Laughter Happens, Seriously!

22Dec
by Lori Ann Lothian

Two days after enlightenment obliterated the me I thought I was, my partner Fergus had a relationship upset. Something I had done or not done was impacting his well being. I listened with an empty mind to his concerns, then went to bed early. When he finally joined me at midnight I’d been soundly sleeping for two hours. He shook me awake, and said, “We have to talk, it’s serious.”

I laughed and rolled back over and the thought arose, nothing is serious, not even death. I said. “Let’s talk in the morning.” My light hearted dismissal did nothing to placate his wholehearted commitment to seriousness. So he left for the living room sofa to spend a night ruminating about how serious things were. By morning, he had decided things were so serious he was leaving the relationship.

I could see he was in the grips of seriousness and that his choosing was reactive, not responsive. So I said sure, whatever you want, but maybe give yourself three days to think about it.

The next day his attack of seriousness subsided and he decided to stay. But still the story is not about the outcome of a relationship. It’s about the Power of Seriousness that so clearly over-rides the deepest truth of being which has an inherent quality of playfulness.

As a result, I laugh a whole lot more these days. Ever since I landed on the enlightenment square in this divine game called life, I realize I‘ve also been given a “get out the of jail card.” I’ve been released from the prison of seriousness, a high security mental lock down that seems to be a mandatory sentence when Mind is running the show.

You’d think that the Ego would be more invested in the prison of sorrow, or the incarceration of anger, or even the solitary confinement of loneliness. But from an Awake standpoint, what is observed is that the most pervasive trap is really seriousness. Because you have to be serious in order to believe you are sad, angry and alone. Serious runs the unreal world. Yes’ Ma’am. No Sir. It’s built in to the fabric of growing up, where respecting the parent, teacher or priest meant being serious. Giggling got you a detention or hard stares from the grown ups. Uncontrolled laughter in serious settings was not sanctioned.

This is probably why Jesus said that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must become like a little child. This was not a prescription to become naïve, or unknowledgeable or even necessarily innocent (you can’t become what you are), but to engage in play, laughter and fun. This, to break up the monopoly the serious mind has on daily existence.

We take life and our self seriously because we believe our survival depends on our ability to assert control, demonstrate ambition and master conformity. These three priorities of the mind are simply not do-able if you are laughing, playing and having fun.

When I was a child, I remember one of my most feared predicaments around laughter. I ‘d be swimming in the deep end of a pool with my sisters, and suddenly something would make me laugh, and I would laugh so hard I could no longer swim. I was laughing and drowning. It took every effort of will to stop laughing long enough to dog paddle to the wall of the pool to safety.

This is a teaching story, in a way. Because if you laugh hard enough in the deep end of life, in the midst of misery and pain, you just might drown. You just might sink under the water and the mind just might die there, in all that water-soaked laughter. And then you would go on laughing. Seriousness would die. And recognition of the playful god you have always been, happens.

The teacher Osho had a lot to say about this topic of laughter and play. He went so far as to claim that the egoic mind makes us laughter-blind, in the way people are color blind—simply unable to perceive the giddy truth of life that is really there, all along. Just as a color blind person cannot perceive, say, green, a laughter-blind ego cannot see the absolute inherent joyful, playful, silly and guffawing truth of being.

I know, I know, I hear your protest–life is full of unbearable tragedy, injustice, suffering and pain. And yet, when you are awake, it’s apparent and irrefutable that this too will pass. That all of it is storm clouds, passing across the blue sky of beingness. Mortal laughter is an echo of the deepest truth of your being—there is a lightness here, a beautiful song of delight that loves a good laugh, especially the kind that brings tears to your eyes. The very fact that Santa Claus, the icon of this holiday season is merry, not serious, tells us something. We are called deeply to the Merry Truth of Being, and joyful engagement in the dream is one antidote to the Power of Seriousness. If you abandon serious in favor of mirth, you give the mind a whole lot less misery to wrap itself around.

So you choose: Is your life funny or miserable? Is it sad or laughable. Can you find the one kernel of giddy truth in the muck of what is wrong?

