WHAT am I?

[Halfglass]

I tripped last week. For a change I decided to walk in the fields near my new rented farmhouse (instead of doing the trance bit)--in the country finally(!). Something happened that was one of those moments, the ones that you know are gonna stay with you for life. On an overgrown dirt road I began to wonder what it would be like to just keep walking...to abandon my life and simply keep walking into the night. Without friends or a job I wouldn't need a name. In fact I thought: "My name isn't really anything at all...it's conditioned into me, that that is me." (Then the heavy) "What the fuck AM I?...You know something? I have no idea WHAT I am! Nobody knows WHAT we are. Forget "who" am I! It's WHAT, WHAT that is the question!" And on it went--me in the gloaming alone with this realization sinking to and through every fiber. "Fiber! Sinew, cells, jellyeyesskinhair!" (Now I'm weirded out much--tripping balls alone, but "I be verteran" I remind myself.) "Verteran over a tripping mind that doesn't know WHAT it is!" I answer. "Okay fine this must be an enlightenment here...to handle this. I've always known I didn't know WHAT I am. But now! Lo! Now I cannot go back to pretending...pretending that owning a car, wearing clothes, having to eat and shit, sweat and work, carry things around...being enslaved to unexpected events like a death in the family, can be used to hide our personal secret--our aloneness. I am unable to not see the mystery everywhere I look, every day I wake up." (Etc.) (The classic deconditioning folks...but this time it hit home very deeply, very mystical and odd it all seemed/has-become for me...and it has come home to stay--WE DON"T KNOW WHAT WE ARE! And know what? I think I dig the mystery about as much as I hate it.) (BTW, got no working computer for now so can't stay in the conversations very well--take care!)

[ August 24, 2003, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[gone]

While predictably unhelpful, the immediate answer is the mantra of the Upanishads, ‘tat tvam asi,’ basically meaning ‘you are what you are.’ The textbook says,

We belong to the real and the real is mirrored in us. The great text of the Upanishad affirms it—Tat tvam asi (That art thou). It is a simple statement of an experienced fact...."I and my Father are one." "All that the Father hath are mine," is the way in which Jesus expressed the same profound truth.

Useful…

[daniel]

good answer!

[Halfglass]

Gelfer thanks yeah "I AM" is Gods name eh? In my seritonin hallucination (everyday reality) I keep coming back to the old "oneness" thing. There is something important in the ancestors, and collective history--seething below is the Aliveness/It--the trip/trances have made this clear repeatedly. The joke's on us, played on us by us (It). I suspect that the DMT clowns only seem odd because the silly trades glances with the serious--like chaos theory--(During Lincoln's Gettysburg address someone's telling a fart joke) and during a trip the two exist as stored experience, one no more "important" than the other. In other words, experience/expression is the only important thing for the emerging It, "good" or "bad" are a product of its struggle--the serpent sniffing about for its tail. (I'm in an abstract mood what can I say?)

[ August 27, 2003, 06:48 AM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[gone]

I know what you mean. Often the nearer you get to the kernel of something the less there is to say.

I thought of this passage from Rumi though:

Yesterday was glory and joy.
Today, a blackened burn everywhere.
On the record of my life, these two days
Will be put down as *one*.

[Proteus]

Halfglass: Great post. i don't have any big answers to your what question except that you are, among other things, one of the bravest and most interesting seekers i've had the pleasure to (kind of) meet.

Your question began with, "what would happen if i just kept walking down the road?"

Here's one possibility--in the form of one of my favorite Billy Collins poems.

Going Out for Cigarettes

It's a story as famous as the three little pigs:
one evening a man says he is going out for cigarettes,
closes the door behind him and is never heard from again,
not one phone call, not even a postcard from Rio.

For all anyone knows, he walks straight into the distance
like a line from Euclid's notebooks and vanishes
with the smoke he blows into the soft humid air,
smoke that forms a screen, smoke to calm the bees within.

He has his fresh pack, an overcoat with big pockets.
What else does he need as he walks beyond city limits,
past hedges, porch lights and empty cars of the suburbs
and into a realm no larger the his own hat size?

Alone, he is a solo for piano that never comes to an end,
a small plane that keeps flying away from the earth.
He is the last line of a poem that continues off the page
and down to a river to drag there in the cool flow,

questioning the still pools with its silver hook.
Let us say this is the place where the man who goes out for cigarettes finally comes to rest: on a riverbank
above the long, inquisitive wriggling of that line,

sitting content in the quiet picnic of consciousness,
nothing on his mind as he lights up another one,
nothing but the arc of the stone bridge he notices
downstream, and its upturned reflection in the water.

[Halfglass]

Thanks, you gone cats!