It was subtle at first. Like a flash in the night. A sudden opening that came with a sense of peace and freedom. What was it?
I was knowing Being. I’ve been reading about it for years. Watched a million talks. Even spoke to people about it like I knew what I was on about. But then I realised it. Realised that it’s been there all along just like they said. A big open empty conscious space holding my experience, always present, always the same. Doesn’t give a fuck about what experience is happening inside it. Is perfectly the same in terror as in joy. Stable, reliable, peaceful. A permanent point of reference. My mind’s getting annoyed about something. What does my Being have to say about it? Let’s see… doesn’t give a fuck, great. Let it go. Now I’m getting impatient waiting for a friend. Mind going off on one. Let’s see what my Being has to say about that? Nothing, as always, couldn’t give a fuck. Totally still, totally silent. Great, let it go. The thing is it’s not ‘my’ being, that’s just the mind creating a story, it doesn’t belong to anyone, there’s no one there for it to belong to, it just is. It’s formless, identity-less, can’t be described or experienced, can only be directly known. All of my experience - thoughts, sensations and perceptions - becomes obvious how it happens within Being but does not touch it. And that what I Am is not them. They are fleeting, they are ‘not self’ as the Buddhists say. It’s subtle but it’s like the mind is trying to cling to glass, and it keeps sliding off. All my fears don’t make sense anymore - who was scared? My Being? Nope, Being is clear and untouched as ever. So who was scared? No one, nothing. Just a relentlessly clever trick by the mind. An endless circling of narrative, me this, me that, but who’s the ‘me’? Literally doesn’t exist. It’s just an imaginary self made through attachment to form, identifying with stories, memories, identities.
I recognised my Being and in doing so I exposed my ego*. Like a little shrivelled creature. I became flooded with shame. Ashamed of itself because of itself. Fuelled by self hatred of its own existence. A self obsessed endlessly selfish mind virus that feeds off the attention it creates for itself. It was awful to see it. I’ve been tortured with it on Ayahuasca, it’s literally traumatised me as I was totally identified with my own ego, whilst being shown what it was - a black hole of selfishness, the cause of all the evil and suffering in the universe, which I considered to be ‘me’. And now I can see what ‘I Am’, just that, ‘I Am’. Being. Consciousness. Awareness. Totally untouched by the ego. And the thing is the only judgement towards the ego is coming from the ego itself. Mind against mind. It’s tormented by its own demonisation of its very own nature. It hates itself. A pitiful spiral of torment. This is what Ayahuasca made me experience again and again with no relief, just endless torture. And what that gave me was a desperation to know the Truth. Please God say it isn’t so. Please show me I’m not doomed for all eternity, that I’m not evil embodied. Existing only to be shown my inescapable doom, in an infinite loop. My ego begged God for mercy and God answered. By revealing what was there all along. Being. Encompassing the whole experience. Too close to see. Too intimate to feel. I was never my ego. I was never any thing. I Am. No words to describe. And the beauty is, Being doesn’t judge the ego. Being doesn’t give a fuck. Being is just there, a big endless space of acceptance. Being accepts. Being is Love. Being accepts the Ego. Being loves the ego. The ego is the ego and that is all. So lay down your weary head ego, you’ve caused yourself enough harm. Come snuggle into the light of Being. Let Being light you up. Untangle your knots. And let you dissolve into the warm light of Knowing. Peace at last.
Ive been working with being ‘the witness’ and observing my experience with a filter of non-attachment for a fairly long time. Practicing different methods of self enquiry - the main one that would keep coming back to me would simply be If I can observe it, it can’t be me, because who’s observing? And I can observe my thoughts, my emotions, my body, the world, everything in my experience… so I can’t be any of those things, so who am I? I could look and see that there was nothing there, but there was still a narrative running that I was believing in, that there was a ‘me’ who was doing the observing. Even though when I looked for that ‘me’ I couldn’t find it, the belief system holding that ‘me’ in place was still operational. This recognition (and that really is the word for it, it is just Consciousness, there couldn’t be a more fundamental element to every single person’s experience, so it’s not discovered as something new, but recognised as something that’s been there all along) was an experiential knowing of Consciousness as my true Being, which momentarily but powerfully allowed me to see the depths to which the ego masquerades as ‘me’ and how deeply the attachment to it is buried. This temporary exposure flooded my experience with shame, which connected me back to my Ayahuasca experiences and a much more brutal exposing of the ego with all its shame, terror, hatred, selfishness, suffering… but now there was a space of Being to reside in whilst watching the ego squirm and allowing the shame to move through. Eventually I could sit and accept the ego structure with all of its dysfunction and inner conflict, holding it in silent loving kindness directly from Being. It’s clear that Being is totally indifferent to the ego and all of this narrative i’m banging on about around the ego is coming from the ego itself, through the mind, a self perpetuating loop, the Being behind it is just silent and open. The same now as when I was a baby, and I suppose even before that…
I can feel there’s so much deeper to go into this, allowing it to integrate into life and become a default way of existing and relating, a process Rupert Spira says is never ending. It feels like moving from the Prologue to Chapter 1, that the pendulum has swung juuuust over the threshold from identification with form to Being. That one of the tethers inside me that was still clinging to the mind’s narrative as ‘me’ has been cut loose and a spaciousness has been revealed. Everything is the same in my experience, still watching the mind on a mad one and frustrations arising, I can be as grumpy as ever and can still feel the ego’s fear of exposure, the subtle contraction and reactivity, but the option to let go and return to Being has become very possible. From there i can see it all more clearly for what it is, just forms rising and falling. It’s like a sense of protection, the mind can’t grip to it, and if I am aware enough not to get caught in the mind’s story then peace returns quickly. It’s subtle, profound and beautiful. A doubt appears - ‘But what if I’m wrong?’ Finding no one behind the question, the mind falls silent. Being remains.
If you’ve got no idea what i’m on about then Rupert Spira is a great and beautiful teacher of all this:
Compulsory plug for my music: Track at the top is called ‘Dusk’ from my EP, listen on spotify, word.
*ego - there’s a few different definitions of the ego. For me ego is the mental construct I have created of ‘myself’ and attached to - everything to do with Finn that I believe is ‘me’ - my appearance, possessions, identity, role, emotions, fears, hopes, thoughts, stories, likes, dislikes, opinions, memories, etc. Anything that is believed to be true under the umbrella of I/me/mine is part of my ego. And these beliefs can be seen as thoughts and often discovered through reactions. If my essence is Awareness (or Being, Consciousness, etc) then none of these thoughts or aspects of experience can really be what I am. I can see that whilst a strong grip of attachment remains to them, then peace and true freedom is not possible because I’ll continue unsuccessfully to try and shape the world to my likes and my preferred image of myself, and to resist my dislikes and anything that goes against how I see myself. This is suffering.
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