The thing I know more than ever since I woke up: Laughter happens. And seriousness drowned at the bottom of that swimming pool of the mind on October 24th.

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Holidays,

Lori Ann

 

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60 thoughts on “Laughter Happens, Seriously!”

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  4. Julie

    Lori Ann wrote:
    “…to respond is to simply be available to action or non action, in each moment, as it arises…I call that actionability. (not responsibility, which is often a mind program that has instructions for action). True RESPONSE abilty, is in the moment. This is ACTION that arises in the moment, as the moment unfolds…”

    This is perfect–thank you.

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  5. Lesya Adehlph

    Hi Lori
    Wow I am enjoying your blog and the comment trails. I am reading Translucent Revolution and am just having my own awakening and it’s sort of become my dare I say obsession. Not really an obsession though. More a coming home that has sought me out ( whomever that me is) and now I am getting my mind wrapped around it.
    I love how well you write and the stories you share from your world. I feel myself on the path of something similar yet the story I tell myself is I cannot find a path for myself nor do I deserve to.
    I am experiencing the importance of laughter for that very reason. I can laugh at the seriousness I have agreed to in order to be “grown up” and I am seeing that indeed although there are serious moments, awakening to the eternality of life allows us to release the pressure
    I have struggled and continue to feel moments of separation and am now finally sensing the stories in my mind as stories and not realities and my experience shifts yet nothing outwardly has changed. Hallelujah!
    Love is all there is. Xo

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  6. bneal817

    “What is this precious love and laughter, budding in our hearts? It is the glorious sound of a Soul waking up!” ~ Hafiz

    All form and thought dances to the laughter of the One Self that is no-self. Praise that eternal bliss and freedom! See you beyond all right and wrong, Lori.

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  7. awarenessishere

    Yes, Joel. I hear you. And yet I am not prescribing laughter over sorrow, especially in the relative world of daily life. I am simply saying that there is an abiding JOYFULNESS (that can give rise to laughter) that is independent of circumstance. I have had quite a few hard knocks in life around sudden death of loved ones and near death of my child, twice. I know the reality of pain (and of course, the option to make that pain into suffering, or not). So, again, I am not advocating laughing through the murder of one’s child–that would be impossible. I am saying however there is a peace deep within, the abiding Self, that also resounds with joy. That is my experience–and was my experience through the death of my mother when she was hit by a car in 2001. So. Yes cirumstance can preclude laughter. And yes, circumstance can bring on laughter. And perhaps, beyond circumstance, our very nature is laugher….just maybe. 🙂

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    1. Joel

      A very Confucian idea is never to forget danger when you are safe, since it is this very circumspection that ensures your safety.

      I see no real need for the doctrine that our very nature is joy or bliss. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying it’s not important whether it is or it isn’t. And even if it is, relative to what? If relative to nothing because absolute, then how can we even know it is joy or bliss at all? What does that even mean?

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      1. awarenessishere

        yep, who knows what it all means. I only know what it feels like, here, this “sense of joy”…which sort of feels like serenity, stillness and delight all stirred up in a swirling is-ness, an elixer of being. You know? Funny, I was watching Mooji in satsang (he’s in London, eh) yesterday, my first encounter with this teacher, who shares much about the JOY-FULL ness of the loss of self, and the seeing of what is. I know when i first “woke up” to the truth of no-self, there was an almost numb detachment in the stillness, but it was interrupted by surges of delight and wonder at the I AM THAT-ness of it, especially in the context of forest walks, or animals, or the bustle of strangers on the city street. I am curious about you. There comes across a sort of cynical edge, or that is my interpretation perhaps and wrongly, maybe it’s a mature edge and I am a puppy too eager and new to know the harsher landscape of no-self/non-duality etc. But it seems from where I sit that this Presence that animates this body, this form, this quiet mind, is …well, upbeat and playful, a dancer, a singer of love songs, a wild whirlind dervish of delight. (By the way, the form called Joel is a gifted writer, and I wanted to let you know how I enjoyed the wry ponderings on your mom’s death last Christmas. Lori Ann

