I've Always Been That!

Awakening came as a great surprise. 

I was very new to L&L, and toward the end of my first retreat (online), I remember Lorn saying, "Now we will go deeper." His words began to fade, and I suddenly felt as if I were cast out of my body through the back of my chair, then flung into a great vastness. It wasn't harsh or anything — just very sudden. I could hear myself laughing, then crying, and I think that went on for a while. 

At some point, there was a sense of a radically different perceiver — a different orientation — with something of an "otherworldly" quality. It's hard to describe, as whatever was happening was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Lorn said my name and asked what was happening. There was confusion, as I couldn't find the person he named, though it somehow seemed to be me. I couldn't find any words and couldn't speak.  There was some disorientation for a few days, but it settled.

Over the next three years, that great expansiveness was often present and many beautiful experiences came and went. I could feel some of the rough edges of personality beginning to soften, and often there was a lot of light and bliss. Even so, sometimes doubt would arise as the mind reasserted itself.  Am I really awake?

One day on another retreat, Lorn was talking to someone else about their experience. Once again, his words began to fade, and the Being came strongly into the foreground.

I felt a soft, gentle sigh, and something very small let go. I remember seeing and sensing something like a very thin, transparent membrane, and once I saw it, it just dissolved. Then... vastness. 

And a recognition.

“Oh. I'm That? That? I've always been That!"

Clearly, the joke was on me!  Pure Being is everywhere. It had been here all along! What was there to doubt? It was so obvious and so familiar and so simple and so laughable—how could I have missed it? Once I saw the mind's mistake, there was no going back. 

I guess I’m one of those people who just needed more than one "nudge" for things to finally stick.

Since that day, Pure Being has been a constant. It is truly unmoving, unwavering, ever-present, spacious, peaceful, infinite, untethered, and free. Sometimes more in the background, sometimes more in the foreground, but always and forever present.

— PG, California, USA