What's In Your Mind?

Evolution: the missing piece

Richard suggests that I read a book: The Celestine Prophecy. Intrigued by his insistence, I buy it. The cover says: "a book that comes along once in a lifetime to change lives forever", "the book that will come to define our decade", etc. How dramatic! I have never read a book with such endearing appraisals!

I am a little skeptical of course, but start reading it in earnest, and find the first few chapters a little boring, triggering a distinct "but I already know this!" feeling (i.e. I already know that we are all One, that matter can be construed as energy, that time is what you make of it, etc). But it only makes me more impatient to see what's coming next, so I continue reading eagerly.

And upon reaching Chapter 5, "The message of the mystics", everything changes: I know that I am now hitting a piece that was until now missing in my "we are all One philosophy/worldview", a piece that makes it much more complete, and that makes things that did not fit until now, now fit together. It feels like a light has been turned on where earlier there was darkness and confusion. The missing piece: EVOLUTION! In other words (and this is the first time I look at things that way), my "we are all One" philosophy works also through time and -- consequently -- does not stop at the human family: we are all One Big Thing unfolding through time, from matter to life to animal life to human life…

The other thing is that I realize for the first time in my life that the experience described in the book as a "mystic experience" I have actually HAD! When I was 13, at a summer camp in the mountains, I had an experience of indescribably profound bliss/understanding, but, not knowing how to relate to it in my ordinary life, I had sort of put that experience in parentheses to see if it would re-occur (it never really did) or if I would find tools to interpret it (I never sought, not found any... until... today!) I remember distinctly (how could I forget?) how it felt back then, the incredible feeling of bliss and insight, and the supernatural beauty of nature, and this is pretty much how the experience is described in the book!

Somehow everything is starting to make more sense, I feel much closer to "knowing what's going on" than before I opened the book, I am vibrating with excitement!

On the mountaintop

Last Saturday, I went through what can be called a "mystical experience", i.e. I found myself in an unspeakable, never-explored-before state of consciousness best described as absolute ecstasy coupled with absolute knowledge. I felt I was "sitting on God’s lap" for a few hours. I could see the whole universe and the beginning of times and the end of times and the smallness of my own life in the middle of it, and I was laughing, laughing at it (inside), at all the petty concerns that I had busied my consciousness with so many times: money, resentment, calculating… I was laughing so hard! Useless to say all the answers to my existential questions came to me, and much, much more…

I "came down from the mountaintop" knowing that I would never, after this episode of transcendence, be the same again… that I would from now on dedicate my life to climbing that mountain again, or at least heading resolutely towards the top! It feels like life is starting anew... Here is some significantly toned-down email to my friend Sasha trying to describe "reasonably", i.e. without sounding absolutely insane, the experience and its impact on me:

"I was like thrown into the "other world" seeing "this world", like I threw myself in the dual universe to solve problems that cannot be solved in the original universe. It was truly incredible and I am going to devote some time now to analyze this experience and draw whatever I can from this trip in the dual universe to help me with my trip in this visible universe... (like I understand now that my trip here in the material world is just instrumental to helping with the reality of that world made of energy and thoughts) I don't have the words to talk about these things (I need to learn), and the words I choose may sound tacky to you, but I believe that I am on a similar path that you have been on, wanting to now focus on pursuing my journey there (the spiritual world? or whatever you call it) after what I know was just a peek into that world. I want to be more in touch with that world in my life here, and I know that it is in/around me. (…)

This experience made profound changes in me, it is quite incredible. What I saw was so beautiful that I am back in "this" life with an incredible energy and appetite for life. Any feeling of scarcity of time or other limitation that I generally set for myself is gone. I feel I can accomplish about as much as I desire. (…) I feel I can make an impact, change the world, I feel every time I give energy to the world it goes out in waves and transforms it... it is absolutely incredible. Seeing eternity has given me (i.e. the instance of Being that I am, here and now) an amazing boost of energy to accomplish great things in my "mortal", finite life here, to live every minute like it could be the last, like it truly matters (I could SEE how everything you do matters). Oh my god. So much bliss. Makes me want to study, study, and live, and prolong this bliss into my life... (…) Right now a lot to process and modify! (make the changes truly effective in my life). (…)