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      2. Joel

        You can call it cynicism if you wish. Sometimes it may be that, other times it may be something else and you’ll miss what that is because you’ve decided it’s cynicism. From an early age, I always rejected fitting-in with any kind of standard-issue anything. It is no surprise that this characteristic should remain despite seeing no difference anywhere. What difference does it make whether one is gruff or all lovey-dovey, whether one is an ethereal tree-hugger or a hard-bitten realist. These are all labels slapped on portions of an ever-changing chaos that makes us feel safe and as if we have actually got to grips with something. I prefer to unsettle comfortable settling points, my own just as much as those of others. I prefer to say ‘Think again’ than ‘You’ve got it’, because even if I say ‘You’ve got it’ the likelihood is that in five minutes, or just five seconds, you won’t have it any more, so why even bother thinking you have it in the first place. It’s not important. I reject the culture of ‘enlightenment’ while at the same time finding my roots in it. There is nothing that I can reject that is real, because if I reject it and it is real I will soon discover it cannot be rejected. That I am unchanging, unborn, eternal, cannot be rejected. That I am enlightened, awakened, blissed out, joyful, can be rejected. So I reject what I can, to save myself the bother of falling in line with a mere self-hypnotic mantra of realisation, when reality has an everpresent simplicity that is undeniable. This tendency, I have found, comes from strength and years of paring away. There are many teachers talking very capably about such notions as basic awareness, but I find seekers go away clutching the cotton-wool padding of it and their realisation doesn’t really go very deep. This message isn’t enhanced by hyper-conformity, it is diluted. I see a need to concentrate it again. So you won’t find much in the way of agreement from me, since I don’t allow myself the luxury of thinking ‘no self’ is the answer to everything, or that anyone has ever ‘awakened’, rather I see these as poor descriptors of something else, something which I in my own easily-misunderstood way attempt to get across in the face of what I regard as the sterile conformity of an on-message crowd. If some would prefer to label me as not awakened that’s fine by me, since I would not say I was, but if they think they know something I don’t, I’d invite them to look again and ask what I might know that they don’t. Such is my way, for what it’s worth. I have always felt Bodhisattvahood should get its hands dirty and not settle for being a mere bliss-junky. I might have wished for dancing on clouds, but wading through mud has more to offer than people tend to think. The way I look at it is that it’s okay to regard the bustle of thousands of people on a busy Oxford Street pursuing bargains in the sales as a complete nightmare over and above any delight in the pulse of humanity. That’s because I don’t actually judge what I’m thinking as either right or wrong, there is simply the response to the moment. There is nothing more brittle than ‘an awakened perspective’. The sooner it breaks up the better. But the unchanging, nothing can touch that. There is a certain humour in dissing the enlightened ones. But who’s doing it? If the majesty of being didn’t want to hand out cold comfort to the supremely settled in awareness, it wouldn’t have called upon certain gruff hard-bitten types to break the mould.

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      3. Ginta

        Thank you. You encouraged me to dive deeper into the mud. Actually, it’s more interesting. What I find impossible to understand, is that how people like telling themselves positives stories – o, everything is so perfect and nice. For a few days I am telling these stories to myself, and it indeed get’s boring. If there is thinking, bad thinking is more interesting and certainly leads to investigation than “o, how beautiful, o, vow”. If there is really so beautiful, then why that one who says “beautiful”” doesn’t dissolve into that beauty? Something is unclear here, returning to the mind, that you could tell yourself “O, vow, beautiful, everything is perfect”. Adyashanti says – you attain Nirvana, when you don’t give a damn about Nirvana. I see my mind wanting to return to all deep experiences, and I am so grateful those experiences didn’t happen half a year ago, because then the thought “I am so great enlightened” certainly would have appeared. Luckily, truth got me down to the mud, to see how really great my personality is. And that concentrated into the very christian thought “I am a sinner, everything I do, is a separation from reality”. Now I feel more christian than ever before and even think that maybe notion of God is better than notion of enlightenment – at least attaining Christ is not your job, all you have to do is see you are a sinner and surrender.

