The Brutal Truth

no title (0.00 / 0)

Gill,

while I'm not into Bernadette's or any spiritual take and thereby can't meet that part of you, I'm very much with you on your last sentence.
I cherish its dark rawness (gosh, that sounds awfully poetic).

A warm hello from flatland.
Uwe.

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by: Uwe @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 00:57:19 AM CDT

Thanks Uwe (0.00 / 0)

Thanks Uwe.  A warm hello back from bored-land.  Love, Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 08:14:32 AM CDT

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a moment in the passage (0.00 / 0)

Gill,

At times, the things that you speak of your own experience and that you share from Bernadette Roberts resonate quite highly with my own experience.  There is a stage in the process of human evolution just prior to enlightenment which is the Void-- it is stark, painful emptiness. It is empty of all meaning, empty of all Life, empty of God. But it is one stage. And it is only part of the picture of what is experienced in the final merging.

In the final merging, yes there is the Void. And there is also Bliss, and Peace beyond all understanding. It is Love. And we Live It As It. It is why some who have had near-death experiences describe incredible and amazing experiences of what is beyond while your experience and that of some others was horrific. It's just an experience of the hereafter from one stage of human development versus another. We have Free Will and believe it or not, you have a choice at this juncture of your awakening process. It is to remain a victim to your reality, or to transcend it. It is to push against this Void and resist it as you seem to be doing with your hatred of it, or to embrace it so completely that it transforms into what is next. But the choice is your's. No one can do it for you. 

Yes, and there is still heartbreak and despair and meaningless drivel in the world when Divine Merging occurs. But it is all perfect. We are here to learn from the experience of contrast. That's why it is all perfect.

I'm not saying making the choice to embrace the Void and then doing it is easy by any stretch. I have been struggling with this choice in my own private (and not-so-private when I wrote about it) hell for the past year now. But I've glimpses of what is beyond it and because I am begging for it in my prayers, I am finally getting guidance through some authors who have moved beyond this.

Bernadette Roberts has possibly had difficulty moving beyond the Void to Love because of the tradition she is steeped in, in which she is insisting that no one has gotten as far as she has, etc. We are all moving to where she is and beyond, some of us more rapidly than others, and some of us more consciously aware of what we are doing than others. But I can't really speak for Bernadette Roberts, of course. I can only speak for myself.

You and I met on this forum because we shared such similar experiences of this Void and no one in WDM was making sense of it for us, except to call it psychopathology, which it most certainly is NOT (sorry, WDM teachers, but you're just plain wrong on that one! No disrespect intended, just stating my truth). But when I suggest that there is something beyond this, you seem to cover your ears and go 'no no no no no' and not hear what is possible. I have some sense of what it feels like for you, what a relief it has been that BR has been able to speak your experience more clearly even than you have felt able to yourself at times. I've shared your experience and I know how absolutely God-Awful it is. And I felt tremendous relief to meet you and others on this forum that began to help me make sense of my experience. But I have had glimpses beyond it myself, and I know others who have gotten all the way through and are Free. Can you hear that?

It is my choice to do the hard work to get from being stuck in the Void to getting through and beyond it, instead of whining about how God-Awful the Void is, because people are sick of my whining. They are sick of my lashing out and blaming them for my pain. To get from here to there, I am having to process distress, trauma, and abuse I experienced from infancy, ages 1 and 2. No one in my present life is responsible for what I experienced then! I mean, yes, I am living it all out now-- with people giving me health care treatment and injuring me literally to the point of infantile helplessness (I had a doctor tell me a few weeks ago that I can't use my arms for six months to a year-- try living alone with a body like that!). But that is interior memories of my 19-yr-old mother hitting me in my crib when I was several months old because I was crying and she didn't know why-- it is those memories living themselves out in my present-day reality. And they are repeatedly living themselves out over and over (with re-injuries) until I face it and process it.

Whole groups of people, my "spiritual families" or potential "spiritual families," have rejected me and ostracized me, just like my family of origin did. Again, MY creation. MY responsiblity to go INSIDE ME and work these things through.

It is my responsibility to see how my memory projections are making my miserable life. No one else's. That is, if any of the circumstances of my daily reality actually are miserable.

