day, and 2), Orion woke up in a seriously foul mood, which I then in turn allowed to sink me into a tough space as well.  That would be the theme of the trip – Orion and I were nasty to each other at times, uncharacteristically so, and it kept throwing me for loop after loop after loop.  Tears were shed one morning in the yard as we dissected these blow ups.  I felt unheard, way too vulnerable, and fed up with the self-imposed lockdown on speaking my truth about our interactions.  All gifts, but shit if that wasn’t a powder keg of a scenario.  Looming around a beautiful soul who is facing his own mortality has a natural effect of asking me to do the same.  I reveled in the lack of separateness – because while the ego really wanted to look with sympathy on Zen for his really challenging predicament, the truth is his story is my story, and I could not diminish our shared experience.  I looked it him and felt what it was like to think you’re dying of cancer.  I looked at him and wanted so badly to help him change his story, in part because I felt it as my own.  But then the higher self would chime in, remind me of the perfection of his dance, how it is his path to awakening, if he chooses it, and the sympathy dissolved into the only thing that remained – unconditional love.

Even with this knowingness, I kept my distance from Zen the rest of the trip.  My head surmised that was his wish, but in the nothing outside of self exists realm that I abide by, it was clearly my own.  I’m still often not willing to call out the elephant in the room, and to really stare down the Very Big Topics.  But I trust that it just wasn’t my place to intervene at this time.  My desire to do so was simply egoic.  I looked in Zen’s eyes and felt the barrier.  A wall we both constructed.  And I knew it wasn’t appropriate to try and blaze on through.  So I watched from a distance, sometimes in tears, but always with my heart.

And in the meantime, during all this interplay, the snaps between Orion and myself were coming in spades.  My head spun from the frequency and depth, and I wound up unraveling.  Seemingly confused by the negative interchanges.  By our very keen inability to communicate clearly.  I tried to let it break my heart, but I kept getting self conscious about the surroundings – not my home, not my place to let it rip, in the presence of people facing huge life challenges.  Who am I to come unglued because of spats with my partner?

We made our way home, and while things were peaceful on the surface, I was seething inside.  Angry at myself for what was transpiring, and trying desperately not to project all this on Orion.  By the time we were back in Vegas, it would seem the worst was over.  But then a blowup came worse than all the rest of the week’s crisscrosses combined – mainly because I finally stepped up and spoke my peace, in a very non-peaceful way.  I saw the charge rise up again in Orion, and had reached my capacity to try and process without kicking and screaming.  I brought out the expletives and just unleashed.  Not surprisingly, he didn’t take my projections well – and basically sent me away.  Reached his capacity as well.  So I did something I’ve never done before in our relationship – I left home, and checked into a hotel.  I didn’t actually think I’d sleep there that evening, but the just in case thoughts prevailed, and all I really wanted was a safe haven to decompress inside.  I had previously made my way to my old home, which is now inhabited by a super amazing friend and her equally amazing husband.  I wasn’t sure if they had moved in yet, so I made my way to what I had hoped would be a private haven – then I saw their furnishings inside, and my heart just collapsed.  This was the house I had bought – my first home purchase – thinking maybe I’d live there forever.  Or at least a really long time.  Now it was almost in foreclosure, claimed again by someone new.  And this homeless girl allowed those emotions to just. . .rise to the surface.  So after a good hour spent meditating in a nearby park, I checked in to a local hotel and pondered what might be next.

Orion and I ended up reconciling via phone shortly thereafter, and I made my way back to the new home which didn’t yet feel like home.  As we discussed what had transpired, I suddenly heard myself speaking words I had silenced for sometime.  They centered around my communication challenges with him, felt primarily whenever I hit that fragile emotional place.  The truth is, the deeper I hurt, the more I feel rejected by the one I love (and, in turn, by my own self).  When I’m clear, I know that Orion’s intent in those times is to fight back against my ego, to not let her run the show, and to not become condescending to the part of me that wants to believe this world is real.  I get that he has the highest intentions.  But none of me feels loved during this part of our dance, and it just came to a head in this particular conversation.  I still don’t know what it all means.  I heard myself tell him how devastating it is to feel danger when all I crave is love and warmth.  At the same time, I’m grateful for the really harsh way he treats me in those moments, because it forces to get me clear on what’s really going on, and look inside for unconditional love, not out.  So I’m not sure which part of me is really asking for him to be gentle with me.  And I’m not sure it’s a sincere request.  All I knew in that moment was – I have to tell him.  I have to tell him how much it hurts me to see his anger, his robotic, cold cold reflection, when I’m in my deepest breakdowns.