        Maybe this is also a trap – thinking that God is bigger than me and in such a way creating little me… But I remember one zen master saying – when thinking appears, believe in God one hundred percent, when thinking dissappears, there is no God and no you. How can I think “I am that”? \When I am that, there is no one who can say “I am that”. So I choose better to think that I am little Ginta, guided by God or awareness or that which is enlightenment itself, whatever. And seeing how Ginta thinks, how Ginta behaves is quite interesting process – everything she thinks she does is totally egoistic. And she tries so much to love, to be gentle, to be a better person. Thanks for all my teachers that they convinced me not to create anything perfect from me and not to create anything not perfect also.

        It’s a feeling I write a little bit out of subject, but if it happens, it happens.

        Happy New Year for everybody.

        See every moment of your life as new.

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      4. awarenessishere

        Hi ginta. We are really saying the same thing using different language. The phrase i am that. For instance. What that expresses is a deep sense of boundlessness. Boundary free selfless no self all self. You see the language barrier and symbol barrier is here. That is always here when the infinite compresses into finite containers, whether those containers are body minds or words. You have a happy. No happy new year! Hugs and shoves. Lori Ann

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  9. Joseph Polaschek

    Hi Ray, The book that got me into ACIM has a picture of the Laughing Jesus on the cover. Any good replica or picture of the Buddha shows him with a slight smile. As I noted earlier, laughter is the antidote, as it were, when we, as the Son of God, did not laugh when a simple thought implied that perhaps we would be happier leaving the Oneness (an impossibility). Our reference now is to a laughter of spirit and the wisdom that we bring on our own pain and suffering, which is unknown by God. We would not outwardly laugh at any starving or suffering people in our dream-like universe. We project forgiveness for ourselves and change the perception of a dreadful dream-like state when we live/teach by example. This I do by reminding myself constantly that I am not “real,” just a misguided thought. I cannot do anything but picture myself and all “others” at home with God. This only seems cruel or “inhumane” if I take anything seriously. It is as it is. And it cannot be serious.
    Joseph

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    1. awarenessishere

      I like your reply here Josepth. Yes, when we invest in the dream by collusion, agreeing to the reality of misery and suffering, it’s really an attack on truth. Truth can’t be harmed of course…but the realization of it can I suppose be detained. I have a laughing buddha on my mantle, where he has sat for years now. There is a reason for the smiling saints, a good reminder of the innate Joy of Oneness.

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      1. Joel

        All of this only really applies if one is truly free of circumstance. If not, then the notion of ‘tempting fate’ applies instead, whereby one’s beliefs are put to the test, as when a person insists life is a certain way and fate throws them a curve ball and says ‘Oh, really, you think so. Try this.’ The classic case would be when a person believes life is all about laughter and that they are impervious to circumstance. To test this fate will give them something they can’t laugh about with any ease, and that is solely because they have ‘tempted fate’. All very well if one is truly free of circumstance, then one may as well laugh if one’s child is murdered. But if you are not absolutely certain you are free of circumstance, then you should be a little hesitant before defining reality for those who are definitely not free of circumstance, since it may turn out that you aren’t either. Because I see no lessening of suffering for those who are just because someone insists they have it wrong, rather I see a tempting of a similar fate just to see how well they handle it in the light of their bold philosophy of joy as everyone’s birthright.

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  10. Ray Loewenau

    I love your posts and feel the truthfulness of your experience. Yet I
    have to wonder, it’s easy for you and me (living a middle class existence in the US of A) to say laughter is the answer. But if we were the mother of five starving children in North Korea, perhaps laughter would not be the answer.
    r.

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    1. awarenessishere

      Hi R: It’s not really about laughter at circumstance, thought that can arise and does arise even in dire conditions. It’s about the Great Joy of beingness–mahasukha, that transcends the relative world of pleasure and pain, happy and sad. This joy is here, and it gives rise to laughter without condition….hugs Lori Ann

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  11. Joel

    Tragedy and farce are both forms of entertainment. ‘Being serious’ is putting on the face appropriate to the circumstances, like a big coat when it’s cold. Sometimes its appropriate to not take others’ sob stories seriously, but if they’re on the verge of suicide it’s better to listen and help them figure their own way out of it without telling them they’re taking things too seriously. This means being with them long enough that their feelings subside and they find their own answers. You give them the space, without judgment either way. Telling people not to be so serious may well have a tinge of the truth, but it’s not necessarily ‘skilful means’ since it involves implicitly judging them as ‘too serious’. Judgment creates division. While I certainly agree that nothing matters, and suicide is in a dream, so is the one who says that.

