The disintegration of the energetic borders of the separate self: a moving and insightful description of freedom given by Anneke Broertjes after the December 2016 ZOOM Meditation Meetup online. (Published here with Ann’s permission).
Dear Georgi and Bart,
What a discovery, or better said, what a deepening of understanding and insight through your meditation and the session yesterday!!
I was lying awake for some time, pondering the insights in the dark in my bed. And I woke up this morning again with clarity about ” Ownership” and “Doer-ship”.
Pieces of the puzzle fitting in the bigger picture.
It is not mine. Nothing is. Not even “my story” is. Every sensation or feeling is the Impersonal One expressing as that sensation.
Without the name, or label Ann, what am I ????
It is Life, Impersonal Being as “a body”; which is a field of sensations; an alive Being, vibrating into a seeming body… given the name Anneke.
Nóthing is personal !!! Without the name What am I? Am I a story? No. It is just sensations glued together by memory.
Years ago I saw, felt: Oh, even pain is not personal! But no one seemed to know that or understand what I felt. And then I doubted it. But pain is not personal either! When the story isn’t then what is in the story isn’t either.
Yes, these sensations, feelings, perceptions are uniquely experienced, but they are not mine. They are “Mine”. Impersonal movements of energy of the Whole. Júst Béing!! They are no ones.
The Infinite seemingly being finite, assuming the form of a personal me…a me that experiences feelings, sensations. That sees, smells…apparently!! But I know it is all felt, seen, smelled Here.
Without a body am I still Ann? I mean, the body is also this Hereness, a field. No Ann to be found. Even the “body” and “the me” flow in and through Me. Without the name body what am I? No body…then no me either.
It is one vibrating alive whole. No need to keep anything, who would and where would I store it? Yet it happens…a trying to keep it, even the pain, keeping it “in”. As if the body is a form, a container in which stuff can be held, kept, with a lid on the container.
It needs a lot of energy and contraction to keep it “in”, which is to keep the idea of an “In, in this body, in me” alive. To press painful feelings down and in, to keep or hold onto what I like…thinking it has to do with “me and my body”.
Trying to keep it, inside an apparent body, is a wanting it to stay personal. Wanting IT to stay limited, confined to a me. To make this me-idea stay alive. But it is already dead.
Yet it lives. This, the Here that I am manifests as a me feeling, a body feeling, an in- or out-feeling. Until it doesn’t.
It is one vibrating alive whole. No need to keep anything, who would and where would I store it?
I prayed for freedom, I asked for clarity and release….and my prayers have been heard. This is what has been offered. Your meditation and our talk are an opening, a deepening into a wider and deeper awareness of What I am.
“No ownership” is another word for “no doership”. It is the same.
I am Life. Life expressing as a sensation through a body and experienced as a me. But all the way always only This. And nothing needs to be taken personal, or held, stuffed. I can let go of what isn’t mine already. Still it is a great feeling to let it go. To hand it to the real Owner…although no one owns anything. It only IS. To give it to God, to release it into the Whole.
I know the body meditations of Rupert Spira, but sometimes stopped when the flowing back into aware space began. I didn’t know why and something was so contracted. Holding on to the knots. It was as if the tights knots hung in space, dense rocks of compressed energy in Space…His meditations originate from Jean Klein and.. the Cashmere tantric tradition too!! Now I see the link!!! Like you come from that tradition. But now I have felt it, and know why it can be given away.
Oh, that is why releasing the tensions, but also the joyful feelings are like a giving back..no, not even giving back, but okay, I can’t find another way to say it now, to release what already is not mine, but feels stuck here. What already is made of aware alive Being… The illusion of Being being a me is released. Taken back into Itself!
Thank you ever so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bow at the feet of Truth, of This. Of what is always Here.
And thus I bow at your feet too!!
Much love and gratitude!!
Ann
*Featured image from the wonderful Tenzin Dhondup, who photographs and shares the beauty of the natural environment of Tibet.