A couple of insights I gained from the experience and am bringing into my everyday life:

• Full awareness of what my "sphere of responsibility" (or action) is: what it is I can act upon, what it is I cannot. Double freedom: whatever I say or do is of utmost importance (taking responsibility) / whatever happens to me (health, money, speeding ticket) is of no importance.
• Major side effect: got rid of the heavy burden of being concerned by things I cannot change.
• Corollary: freed up my memory big time! For the first time in years, direct access to lots of old memories. I do not complain from memory loss anymore (I had for a while). Joy of digging into tons of old memories, whenever I want.
• Corollary of the corollary: my life is coherent again. I see the path I created for myself through every mini-decision I've ever made. I see the logic, I understand what I am about, my history. I now have guidance as to what I'll do next. I am whole again (vs. some incoherent sum of moments).
• Other incredible side effect: no more fear. Fear (of everything, especially small things) is gradually receding in my life. Feel so incredibly light and free! (…)
• Clarity... clarity of mind, clarity of purpose. It's LITERALLY like getting out of a very foggy patch.
• I am the "CEO" of every project I undertake or carry out.... indeed...who else?
• I realize the incredible potential for action I have in my little sphere of action... I realize everything I say or do potentially has tremendous consequences. I have gotten rid of all the barriers I had set to myself (money, etc)...

OK - just a couple of things I wanted to share with you (there's much, much more!!). (…) Realizing that we are an instance of the infinite Being bounded by the parameters of our finite living-on-earth... aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

An infinite ocean of freedom and possibilities

A couple of days ago, I sent an email to my cousin Francois back in Paris, to share with him the incredible experience I just had. His response has an interesting Orwellian slant to it: progress and industry are evil, man has subdued to machines and order, nothing is sacred anymore, violence is our only way forward (to tear down materialism, consumerism and capitalism). He says: "how could you think of your after-death when all is matter, that you mold according to your desires?" He concludes though: "what we need [to solve the global warming problem, etc] is to believe in it, what we need is more sacredness". I continue with my "just back from the mountaintop" style:

"I don’t understand all of what you say. I do not understand violence. My thirst for the absolute is naturally quenched in my spiritual life (I am just at the beginning of the trail but I clearly see the light).

As I said, there are two "dual" worlds: the material/mortal world, and the spiritual/infinite world. In the former we take the form of separate individuals, in the latter we are a collective consciousness. The two worlds are dual, i.e. they are just two ways to look at the same thing – one is not more valid than the other one as they are one. But some problems you cannot solve in one you can go solve in the other one (like in mathematics), hence the handiness of having access to both. I think this is what the Buddhists are after (as well as other yogis and religious people). This is what I am after now. Life "here" is not of much interest if one does not understand life "there" (as we have this unquenched thirst) and I think that life "there" is not of great interest without life "here" in the material world: it actually explains why and how much every little thing "here" so profoundly matters. Each one of these "worlds" gives meaning to the "other". What peace one feels in this world when one is familiar with that world! And how everything, all of a sudden, makes sense! It’s as if life was finally taking on depth, meaning, colors. Huge.

There is no after-my-death: there is the mortal/temporal world in which I exist for a finite time (70 years?) and the spiritual/infinite world in which I’ve always existed and will always exist, as part of the "big all", of the timeless and infinite consciousness. I don’t have the words yet – actually what I want is learn to express all this in a way that people who are not familiar with that world can understand, i.e. using words from this world. I’d like to start by helping people ask the right questions.

Now I know there is an answer. I live much better since :-). It eliminates fear, gives courage. I feel I do not fear anything anymore (why fear?), I am learning to detach from things that seemed so important. Immense joy!