    You say seriousness or laughter just arise, which is true, but it should be noted (with all due seriousness) that good or bad habits also arise and you have the power of distinction. It takes but two seconds to react to someone in what one supposes is an ‘awakened’ way, but it is just a bad habit that remains. Similarly, good habits of wisdom and love acquired before one saw through habit as just habit may sometimes arise usefully in difficult circumstances. You can say that going back to sleep and not addressing your partner’s concerns just arose and was right and appropriate, because it was simply what happened, but he can also say that simmering about it on his own was right and appropriate too, because of the way you had behaved towards him. Even while simmering, I used to find, there was part of me that just didn’t believe in it at all. I think that is true for many. And it’s that that is the unborn that people look for. So even in simmering and fury, it’s right there. Just as it’s right there when smug, or whatever. The bottom line is this: there is no state that is better than another state. Seriousness is just as good as laughter.

    I like the way your blog is going, these are all very interesting topics. Have a good Christmas Lori. Or, if not, have that too.

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    1. Ginta Gaivenyte

      Thank you, Joe, the words you wrote, are wonderful 😉 It was indeed a brilliant idea of Lori’s to create this awakening blog, and now it’s getting more and more interesting when mind habits silently seek how to play awareness role. And words can help not only for Lori to see through this cunning game, but for many others (including me 🙂

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      1. Joel

        Thanks Ginta. Seeing through the cunning game is another cunning game. It’s what happens when you stick your head between a mirror reflecting another mirror, something I loved doing at my mum’s dressing table as a kid to see the endless corridor. Once you’ve seen it and how it works, you don’t have to wonder any longer how far it extends. Same with peeling onions, you get the gist and don’t have to keep wasting onions. It’s not so much that you’ve seen through the cunning game as you know where it is and don’t have to go there any more.

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      3. Joel

        Idea hunting, I know it well. It is like separating the wheat from the chaff only to end up with two piles of chaff in the most labour-intensive way. But sometimes that is needed to reach the point of discarding it.

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      5. awarenessishere

        HI Ginta. Have you seen the blog, Marked Eternal by Ilona. I just discovered it today and added to my blogroll. Check it out. You wrote about how your awakening was to the thought, I am not my thinking and how there is another thought that awakening to I am Awareness is a non-compassionate place. I don’t see this, this difference or betterness of either or…when I “woke up” the thought was more precisely Awarness IS Here (thus my user name at wordpress). Because the I was gone, who would claim to be awareness. Thinking was clearly also NOT HERE, because it simply dramatically ceased–an analogy would be it went from an activity level of 100 percent to ten, and that remaining ten percent of thinkings consisted of thoughts, contextual to the moment or functional to living (like, get gas the tank is empty or remember to take out the garbage tonight etc. Thus my second post, “It’s so Darn Quiet in Here.” When thinkings drop so drastically so do feelings, since most emotion seems to be tied to a thought. Anyway, thank you for being curious and questioning. This clarifying is fun!

        Lori Ann

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      6. Ginta Gaivenyte

        Thanks for your comment. I guess it was a misunderstanding – you say “how there is another thought that awakening to I am Awareness is a non-compassionate place”. There never has been such a thought. I spoke about that the idea “I am Awareness” can lead to the wide variety of ideas that there is no suffering or that you are separated from suffering or that there is no you so there is no need to do something about suffering.

        And I have another question for you ( I was a journalist, so it’s a questioning habit 🙂 You say the thought accompanied awakening was “Awareness is here”. My question is – what do you mean now when you say a word “I”? That bunch of habits that create Lori? Or you refer to something else?

