an actual awakening

This is a message sent to me by Roque Torres Moreira, a member of the Depending On Nothing Facebook group. I shared it here a year ago, but so many new people are subscribed now that it feels worthwhile to post it again for them to see. Highly recommended.

Hi. I have sent Robert a few months ago this text of two "satoris" because I felt good vibes, good feelings to share it.  At that time Robert told me that it could be interesting to publish it here, but I didn't know DONT yet, and I preferred to leave it. On the other hand a satori is non-transferable, and besides it is not useful for anyone, because no one "does it" and no one can make it happen, but it can cause some debate or just be pure entertainment.

As Robert said in the last video, "here there are only human primates communicating through technology". During this time I have visited the page very often. These days this issue of "awakening" is addressed in something I wrote last November, and it seems to me that it might be a good time to share it. So I put it here for whoever is interested. I hope that in the translation from Spanish to English it will be understandable:

That morning, walking in the woods, I remember I was obsessed with "my spiritual quest", like so many times....That feeling of "almost, almost got it"...Exhausting. I don't know what happened, perhaps I lost consciousness for a split second. I found myself with no thoughts and no personal history (this I found out later). I was empty of my obsession, empty of myself, only a purely "animal" state of energy remained: freshness, originality, vitality, purity and, above all, the absence of the consciousness of "I". 

This consciousness appeared as unexpectedly as a flash of lightning, totally clear and indisputable. I felt like someone who woke up and is sure that the whole story of last night was a dream. How was it possible that the "I" did not exist? That Roque did not exist and never existed? How had I not seen it until now?  It was so obvious. I was so surprised by this obviousness that it seemed like a joke. How was it possible that this idea of me had fascinated me for so long? I felt as if all my life I had been walking around with a suitcase in each hand, and suddenly the idea arises to put them on the ground and it is understood that there is no suitcase, nor was there ever any suitcase.  I just had my fists clenched. what a surprise, what a release, what an absurdity!  

The understanding overflowed like a torrent: It's not that I didn't exist, it's that no one existed, nor ever did.  Then I saw that my children, my wife, my friends did not exist either (as stable entities).  I felt vertigo and liberation at the same time. The world was empty of any entity.

This realization had nothing to do with the intellectual understanding of "I understand that the self is an illusion". No, this evidence had an energetic character and a fresh vital and indisputable flavor. There was only this conscious organism, with intelligence and full of vivacity.  A homo sapiens walking in the forest, life expressing itself in this particular way. Compared to the purity of this consciousness, a "mystical" experience I’d once seemed impure to me.  It occurred to me to think that this was the life of "Adam before he was expelled from paradise": innocence and purity.

Although I was "touched" by this experience, apparently everything went on more or less as usual, although with a "new and fresh flavor". Yes, what I understood as spirituality was filled with flavor, the flavor of life. As if the bland and insipid spirituality was now seasoned with salt and spices, and suddenly became vibrant and natural.

A few months later, while I was at work in the early hours of the morning making a photocopy, I was transfixed looking out the window. The vital energy was unexpectedly separated from thought: the vitality of the organism was here, in what I perceive as the body; and thought, on the other hand, moved parallel to this organism, like transparent threads.

Again the vital energy free of thought, life touched in a point so alive, so fresh, so original! This time the certainty that appeared was different. The first thought I remember was (I tell it as it came to me): Holy shit, everything is false, everything I heard, read or was told, everything is false without exception! 

This certainty did not need to be reflected upon or confirmed by any external authority. It was so evident that there is only vitality, only the functioning of the organism not separated from life. Thought was something superimposed on this freshness. It was really a surprise, this was not in the script of the search, I did not count on this!  And I felt so ordinary, so normal, so natural!

This burned away the hope that thought could lead me to enlightenment (I had already sensed that, but now it was a certainty), and the concept of enlightenment and all that goes with it vanished.  All those countless words contained nothing real, nothing vital, nothing originally inherent in my nature.  This included everything: the great ancient texts, the Sufi texts, the words of Nisargadatta, the beliefs, everything, and especially my own ideas and concerns about enlightenment. I could no longer read any "spiritual" books (phew, how much I saved on bookstores), I could not and did not feel like sitting and meditating, at least in a formal, disciplined way. 

And so I continue. I ask myself, “What is there to look for?  If the ultimate reality, the truth, the absolute, the non-being, the permanent and the eternal are an invention of thought, what does it matter what I look for!” Whatever I look for: peace, love, enlightenment... everything distances me, all are ideas of the same desire, of the same desire: the desire of an I that wants to continue, that wants to free itself from the discomfort of suffering and to be happy forever.  In other words, pure egoism that feeds on the hope that one day it will happen.

Before this I lived immersed in the obsession with the question "Who am I?" and its variants.  The question became obsolete, but this not knowing became the reassurance that there is nothing to understand at the level of the seeker. Now I can be interested in what I really like without feeling compelled to have to know more, without feeling the urgency that I must be doing something more "spiritual" to see if I become fucking enlightened.

This happened in April and September 2011. Since this date I feel a disinclination for "spiritual" reading, with a few exceptions including Robert Saltzman. I don't know if I'm awake or not. You didn't ask me that. Some rare, very rare time still comes the smoke from the embers of some belief. And also very often I am dragged by the habit of being the doer, even though I have the clarity that it is not so. If I had to define this in two words, I would say: human vital flavor. So my state is a "tasty" state

That taste is my guide. The taste of myself. I don't pretend to be what others were, nor understand what others say they understood. No one knows anything! The temptation to become someone else different no longer exists: In the peace of my own absence I inhale my perfume And find the taste of myself.