I try to avoid words like "moral", "sacred", "values". These words have no meaning for me – they lead to discord. These things are extremely subjective, i.e. they don’t correspond to the reality that I perceive that we are all one and the same thing…

Global warming is no drama – the same way having a cancer is no drama. The solar system, the earth, humans: all that is material is mortal. We accept this. Now we feel that it is good to have a longer life and we aim for this. In the same way, humanity is slowly awakening and will take care of the problem of atmospheric emissions… the collective survival instinct. I am not worried, in fact (given that the earth will disappear, like we and our children will). I sense a duty for me to contribute to raise people’s awareness about that problem. I love that problem because it is so vast, so global. It is a good topic to engage and make people thing about the cause and effect concept, etc. Everything is cause and effect.   

True, you have to believe in it. Every negative thought turns into negative action (or lack of action). Negative thought serve no purpose. EVER. If you believe in something, in general, that thing gets realized. If we believe strongly enough that we will stabilize the climate, we will manage. This is how it works. This is how EVERYTHING works. One must learn to master one’s own thoughts. Like one masters one’s body or one’s reasoning faculties. This is what I’m striving to do now. It is fascinating learning! It opens an infinite ocean of freedom and possibilities."

Back from Burning Man

I am back from Burning Man. Wooh! What a trip! I feel about 5 years older than I was a week ago. Another whole layer of personal growth, a deluge of realizations about who I am, all stacked up in a few days’ time. Burning Man. 30,000 people coming together to co-create the ideal conditions for enjoying a joint peak experience, an experience that imprints in your body, mind and soul a whole new idea of the heights of the experience of being human.

Take 30,000 people. Bring them in the desert, a hundred miles away from the next city. Remove all the things in life that, at times, separate one from joy: cars, money, buying and selling, stiff ideas about what life is about, etc. Have each of them bring with him/her the best of what they want to offer to others: art, music, food, drinks, parties, games, colors, kindness, fun, etc. And get a true taste of heaven on earth. This is Burning Man.

In addition to what seemed like an uninterrupted stream of personal realizations about the great mystery of life, I was also blessed with another major "mystical episode" there, somehow even stronger than the last one. Woosh – how strong that was! I cannot put into words, and won’t try to. But the whole Burning Man experience is, in a way, nothing less than a mystic experience: a real-life experience in realizing our fundamental connectedness to each other, the impermanence of all things physical, and the law of cause and effect that rules the manifested world. I won’t say much more – words will fall short no matter how hard I try. Just come and experience for yourself!

In the meantime, you may want to check out the Burning Man website (e.g. check out the pictures!) and maybe you will get the beginning of an idea of what it is. But don’t, please don’t, try to fit it in any pre-conceived notion you have of what it could be! It is NOT like anything you have ever experienced or even heard of. You may also try to connect with your local Burning community.

I told my parents on the phone today: "Burning Man is the edge of evolution".

Mystical experiences

I find an article on the web that describes some features of the peak, or "altered state" experiences I have had (e.g. here). I start understanding the universality of my own experiences, that these experiences are, simply, what is commonly referred to as "mystical experiences".

It feels really good reading articles like this one, makes me feel less lonely: there are still not many people around me with whom I can share about these things (which is why I am searching the net in the first place). I often feel "crazy" sometimes... The article says:

"The intensity of the experience seems to be measured by the way in which the individual's life is affected. No matter whether the experience is great or small, the life seems to be altered or reshaped some way by it; and, perhaps this itself is the mystical quality."

Can't you see that we are all one?

Email to Richard:

"The meaning that I give to my life is that of "growth", of "spiritual growth". It had been my personal secret philosophy, and I found it spelled out more recently in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. More precisely, I don’t see myself as separate from others but as being  part of them. For me, "we are all one", there is only one thing, not separate individuals, and I’m a part of that thing, like a finger in a hand, and that finger has talents, that I ought to discover, cultivate and offer for the well-being of the hand, i.e. to the service of OTHERS – otherwise I would be nothing at all. This is what life is for me, this is what I inspire towards, this is the engine of my existence.