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      7. Ginta Gaivenyte

        Thanks for your answers. May sound egoistically, but I find it much better discussing with you and other people here than discussing in other spaces – and as questioning and investigation is my habit, I see that as a tremendous change, going from the space of trying to find what is wrong into the space of trying to find what is true.

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    2. awarenessishere

      Thanks Joel. Yes, no one thing better than other. Just noting a prevalence arising here for levity in the moments unfolding. The funny thing (hahaha) about the non-engagement in a long talk that night is that is was anti-script to the old Lori Ann way, which would be to flog an argument to death and to take it all so damn seriiously, not to mention, personally! Fergus sitting in his own thought mudslide that night was a lovely beginning of his own inquiry into what is real…which continues. For me, it was a stark contrast to experience his upset and not be upset by it, making it so plain to see that some deep habits had died with the thought of ‘i”. It’s boxng day here in Canada, which is a big shopping spree for most people. i’m sitting by a fire in my living room, Fergus just left to walk the new puppy, Leela, and I am ready for a nap. This body danced hard last night after a big Christmas feast. Lori Ann

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  12. Joseph Polaschek

    Laughter is what we failed to do when faced with the tiny, mad idea that we could be separate from God. So laughter brings the forgiveness of ourselves who never left home but concocted a dream-like state where we think we and others live. Laughter, expressed or simply lived, frees us from fear, the opposite of love, and opens us to enlightenment where everything is neutral and we bring “feelings” to it. In “living” our lives (we are not alive) accordingly, other animate or inanimate “forms” are healed or not. This is not our role in the dream-like state that the Ego makes real.

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    1. awarenessishere

      YES, I hear the ACIM in your words. Have you experienced the truth of the self beyond the dream like state that ego makes real? I ask only because ACIM was a pointer for me, for years….I am simply wondering. Thank you Joseph for sharing.

      Lori Ann

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      1. Joseph Polaschek

        So many words by many interested/interesting people. But the word you use, “pointer” is the key. In a lucid dream I was told “You are I Am.” I’ve based my life on “Gneothi Seauton” – “Know Thyself.” My self is “I Am.” This is just a pointer, like so many other words, e.g. awareness, consciousness. Have I “experienced the truth of the self beyond the dream-like state that the Ego makes real?” Perhaps my true Self that never left home is telling me I have experienced enlightenment. Or perhaps it is my ego hoping I will “know” or “believe” this non-experientally. A teacher once told me “You will know when you know.” All pointers. I experience my dream-like self as “enlightened” and accept only that. To the others I say life is NOT serious, regardless of the apparent circumstances. This “dream” never started and death, perhaps what many fear most, is the ultimate non-serious event. We do not have to “laugh” at the event outwardly, just know the laughter and do what is expected of us.
        Joseph

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  14. awarenessishere

    yes, well compassion could also have arisen, as noted in an above comment reply. That night, in some way, there was perfect storm arising….and the response of going to sleep was a bit like adding fuel to the fire, that then conflagurated the near break up. Yet that too was perfect. There is nothing that happens that should not happen, because the happening is not something this awareness argues with. Lisa Cairns (check her out on YouTube) makes the clever analogy of actors playing a character and then getting upset at what their character does or does not do in the story. Hello? It’s not the real you! When you disindentify from the character and return to the ground of being (the actor) it’s so clear that what is happening is not your life, but that you are life (and that is a Lisa quote, too, I think). In awareness, Lori Ann

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    1. Ginta Gaivenyte

      You say – There is nothing that happens that should not happen, because the happening is not something this awareness argues with.

      What is the connection between this happening and responsibility?

      Is there a sense of responsibility in awareness?

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      1. awarenessishere

        This is a juicy question. I will sit with it over my morning coffee because no answer arises in this now, where my puppy sleeps at my feet and my tummy is hungry for breakfast. Stay tuned…

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      2. awarenessishere

        There is only action here, or actionability….responsibility as understood by the mind, means control-ability, or fix-abilty or betterment-abilty…as if something is out of contro, broken or less-than.

        So Ginta…to respond is to simply be available to action or non action, in each moment, as it arises…I call that actionability. (not responsibility, which is often a mind program that has instructions for action). True RESPONSE abilty, is in the moment. This is ACTION that arises in the moment, as the moment unfolds…

        does this help?

        what did you mean, by responsibility? Did you mean duty?

