How To Be Alone by Tanya Davis

 

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.” – Hermann Hesse

Understanding the Ride

Student: According to Bill Hicks, “Life is like a ride in an amusement park.” In what sense?

JS: Imagine that you’re on a roller-coaster. The normal perception is that ‘you’ are experiencing the ride – right? “I am experiencing this roller-coaster.” That seems fair enough.

However, can the ‘I’ that one is normally referring to here be separated from the experience itself? What do I mean by that? Well, all of the people on any given roller-coaster are having a very different and unique experience of it, are they not? No one is sitting on the same seat, for example, so the experience differs in physical terms. And likely some of the people have been on the ride before, perhaps many times, and so their own experience of it will be quite different from someone who is riding for the first time. Then we can differentiate between those who are enjoying the ride and those who aren’t; those who are are excited and those who are scared; those who feel elated and those who feel sick; those who are in the moment and those who are worring about their marriage, or their bills. The list goes on and on.

So you see, there isn’t an objective ‘ride’ for consciousness to experience once, and then it’s over with. ‘You’, if you contemplate this, will realise that you are not the experiencer of the ride at all. Rather, you (and your apparent life, which is analagous to the ride) are a single stream of happenings being experienced by consciousness. You (the persona) and the experiences that you appear to be having, they can never be separated, because you colour them. And yet this persona, this false self, can certainly be experienced, and is being experienced, by your true Self: unconditioned awareness – that universal I Am that we all ultimately are.

So, when you think about it, there is actually no ‘you’ at all – no doer of the deed. The you whom you felt yourself to be is merely a process happening within consciousness. How can it be otherwise?

From the moment you get up, till the moment you go to bed, you are caught-up in process; the context and the conditioning of your own apparent life. Even if you resolve to do absolutely nothing ever again, the natural processes of your body will have you getting up to use the toilet, or to wash, or to eat. And then there will be people knocking on your door due to unpaid bills. Or if you live with family, they will be pestering you to do something, or else calling a doctor out to see you.

What I’m saying is that you can’t physically avoid the process, which your present notion of self is a fleeting consequence of. You can, however, let go of that fiction altogether; including the fiction or self-image of a seeker who is seeking enlightenment. For that too is the result of process. And as long as you continue to hold on to it, the process has to continue… more books, more gurus, etcetera!

Student: So what’s preventing me from letting go?

JS: You’ve likely always had a very specific concept of enlightenment, which you’ve begun to realise is an erroneous concept. And so you keep on seeking, hoping that the truth may be something other than you now suspect. Because, of course, enlightenment is not an attainment of the ego, but rather a state occuring in its absence. Yet it’s the ego which seeks. And you know this because you are ultimately observing that process… which means that you also have the power to let go of it – when you are ready too, of course (more process).

Student: Surrender control?

JS: You’re not surrendering control because you were never in control – remember? It’s just a ride. You’ve never been doing anything but observing the ups and downs, the twists and turns, of a divine process. You’re a passenger!

Student: I’m not sure that I understand.

JS: Imagine what movies may be like in the future; that instead of watching it on a screen, you could actually ‘plug-in’ and select a character from whose perspective you could experience it from. Your own conscious memory is then ‘suspended’, for the duration, and you inevitably believe yourself to be the character you become. The resulting experience would be one of having control, of course, and of free will. Even the character’s thoughts you would feel to be your own, when in fact they’re merely part of a script.

Nevertheless, you’d still only be watching a movie (albeit from within, and from a particular perspective). You wouldn’t actually be doing or controlling anything at all. The only difference between that, and life, is that the script of life is not written, but arises out of process – conditioning. Which is why mind control becomes the primary tool of choice for anyone wanting to control a planet. There really are no limits to the kind of society that one can create through mind control – but only while most of the people still believe themselves to be their minds. Only for as long as they remain asleep, in other words, and disconnected from their true and infinite Self.