A few sample consequences of that "philosophy": I do some exercise because to respect my body is to respect the whole, because to give myself energy is to give energy to the whole, because to be strong is to be strong for the whole; I see all my successes as successes of the whole, I don’t appropriate my (mini-)successes, for example I know that my example (when I am joyful, or when I exercise) has inspired people around me, so I thrive to be a good example; I am looking for a job where I’d be happy and give more, because I want to give much more – hence this time off now. I seek where the world’s greatest pain and my greatest talents intersect – this is where I want to be. I SEEK, yes.

Maybe this quest will bring me back full circle where I started ;-), what a joke, this is what Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and other stories, are telling… But then I will be happier, and this is what the story tells... The journey is leading me towards a state where I am more relaxed, where I let life come to me, where I let go, where I surrender to life, where I stop being forceful, where I take the path of least resistance, etc. I feel it. You knew me "contorted", "tortured" almost. It is less and less the case, I can see that, as soon as you surrender to it, life brings you everything you need (for the very reason that we are one). It is like making love, it works when you are relaxed. I am learning to be relaxed. Yes, I was neurotic. But I am committed to change. I know that it is possible to change, I know that, the same way I have gotten rid of my fears I can get rid of the other monsters that burden me. I realize that change is actually pretty fast, suffices to turn 2-3 screws IN ONE’S HEAD.

Another example to show you what my philosophy of life is like. The other day, I was at a party, pretty high (on meditation!), and I had dressed rather sexy for a laugh (mini-skirt, funny hat), and it provoked rather extreme reactions. A number of people, I was told, said really bad things about me, because they judged me based on the way I dressed, or looked, wondering "who is this whore, what is she doing here" – while others came to me to tell me how they found me beautiful, radiant, etc (which makes me laugh also by the way – a number of times in my life have people gone out of their way to let me know how ugly they thought I was!), and a bunch of other things. People were confiding in me, it was rather intense – as I tell you I was quite high. Someone told me "you’re a woman women love to hate" (how awful!), someone else "you're so lucky to have such a beautiful body!", etc. And what I was thinking, from my "spiritual viewpoint" (but it is politically incorrect to say, so of course I didn’t say it), is: "YOU're so lucky to have such a beautiful body!" like, "YOU're so lucky to be able to enjoy seeing my body tonight, I dressed it all sexy and brought it in just for YOU to enjoy (vs. keeping it in my PJs in my bed like I normally do), because my body is for you to enjoy, my body is as much yours as it is mine, you are me and I am you, we are all one – CAN'T YOU SEE THAT WE ARE ALL ONE, THAT THERE IS NO SEPARATION?"

This is the bottom of my foundations, Richard. That we are all one, that there is no separation. This is what I found recently spelled out in Buddhism. This episode made me think of Burning Man, actually, because I was in a way bringing to that party the spirit of Burning Man – remember, everyone is a show for the others, otherwise there is no show, there is no party, there is no Burning Man, there is nothing but the cold desert – it would occur to nobody, at Burning Man, to tell someone else that they are lucky to be pretty or to have a nice costume!... We very well know that we are all together making this world…

This is what I thought, this is what I think, this is what I feel. I was all shrivelled, and I feel I am unfurling, at last."

