No longer interested in the end of suffering

The ego doesn’t go away, it discovers it is an expression of the entire universe, of the absolute, god, whatever you call it. And that opens its' heart to its' own suffering and that of others, widening your view to take in the greater context we are a part of, and that expanded consciousness that includes each particular thing, doesn’t miniaturize or make things less significant, but more, rich and full, and filled with infinite interconnection with everyone and everything. Now it's not about getting rid of suffering, but being able to be with it with compassion and tenderness, felt in the power of our shared human condition, and in even the most painful experience being an expression of god breaks our hearts open for love to pour out for both ourselves and fellow beings...

Ego dissolution isn't a final end but a stage in waking up to the formless dimension, expanding our view beyond the ego to wake up to what we are a greater part of, poignancy in the wider perspective of the whole we are an expression and a part of, enthusiasm to live this life expressing as a personal expression of the universe!

I’m more here I guess to suggest a different way to approach suffering… I think when we feel the profound significance of being incarnations of the universe and the significance of everything simply because it exists, that we and this world are somehow here, the awe of that opening up your heart and inspiring so much passion to simply be human…it can even feel like ecstasy even right with agony...ecstagony

I suggest a way to experience joy and sorrow together, a path that is fully bittersweet, and wanted that way because it is feels most whole, most inclusive and radically alive.               Read More

I’m not really interested in the end of suffering at all anymore because every path that teaches that comes with far too great a cost, and I've seen the great suffering that the pursuit of an illusory final end of suffering causes so many of us. 

An unpopular truth is that the absence of suffering isn't necessarily wellbeing, for example, it can be deadening numbness.  

I'm more interested in experiencing profound interconnection with everything, experience that redeems suffering somehow as a gift that opens us to feel that resonance with the burning aliveness of all , suffering that has broken us open to feel universal love in a personal way.

I now want all of the things that will hurt me most to lose!
To be free to engage with their preciousness, now more important to me
than my once perpetual self-centered bubble of self-less expansive serenity 

Because those are the things that make me feel, that use my heart as it's meant to be
to feel all it can feel

And make this life experience feel most profound
I choose a path unconditional significance over unconditional tranquility
if I have to choose, but perhaps this too can be a both/and...

I’ve suffered more from trying to end suffering
feeling radically free from suffering
Is what led me to the worst suffering in my life ironically
I eventually discovered the limitations of liberation via self-negation
it was a triumph indeed, but one with many tragic qualities

FREE to let myself be vulnerable in a new way
SAFE to feel vulnerability
Not safety from vulnerability!

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Yes I experienced radical freedom through self-inquiry
And ego dissolution states
And experiencing my own absence
And 360 degree panoramic awareness without a me
Without a perceiver
And the peace that passeth all understanding
Disappearing and experiencing myself as everything and nothing
Back and forth constantly
While denying being something and somebody

I don’t want to live life addicted to spiritual heroin!
I did, and the come down was brutal

Stranded at the mountaintop
Wasn’t sure that I wanted to come back
Or stay alone up at the top

Oddly I feel now the most safe and at peace with dying, looking into the eyes of others and feeling we are one epic mystery, risen up into individual incarnations, and looking at itself, with loving reverence!

Looking into people’s eyes and seeing emptiness, or falsehood, or nothing, or just pure awareness - that’s another kind of safety, but it’s not a fully alive as human one, and it’s not relational intimacy, it’s merging and disappearing....that is not oneness with anything!

When the ego connects to something greater that it is a part of, it both shrinks and becomes bigger - it recognizes it is a part/whole - it’s no longer the whole, but a part of it, and the whole itself, and then ego drives are more concerned with the whole, and informed by its universal connection, overwhelming benevolence, so it’s me-centricity expands to include everything that it now knows is me and other than me!

Discovering divine immanence, I laughed and cried harder than ever, throwing my arms around the world - everything I thought was beyond the world IS the world, what a mistake I’d made!

Realizing I never had to lose anything vital or positive from myself/personality for oneness and non-dual consciousness.

To experience oneness AND also be fully human/personal/and touched moved deeply
Oneness with NO NEGATION, without a giant hole in it.

My most powerful experiences, looking into a strangers' eyes with tears streaming down our faces,  realizing together that we are the universe looking at itself, with human eyes.

It's true that I fell in love with my faceless face in silence
But then I couldn’t recognize my own face in the mirror

"Only after you’ve lost everything....are you free to do anything."
Only after you've lost the desire to do anything at all, are you free to do anything at all.
That was the strangest deal I'd ever made.
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