I guess that I am suggesting if you are bored and empty to go inside even deeper than you have rather than looking outside for what the problem is. It's not out here. It's inside you. And I am only suggesting it from personal experience, not because I am suggesting that I am any better than you. I most certainly am not. I am one awful, crippled, horrible human being. I hope that what I'm learning has some value to someone somewhere someday. Maybe to you?

To be blunt, it is not Paresh's or mine or anyone else's responsibility to release you from your boredom. To believe you are entitled to this from any of us is the height of self-centeredness. (Your own effort to contribute here at Michael's request notwithstanding.) Again, a stage in the process I have gone through myself, so I most certainly don't blame you. Just holding up the mirror because I am probably the only one on this forum at the moment who has the cahoonas to do so (and my own public bruises for doing the same thing to others).

If you do not find this helpful, please feel free to tell me to go f#$k myself. You've basically done so before and I've gotten over it. Around the same issue, I believe.

We are actually massively powerful beings. We create reality moment by moment with the thoughts running through our minds, with the conscious and unconscious memories we have, and the conflicts we hold across all the fragments of our broken little egos that we live out over and over again. We project those out into the world and they become our lived "reality." If you are running the same broken record over and over again about what life is, then I assure you you are coming from broken ego and not awakeness. Full awakeness is Life without repetition. No moment is like the one before it.

Getting to the point where ego is fully integrated, and truly and permanently subjugated to the backseat of our lived experience is not only possible, it is our birthright and our responsiblity to work towards and attain in this lifetime. Now.

Just one humble opinion.

Love,

Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 00:28:51 AM CDT

p.s.... (0.00 / 0)

p.s. Take a look at Krishna's post "Theophany". That's what I'm talking about. That's what's beyond this outrageous, horrific experience of God-Awfulness. Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 00:34:48 AM CDT

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You misunderstand (0.00 / 0)

Chris, I think you misunderstand.  Neither BR or myself are complaining about the awfulness of the Void.  Almost the opposite.  It's that having touched the void, and espepcially the Divine love and Beyond, this manifest world then becomes more god-awful by comparison.  Love Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 05:45:06 AM CDT

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no misunderstanding (0.00 / 0)

Gill, No, I don't think I misunderstand at all. You said it here-- you've touched the Void, and touched what's beyond. You ARE the Void and you ARE what's Beyond! But this won't be your lived experience until you fully embrace and BE the God-Awfulness. You say you are not complaining about it, or rejecting it, but that's exactly what you are doing in all of your posts here for the past year. I spoke about my individual psychology, but the God-Awfulness of Life has been my daily lived experience for most of 1.5 years. I'm living the experience you and BR are describing most of the time these days. This is only one pole of the Truth. Divine Love and Beyond ARE this manifest world. It is no different from you! There is nothing to compare when you are All of it. Come to know that, and you'll know what I'm talking about. But you have to take responsibility for your evolution. That's not hyper-masculine. It's called growing up. Love, Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Tue Sep 01, 2009 at 01:26:00 AM CDT

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a day later... (0.00 / 0)

Hi Gill,

A day later and I feel like all I did up there was say things you probably either won't understand or find completely meaningless or are unable to hear. More importantly, that you will not feel heard and understood by reading what I shared. I'm sorry about that. I'm basically regretting the contribution as worthless, so please do not take it too seriously.

What might be more helpful-- I am reading this book by Dannion Brinkley about his 3 near death experiences (one in which he was dead for a full 28 minutes), and he speaks about a couple of different levels of afterlife experience, depending on the person's level of development while alive. The book I'm reading is Secrets of the Light. I suspect you might find it helpful in some way. 

Still, there is something deeper than the God-Awfulness. I am positive about that from my own experience. But it requires becoming the Divinity that is you. You Are God. It involves taking a pretty huge leap from child to adult, basically-- from Jesus to Christ, from Son to Father, from powerless to massively powerful. But that's what's required in my experience.

Take care.

Love,

Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 20:19:15 PM CDT

God-Awfulness (0.00 / 0)

Gill,

I agree completely with Chris has said here. There is something Wonderful beyond the God-Awfulness, but to get there, one must first totally accept the God-Awfulness to the point of being it. Then letting go of God-Awfulness becomes possible.

After that letting go, the Yang of God-Awfulness becomes possible, because one cannot have just one pole, and the pole we always refuse to accept is the negative. Why? Because our negatives hurt and we don't want that. Call it human nature. But, the refusal of our negative poles makes the opposite positive poles unavailable. However much of our negatives we've lopped off is how much of our positives we've eliminated as well. We can't have one without the other. Yin and yang is just the way it is.

