I am a bit overwhelmed ...

Dearest John,

I am a bit overwhelmed and I thought it would be a good idea to write down what I planned to ask you in the next online meeting. I am bursting with statements to make and maybe a question lurks in there somewhere — and I thought I should find some clarity.

I have been on the enlightenment bandwagon for a few years now, and I have spent a good part of those years in denial about the fact of what I wanted — even when you pointed out that getting it is an impossibility. Of course, like you have always said repeatedly and so lucidly, spiritual wanting is just another form of wanting and the insights don't satisfy (they don't pass the 3-day test. You know how it is said you have to wait 3 days to see if you really have the will to quit smoking, for example). In fact, I can now confidently say that all the spiritual utterances are a hindrance. Worse, they are symptoms of mental illness, to borrow your words.

I can imagine that very useful and incisive skeptical side of yours has jumped to attention at my claim of confidence. I hope that it tears my report to bits if it finds any contradictions or hidden assumptions, and I can rest knowing it will.

The first thing I would like to say is that I am utterly delighted to have been tricked by you. I am here with the delight of a little boy who has seen the first magic trick of his life, mouth agape with wonder. So, all this 'look at you' business, coupled with the oft repeated explanation "the purpose of seeking the self is to point you in the right direction," is not what it sounds like at all. The seeking did not end with the finding of an inward-self, infinite space, god-like perception, enlightened mind or any of that fancy stuff at all. Nor does the thing to be sought lie in any particular direction. What happened, was like a silent recognition, I saw that I was at the center of attention. And then I saw it again, and again and again. And I knew that this attention is what I had been all my life, and I was at the center of its random wanderings, somehow miraculously static. Not so random actually - its movement feels like ordered chaos, like music — but that sounds like spiritual utterance and therefore incomplete.

I was probably forced to let go of my spiritual understanding which seemed to have actually added to my misery over the years. What caused this to happen was your particular assertion that "Of course, you know what you are. How could you not? It is impossible for you not to know what you are. What is possible, and what is the case, is that we do not know what that knowing feels like." Though I had heard the first part several times and would go off on a trip in my mind desperately seeking to find what I already knew among all the things I knew, the second part had never sunk in.

On letting in the possibility that I was not sure as to what exact facet of my existence you were pointing to, the self-inquiry automatically became the one question you have always asked. How come I feel I have never changed, never been absent? And I stayed with that question and the disregarding of all standard philosophical answers happened on its own, because I think for the first time I saw (not intellectually) what I needed to seek out.

And now I realize, this is the only thing that has worked ever since I discovered you. Every piece of understanding I had was just excess baggage. And somehow, magically, in the method of trying to know what I feel like directly, I caught myself at the center of what I was looking at. Not me as a person, at all. And I knew then that this is the feeling that has felt like 'me' all my life, because the feeling of being at the center of attention is exactly that which has never changed. And therefore, this must be my identity and the rest follows, but is beside the point. Also, I use center not to mean a point, but to mean a 'core'.

And true to your promise, I wonder if I can ever be unhappy. Sad, yes. But miserable, maybe never. Just like that. Im speechless (not really considering the length of this e-mail :-))

And the story continues, I somehow seem to act, but this is so simple, ordinary, and of course, the one thing I have known all my life. Any feeling including the one of having a body (oh, that sounds so absurd :-) ), is seen to be not as a fact, but as to where attention is currently residing. And I am at the center of attention and therefore as the center. At the heart of anger, love, hate, jealousy, body, anything and everything. No great explosive experience. More like the kiss of first love.

As you have probably guessed, I am in a little bit of a rapture. But the rapture is not needy, or desperate for emotional experience or spiritual fulfillment. it is a silent rapture.everything seems so easy under the unbearable lightness of being.

The search has almost skidded to a halt, all of a sudden. It only needs a gentle question once in a while — "how have I been all my life?". I dont know that what I see now feels like freedom, or happiness or whatever it is that we are told we should seek. But it seems real, and true, and self-evidently constant. Im willing to patiently wait and see if this certainty remains. It seems like it has never left. This is so simple and there is nothing to fear in it!

Well, I guess what I am saying is that I would be grateful for feedback as to whether I am deceiving myself or not. But strangely John, that thought is not a source of worry anymore. Even if I am doing that, it seems like it is OK and perfectly acceptable, because at the heart of it nothing has changed.

Words cannot thank you enough. Really.

My love to you and Carla.

P.S: After so many months of having it in my e-mails, my signature below makes sense. It is so much more lighthearted than I had made it out to be in my mind.

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
- Rumi

V.

New Bern, North Carolina   
October 31, 2008

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