We were just back from a deep journey.
The trance still had a hold on me. I was still. My vision was wide and clear. My being was still vibrating with the effects of the atemporal experience I just had. We were just sitting there, in the room, in silence.
‘How do you feel?’
It was impossible to find the words to answer. I closed my eyes and I returned just for a second in the experience I just had.
When we are experiencing The Truth it comes in particular ways for each one of us. Extremely different yet with not even a tiny alteration to the essence of what it represents.
The Truth is one, but to reach it, we all have our individual ways of getting there. It is very hard to translate what you lived in this space. Very hard to put it into words and thoughts. Even if it is the single most logical and self-evident thing. It makes all the sense in the world, the most obvious, autentic, common sense you can ever live. But it is so wide that thousands and thousands of words could cover it only partially, and yet so simple that a word, or, even better, silence could explain it all. There is no way of transmitting it in such a way that someone who did not experience it could understand.
But now, in front of me is someone who has been there before. He traveled this space. Maybe I could gather some clues on how to guide his understanding. I look at him and start telling the story while he listened with a smile.
‘This is exactly how the spirit comes in rituals. The spirit comes and conveys to us his message through images metaphors. But always what is important it is the essence.’ he said.
The message for me was clear as day. I had no doubt or question. Not only did i know it, I just lived it. Yet there is something that does not give me peace after this journey. I briefly saw something, but I couldn’t grasp it entirely. Like a ghost playing around in my blind spot. I turn to him.
‘There is something there.I saw something that keeps imprisoning me.’
Trying to the best of my abilities to point him towards this ghost that I could not see or recognise. Towards this invisible weight I keep feeling in my movement. He did not need many words. He understood.
He gets up, takes his drum, turns to me.
‘We go again’
And so, we start again.
If in the first journey I was present, strong, with my power, my intention and my will all fighting for my highest goals, now it was different. The drum created a vast dark opening in front of me. This time I was on unknown territory. This time I did not know what I am going to face and what are the correct strategies. My only chance was to abandon the journey to him and to the spirit. There was no other way.
So, I entered. And I just let go. I let myself sink, and flow and turn and sink again applying no resistance. I sank in the sea of the past. I sank in the ocean of fear. I sank in the most hidden spaces.
And tears started to fall. And I cried. And I cried. I cried the tears of a thousand broken hearts, the tears of a thousand losses, I cried the tears of all humanity from the beginning of time. I could barely breathe. But it felt like I was breathing for the first time.
It did not feel like me crying. The tears were passing through me, like they waited for thousands of years to be felt and cried.
Like finally opening a hidden drawer that no-one dared to open. Until now. And with a sweep move, it s now open and all the dust rushed out dissipating in the new fresh air and all that darkness that seemed to exist inside for an eternity melted in the warm light in a split second.
I arrived. I arrived in a very fragile space. The space where agony and ecstasy melt in union then split again and melt again. Eternally dancing the dance of melting together and then separating. The space where lives the raw truth of life on earth.
I was right there, right at the edge.
The fragile edge of US.
The boundaries of YOU and I.
The sacred and profane space where the real separation begins.
Why agony lives in this space?
There is a period of time in our life when this boundary is not formed yet. We are free divine and innocent. With no concept of you and I. We experiment the world fully, open, with amazement and curiosity. At our core, at our essence we are one with all creation. This is what ‘home’ feels like to our soul: freedom, unity, infinite bliss. Somewhere around 18 months old, we start to develop the sense of individuality. The infinite slowly starts to collapse into one measurable and finite form. A very big developmental leap in child’s evolution. But it actually translates into a big loss: The loss of ‘I am (endless bliss)’ to ‘I am this human’.
There is a big sorrow associated with this loss.
And I believe somewhere deep down, all human souls have felt it. There is a collective sadness sourced right here. This particular sore spot of our existence that emerges like different types of feelings. We usually try to explained them circumstantially but not until you reach this space can the sadness be entirely understood.
The frustration and desperation of being limited. Limited and not being able to express all that you are no matter how hard you try. The limit of not being able to move as fast as you want. The limit of not being able to be in more than one space at a time. Oh, how good it would feel to have this luxury. The feeling of being disconnected, separated. The feeling of being alone in the whole universe, no matter how many lovely people you have around. The sadness of not being ever seen in your entirety. Not being seen by others, and more importantly, not by you. Only tiny glimpses from time to time when you can perceive your whole self, but in the majority of time you connect only with parts.
The agony of not being able to be yourself. For some not even knowing what it means to be yourself.
This agony is engraved deep within us. It is part of all our stories and it is present in the oldest tales of life.
Like the story we all know about the life of Jesus. He was one of us, right? And he came here to make a sacrifice.
Yes.
Jesus did sacrifice himself for humanity, but the true sacrifice was not the crucifixion. He did not die to please an angry God and magically erase some said errors of our race.
His true sacrifice for us was his birth. Deliberately descending the divine consciousness into the limited, vulnerable, perishable human body and human identity.
But he did it to draw us the map. His true mission on earth was designed to empower our own consciousness from deep within our human condition.
And he was able to draw this map because he never forgot who he is, what he is. ‘The son of God.’ This is why his story was different and lives to this day. The exception from the rule. Remembering.
The majority of us are living in the general rule. Forgetting.
We all descended as divine consciousness and we did experiment life through the divine eyes, for about 18 months.
18 months in which we are told who we are. David, Alexander, Elena, Ana, etc. How the colors are named. How the objects are named, the animals. We learn the body parts. Learning learning learning.
