This human self is happening on its own, just like everything else. He is living his own life.
And when attention goes there, he is a little bit freaked out by it!
A COUPLE OF SHIFTS
There were two major shifts in my teens.
One happened when I was fifteen (January 1st in front of my parents’ house) and the world, including this human self, seemed very far away. It seemed like this human self was living his own life along with everything else, although there was still a sense of being an observer, something observing it all.
The other happened almost exactly a year later, when I was sixteen (between Christmas and New Year, on the gravel road to my parents’ house). Here, everything without exception was revealed as God. It was all Spirit and consciousness. This human self, everything associate with him, and the whole of existence, was revealed as God.
Any sense of being a part of it, and not the whole, came from God exploring itself in that way, fleetingly and locally. All of existence is God expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in always new ways.
This turned everything inside out and upside down and it profoundly changed everything related to this life. For years, there were enormous energies going through my system, an endless stream of insights and noticings, endless inspiration for music, drawings, and paintings. Endless amazing synchronicities. And so on.
At the human level, there was also a good amount of turmoil in response to all of this, from a lot of accumulated trauma through childhood, and from not finding anyone or any book that seemed to clearly describe what seemed so obvious: That all of existence is consciousness continuously forming and reforming itself into everything.
After some years, I did find some hints of this in the writings of Christian mystics, and I also could see it – usually behind a lot of terminology and ideology – in some Buddhist texts. I also saw that systems views and Taoism were aligned with it, although they usually didn’t point to it directly.
HE IS LIVING HIS OWN LIFE
This is just to point to one aspect of what was hinted at in the first shift, and revealed very clearly in the oneness shift: This human self is living his own life.
This human self is happening on his own, just like everything is happening on its own.
There is usually a part of consciusness that keeps track of which human self I am in a conventional sense, but even that has occasionally gone. (The one I am in a conventional sense is the one I have inside information about.)
RELEASE OF IDENTIFICATION
At first, it was just an unavoidable noticing. When I tried to explore it in thought, it seems that it’s what happens when identification goes out of this human self or ideas of being a doer or observer. When there is not identification there anymore, he is just happening, he is living his own life, just like anything else.
THIS HUMAN SELF IS STILL SOMETIMES WEIRDED OUT BY IT
Most of the time, this noticing is happening in the background and attention is on other things – either aspects of what I am (aspects of consciousness) or practical things in the life of this human self (consciousness taking those forms). Sometimes, attention is also on distress and hangups. (One of the forms of consciousness.)
When attention goes to this human self living his own life, this human self sometimes responds by freaking out a bit. Still, after fourty years of living with this, it weirds out this human self when attention goes there.
It’s not a big reaction. It’s just a hint of it, but it’s there.
It’s natural and understandable, and charming and cute in a way too. (As this human self sees it.)
A PART STILL ASSUMES THAT IDENTIFICATION IS NEEDED
It’s understanable since our psyche is trained to think that identification is required for this human self to function properly in the world. There has to be identification with this human self, or at least an image of a doer or observer, for this human self to be able to take care of himself.
We assume that because that assumption is part of our culture, even if most may not be aware of it and it’s usually not talked about.
It’s something we viscerally learn growing up.
So even if there is a general and conscious noticing of this human self living his own life, and a noticing that he can still function normally without being identified with, a part of his psyche is still weired out by it.
And, as I mentioned above, that’s understandable and has some charm.