Freedom From the Small Self

There is this ongoing process of letting go of the world, of relinquishing your personal control and no longer trying to manipulate the external environment. Leaving it alone, being less involved. Releasing the conditioned habits built around egoic desire and control.

And in this, what occurs initially is an experience of intensification of chaos, or unknowingness. But at the very same time that this is occurring, there begins to be a taste of a solid, stable ground that moves from the background into the foreground. This is what is unchanging while what is changing begins to be experienced as more unpredictable, more chaotic. The mind will respond in the beginning with fear. But when the willingness is true, what is fearless and untouched begins coming more and more into view, and what happens in this ever-changing play begins becoming less and less important. 

So there is a time of great stress that needs to be faced because there is the experience of handing over my own will. In this process however, the recognition is that nothing is really given away. It is only the conditioned suffering. That there never really was a chooser and what is falling away is only the separating, habitual patterns. And what is coming into the foreground is the true beauty that has always been hungered for. 

And then there is the next step, which is really identical, but poses an even greater level of intensity and challenge. This is the release of my body into the divine. It happens at a time of great spiritual maturity. Here the protective conditioning which causes the experience of separation and identification are let go of as the sense of 'my' in my body is unraveled.

Desire for pleasure and fear of pain had driven this ego in attempts to make this body-mind feel good. And when the body is in discomfort, it is a closer, more intense relationship than when the world is out of control. It is more immediate. But it is exactly the same thing. 

In the later stages, the intensification of what happens in the body is discovered to be the process of its disassembly into nobody. It is the unraveling of the contraction, and in that all of the forms of discomfort which created its congealing is felt. The mind's story can be extremely aggressive when this is happening. But if there is just the letting go of the story as it arises, and allowing what has congealed to be disassembled, as opposed to the idea of fixing it, what begins to occur is the feeling of the reference point beginning to disassemble.

The great sages throughout history often had no roof over their head and were most commonly in a state of constant hunger. There was not the possibility to make this habitual point of reference called the body comfy. The egoic story is, that the body is who I am, and when it is uncomfortable, conditioning does everything in its power to try to make it feel better. But when the wisdom at work is allowed to be and your personal involvement is released, there is the potential recognition that what is happening is the disassembly of the one known as you.  

What is ultimately discovered is that the arisings in the body are never an issue anyway. It is all part of the perfect orchestration. At a certain point, one is no longer a slave to bodily demands. Whatever it is that is arising, becomes completely and totally secondary to the simple release of the experience of someone. Then it becomes natural to allow the movement that moves everything to carry what had been previously believed to be my body. If it is set up as some future endeavor, this is an error. This deep surrender is always in the moment.

One thing that I can speak of directly from my own experience is when the time gets close for the true disassembly of what was defined as me, this body will go through great challenges. The mind will go through a great uproar. Exactly the same as in the beginning when one is first willing to let go of the attempt to control my outside environment. But this time, the stakes are everything. Because when this process is finished so are you.

The story often comes up during this phase: Oh, there is so much crazyness, so much pain, so much going on in my body, it is so hard. Then the possibility is to question 'hard for who'? But when one is really lost in it, looking for 'who' can be an egoic attempt to get away from it all. If this is the case it is to simply surrender to the unraveling. If it is not, meaning fear and running are finished, then true self-discovery is ripe.

The challenge is always the doorway into true beauty. In this dream we call life, there are two levels of what has contracted into the experience of someone. The first level is my situation and my world, what is called the others, and how the others affect me. And then the primary is me, the I. 

What is being spoken of is by no means a recommendation to not treat the arisings in this body with tender, loving kindness. But it is to recognize that true action is not experienced as coming out of someone. It is always turning it all over and resting in what is unchanging, and allowing that to carry the dream, whether it is called my world, or my body. When the fear which causes all the running is over, then self-discovery becomes the effortless falling into your eternal nature.

The most humble, and the act of greatest devotion, is the offering of all of it at the feet of the Beloved.