Mystic experience and two modes of consciousness

I stumbled today on an article explaining quite well what the mystic experience is all about. What I like especially about that article is that, instead of suggesting that the mode of consciousness of the mystics is "higher" than our ordinary mode of consciousness, it simply suggests that having access to both modes is superior to having access to only one. Abstract:

"Deikman, an academic medical researcher, proposes that mystic experience is a psychological phenomenon that largely has been ignored by contemporary scientists. This situation is understandable. Scientists have waged a long battle to obtain freedom from religious control, and mystical experiences are usually described within a religious idiom. It is natural that things mystical should be suspect and categorized as part of organized religion. In addition, the content and form of some types of mystical experience seem to give clear evidence of psychopathology. For this reason, the scientist may be tempted to dismiss all such reports as some type of hysteria or madness.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, to study the mystic experience requires participation on the part of the scientist so that he can stand outside of his customary mode of thought long enough to experience the different mode of consciousness involved in these phenomena. Such participant observation is not a part of the experimental model of contemporary science. Psychologists, in particular, have tended to model themselves after the eighteenth century physicist, who believed he could be "objective" in observing the world. He proposes that it is time to depart from this attitude, and concludes that the broad terrain of mystical phenomena contains within it lawful processes pertaining to a mode of consciousness as mature and vitally practical as the one to which we are accustomed.

Our ordinary and habitual mode of consciousness can be called the action mode, organized to manipulate the environment and featuring an acute consciousness of past and future time. Its basic reference point is the experience of a separate, personal self. In contrast, we have the capacity for a different organization -- the receptive mode -- oriented towards the present, in which the personal self as a preoccupying orientation fades away and the world tends to be experienced as more unified and satisfying. As the action mode is used for problem solving and manipulating the environment, the receptive mode is used for receiving, for providing nutrition and satisfaction.

Which mode is better? Deikman proposes that if we think in such terms, we are missing the point. His claim is that we gain nothing by restricting our functions to one mode or the other. Rather, we need the capacity to function in both modes, as may suit the occasion.

What stands in the way? Deikman points out that the first barrier is a cultural bias that tells us that "mystical states" are unreal, pathological, crazy, or regressive. Without knowing it, under the banner of the scientific method, our thinking has been constricted. He proposes that we have been indoctrinated to avoid looking closely at these realms, but that it is time to make the receptive mode, and the experience which it engenders, a legitimate option for ourselves and for science. If we do so, we will be able to see more clearly the psychodynamic barriers that limit this option: defenses aginst reliquishing conscious control, defenses against the unexpected and the unknown, defenses against the blurring and loss of boundaries defining the self. We will be able to discriminate those instances in which the pathological or regressive are indeed present, but we will not miss seeing and exploring those phenomena that are truly mature and life promoting.

Deikman speculates that our survival as a species may depend on being able to utilize our receptive-mode function so that we can experience the basis for humanitarian values. The action mode that pervades our civilization does not support selflessness; the receptive mode, ordinarily the specialty of mystics, does. From this point of view, mystics have been the guardians of a potentiality that has been ours and that it is now time for us to reclaim. We can integrate this realm with our present knowledge, making it less exotic and less alien. By doing so, we can explore and regain a functional capacity that we may now need for our very preservation. "

Re-discovering the "receptive mode"

Email to Kathrin:

"I feel that my calling is this (I was calling this "spiritual teacher" before but it sounds scary): contributing to helping our civilization re-discover and re-invest en masse the "receptive mode" the article talks about – i.e. that the lay person in our Western civilization understands:
- the huge value in doing so (less suffering, more happiness, etc)
- the tools readily available for getting there.

This implies removing the obscurations in people's minds such as all the mix-ups re: religion, God, etc. It implies truly extracting the mystical awareness (awareness of Spirit, we are all one, etc) from religion – what Eckhart Tolle does an amazing job at. But I even feel we can go one step further and extract it from concepts like spirituality, enlightenment, etc.

What is needed is to forcefully destroy people's concepts about these things. I feel I'm on the right track with this article. Key is to bridge the action mode and the receptive mode, THAT'S IT!!!!

It was easy for me – it should be easy for others."