The Wonderfulness at the other end of the God-Awful pole becomes freely available only after fully becoming God-Awful. Again, one cannot have one pole without the other, and you are refusing to fully embrace and be God-Awful. You sure as hell feel it, but it just makes you want to stay away from it, which of course, makes you do nothing but hurt from your resistance and sensitivity to the pain of existence as a limited being. Instead, consider really, I mean REALLY, falling into it and owning it. Do that, and you will own it rather than it owning you.

Rejecting and resisting one pole causes one to hurt like hell by being only able to feel that which we have not accepted about ourself, because the process of growth only takes us to where we're stuck. And we're never stuck about feeling good. We're always willing to do that but can't because of our rejection of feeling bad. Once embracing our pain where ever we find it, the opposite feel good pole becomes possible and we are free to move between those poles by choosing how it will be. Sure, every now and then, life will cause us to move towards one of the poles, but whether or not we stay there will be one's own choice once one is FREE to move between one's positive and negative poles. Owning both poles makes choice possible.

I can testify, that the opposite pole to God-Awful is pretty nice and is just as easy to hang around at. But you can't have it until you've accepted and owned the negative.

JoeBlowinski

I'd like to be an optimist, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work out.

John Mayberry

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by: JoeBlowinski @ Mon Aug 10, 2009 at 22:53:58 PM CDT

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question (0.00 / 0)

Thanks, John, for putting your support behind the important part of what I was saying.

May I ask for your guidance here? How do I relate with the material I was describing getting kicked up? During an earlier part of the shakedown, just living this stuff seemed to integrate it. Now it does not appear to be helpful. 

Do I recognize myself as not this body and not this "stuff" and work to transcend it? While diving deep into embracing the Void (because that's what's Real)? What are your thoughts on this? We might've spoken about this before, but I've gotten pretty lost lately, which is why partly you haven't heard much from me these days.

Thanks,

Chris 

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Tue Aug 11, 2009 at 19:20:19 PM CDT

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answered (0.00 / 0)

Nevermind, John. I've answered my own question. My experience is that I must assimilate and integrate all of it. I'm not as good at it as I'd wish to be, but I'm doing it.

Take care,

Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 20:43:11 PM CDT

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Poles (0.00 / 0)

Hey Joe

Interesting that it's you and Chris that show up again here...

Look, none of us know one another, and because you don't know me (not your fault) you cannot realise just how patronising your posting is.  You have no idea of how much of the negative poles I have encountered and embraced - more than many, I would wager.  But that may just be my arrogance, who knows.  

It is amazing to me how offended people get by my "whining" about the downright nastiness of life - as if they need to deny it and/or persuade me otherwise.  Or make it my fault.  

Now and again I just need to have a whine about it, okay?  Jesus, I put up with zillions of human beings whining every day about just about everything, relentlessly, so why can't I have my whine now and then??!!

I mean, I nearly had a go at Susan Joy about her food postings - her "positive" pole just naturally brings out the "negative" in me.  [Like how you can feel poisoned eating food others' cook for you but how this is often unavoidable.  Anyone for a Big Mac??!].  

Maybe my point is if only there were a few more "negative" postings then at last someone could bring out the "positive" in me.  Believe it or not, I'm actually quite a happy and positive person in my daily encounters with people.

Love, Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 06:08:49 AM CDT

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Still in denial (0.00 / 0)

Hi Chris

Just to say I really don't think it's anyone's responsibility at all to relieve me of my boredom or whatever else.

What I feel from both your postings is the familiar human self-insistence of trying to persuade oneself that life can be better, that somehow it's all our fault and that if only this or that then somehow things will get better.  This is the "whine" of almost every human being.  It's the "whine" of the hypermasculine, if you will.  It's the biggest delusion around and we've all been suffering from it since birth. I would say true "healing" comes about when at last one realises that despite many, many efforts, it actually  isn't our fault at all.  It can be a stark place to live, but there you go.  That's my truth.  Love, Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 05:58:01 AM CDT

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experience (0.00 / 0)

Hi Gill,

I am not speaking some hypermasculine bullshit "hope" thing. I am speaking from personal, lived experience. So is "Joe". I've encountered it with other Waking Down people who have gotten through the Void stage of things, as well. No point in saying anything else though. It sounds to me like you are enjoying living in stark God-Awfulness, and you are quite done with your awakening and 'healing' process. So enjoy!

