This was written in September 2020, as I was just emerging from the worst of my experiences and had already written a large portion of my writing. The purpose was to give people some personal context of where I was at at the time.
I wanted to write a short preamble to frame the context of my writing and share where it is coming from.
I was taken through a set of experiences that completely transformed my consciousness. Memory and self-awareness are two of the biggest things that have been fundamentally shifted and I no longer remember what it used to be like being me before this happened – so this new state of being feels very normal to me.
I completely forget that other people can’t feel their emotions rippling through their hearts and bodies at all times and that listening directly to intuitive information isn’t the main way that most people move through the world.
When people imply certain things, like the idea that emotions arise in our minds, it sounds as absurd to me as saying breathing arises in perception. I live in a different experience where lots of concepts and ideas just don’t add up.
Everything in my world is simultaneously profoundly simple and infinitely complex. We can understand everything so immediately and directly and yet it is such a never-ending fractal of increasing complexity that we will never understand anything. Embodying this is one of the most relaxing things to have arisen from what I’ve been through.
I’m still recovering from what I went through and it’s also very hard work to function in the world on my own in a normal-seeming way, so I’m mostly really tired all the time.
Sheep who are on their own show more signs of physical and emotional stress than sheep who are next in line in the slaughter house, and I can relate to that. Humans are sociable animals and living in your own paradigm is very lonely.
Awakening is not about having everything in life handed to you on a plate. I find it childish when gurus speak like this. In my experience it’s deepening our connection with life and each other. Lots of the difficulty is in the depths, but opening to it in a wholesome way gives us an increased capacity to engage with our challenges and to contribute more to the world.
It’s hard.
The aim of all my writing is to share what I believe will be helpful for people, individually and as a collective.
I aim to write in a very straight-forward, clear and jargon-free way that most people could integrate into their own experience and understanding of the world.
One of the problems with my state of consciousness is that I forget what is different about it, so I usually have no idea whether what I’m saying is going to land as really profound or sound really simple and even dumb.
One of the secrets to dharma teachings, and life, is that changing your experience is as much about ‘feeling a thing’ as it is about ‘knowing a thing’. So my writing is as much about giving a feel for something as explaining it.
I think that most people would have probably turned every couple of blog posts I’ve written into an entire book.
This is why I don’t read dharma books. It feels like they are just endlessly abstracting away from a concept that at its core is very simple and needs to be experienced and embodied rather than explained.
But it seems to be different for other people who need or like to have things explained in a more intellectual way. Luckily there are lots of dharma teachers who create hundreds of dharma talks on the same topic or write intellectually comprehensive dissections of parts of experience to cater to this.
All of my concepts and ideas come from my personal experience. Things that I have experienced from all different angles, including every reason why not to believe it, and distilled into the essence of what feels most important. Everything I share, I sincerely embody.
If there is anything in my writing that seems glib, oversimplified or overly complex I would be more than happy to converse with you about it. There is a huge amount of depth and understanding behind all my writing and having the opportunity to talk about it is immensely freeing and enjoyable for me. I enjoy listening as much as I enjoy talking, so will probably be just as interested to hear your thoughts and beliefs about it all.
There is wisdom to be found in everyone’s experience, if they are willing to engage sincerely with it and share from this place.
Probably my deepest insight is that you don’t hold the space that is your experience, the space holds you as a process. There is a huge amount of faith and trust to be found in this.
Your physical body is pulsing with life
Your story is unfolding
Your heart is telling you what is important
Your mind is rationalising all of this into something that makes sense
All of this happens within the shared space that is our Universe. It is an organic being that is just trying to figure out how to exist and have a nice time, too.
In order to be present and alive, we need to create healthy, empowered connections with our whole selves, with each other and with the world.
This includes working hard and going through difficult times to come out the other side stronger and more compassionate for it. We can have a nice time taking on these challenges if we support each other through the process and enjoy the good times together.
I hope my writing can contribute this. May the Universe and all its beings experience enough joy to make the shit-show worthwhile.