Notes From The Space Beyond Even Oneness
What happens when the pleasure of unity disappears?
When even nonduality gives way to something more fundamental?
You never know what will open up.
If you’re reading this, you’re on this spiritual ride. And I want you to know: you just never know.
For years after the abiding nondual - or unity - realization, there was this light shining through everything. Pervasive love and interconnection. Non-separation. It was always here and it was a very pleasurable experience.
It was consistently there in the background, and often the foreground, as I lived my life. It was there while I went about my daily routine, pouring tea or tripping over my shoes.
And then, something happened.
“Like the engine of a car that just drops out on the freeway, there was a ceasing.”
The Moment Everything Dropped
Lying on my bed one day, looking out the bedroom window, as a friend was dying in the hospital, I contemplated death. I was pondering, in particular, why we humans hang on at the moment of death.
Why don’t we just let go?
To me, it made total sense to surrender. And I was feeling into what it’s like to just… let go.
And suddenly, without effort, something fell out of my gut. Like the engine of a car that just drops out on the freeway, there was a stopping. Like a ceasing to be.
Untethered, unmoored like never before. Time-less and location-less.
A ceasing of any movement forward; a ceasing of movement back; a ceasing of whatever propels you into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing — and maybe even into the next life. This ceasing was radical, yet oddly subtle.
The Pleasure of Unity
But most notably, the experience of unity, or nonduality, had dropped away. If I could describe it, it would be to say it’s what is underneath that.
And there was simply this roaring now. Now. Now. Now. Like powerful wave after powerful wave that never stopped. You could only go limp in its relentless movement.
I had been living in presence before this. But now? This was something deeper.
Just total unmeditated rawness.
And there was this absence of what had been, and therefore a perceived “flatness”. But that’s not exactly what it was. It was unfiltered, exposed-nerve, un-diluted This-ness.
Getting up off the bed, I felt like I was seasick. The ground had opened up. It was as if my entire system – vestibular, nervous, even subtle energy field – seemed to wobble and sway, adjusting to a new gravity. Eventually, after some weeks, the totality of my being acclimated to this groundless ground. After all, we are such adaptable creatures.
As someone with a sensitively wired AuDHD system, it was both radical — but also the subtlest shift that had taken place.
“Consciousness itself appears to be a lens or filter. And experience seems to be a moment that lags behind.”
The Absence
Years prior, when I first opened to emptiness, there was this draining away of color and texture. Then, a draining away of mind-made meaning. As nonduality eventually opened up, there was a draining away of separation, of self and other, inner and outer — all culminating in something that was experientially quite wonderful, and very, very full.
And back then, I always sensed it all to be part of the process of my whole system adapting to waking up. There was an intelligence arising that trusted in the truth that people have been doing this for centuries. Whatever I encountered that was weird, or scary, or confusing was seen as part of the unfoldment of awakening.
But this.
After that gut motor fell out, there was a draining away of experience.
How could that be? I know, I know - it doesn’t make sense to the ears, or the eyes as you read this, because I’m describing an experience. It doesn’t have to make sense to our rational, ordinary minds.
It seems experience is so rapid, that it’s gone by the time the mind processes it. And the mind has ceased to try to grasp something that is beautifully and perpetually falling away.
Beyond Experience, Beyond Consciousness
And so what is revealed is a reality that is prior to experience and prior to consciousness.
Consciousness itself appears to be a lens or filter. And experience seems to be a moment that lags behind.
This moment is continually before and beyond.
And yet here I am. More here than ever before. I am simply aliveness.
“There is an untethered freedom from both form and emptiness; from both experience and non-experience.”
When the Light Returns
After some time, I noticed the light began returning. I hadn’t expected it to. In fact, I never even thought about it. But it returned, and it was different this time. A simple, fundamental luminosity.
It’s a radiance that is neither light nor dark. It is the effulgence behind all things. It is that which is prior to all things. It is that which we die into, and it is that which we are born out of.
And the love? Not an emotion. Not an experience. But the truth, or a fact. And everything arises out of this love. We are movements of love itself.
If I tune into my body, there is an underlying bliss that is always here no matter what. Whether my car is getting towed, or I’m sitting at the base of a tree with sunlight on my face, or getting my teeth cleaned. Whether I’m hurt and upset about something, or I just received good news.
Seamlessness and Sensitivity
The light, the subtle bliss, this thunderous now. All a seamlessness these days.
There is an untethered freedom from both form and emptiness; from both experience and non-experience.
And yet I’m even more attuned to my sensitivities and what feels aligned and what doesn’t. My body and senses feel what is true to me now more than ever before.
I’m on a razor’s edge.
“Don’t think you’ve reached the end. Even at the end. ”
Freedom To Be The Paradox
We are a paradox.
And I am here. With all my failings and undesirable qualities, and my continued curiosity about what it means to fully be free. I continue to be swallowed up into the flow of my dharma, this momentary existence, over and over again.
I exist as primordial being-ness — and I also don’t exist at all. And I am a (slightly? OK moderately) messy human.
You Never Know
So why am I telling you this? Well, just don’t be surprised by anything you encounter on the spiritual path. You will have flat stretches. Blissful stretches. Maybe some disorientation at times. Don’t think you’ve reached the end. Even at the end.
The infinite ways that Reality can reveal itself is astounding.
So enjoy the ride.
And may you enjoy the the endless not-knowing. Because you just never know.