This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.
A LIVING REALITY BEFORE HEARING ABOUT IT
One of the things I am most grateful for on my path is that I lived the essence of what I am writing about here before I read or heard about it. The initial oneness shift happened when I was sixteen, an atheist, and just before World Wide Web (the Internet is older), so it took several years for me to find someone talking or writing about it. And when I did, there was a kind of distance there from the culture and times of the people I found. (It wasn’t until I discovered Adyashanti, Byron Katie, and Douglas Harding many years later that I found someone describing what I had discovered and there was less of a cultural barrier between us.) I had those years just to myself, which gave me the opportunity to explore it without any influences from others.
Almost all of what I write about here is what I discovered or what was revealed to me during that time, with the exception of specific terminology, jargon, and practices.
IT’S ALL IMAGINATION
This is pretty obvious, and it can take some exploration to get it viscerally:
It’s all literally imagination.
We imagine the past. We imagine the future. I can only find the past and the future in my imagination, in my mental field.
We even imagine the present. I have things happening in my sense fields, and my mental field creates an overlay of labels, boundaries, stories, and so on. What happens in the sense fields is a kind of imagination. It’s our brain creating a certain experience based on sensory input. And the mental field overlay is also clearly imagination.
We also imagine ourselves. We have images and stories about who and what we are, and our mind combines these with certain physical sensations that lend it a sense of substance, solidity, and reality.
All our content of experience is imagined.
And that’s fine.
This is often a very useful imagination. It helps us orient and function in the world.
If we don’t recognize it as imagination, we tend to get ourselves into trouble. (Stress, discomfort, misjudgment, and so on.)
And when we recognize it as imagination, we can hold it all more lightly. We use it for what it’s here for, which is to help us orient and navigate in the world. And we don’t assume it holds any final, full, or absolute truth.
JUNE 18, 2023
MENTAL FIELD OVERLAYS
A neighbor cat has been visiting for the last few weeks, and I assumed it was a male at first. It now looks more likely that she is a female.
I notice very clearly the mental field overlays here. When I thought he was a male, he looked male. My mind created a male overlay on the cat, both when he was here and when he wasn’t. And now that I think she is a female, she looks female. My mind creates a female overlay.
This is, of course, in addition to all the other mental field overlays my mind creates: Cat, boundary of the cat, my relationship with cats, ideas about this particular cat, and so on.
[Made into a regular article]
JUNE 20, 2023
WHAT WOULD I DO IF I WAS ON MY OWN?
Since I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), I need to be diligent in following my inner guidance, and especially with resting, drinking, eating, and so on.
When I am on my own, I am relatively good at following my inner guidance, my energy level becomes more stable, I can do more, and I don’t crash.
And when I am with others, I often forget or ignore my own signals and what I need to do, and I tend to crash more often.
So the question for myself is: What would I do if I was on my own? Would I rest? Drink? Eat something? What would I do? And then do it, even if it’s not what the others are doing, and even if a part of me may be afraid of judgment or that they will feel rejected.
This reminds me of a guideline from Jes Bertelsen: When you are with others, be as if you are alone. And when you are alone, be as if you are with others.
Sometimes, we do things while alone we wouldn’t do with others. (Often, quite innocent things.) For instance, I may eat a whole bag of tortilla chips or several dessert servings at once. And sometimes, we do things with others we wouldn’t do if alone. In my case, I may ignore my inner guidance when it comes to rest, water, and food.
[Made into a regular article]
JUNE 22, 2023
PICKING UP INFORMATION FROM PLACES
Probably like many others, I sometimes pick up information from places.
Many years ago, I would go to Milwaukee to join the Process Work practice group there. I stayed with one of the senior members, downstairs in her house which used to be a kind of bar or restaurant. I slept on a massage table. During the night, I had a series of dreams with strong archetypes and it seemed that the dreams oddly enough didn’t “belong to me”. They seemed to come from somewhere else, somehow.
I mentioned this to my host, and she said that she works with clients in just that area, and my dreams reflected themes her clients had worked on recently.