I would be careful about unloading on innocent bystanders such as others writing on mutuality.net, though. It's not their fault that they don't see Reality as clearly as you do.

Love,

Chris

 

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 01:12:01 AM CDT

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Offloading (0.00 / 0)

Yeah, I just thought (seemingly wrongly as it happens) that mutuality.net might be exactly the "safe" place I could offload, as it's so hard to do so in ordinary life surrounded by people who don't have a clue about Realisation etc.  I thought at least people who had been through a lot of stuff might be able to take what I'm saying - mutuality and all that.  If not, then so be it.  It just shows that WDM is not the place it sometimes claims to be; not the place where "All of you" is welcome.  Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 04:46:51 AM CDT

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The great puzzle of online mutuality (0.00 / 0)

I think there's an important distinction that needs to be drawn between the sharing that goes on in a WDM workshop or sitting, and online communication.

In an in-person setting, even to some extent over the phone, if one person "thumps" another, there is real-time feedback. We can feel one another. The pain of the thumped person. The experience of the thumper, after the thumping has passed. The witnessing of everyone in the room. Usually, there is a kind of field, a high-energy space of awareness and compassion that tends to be self-healing, to allow for an openness that brings everyone involved to an opportunity for growth.

An online discussion is not in real time. If one person thumps another, that thump is essentially cast in concrete. For the person thumped, that thump can happen newly each time the thumping post is reread. The thumper receives no immediate feedback. There's no shared feeling in the room. Sometimes, if everyone involved is committed to it, there can be a small amount of opening, gradually, step-by-step over many days. But it's not the same.

Just as easily, much more easily, it seems to me, flame wars can break out. Each shove, frozen in place, can act as a spur to further and greater shoves. Soon, those who are disinclined to conflict go away, and others who revel in conflict are attracted. Such a cycle, once begun, can be almost impossible to stop, short of shutting down the forum altogether.

But I do see the contradiction here. To counsel against thumping is itself a kind of thump. To say to you, please help us preserve a safe space for everyone here, makes the space less safe for you. This seems to me a genuine riddle, and I have no idea how it should be resolved.

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by: Michael @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 14:10:23 PM CDT

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Thanks (0.00 / 0)

Thanks Michael, I appreciate very much what you're saying here.  And it is a riddle indeed.

It is not my intention to "thump" anyone - and I am renowned at work for pouring water on conflict rather that fuelling any fires.

But occasionally I do feel the need to "scream".  If that's not welcome here I will accept it and go scream elsewhere!  I'm just, after all, expressing my own Reality.  And I know from experience that a lot of people have a hard time with that.  Not because I'm being nasty or whatever, just that my Reality is rather stark and therefore not what most people want to hear.

Sorry if I've offended anyone by just being myself.

Love, Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 04:42:51 AM CDT

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maybe a misunderstanding? (0.00 / 0)

Gill,

I was not trying to say that I didn't think this was a place for you to share your genuine experience of Reality, a place for you to "offload." I certainly feel like it is. And I think the way you did it, with this post, is entirely okay. I'm sorry that my responses did not leave you feeling better heard and understood. I really am. I had a feeling my first response was like that, and so I pulled back with my second response the next day. Not very helpful, but the best I could do, because as Michael is pointing out, these responses are here for posterity.

What I am concerned about, and what I meant in my last paragraph of my last post, is that when you respond to others who are also genuinely expressing their Reality and you suggest that their "positive" experiences bring out the "negative" in you, it feels as though you are beating up on innocent people. Like when you responded to Paresh, and you also mentioned you wanted to respond to Susan Joy. It feels to me as if you are expressing a kind of victim stance to your experience of the God-Awfulness of Reality, and then being hurtful to people here who may be having positive experiences of Reality. That doesn't seem right, and I was saying so.

My first post was to say to you  "I hear you, but...." I hear you that Reality is God-Awful. But if you kept doing the work of your awakening process, you could move through the God-Awfulness and experience something different. This sounds hypermasculine to you, like wishful thinking on my part, it feels blaming, and not at all helpful. It is not wishful thinking, it is my lived experience. But other than that, I must accept that you do not find what I'm suggesting at all helpful. I'm sorry. But that doesn't mean you don't belong here or you shouldn't be sharing how you really feel, as you did here. It is okay for you to whine if that's what you need to do. You belong here, your whining belongs here, and you are still loved.