        Lori Ann

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      3. Ginta Gaivenyte

        Thanks, Lori,

        Actionability – that is indeed very nice word. Much better than responsibility.
        And that what I meant – as you say, acting or non acting in each moment as it arises.

        But still I have a question – not only for you, for me as well – how to see if you act looking through the lenses of egoic habit or just seeing everything as it is?

        As I noticed, sometimes it happens that I only see how interestingly coloured glasses I weared when they are removed from my eyes. And then it is – aaaa, I really thought this is true, and this was the thought that created so much chaos. For example, I was totally sure that I need to be loved. And the trick is that I knew that the statement “I need love” is false, but I didn’t see how it is operating on subconscious level. And when once in a middle of discussion, being totally emotional – indeed, not very enlightened state -the words came through my mouth “But why don’t you love me”, it was a breakthrough. And it was beautiful, it was in the middle of the emotional turmoil, in the middle of being totally identified with emotions, and then it was – aaa, so I demand others to love me… That is so… And like a stone from my heart was removed immediately. Later I saw and still see this idea operating within me, but now it is much more often – maybe I could even say always noticed as false.

        Now I say – I am lucky that I don’t feel awareness. After awakening the first thought I saw was “I am not my thinking”. And I am grateful that it was not “I am awareness”, because when I see how people who are “awareness”, “just nothing”, “not identified”, “just witness” act, it’s – with all my respect for always perfect Universe – I say, oh, my God. Such indifference, such a lack of compassion – compared with all other egoic states, the most egoistic sinner is more compassionate than that “awareness”, because the most egoistic sinner knows very well how painful it is to be hurt. Here I also speak about my own experience – nevertheless the thought “I am not my thinking” is more healthy than the thought “I am awareness”, but somehow the mind managed to transform even this thought into the thought “I know I am not my thinking” – and that led me to passionate hunting of my ideas, trying to clear my and other people’s mind, being cruel with myself and others, feeling worthless, hoping for big big big final enlightenment experience that I could at last complete my enlightened self image and feel well. But now I am sure – I would not come out of this ego game, untill I wouldn’t be flatten with the ground, until I will lose all the hope that one day I will be something special – no matter how good idea it might be.

        And thank you for Adyashanti – I saw his name in your blog, and now, as I listened to his recordings, he turned all my (human and personal) life upside down. And the thought that hit me most was – it’s not about feeling well, it’s about truth whatever happens. And it was – oh, really, I was just wanting to feel well, all was about just feeling well…

        And these days it happens that I find myself writing e-mails to people I didn;’t saw for years, but a long time ago I did something that hurt them – and I find myself simply writing “sorry”. No justifications that it happened as it had to happen, also no blaming that I am guilty for something, just – sorry. Not waiting for an answer – just sorry, and it’s the feeling that immediately you can breath more easily.
        Saying sorry also happens – sooner or later.
        And that can be called grace.

        So Merry Christmas to you. Christ in you is already born, but there will be a nice story before the final crucifixion. Enjoy it.

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      4. awarenessishere

        You asked; “But still I have a question – not only for you, for me as well – how to see if you act looking through the lenses of egoic habit or just seeing everything as it is?”
        My answer is this: Where is eogic habit when the ego itself has been seen through? There is nothing here that I know as “self” in the sense that it is clear I am no self, and from that no-thing-ness that gives rises to all things, I am simpy being lived. The words are hard to express, Ginta. It’s a deep implicit knowing, trusting, seeing that all is unfolding as it is, perfectly. There is nothing to filter, censor, do or fix. There is no wrong, or right. There just is “what is happening.” I have seen actionability look like cruetly or harm….there is compassion here. And there is not idiot compassion here. hugs, Lori Ann

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    2. Sailor

      Lori Ann
      Your reply reminds me of “The very circumstance our suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, love entertains an angle unawares”. Thanks for your sharing. It’s very helpful.
      Merry Christmas.

