Well today has been another wondrous day. The main event was me thinking I did it, which turned out to be a false positive – but it doesn’t exactly seem like it was an actuality-mimicking ASC, either
What happened is I was out climbing, and went to use nature’s restroom, and as I have been continuously contemplating and reflecting on and allowing self-immolation to happen, I thought it’d be really funny if I went to the bathroom and came back actually free haha. So on the way there I noticed some change or shift in experience, and wondered if that was it. On the way back after I did my business I noticed that I was spontaneously skipping with joy and delight over the rocks and really having a blast, mired in their wondrous detail.
My experience really was different than usual lately. I experienced it as that I was the senses / the sensate experience was much more immediate. It is also like full-blast wondrous purity was available essentially ‘on demand’, like I would just wonder about it and experience would instantly become more pure and magical.
It also seemed very obviously clear that time does not move, that the past doesn’t exist, and it’s always now, and there is no other moment. This was my experience of it. And, climbing on the rock wall, it was much different than I would usually do it, much easier, I saw and tried stuff that I just wouldn’t have before, and it was all natural and I was just having a blast.
However I experienced some uncertainty as to whether I had done it, and it seemed like it was a feeling of self-doubt somehow. I wondered if this was some remnant – I thought that wow, ‘Claudiu’ was really caught up with his identity of self-immolating and succeeding in that, and maybe because it was so habitual I (as actually free Claudiu) was experiencing remnants of it that were not feelings anymore. I couldn’t exactly tell if it was affective or not.
But then I realized that I could easily solve the uncertainty, I didn’t have to be uncertain – I could just apply the same contemplation and pure intent towards this topic, and find out what the actual answer is, if I was actually free or not. I thought about describing it all to Vineeto also and realized that Vineeto would not be able to figure it out for me, actually, I had to do it myself – and it just made sense and was so obvious and straightforward. That this was so straightforward made me think that maybe I had really done it, since before I would have gotten more caught up in it.
I also realized I had a feeling of having done something ‘wrong’, and I saw that no matter what happened, it wouldn’t be ‘wrong’. Either I did succeed, in which case this is wonderful and these are the things that one tidies up after becoming free, and it’ll be valuable info to share with people. Or I didn’t, in which case I will find that out and learn something. There’s no ‘problem’ actually. The only problem would be if I was trying to fool myself or fool others about it, and I saw that I wasn’t, so there really isn’t any issue either way.
I also felt and experienced a deep pang of like “Ahh I just want to have done it already and gotten it over with!!” And I found it so strange. This is not something to ‘get over with’. It is a wondrous journey and path with immense benefits for all involved and affected. I wonder where I had this feeling from, it was a very deep-down one, and probably it is a remnant from my days of intensive vipassana meditation, which indeed was very unpleasant and definitely something to ‘get over with’ (or better yet avoid entirely lol)
So it went like this back and forth for a while. The ease and simplicity at which I was addressing everything made me think I succeeded. But the uncertainty, doubts, and confusion kept coming back, each time feeling more familiar, like my usual recent experience of being alive, as a feeling-being. Eventually as I was getting more tired and it was getting later, I got mildly annoyed by what someone did, and I couldn’t deny it any longer haha, I was not actually free.
But the remarkable simplicity and naive sincerity remains. Everything just is so increasingly straightforward! And it was almost like a preview of what it would be like – nothing missing whatsoever. Actually the only thing spoiling it was ‘me’, that is me the feeling-being writing this right now, haha. Except for that ‘little’ bit it was all perfect.
So, onwards!! 