Sometimes when someone whines the same thing over and over, someone else may recognize them as stuck and suggest a way out. That's how I was seeing things and so that's why I made the suggestion I did. I was wrong. You needed to be heard and held where you were. I'm sorry I did not do that for you. The God-Awfulness of Reality absolutely does suck and I also know that from first-hand experience.

Love,

Chris

 

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 22:29:32 PM CDT

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Again, thanks (0.00 / 0)

Thanks for this Chris.

I don't mean to "beat up on innocent people".  I wasn't trying to do that to Paresh - I just critcised his poem, sorry.

It's not so much a victim stance as a stark cry in the night of "doesn't anyone else experience life as badly as I do?".

It is not, I think, about being stuck in any of my process.  It's about the daily physical and emotional pain I experience; it's about the suffering and nonsense I see all around me every day; it's about the endless heartbreak I've experienced in my life and again see all around me. It's about the many traumatic experiences I've been through.  Yes, there has been some healing too.

 It's my life, I'm sensitive to the core, and that's just the way it is for me.

Please also bear in mind that people who are having positive experiences of Reality are and often have been very hurtful to me.  It works both ways.

Love, Gill

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by: Gill Smith @ Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 04:57:45 AM CDT

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yes, and... (0.00 / 0)

The thing is, Gill, that some of us, maybe even many of us, do experience life as badly as you do. I have also just about all of my life, and it has felt like hell on earth for the past year. But I don't feel the need to express it in the form of a whine, or a cry out to all of you anymore. Not now. I cannot tell you how many nights I've spent sobbing, near suicide, in the past year. Even last week, hours and hours. It frightens my friends when I tell them that. What's the point? It's not making the God-Awfulness go away. 

Getting to the other side of it requires growing up. Growing up requires me to learn to hold my pain instead of unloading it on helpless, innocent others. (Even not whining to my friends, I'm just now learning.) In fact, the more I am getting out of the whine and the drama of it, and just being it, the easier I am shifting through it to what is on the other side. And what is on the other side is peace like I have never known in my life. While knowing both the beauty and the ugliness of this world. And I feel a strength and power in myself that I never knew was there, that doesn't need to whine. About anything. It is genuine and true freedom from suffering. Not from pain. I still feel pain. It is a requirement of being embodied. But the suffering is what we can be free from. (The interpretation on top of the pain. And the rejection of the pain. It all just falls away.) BR obviously hadn't gotten there yet when she wrote the stuff you are quoting. Maybe she still hasn't. Jesus didn't die for nothing. He died and then he ROSE. He TRANSCENDED the moment of "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" He stayed with it and died. That's what we have to do.

You are describing the suffering of being alive. You can be free of that. If you want it.

And then know through your own lived experience, even after all the suffering, that this life given is actually a gift to be grateful for.

Love,

Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Tue Sep 01, 2009 at 03:09:43 AM CDT

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B Roberts (0.00 / 0)

I apreciate what you are trying to say here Chris, really I do.

I just wanted to correct you about Bernadette Roberts.  The quotation about the "God-Awfulness" is from the end of What Is Self? which I don't think you've read yet.  It's from the end of her journey, when she actually has no self at all and actually little physical awareness of her own body.

So she is not whining (god I hate that word!).  She is not whining but describing factually what she perceives to be the case.

If you read her again you will see that, in losing the self, she lost God.  God was seen to be part of self or Self.  What was left was "What Is".

U G Krishnamurti also has a similar take on things.

In the end, we all have different Realisations.  

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by: Gill Smith @ Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 08:45:55 AM CDT

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mistaken... (0.00 / 0)

I read the entire book, Gill, about two months after you did. I've also seen her material produced since she wrote that book, her "prerequisite" required video for what she teaches now. What she teaches now she calls "The REAL CHRIST."

Be that as it may, I get that you have chosen to perceive me as having nothing to offer you and I fully accept that. I do not take it personally in any way. But I would like to end the discussion here, as it is clearly a waste of both of our times to continue it.

Thanks,

Chris

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by: Christine DeLuca @ Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 00:07:58 AM CDT

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