At another time, I stayed with a friend in Berkeley during a Breema intensive. He and his girlfriend were away, so I slept in their bed. The first two nights, I slept on one side of the bed and had dreams of his ex-wife being very angry and screaming at me. (They were going through a divorce at the time and I had met her briefly once.) I then switched and slept peacefully on the other side of the bed.
SYNCHRONICITIES
I heard someone explain synchronicities from a theistic and dualistic view. That’s fair enough, and it’s a way to make it make sense within that worldview.
For me, synchronicities are a little different. I see them as movements within the whole, with local expressions that we interpret as synchronicities. Something happens in the world and in us, we call it synchronicity, and it’s an expression of movements within the larger whole all is a part of.
And more honestly, I would say that it doesn’t matter. Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences, and that’s all. We can explore them and make use of them in our own life without having to imagine how it maps onto a larger worldview. We can leave that side of it open.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE PANDEMIC
Our experience of the pandemic is obviously as varied as our circumstances and personalities are varied.
How was it for me?
I lived in a small(ish) town outside of Oslo at the time, in a house with a large garden and next to a forest. Also, I have a disability that greatly reduces my ability to work and be socially active. So for me, the pandemic didn’t change much. I still enjoyed sitting outside in warm weather. I still went for walks in the forest, as my energy allowed. It didn’t impact my financial situation. And so on.
In Norway, people were encouraged to work from home and masks were required in certain settings. Apart from that, life went on much as before. For instance, Norwegians tend to love nature, so many took this opportunity to spend even more time in nature.
If anything, I enjoyed it since my town got quieter. (And now, others lived more like I do! They stayed more home. They spent more time outside and in nature.)
I realize I was very lucky to live in this situation, and that for many others around the world, it wasn’t quite as easy. Some lost their income. Some lived in a place where they were restricted from spending time outdoors. And, of course, many were impacted strongly and more directly by covid. (Two of my friends got it right at the beginning of the pandemic and still struggle with long-covid.)
TIMELESS SLEEP
Following the oneness shift in my teens, and for many years within it, I would go into a deep timeless sleep when I took a nap that lasted maybe ten minutes. That went away with the more serious Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) following severe and long-lasting pneumonia combined with living in a house with mold (in Oregon). And these days, my system seems to have returned to these brief timeless naps.
Normally when I sleep, I have a sense of roughly for how long I have slept. There is a sense of something there monitoring or being aware of time.
And now, when I take these deep and brief naps, it seems completely timeless. If I had no external cues like clocks and what people tell me, I could have been gone for ten thousand years or a millisecond. I would have no way to tell.
EXERCISE FOR FINDING TRUST IN LIFE AND OUR HUMAN SELF
Byron Katie has a simple exercise: When you wake up in the morning, don’t get up. Wait and see what happens, and find some curiosity about it. (Paraphrased.)
When I do this, I find that my human self gets out of bed on its own, and at the right time. It has an innate wisdom that makes it get up when it’s the right time. It happens without any conscious planning or effort or use of will.
This helps me see that my human self lives its own life and that it has innate wisdom and kindness.
And I can do this in other areas of life as well. I can wait, notice with curiosity, and see what my human self does on its own.
When I get out of my own way, my human self is more free to live from wisdom and heart.
[Made into a regular article]
ACCEPTANCE AND ACTION
A common question is how we can accept while also being engaged in our life.
One answer is that acceptance has to do with my experience here and now. I can accept my experience as it is. It’s already here and it’s too late to do anything about it.
I can still be engaged in life, and be a good steward of my life.
Another way to approach this is to find our nature. When I find what I more fundamentally am, I find what’s already accepting and allowing the whole field of experience as it is.
Yet another way is to do inquiry on any thought or identity we tend to get caught up in and identified with, and recognize it for what it is – a thought that’s not (fully) true, and an identity that’s only a small part of who and what we are.
It also helps to work on emotional issues and traumas.
And do heart-centered practices that help us shift our relationship with whatever is here in our field of experience, including our human self and what’s happening with our human self.