What’s important to remember is that you cannot separate the experience you are having from the character you are playing. Your character and its experiences are the experience – the ride. ‘You’ are not experiencing the world, as such, but you (Consciousness – God) is experiencing you, within the world. When you see the difference you understand the ride.

Animals Are People Too

“I cannot emphasise too often or too strongly that if people realised how important it is for them to make friends of all domestic animals and do their part in making them understand man, then this, last stage [of individualization] would be reached much more quickly than is often the case.”

– A Soul’s Journey by Peter Richelieu

Student: My cat died last week. Will I ever see her again?

JS: First stop thinking in such linear terms. All incarnations are concurrent, as I’ve said before, and I’m not only speaking about human incarnations, or of past and future ‘dates’ on the cosmic calendar. Do you understand the significance of this?

It means that you are very intimately connected with any and all animals in your life. And although this may sound strange to some, they are usually what you presently think of as your own human family members. That is to say, your cat may actually be your own mother – at an ‘earlier’ stage of her evolution. The past is with us, right now, remember. Often you will be able to identify traits in your pets that are mirrored in the people around you – and there’s a reason for that: They are the people around you! A pet may even be your own self. This is true on an ultimate level, of course, but I mean on a soul level.

When you truly grasp the significance of this, and of pets generally, then everything changes. An abuser of animals, for example, is simply reflecting how he/she ‘was’ treated as an animal – because he/she is that animal that’s being abused, in all likelihood. We tend to think of cause and effect in linear terms, but that’s part of the illusion. An abuser of animals is not violent because he experienced violence ‘in the past,’ as AN animal, at the hands of someone else, but rather because he is experiencing violence now – as THE animal that he’s abusing. Which happened first? Neither, because everything is concurrent. Do you see that? In other words, anyone who changes the Now also changes ‘the past’. This is Karma in action.

Any changes that we make to ourselves, in the Now, are reflected throughout the fabric of Creation, in ways we cannot possibly comprehend.

The One is the Many is the One

“We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.” – Bill Hicks

Student: What is meant, exactly, by ‘transcending the illusion of other’ and how might this be accomplished?

JS: Fundamentally, we know that the One has become the many. That is to say, pure unconditioned awareness/consciousness appears – through the process of conditioning and the illusion of physicality – as apparently free-willed individuals. And so we engage in this drama, or believe we do, when ‘we’ is actually an ‘I’ – who watches as the only member of the audience. The all-seeing I.

Student: So who creates the characters?

JS: It happens organically – your temporary character being the inevitable and unique consequence of whatever myriad of processes it has gone through up to this point in the illusion of time. I’m talking about influences and experiences here.

And so we are largely playing out our roles, identified with the conditioning, with form, unaware that we are actually the I Am who merely witnesses through the eyes of the character; as the character. There is no ‘doer’, in that sense, only the observing of the effect of the process in action. You are observing the apparent doing, in other words, believing yourself to be the doer.

To really get this, however, means coming to terms with your aloneness, because you certainly cannot dissolve your own false-self whilst at the same time validating the reality of ‘others’. And by others, I mean those who are still lost in the role, and who continue to assert that they are the role.

Student: But without conditioning wouldn’t we all be the same?

JS: There will always be residual conditioning. However, it’s now seen for what it truly is – it’s certainly not taken seriously anymore. So variety and uniqueness will continue. What’s important is that one is no longer identified with that conditioned persona and understands that ‘other’ is simply oneself, one’s true and ultimate Self, seen through the illusion of form.

And so the whole drama of division/conflict through conditioning becomes impossible. The price we pay for the resulting peace, however, is the acknowledgement and acceptance of our own aloneness… both as the apparent self and as the true Self. Either way, ‘we’ are alone as I. There’s no escaping it. Pure awareness is all that exists, and in the absence of conditioning this awareness will appear as the love and wisdom that it has become through infinite experience; through the witnessing of each and every character and situation imaginable… characters who took themselves to be ‘real’ and situations which those characters took to be ‘serious’.

First, then, come to terms with aloneness as your character, and then you will be ready to accept your aloneness as the totality. For this is the ultimate truth (and fear) of existence, which can only be known and transcended through the illusion of ‘us’.