Then came today’s Sangha – our weekly Sunday meetings with our Enlightened Master, Mac.  Conversations always swarm around the absolute – about the true nature of reality.  Today was a special day – sparsely populated, very direct, very focused.  Orion is off flying to Shanghai, so I was the sole host.  One participant, the Poet – named as such because *everything* he speaks is poetry – talked about the Buddhist notion of “entering the stream”.  This is an act done by the individual who is willing to let down self – to enter the stream and be in the flow of life, not a driver.  No identity at all.  It isn’t enlightenment per say, but it is a stripping down – a willingness to be without ego.  A proverbial gesture of nakedness and vulnerability.  I buzzed as he relayed the notion, and willingly reentered the stream.

This day was magical.  As the Sangha ticked on, all but three of us left.  Guru Mac, Fire-Friend, and myself.  Mac even gave me a foot rub today, as we went deep into the nature of emotions.  I can’t even process how honored I feel to have had this experience.  And through the interchange today. . .I am just now realizing. . .I got my answer.

Mac helped me categorize emotions in a sense – to understand that they spring forth from one of four scenarios.

1) Phobias – the stories our minds create around fears (example – I’m afraid of cockroaches and totally freak out when one is near)

2) Psychosis – illogical, emotional responses to things that don’t even exist (example – My life is a mess because my fear of cockroaches permeates my every day experience)

3) Neurosis – the externalization of illogical fears (exampled – I won’t go in that house because it might have a cockroach)

4) Real (in the relative sense) – emotions that spring up because of actual life events

The first three are tricks – tactics the mind employs to maintain control, and to keep a grip on the perceived sense of reality.  The last one is the only logical place to let emotions run free.  If your dad dies, let your heart break.  If life is throwing you curve balls, let your emotional self feel whatever he / she needs to feel.  But if your mind is creating emotions that do not reflect what you know to be true in your circumstances, do not be fooled.

So I bring this back to my week with Orion.  I think in part our conflicts came from our inability to talk about what was really bothering us.  We projected on each other, rather than talk about the heart of the matter.  And my conversation with him regarding my apparent “needs” shows me the places in which I am not “in the stream”.  I basically voiced to Orion that his way of being didn’t fit my script.  I still say there’s real validity in needing to be treated with kid’s gloves on occasion, but *only* when than emotional need arises from real circumstances, not those created by my mind.

To put this in tangible terms:

What feels right, in the highest sense, is to feel safe and loved and nurtured when the shit hits the fan.  If my brother is dying of lymphoma, if the whole fucking world is imploding, than yes, please, show me some mercy until the floods subside.  But if I’m acting out from any of those phobic/psychotic/neurotic spaces, do not play my game.

It seems futile to dissect the past and analyze when Orion showed me that harshness and when he didn’t – I’m simply grateful for the clarity of where I stand emotionally.  This is all centered in self-integrity.  If I keep that in check at all times, then some part of me will know when the mind is playing an emotional game.  In those moments, if Orion reacts with toxic glances and out-lashes, it shouldn’t matter – nothing is as it seems at those times, and it would just be the ego who wanted to be protected.  That’s the rub, of course, because when I fall into the illusion, I do so because of my ego.  She’s extraordinarily crafty, and she wants to be validated – and is bloody sick of my “you are not real” light of truth.  But I feel like this is another big light in the realm of self-discovery – to insist that I be aware of the source of emotions.  I trust that what transpires between my partner and I will follow suit, and will reflect back exactly what I need.

A big blog post for a very big week.  Facing mortality, blowups with loved ones, footrubs from a guru.  That this is my life makes me eternally grateful.

“Waiting on Sunday to drown. . .”

(Tori Amos)

Enlightenment is a gas, really.  Line up 10 enlightened peeps, and they’ll give you 10 different explanations for what it is.  AND they’ll argue that some of their peers ARE and AREN’T enlightened, thereby flummoxing the surrounding seekers all the more. This is, of course, a gigantic favor.  Since I understand unequivocally now that my mind will never actually be enlightened, and that I’m in the process of accessing an entirely different part of myself, I realize this word game, the he-said-she-said, is completely meaningless.  As Orion discovered in the shower one day, any / all words = false.  Even those uttered by God.

I surround myself with enlightenment.  Men that claim it, others that claim to be close to it.  Books about it.  Audio broadcasts. In-person events / speakers / retreats.  And yet no one can tell me what IT is.  Which is marvelous, no?  That I would be chasing some mysterious illusion with such a passionate, reckless abandon?  

Marvelous, yes.  But not always to the smaller self.  Some moments I yearn for a tangible carrot, something I can see / taste / feel and know it’s worth this incessant yearning.

Yet when I ask myself, on the highest level, why I, the creator of my world, would manifest such mass confusion – I have an immediate answer.  Enlightenment can’t be defined because that which defines EVERYTHING (ie, our big hairy-scary brains) knows nothing of it.  Furthermore, by hitting my head against a mammoth brick wall whenever I approach this topic, it forces me to go deep and find what it means to me.

