What's a "Who"?

Q: I understand the way you communicate and I like that you are so jargon-free. I have been on my own in this whole spiritual quest business for several decades – since childhood, really, and I'm 57. But I've never gravitated towards any particular sect or guru or teaching wholeheartedly because they always seem to me (despite my ignorance) to be adding in unnecessary elements. So I hedge my bets continually.

A Course in Miracles is great in that it says, basically, this is all a dream, it never happened, nothing is wrong, you are not a separate self, you are not a body, and so on, but it adds in the characters of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, with which I have difficulty working. I'm well read in Buddhism, somewhat experienced with Vipassana meditation, somewhat well read in non-dual writings, and certainly indoctrinated by the new age, but needless to say, I've managed to corral the truth into a corner but I still don't see it.

Now I find myself in a position where I feel like I'm looking at one of those "magic eye" pictures. Remember those? You held them a certain distance from your face and the original picture sank into the background while the hidden one emerged? I feel like I'm ready and just need someone to say, “look right here.” I don't think I can do it myself. I'm too slippery or something on my own.

So I was wondering if you might have time to correspond with me?

A: I'd love to correspond with you. Why don't you just tell me what it is that you want, briefly, and we'll go from there.

Q: Here's as close as I can come, for the moment.

I want my happiness and peace of mind to be independent of anything occurring outside of me. I want to be able to imagine myself a lonely old woman in a nursing home with a roommate whose television is blaring, eating bad food, and having no one to talk to – and still know that I will be happy and at peace with a heart full of love towards everyone around me.

I want to be able to imagine that I die and discover that I have to do this all over again because I didn't get it right – and know that I will be happy and at peace, with a heart full of love, even so.

I want to look out at the world and find it always beautiful. I want to look at the face of everyone I see and find it lovable. I want to have no complaints. I want to be done with that. Done with differing with what is.

If this is truly a dream, I want to KNOW it. Not think it or understand it. KNOW it.

That's about it.

A: Regarding your paragraphs that describe your desire to be a loving, happy person, despite the circumstances:

In your own experience, when you've experienced having a heart full of love, has that ever lasted? When you've been depressed and fearful and outraged, has that ever lasted?

Is there anything in your experience or education that makes you think that any feeling can be lasting?

I’m just going to focus on this one thing for now. It’s important. Try to stay on just this one question for now.

Q: In my own experience I have never had a feeling that has not, at the very least, fluctuated somewhat.

In my self-education, I have perhaps led myself to believe that such a state is possible. Reading Byron Katie, for example, and listening to her – she seems to be in what looks like a steady state of acquiescence, acceptance, happiness, lovingness. Tales of enlightenment seem to be everywhere in spiritual literature, and I've interpreted them to mean that the internal war ends and what is left is peace – love for what is.

At least that's been my interpretation. I have a belief that this is possible, apparently, and a desire to experience it.

What is it that I'm not seeing? Is it that feeling, period, is not the thing?

Is it that my desire for what I believe I don't have is coming from a fictional me?  I was able to touch that idea for about half a second.

I just got a headache. Interesting.

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this. Thank you.

An hour later:

Q: Is it that nothing that can be felt or perceived is permanent?

Yikes.

That would sort of cancel out Madeleine, no?

A: I'm laughing as I read this because it – well, it was fast!

Is there anything else you would like to know?

Q: Thanks, sweetheart, but don't count your chickens quite yet. I need to integrate a bit.

I have an unsettling ability to understand things intellectually without letting them in. I need to do a little work to bring it home.

Is nothing that can be felt or perceived real? What's left? What's behind it? Who is the dreamer?

Does your experience include a sense of those things? Or is the need for a sense of those things part of the dream-self?

A: Okay, I won't count my chickens. But I’m going to ask you to forget about trying to integrate anything. Thinking about things is going to be counter-productive at this point. Integration of the wonderful insight you had will happen on its own. You can’t make it integrate or not. Just forget it. The insight is part of you now. You can’t lose it. It will work on you behind the scenes.

I’m not going to answer your questions, because they will lead you to a dead end. I’m going to go back and try to point out some places where misunderstanding is causing you to have unrealistic expectations. This is a very weird question, but just indulge me: 

If someone started shooting at Byron Katie, would she duck behind a wall? If you think she would, why would she? If she is loving and unflappable, why would she duck behind a wall while being shot at? If you think she would not duck behind a wall, why would she not?

Just see where this question takes you, and let me know.

Q: Ah. Brilliant to tell me not to think and to just let it happen. Much happened in the middle of the night. I woke up and was trying to chase down what was bothering me, which seemed to be that the money my mother had left me when she died was now pretty much gone because of the market crash. I felt guilty because of that – like I'd let her down by investing it.

But then something different happened! It occurred to me that the idea of "mother" was erroneous. That the idea of "other" was erroneous. I got up and took notes or I wouldn't remember this.

I wrote: any idea that has an opposite belongs to the unreal. Real vs. unreal – the question is erroneous. Who wants to know? Seeking is suffering. It splits. There is no mother – she's my projection. Self is one. I was born – is it true?

I saw that the question shouldn't be "Who is the dreamer?", which has been my question all my life, but, "Is there a who?"

And then everything stopped and my mind just settled. Wow. Holy cow. In all my efforts with meditation that never happened. I felt like it happened from the inside, whereas meditation was a bit like trying to approach it from the outside. It felt like I just hadn't been formulating the questions correctly. Asking the right question is key!

Everywhere I looked bricks were falling off the edifice. I kept thinking “peace is.” It's when you add the "I" that it isn't. I kept feeling like the right stitch had been pulled out of the sweater and now the whole thing was unraveling. The sensation of just lying in bed awake was so deeply peaceful. My breathing was like a highway.

The whole problem seemed to be clear and there was no longer any problem anywhere. As long as I kept my mind solidly with me in the present moment, which was so easy for once, there was no problem. It was like my mind was totally tame. Like a unruly dog that had just stopped misbehaving. I felt like Cesar Millan!

This morning I'm back to my old tricks.

So I'll work on your question, which is a good one.

Last night I understood it. Because last night it seemed to me that my body was doing all this tossing and turning, which was actually very entertaining, on its own. It was just happening and I wasn't doing it. Never felt that before exactly.

So I'd say that yes, Byron Katie's body construction would duck out of the way. Or not. Whichever – it wouldn't be a problem for her.

Thanks for sticking with me. I will continue to let it work and stay in touch, if that's okay with you. Much much love!

A: Well, as you can imagine, I'm grinning from ear to ear. Good job!

* * *

Later Madeleine sent:

Just a note before I head off to work this morning. The cherished concepts – some of them I've been hanging onto for forty years – they're falling like the Berlin wall. Wow. I am really amazed. I send you a big huge digital hug.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And a week later:

Understanding seems to ripen on its own. That's about the only way I can put it. As you advised me – there is nothing to be figured out. What seemed like a solid concept a week ago now seems semi-transparent. What seemed semi-transparent a week ago now seems patently false – and then it's gone. 

As the thoughts are seen to be false, the sense of heart, the sense of Being, begins to be felt. The screen that was opaque becomes less so. On its own. Freedom is. What was ordinary begins to have depth. What was, "It can't be just this," becomes, "Wow. It IS just this."

It blows me away that understanding ripens on its own. The whole idea of non-duality, or codependent origination, never made sense to me, and holy cow, now it does. But NOT because I used my mind to figure it out. And NOT because I sat in meditation and tried to see it. In plain sight. I could weep, it's so simple.