Autobiography

I love stories. Especially my own. But a story is a story is a story and whatever happened to me will certainly not happen for you.

Still, apparently people want to hear so here it is. A big fat dollop of Ego Ice Cream.

Somehow, all spiritual quests begin in cliche and end in laughter. The laughter is to do with what you thought had been true all along, that you had been fooled in the most fundamental way.

I'd been vaguely spiritual since little, piling down the yoga books, tantric treatise and lighting votive incense. Of course, these things brighten up the corners but do not de-lodge you from the matrix of me.

When I was in my early 20's, I went off to India with the hope of meditating my way out of 'Samsara'. As a good friend of mine says, meditating is just staring at the back of your eyeballs. I escaped Camp Buddha and went downtown, and smoked hash with the locals. This was far more interesting.

A yearning had opened up in me though, for something I already knew.

For years I messed around with Gurdjieff, Kabalah, Vedanta, Vegetarianism, Shamanism, Hatha Yoga, psychedelic psychotherapy, 'non-duality' and many more dead end streets peopled by colourful 'beings' all Phony-Holy and trying loudly to convince everyone their story was true. It was all bullshit. There was always an agenda.

I ended up sitting in front of an old man in a cardigan who didn't have an agenda. He kept telling me that there is no self, there is no division and there is just this.

Pah, I thought. Another one. But I kept coming to hear him, I don't know why. It made me nervous to listen.

One day I took myself off to sit in a park to read and write and sunbathe. I was filled with an adventurous sense of child-like wonder and a strange nervous energy.

As I sat there, reading, one line struck me, it read:

'Zoom out, until there is no sense of self, no sense of duality'. It hit me like an eighteen-wheeler.

I felt light headed, and everything seemed to thin out and brighten. I laid back, laughed, danced around, wrote poetry, read Whitman and it finally all made perfect sense. THERE WAS NO ME ! THERE NEVER HAD BEEN! WOAH!

Since that day, the me-contraction has come in and out but it doesn't convince any more. Not at all.

Nothing can force your liberation. You read this and your mind whirrs and goes 'what book?', 'what park?', 'how can I develop a sense of childlike wonder?'

No no no.

You're missing it.

It's here.

Your eyes, looking at the screen (apparently).

Feelings in your body (apparently).

What you think of as yourself is a smear on the window of This.
Trying to see this hides it.
You are it.

What you are looking for is this, and there's simply nothing you can do to escape what is self evident already.

You don't need the next book, teacher or satsang. Face up to the fact that all that is merely spiritual entertainment. Nothing wrong with that but it ain't gonna set you free, baby.

What you really, really are is utterly free. Always has been. Cannot be otherwise.

Sadly, this-what-you-are cannot really be written about, certainly not directly described, but hey, stop fooling yourself. You know what I mean.

You
are
it.