In other words, what is the big beautiful dream I’m chasing?  What exactly do I WANT?

Today, I’m feeling edgy and frayed, angered and annoyed at the slightest of infractions.  My life is massively unsettled.  I really don’t have a clue what’s happening on any level.  I can still access the Everything’s OK place with ease – the emotional upheaval isn’t the strongest force.  I’m watching my reactions from the observer mode, and she’s got a big toothy grin.  We’re having fun in this uncomfortable, uncertain, crazy little space – but it leads me to really define – what is enlightenment to me?  Am I trying to evolve myself out of these emotions all together?

I recently had the opportunity to attend a day-long enlightenment event with Timothy Freke, author of the brilliant Lucid Living, Jesus Mysterious, How Long Is Now?, and many more.  On my first date with the Seeker, he gifted me with Lucid Living, and it smacked me upside the head in the most magnificent way.  Tim’s take on this game is relatable – he advocates what he calls the “both / and” perspective (a term my huachumero shaman, Howard, uses as well.)  Tim states that he LOVES his human side too much to transcend it all together.  He acknowledges attachments to people like his children and wife, and absolutely wants those to stay intact.  In other words, if he got the call that his son had died, he’d still want to own that devastation and pain.  I suspect he would say this is part of being human.  Part of our rite of passage.  The key here is to never get LOST in that pain, to never truly identify it as your core self.  But there are many on this path that still have a very real attachment to this idea of humanness.

Is that what I want?

There’s a very strong piece of me that feels the need to challenge this – that there is another way of being.  It’s just a matter of determining whether or not you want it.  Which is clearly the process I’m working through as I write this.

The other way is the Tao.  An all-embracing perspective that what is is perfect.  Even when your cat is sawed in two by pranksters on Halloween (an actual event that happened to a very enlightened friend of mine this year.)  Even when your father dies (back to my fated event with Daddy.)  There’s pure poetry in embracing whatever the universe brings with a smile.  A smile like that the one on Daniel Pearl’s face when he was hooded and held by knifepoint by his angry captors, about to be beheaded.  Who would dare smile at a moment like that?  The same person that would do so when they’re staring at their dead, mutilated pet.  Or their dying father.

And is that human?  Is that really a state to aspire to?

When I started this blog, I wanted desperately to cling to this humanness, as I have defined it here – that which helps us feel.  I suspect I will always, always have these emotions, although I do allow for that to transform as well.  I can acknowledge that the old identity was once obsessed with anything that made her feel, as so much time was spent in denial of that self.  I can also admit there’s more to feel within, and I am hardly done with playing that game.  But I can say now, something that’s starting to really solidify internally, that I do not need to be the cesspool of emotions forever.  That those days are dying too, in that slow-like-honey fashion.  

It’s easy to say – I’m willing to give up my pain.  Well, strike that, it hasn’t been THAT easy, as it’s been a huge part of my identity until recently, but I’m more than thrilled to drop that story.  The hardest part is giving up my bliss.  Exiting the world of duality and into the oneness requires this.  I can’t say “God, take my pain, but I want to keep my bliss AND become self-realized.”  The acknowledgement that pain and bliss are separate sends me right back into the dualistic, ego-driven realms.  I’ve got that world in my rearview, but my eyes are still so transfixed.  Time to revert the gaze and see the beautiful nothingness that lies before.

Of course, in my willingness to be the source and the emptiness from which it came, the willingness to take my happiest memories and my highest highs and drop them on the alter like pearls (as my beloved Mac always teaches us), will in turn allow me to experience all that and more, but in this new transcended perspective.  At least, that’s the assumption, but it can’t be relied upon, or I’m not really giving it all up.  That’s like sleeping with one eye open – there’s an attachment in there.  A lack of surrender.

I guess I know now – that which I am heading towards.  I am taking on the Tao perspective, as it resonates strongest.  I love this world, don’t get me wrong – it’s just that staying behind and holding on to even the smallest of threads won’t get me back home.  It will just keep me lost in this beautiful and maddening illusion.  I want what’s real.  So I will let it all go.

I’ll just come out and say it – I’m a very, very frightened girl.

That is, my egoic programming once led me to believe as much.  Fears so bloody deep it took me decades to acknowledge them.  And make no mistake, there are more hidden in deep layered coffins inside my twisted little psyche.  Truth be told, I can’t wait to find them.

Three weeks ago, I gifted myself a mystifying experience of self-realization.  In the days since, I have maintained a pretty solid awareness of the veil of separation.  External events will transpire, and my consciousness stays in the space of “everything is perfect.”  An attempted carjacking.  Needles full of numbing goodness jabbed into my forehead by an amateur medical student.  Judgmental siblings that wish me to be anyone but who I really am.

