The Donkey Dharma, or Seeking's End

Personal history seems largely irrelevant. A childhood mixture of privilege in a family of artists, sexual abuse and boarding schools may or may not have led to intense psychic experiences and profound depression, alienation and that feeling of being an outsider looking in, separate from life. The vastness, the emptiness reduced the simplest things to fatuous meaninglessness. Some mornings even breathing seemed pointless.

Then came being in love, and, curiously, "near-death" experiences, all that tunnel and light stuff, but during love-making!

Then, out of the blue, aged 21, cosmic unity hit me like a truck at a Ravi Shankar concert. All that is, is One, one Truth, no self, one eternal Being  whose nature is love......

Sounds so good, but there was no support context, no guru on hand to say "tat twam asi", or even "yes". The love shimmered for a few weeks, and the awareness became an experience remembered, then regretted, then pursued, through sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Well, it was the sixties. So even the memory was pretty much lost. Depression returned, even psychosis, paranoia, and hallo psychiatrists! Then Rammurti Mishra, Tibetan Buddhism, TM and a gradual return to some light. Marriage, three yearsTM teaching, children (miraculous), parenting (bliss), and the return of the Longing.

Three actual experiences of being near death, (two car crashes and severe illness)....but no visions!

India, the Ganga, KaliMa, Mother Meera, Gangaji, Ammachi, divorce, dark fire, new love, and bingo, through the affirmation of a connection to Andy Rymer, seeking ended with an awakening death into no-self on July 2nd, 2002.

Everything changed, but nothing is different. If you're here, you'll know this. Now whatever arises arises, bliss and shit, and the world seems to carry this body wonderfully well without too much thought, effort or hassle. Things seem to fall into place of their own accord. The ego is not lost, but it has lost its hooks. There is often pain, but there's no suffering. Sometimes the vastness is flat, sometimes the emptiness is vast, sometimes bliss bubbles in every atom. The most miraculous thing of all is the mere fact of the ordinary  mundane realities, in all their Divine splendour, just being Being. Funny, eh?

 All those years spent gazing at the back of my eyelids just to find that what I was looking for was doing the looking. Ironic. And they say the Divine has no sense of humour!

This is the Donkey Dharma. Follow the carrot till you drop the following. It's pinned to your own tail anyway. As a good friend once told me, "If you don't know where you're going, go by the road you don't know."