And you burst with the joy that has no opposite

My statement that "I want to dedicate my life to helping show the world its own beauty, by being a mirror of it" seems to have stirred something in Marco, as he replies quite profusely. In summary (my summary of his words):
- "Help the world"??? What about your "sense of proportion"?
- How do we know what is good for the world? We cannot judge, e.g. did Jesus make the world any better?
- As the final output is unpredictable (and just a matter of perspective), then why bother?
- All we can do is help ourselves.
- Why do you live in a dream of helping others? Do you need that to be fulfilled?
- In the end, we are just passing time, doing this or that.

My attempt at addressing these issues and questions:

"On "the world" and a sense of proportion, to me the world is whatever is around me, whatever I touch and touches me, it is nothing that is away from me. The world is one, there is only one thing and I am just a part of it, there is no separation between me and the rest. This is the premise.

I do see that with a "higher" consciousness such as I experience now (actually the very ability to throw your consciousness outside of yourself to the confines of the universe and of time – let's say, being "awakened", as I can clearly see how there are 2 phases in my life, before and after the awakening) you can actually see the consequences of your actions quite clearly, know whether you do good or bad. More, you CANNOT DO BAD anymore. Think more about Jesus. He did not do bad – he did the best he could with where/when he was. He could have done nothing else, no better (the concept of choice does fade away when you awaken) It was not possible to do any better given the circumstances. Same with Gandhi for example – 2 awakened people.

Are you trying to weigh pros and cons to judge if Jesus did good or bad? You can't. Knowing what is good or bad CANNOT be experienced at the intellectual level, it just can't. But there comes a point in life where you are able to be in the world and keep your activities free of any negativity, effortlessly.

I do not live in a dream of helping. I was not able to help much before. I wanted to, I guess, but would inevitably bump into the wall of my own obscurations and contradictions. Now I am actually often able to see what is going on and, sometimes, I am even able to help. I said "help show the world", not "help the world" by the way. Help the people I touch see things as they are –and as a result feel better in their lives.

As you rightly point out, there is only one place to conduct the work: within oneself! This is the place to be and to act from. The "world" as we see it, our reality, is nothing else but a mirror of your consciousness. You see what you are. There is no reality. I know this kind of statement sounds insane seen from the dualistic mind, yet we all very well KNOW that, say, your reality and my reality are totally different, that if we walk together in Paris we will see/experience completely different things. We know that. Because what we experience is really in our minds, nowhere outside. As soon as we operate from the non-dualistic mind – the space that contains the objects we were discussing the other day – we know that very well, because our consciousness is no more confined to our ego (ego disappears): we can see reality from a myriad of angles, everything comes in many many dimensions – not just four.

I would prefer to look in your eyes to tell you these things because you would see where they come from, you would see that they don't come from my thoughts but from my (and your) essence. And I think that while looking into my eyes you would know exactly what I mean.

We do not make the world better, the world is not to be improved in any way, it is PERFECT AS IT IS, it is a miracle impossible to put into words, CAN YOU SEE THIS? Nothing is to be made better, there is no better world, there is one world, it is perfect and we are of it. I don't want to help the world, the world needs no help, I want to help people SEE the world. See its beauty and perfection. I want to help "clean" the consciousness (the inner mirror of the world) of as many people as I possibly can. This is a calling.

My existence needs not be fulfilled by any mirage, it is fulfilled, it is complete, it is more than fulfilled: I have a lot of surplus for others. My joy is leaking, I cannot contain it :-)

You see good/bad, matter/antimatter, positive/negative, etc (your words). This is because you are operating from your dualistic mind, the one I described to you, where objects are endlessly classified and judged. When you start operating from your non-dualistic mind, there is no more good/bad, plus/minus etc. There just IS what IS. And you see the myriad of possibilities inbetween what you labelled good and bad and positive and negative, and you get a taste of the infinite and the eternal, and you can hardly believe it, and you burst with the joy which has no opposite. There is the waves, up, down, up, down, but now you are the ocean and you just see the waves. There is the flickering candle, on, off, on, off, but now the shutters are open and there is sunshine.