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  15. Brook Bartlett

    love it. you helped the other a great deal in that moment. there is nothing that could have been more healing and pure a response to pyschological (oh crap I still can’t spell the p word) suffering of the non-emergency variety. (not that you did it for that reason, but, like, way to go : )

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  16. Timary

    Thanks so much for sharing your insights. But what about physical pain? What is the awakened perspective on that? Is that also something no longer ‘serious’?

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    1. awarenessishere

      Pain is pain. It is neither serious nor not-serious. It is a physiologic reality of the body. To make it serious, is a choice to invest in the pain that added layer of thought–this is wrong, bad, unbearable, serious pain! I have pain right now, in my right hip, that has been there for two months or more. It might be soft tissue or it might be joint pain. That aside, the pain arises. The pain subsides. The pain arises. What is not here is thought about the pain. Or feeling about the pain. (boo hoo, poor me!). So to answer your question, serious is in the mind of the beholder.

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      2. Ginta Gaivenyte

        Who asks what is correct or incorrect?

        From awareness point of view everything is correct, but…

        There is a zen kongan. Man comes to the temple, lights a cigarette and drops ashes on Buddha statue. He laughs – why not, I am free, I am Buddha, everything is Buddha. Then the monk comes in the hall, sees the situation.
        What would you do in that monk’s place?

        What I see in my case – and in my case laughter happens very often, that sometimes it is spontaneous, and sometimes mind does a trick and laughter prevents me from facing the fear. Maybe not the fear of death, the fear of living – living not as a perfect awareness, but as an ordinary sinful human being also.

        Do you see how the mind begins to play with you?

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      3. awarenessishere

        Hello Ginta. What arose was the questions above, “what is correct and who decides.”. The question appeared while sitting with your comment “Are you sure it is correct action to laugh..”

        I might also have replied “who is the you that you are addressing?” And then it becomes a funny ! exercise like a dog chasing it’s tail, to determine who is on first. Haha.

        Thanks for your playful feedback. I will say that in the end that the mind will always play. And awareness will always witness.

        Hugs

        Lori Ann

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  18. Suki

    Life is too serious to be serious. It’s funny though, how there can be anything at all. How there can be such a ‘thing’ as seriousness(smiling)…at the heart of THIS, all is just happening. I don’t know what is happening, but some thing is happening, whatever that happens to be this moment is what is.
    Best of the season to you – Suki

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  20. Ann

    Love your comments on enlightenment, my view is slightly different yet similar – if my partner required my attention at midnight, due to his being caught up in seriousness my compassion would have me up and making us both a cup of tea so I could lend an ear and hopefully assist. I know it’s up to us to choose fun or misery…. my fun is to ‘be there’ for my partner in life (as he has for me). Interesting how each individual see’s life so differently, I enjoy the process muchly, and respect all our many variations on choices. No right or wrong in the matter, just choice.

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    1. awarenessishere

      Hi Ann. Compassion arises here too. Every moment is fresh and what arises, arises. Sometimes it would be the choice to stay up and talk, for sure. This arising was to sleep! From here, there is no “I” that prefers to “be there” or to “not be there.” What might seem odd to some, is that I am being lived, or life is living and I am here, or …there is not a good language for the no-self as it experiences each moment unfolding.

      What I might ask, in curiousity, is this: What does this assistance look like (that you would offer your partner), from where you sit?

      in awareness,

      Lori Ann

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      1. awarenessishere

        Hi again Ginta. I just saw this question now. Correct and incorrect are idea-thoughts. They exist in the mind. Problems exist only in the mind. Serious is a thought-idea that exists, in the mind. Free and awareness are descriptors of beingness, and free is a quality of true nature. The relative and the Absolute are what the pointing is here. From the mind, problems, serious, correct, incorrect are real. From awareness point of view, this selfless self from which all arises, including the relative mind, using words like “nothing is” and “everything is” serious is just a game. Leela unfolding. I like Rumi here, who teases us to realize the non-dual, “beyond wrong doing and right doing is a field. I will meet you there.” Of course, the mind cannot meet him there, though it can grasp the IDEA of meeting in a place of non-duality. Lori Ann

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