These are the ones I have handled with grace and gratefulness.  I have found, for example, that the disgust of my family is no longer a sore point – at least in this present experience.  I can finally let them be the beautiful people that they are, fully recognize that they’re just extensions of my own awareness anyway, and let there be peace in the discord.  Oh, happy day indeed.

But as Orion and I say thank you to the cosmos for the massive openings we’ve been gifted, we’ve also done anything but slow the pace.  I am owning now that Waking Up is more than an instant.  It’s the everythingness from which I never have to return from, and I still have work to do.  I don’t sense that Enlightenment is a simple destination, but I don’t know that unequivocally yet.  I only know that since there is something in me still seeking, there is still an imbalance.  More to Know.  

That’s exciting, yes, but it makes me insane with fear sometimes.  I should qualify that – it makes my ego freaky-scared.  Her power has not only been grossly diminished, it would seem that her days are numbered.  I own that now.  I own that I am already an Enlightened being, I need only to remember exactly what that state is all about.

And to do that, I need these delicious fears that keep tossing me big old emotional curve balls.  Since Orion and I have both literally thrown ourselves in the galactic pressure cooker, shit’s been surfacing as of late.  Different shit for each of us, but equally head-spinning and really quite fun (at least the masochist in me agrees with that one.)

My fear-based confessions, as they stand now, are as follows – please accept the global caveat that these are not really *my* fears, but my programming + stories.  The more I expose and allow them to be, the more I know they will diminish and cease to be.

* I am afraid that I will soon lose my job and have to move someplace on the other side of the planet to maintain a financial stability high enough that I may continue to pay off my massive debts 

* I am afraid that I am no longer beautiful, and my self worth will crumble once this becomes a reality

* I am afraid that I am all talk with this Enlightenment chatter, and that I am tricking myself into falling for the lie of possibility

* I am afraid that nothing is real, including God 

* I am afraid that I’ve made all the wrong choices in my life, and that shit is going to blow up in my face any time now

* I am REALLY afraid that I will one day go insane

* I am afraid there’s something seriously wrong with my body (health-wise – I’m bleeding a lot)

* I am also afraid that Orion will achieve full-scale Enlightenment before I do, and this will be completely unbearable for my ego, and it will destroy our bond and my sanity (back to that REALLY big fear)

There now.  I feel better

It’s magical what these confessions do for me – I feel like outright laughing at every line I wrote up there.  That’s not to say that these aren’t completely real feelings, it’s just that when I see them in black and white, I can fully acknowledge what meaningless little stories they are.   They are all manifested by the part of me that is quite literally *dying*.  She doesn’t get her way with selfish conflicts anymore.  She doesn’t get to externalize anything that happens – she only has to own that it is ALL coming from her /me.  She doesn’t get to be a victim, even for a New York minute.  She doesn’t get to hide.  And she’s getting more and more discipline, more and more aware of the power of the Oneness.  That gorgeous void from which it all springs from.

You know that feeling you have when EVERYONE is in on some joke, and you just have no clue what it’s really about?  That’s how my ego feels.  Because the higher me, the non-egioc me – she’s getting closer and closer to being the All.  To dropping the notion of separatism, and connecting with the Oneness for all eternity.  Strike that, I am ALREADY doing all of this, I’m just working on bringing this into my permanent consciousness. Like flipping a light switch.  But the thing is, my ego can’t come with me.  I can’t hold on to my identity AND be god at the same time.  She knows this, I know this.  As such, we have what you would call a Big Fucking Conflict.

I will admit I am often awed by her tenacity and craftiness.  But ultimately, I Am Not Afraid.  I know who I am.  I know I’m playing the mother of all games – unraveling a lie so (un)believable that it could only come from God.  It’s our lie, and it’s up to us to come clean.  That is my current reality.  Integrity like I have never known.  

And so for now, I will keep on letting the frightful little tears flow, all the while acting as the observer.  But letting my ego act out her passion play, without giving her the wheel.  It’s a damn fun game.  As Ami would say, it’s the only game in town.  I will do my best to be in this space as both the feeler and the observer, the creator and the created.  To see it all as a gorgeous illusion – there to help me die before I die.  That is to say, there to help me see and be the Ultimate Truth – that flash we are gifted with the moment we leave this body – before I actually have to exit stage left.  

If I never have this Knowing, dear self / God – then at least grant me the grace to be joyful and humbled with all I have already come to Know.  Yes, there is still more for me, but let me take a moment and just say -

Wow.  This – this current little projection of time and space – this is glorious too.  In these moments where I can wear the Truth, there is nothing that could ever be anything but.

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