Show Me The Love!

Student: I hear a lot of talk about love and light, how God is love, or how infinite love is the only truth, but I reckon it’s a kind of collective delusion, because I really don’t see much evidence for it. This world is utterly horrific, to anyone with even an ounce of discernment; a nightmare of insanity, violence and hatred. Even nature is cruel… and as for the God of the Bible, he’s clearly a genocidal maniac, who people worship, nevertheless, perhaps appropriately. In short, I see existence as horrendous beyond words, and it’s love which appears to be the illusion.

JS: Okay [Silence].

Student: You’re not going to argue with me?

JS: Well, answer me this: Do you think that a cold, selfish person would see life as you do?

Student: No.

JS: And so do they suffer as a consequence of the horrors that go on all around them; do they even notice the insanity of it all?

Student: Such people are most likely contributing to the insanity and the horrors of the world.

JS: So who is it who suffers then?

Student: The sensitive ones; those who can see how fucked-up everything is.

JS: And this suffering, what is it evidence of?

Student: I don’t know… Clarity? … Love?

JS: So there’s your answer. You’ve been looking outside of yourself for it when all of the time it was inside. The truth is, the more sensitive/loving a person is, the more they will suffer here. How can it be otherwise? And the more they suffer, the more they will continue to awaken – awaken to themselves as the source of love itself. It’s actually those who do not suffer in this world who need help to see more clearly.

Coming Home to Inherent Freedom

A Closed Loop

Student: Why do you put so much emphasis on aloneness?

JS [laughing]: Because people put so much emphasis on others! …Did you know that 80% of a person’s decisions in life are made for no other reason than to attain the approval of others?

Student: And so what’s driving that?

JS: Aloneness is the primary fear, you know, and so it has become the primary illusion – that of separation, individuation, the play of egos. On one level a person’s behaviour reflects the fact that they fear being alone ‘as’ the ego. However, on another level, they daren’t look beyond the ego, because then they’d see through the illusion entirely and know that the true Self is alone ‘as’ all that is; that there are really no authentic ‘others’ and there never will be.

Student: What about our separation from God, the Father?

JS: It is better not to conceptualize God, because then you may see God as something external (other than), when obviously there is nothing other than you. Existence is a closed loop! So I would prefer to say ‘separation from Self’, which is something that has simply come about – as has been said so many times in so many different ways – through identification with form, with context, and with one’s own conditioning. And this is what maintains the illusion, of course.

5 Gateways

Serving the Master – Enlightenment for the Enlightened

“The world that you exist in is an out-picturing of your requirements for a world that you need to live in.” – Paul Selig (channeled)

Student: I feel a calling to become a spiritual teacher. Is there anything you can say, or do you have any advice for me on this subject?

JS: I’ll tell you a story: A long time ago, there was a guru who became very popular and sought after in his own community, and who helped many students on their path to self-realisation. In subsequent incarnations he wrote numerous books, under different names, which continue to help seekers all over the world. Following his most recent death, however, he decided that he wanted to liberate even more souls; and so he went about consulting with the highest aspect of himself – God – on how he might accomplish this.

And God said: “I can tell you how to liberate many millions of people, and it will be very easy for you.”

The Master, however, preferring a challenge, asked: “How might I liberate everyone?”

And God said: “I can tell you how to liberate everyone, but this will be very difficult for you, and you will become agitated at the mere hearing of it.”

The Master nodded in acceptance.

And God said: “To liberate everyone you must not incarnate again or have any further contact with earth. In fact, you must never speak to anyone at all about enlightenment or what it is that you think they need to know.”

Sure enough, the Master became very agitated at hearing these words, and said to God: “But I wish to continue to serve others.”

And God replied: “Yes, and when this need of yours disappears, I will no longer have to incarnate as others – to suffer in ignorance – in order to serve you.”

3 Magic Words

“When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are. You are because God is. The two are one.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.” – Sri Ramana Maharshi

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