And slowly, from a vision where everything is intertwined in a vast pulse of energy, we start to understand with a different type of intellect. The one that understands where a plate starts and where a plate ends, in order to name the object a plate. The start and end of a fork, to be able to label it. And so we begin to use the mind, to categorize, split, label, separate things into their individual concept.
And what about the concept of you, the concept of me? With this mind we start to recognise some boundaries. Not everything I am interested in sparks the same interest in others. When I search connection I sometimes do not find anyone home at the other end. When I cry, mom does not always understand my discomfort to fix it.
Energetically our endless flow starts to hit some walls. The identity of our parents. Their beliefs. Their fears. Their own unconsciousness. Their mechanical behaviors and patterns. Like a hard shell that blocks our energy from merging with theirs.
And we are also told, ‘you are my son, I am your mother’. ‘You are a boy, I am a woman’. ‘You have 1 year old, I have 30.’ ‘Your name is Arthur, my name is Elena.’ With the highest and greatest intention of the parent to help the kid for life, to teach him, to help him adapt, to help him understand.
But what all those phrases have in common?
The separation of you and I. And we learn. We begin to form our identity. We start to draw the line between us and the others.
It is easier with the body. Physically we see and understand that our body is no longer one with the mother. We start to recognize our image in the mirror, and we know it is us. We can see, feel, and put our hands on the toes where it starts and all the way to the tip of our head where it ends. Now I know, this is me!
But emotionally? Mentally? It is not so easy. The trick we learn for the material fabric does not apply here. So we start to draw the boundary of me, but emotionally we do not know yet where this boundary is.
Imagine we are just playing innocently and proudly with our new conquest - must be some kind of toy. Endless happiness around us because we were so smart to name it. We just got a round of applause for the word ‘plate’. And in our play the plate drops from our little hands, and it breaks on the ground with a loud noise. We are startled by the sound so we turn our eyes towards our parents in of search of some guidance.
And you find their stare. Their eyes are dark with anger. They shout and point and rush to clean up the mess. This energy feels like a punch in your gut. We are so hurt. So lost. Or we even start to feel the rush of anger heating our little face.
What tf just happened?
We register.
There is something wrong with ME.
We do not know yet to label this hurt as something outside the boundary of me. ‘My mom’s anger’. For us it translates as our hurt. Maybe our vulnerability to be hit. Maybe a fear of slipping again. A fear of mistake. Something gets registered in the book of who we are.
And this example is an oversimplification to understand the mechanism. But how many times did we register the trauma response of others as a problem with us. How many times was our mental energy influenced by the beliefs of others. How many times we accepted other people’s projections and suffered?
I believe the majority of us not even in adulthood know specifically where our emotional boundaries are. Or the mental ones. I believe if we were truly aware we would be amazed on how many thoughts that we believe are our own, are actually just influences, or chains of domino reactions from internalised thoughts of others.
And every time we hit the boundary of the other it hurts.
It hurts proportionally with the speed you are moving towards it. Sometimes our enthusiasm rushes us toward the other in a genuine wish for connection. So we move with speed, passion, with nativity.
And we hit hard a very big wall:
The wall of different beliefs systems. The wall of a closed heart from too much heart break. The wall of fear of being vulnerable. The wall of trauma and anger with the world. The wall of cinism. The wall of disappointment and disbelief in real connection. The wall of ignorance. The wall of shame or low self esteem… all in all, the wall of the ego identity. The boundary of you.
And after hitting so many walls, for so many years something dies.
This is the death of innocence.
This is the death I was mourning with the endless tears of all humanity.
Yet there is something else in this space.
The ecstasy and beauty of incarnation.
When we love another soul, and we look deeply into their eyes, where do I truly end and where do you truly start?
When we open our hearts to the other and our encounter feels like an eternal sweet embrace. Like we’ve known each other since the begging of time and we just melt in this ecstasy of becoming. Transcending you and I and becoming US, again. That feeling you could just stay there for an eternity. In their arms. In this embrace. Looking in their eyes and seeing the whole universe melt in your union.
Without separation, the ecstasy of homecoming cannot exist.
Consciousness does not play a cruel game of agony to torture us. It is a far more important game. The game of self-realization. Without forgetting what we are, there is no game of evolving and realizing our nature. There is no hero journey without the challenges, and the dragons, and the enemy or the long path.
Consciousness materialises to experience itself.
Without these created boundaries, the ethereal structure cannot feel the sharp, ruthless edges. The air cannot feel the air around it. The space cannot feel the space around it. The void cannot feel the void around it. Yet there is a loud noise, sometimes a spark when a rock hits another rock. That raw, delicious, precious, and no where else to be found experience. Only here, in the material world.
Here on earth you can literally touch the ‘object of your affection’. And you can physically express your affection. What a blessing. To be able to hold your kid in your arms. To hold the hand of your partener. To give a hug to your father and to kiss your mother. To meet new people, to fall in love, to admire, to make friends, to find common interests, to walk the same path with others. To smell a flower. To look at the stars in a summer night. To travel the world. To watch a birds flight. To laugh. A good laugh at a silly joke.
My tears were no longer sad. They were tears of joy. Tears of gratitude, of feeling blessed.
My whole being light up with this realisation. And i saw how all those bruises I got from hitting walls were starting to heal. Like a rewind button was pressed, and all those experiences were reversed. But in this reversal I saw something else. Something that took me by surprise.
All those bruises were not where I thought they were.
They were all on my own wall.
... and behind that wall, I could now see.
My innocence.
Unharmed. Untouched. Invincible.
There is not one thing in this world that could ever hurt our essence.
I open my eyes.
The drum stoped. He gets up. Puts down the drum. Turns to me and says
‘Deeeep shiet.’
Simultaneously, we both burst out laughing.