The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
- Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)
I know my speak sounds mystical and this is not something I am happy about. As TallPenguin says "the language I have for what I'm experiencing just doesn't cut it". It will always sound the same in the end - because the experience (that de-ja vu) is the same, one just knows it again and again and again - each time more deeply, more expansively, more exquisitely.
So when one accepts this and surrenders - there is that sense of there being less of me and, simultaenously, more of me (in an expanded sense). Dualism still exists and we still play out the dualism - forgetting, remembering - yet from a place of awareness that encompasses both and doesn't get 'stuck' in either state. I am happy to forget, there is so much compassion in forgetting. The 'in and out pattern' is genuine.
About four years ago I saw a 'vision' of myself five years down the track and all I could see was a dark figure in blackness and it scared the bejesus out of me (I was just beginning to leave the witnesses) because I 'knew' that it was my future self and I was (in my limited understanding and labelling back then) "shamanic"! (ooooooh). Now, if you met me, all you would see is a suburban mother of two, reasonably well kept (happy for you to think 'yummy mummy' though), married, trying to do the best she can and, by no means do I look hippy, shamanic, new agey etc :) I thought I consciously chose the path I was on - but at the conscious level there was a lot of resistance - and now ... I don't completely know. All I am aware of is that there is something deeper inside which drives me, pushes me, pulls me. I don't consider myself shamanic anymore than I consider myself anything else - I understand that anyone who delves into that abyss will appear to others (and even in our own undeveloped eyes) as mystic, shamanic, crazy, simple etc etc. I find the same essence in science. I love science and delve into it as much as I can and I see the same intensity. It is there within anyone who is pushing the boundaries of consciousness. Whether it looks 'light' or 'dark' is, again, just a play of shadows.
TallPenguin (and this is limited to me knowing nothing about you or how long you have been out of your old constructs, so please take it in that spirit) - the dark moments become less debilitatingly dark in the sense that your willingness to be taken there increases. I think this is what Nark was talking about when he says you fall in love with death, because in every moment there is a small death to the previous moment. You step into knowing and, as soon as you have that 'aha' moment of "I know" you realise that you don't know and fall into the abyss again of "and even this is not it". I found reading your words was like reading my own :) I especially liked "I feel like I am at one with life, in love with it, making love to it." Just yesterday, after posting, as I was going about the shopping centre preparing for my daughter's b'day today, I was wondering "How do I post onto this topic what it feels like to have so much energy in your body that you feel as if you want to have sex with everyone and everything?". This could be so wrongly interpreted by so many, yet those who have experienced it will know what I mean. It is the orgasmic bliss one feels when one has let go of all attachment to any one thing, one person, one situation as bringing it about. It isn't about sex (although my Salt'n'Pepper vid was taking a poke at myself because I believe in the end it always comes back to sex) because it feels so pure, like you can feel every cell in your body vibrating. As in that Jill Bolte video, I am often wondering "How do I fit into my body?" This is beyond feeling whole as a person, this is the experience of universal wholeness that I can only describe as such pure potential that it is the uncreated, the unmanifest and the unborn.
The living here becomes easier as you become more at ease with this state, so I can only encourage you that you are in fact in a most wonderful place! In fact, I now know we don't actually 'forget' or step out of this flow. I just think that when we open and grow newly, for a moment we feel the intensity of that new state. I used to get frustrated because then 'it' would go away and I would go back to my default setting. I was attached to that first feeling of excitement, of aliveness. What I finally came to accept was that my 'default' setting (that feeling of neutrality, which can look/feel like the grey zone until you re-frame it mentally) was in fact the state of mastery, when I had come to embody what I learned and it was now an effortless (or at the very least, easier) part of my being. So I enjoy this state as much as the feeling of being in the flow. It has stopped being 'neutral or grey' and rather I know it as the stillness, the potentiality of everything that ever was and ever could be. You don't live here - you live from this.
I am so beyond caring now whether I am this or am not this, including enlightenment. I have called off the search to find myself or to find anything outside myself. All I want to do is to grow in my ability to be all this. This thread is about being aware of those who are just entering this seeking consciously and you can't say to them "stop seeking' because it is like saying to a baby "stop crawling" - it is a necessary part of development to get to walking.