On time: there is no time management because there is no time. THERE IS NO TIME. All there is is a succession of NOW. Living in the now and not thinking happen to go hand in hand. No thinking, no time.

How about energy management? If there is something to manage, it is this: energy. Time is one object in the box – one dimension to organize some other objects in the box. When you operate from the box and not from the level of the objects in it, there is no time. You see time, you have time, but there is no time. You are above it. You operate from the timeless. This is my (and countless others') experience. Energy... is what the box is made of, at the end of the day. Energy management is key."

On love and being of flesh

Marco says he likes what I wrote :-). He says there are two topics we have not covered yet:
- We are beings of flesh: no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape.
- Where is love in all this?
My reply:

"On being of flesh. I like to think of the manifested vs the unmanifested. I see now (and I suspected before, and I think everyone has glimpses of it) that there is more to life than what meets the eye, what is manifested as form: objects, bodies, places, etc. In a way, the outside world that we perceive is a reflection of our consciousness: when you use only your object-consciousness (i.e. operate from the level of thoughts, emotions, etc, the objects in your consciousness) you see only the objects in the world. You see the world's physical manifestation (or some aspects of it, at least). When you start operating from what we could call space-consciousness (or receptive mode, or from the level of the box itself, or whatever) you see the space inbetween the objects and the world looks very different. Lots of was previously unmanifested manifests, you see plenty of things you didn't see before. Even your perception of the physical world is greatly enhanced and changed. The objects you saw before (and thought you knew fully) appear to be not nearly as solid as you once thought... and what you used to label "limitation" (because you turned a perception – e.g. backache – into a solid object) tends to disappear... Life becomes quite "magical" – I have plenty of examples in my recent life, with my body for example, I can tell you about it when we talk next. How our body is not nearly as solid as we think it is! (it is actually, even when described in physical terms, composed of about 99.999% emptiness, remember?). You also realize that there is no limit to the intensity with which you can feel a pleasure, contrary of what you may have experienced when you operated solely from the object-consciousness. Finally, lots of things that are "unexplained" in the manifested world have an easy explanation once more of the unmanifested manifests to you... science is catching up on all this... slowly (e.g. research on meditation, human energy field, eastern medicine, extra sensory perception, etc).

Love. Yes, the love I had twice in my life was before my "awakening" and it was very human love, love from the object-consciousness level, and yes there was still an ego so it had to do with it (which caused trouble and, eventually, unsurprisingly, failure). I think falling in love, passion etc, are glimpses into the unmanifested, a door that opens momentarily to show us the bigger thing (falling in love sweeps us away, right?), but often we pass on that opportunity, we do not understand, we let the door shut, and we fall out of love and bliss. We are sad, we think "Who can make love stay?", our heart breaks and we write songs that air on the radio, for others to hear the sadness of lost love. We do not get it. Now, yes, I guess the door opened again for me into the unmanifested, and I stepped in, and I have one foot firmly there, and there is no coming back, and I see that indeed love is all there is to experience in this world, that it is the glue that binds molecules together, that it is what reminds the manifestations of Life that we humans are that we are, in fact, just facets of one larger thing, that there is, in fact, no separation between us. That when I look into your eyes, it is my soul that I see there. That when I meet someone, it is in fact me that I am meeting. This is love. I do not have desire for love and relationships, I see that there is nothing else than love and relationships, this is all there is to life. There is One Life and it manifests through the plenty, and the plenty feels the One Life through love. The other and me are one and the same, so all I can do is help whoever crosses my path. This is all there is to do.

Love with ego is trouble, sooner or later. Have you noticed? Love is egoless or isn't, by definition. Whether I get married and/or bear beings to this world does not matter to me, if this is what you allude to. When you operate from space-consciousness, lots of things happen. One of them is that the notion of choice fades away – when you feel one with the universe, and not separated from it, what there is to do strikes you with the clarity of a thousand suns – and the more you surrender, the less you struggle against Life, the easier/happier/clearer things appear :-) well this is my experience..."