Conversations with Dan

As I mentioned in Passing Contact, my friend Dan recently passed on. He had engaged in a number of on-line conversations on reality. In particular, there was a long ongoing 1 on 1 conversation on awakening. Here is a few excerpts from that I enjoy. Each paragraph is from a different part of the larger conversation.

It’s not that you die. It’s there you simply realize that you never was.

Perhaps each moment feels whole because it is. And THIS is what wholeness looks like right now. It can’t look like anything else in this moment. One way of talking about Enlightenment is that it is simply the acceptance of What Is.

But it’s important to recognize, I think, that the ego can try to shrink itself to remain individualized just as much as it can want to puff itself up. My ego definitely goes the “I’m not good enough” way, so I definitely know how it is. And it’s truly AMAZING how deep that denial of infiniteness can go. “I’m so great” and “I’m not good enough” are two sides of the same coin. I think it was Byron Katie who said that true humility is recognizing how infinite and amazing you truly are for real. And that makes sense, because to really know that brings the utmost humbleness and appreciation…

It’s near impossible to see anything clearly that is being resisted, and the desire to “be done with it” is actually a subtle resistance to that process. That’s one of the reasons why it’s a very common response that Enlightenment does not give you anything. Because you have to accept all the negativity that we want to have Enlightenment to avoid in the first place….

I think if you let yourself cry forever and fall apart and never be okay again something wonderful will happen… Nothing will ever be the same again. In a very very good way. Just as long as the crying is the allowance of feeling the sadness and not an avoidance of it. It’s the feeling that fixes it, not necessarily any particular response…

Fortunately, Enlightenment is not a function of the personality…

Also, we are all here in this Creation like children playing in [a] giant sandbox. What if the child makes a mistake? Does it matter? What does that even mean in the context of playing in a sandbox. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do in terms of obligation, though there is everywhere to go and everything to do in terms of exploration and fun. So what does a mistake even mean in that context? Do I make mistakes? As much as a child playing in sandbox does I suppose….does it matter?

I think that there is a constant gift of grace being given, and it’s only about how much openness we can have to receive it. And so there can be, eventually a habit of that way of functioning (once we know who we are) so that there is more and more embracing of the ever present grace all the time. It will always fill us until we are full though, no matter how big our container gets, and then overflow.

The point of Enlightenment is not the relative experience that it creates, but the realization that the relative experience (although it does get significantly more enjoyable) is more and more completely BESIDES the point. There is no time in relative life that is not a good time to realize that.

There are no rules and really no hurry. And, at the end of the day, there’s really only one path, and that’s your path. Whatever your path happens to be. It’s the only one. 🙂

Of course, all this is a story for me to express my appreciation of this process. And my story that it’s all just a story is, of course, just a story. And so no need to take anything of these things too seriously….

Some of those conversations are being compiled for everyone’s enjoyment.
Davidya