Coherence & Return

Part III of Oholomo's spiritual journey.

A record of spontaneous outpourings written from 2023-24. In the wake of the revelations previously described, this collection primarily focuses on the integration of emptiness and divinity, or of spirit and soul, or the Above and Below, back into the Middle. This, to me, is the deepest non-dual lesson of all: the realization that, simultaneously, nothing is real and everything in the world is deeply sacred.

I.

I am not here to become a Buddha, to achieve some kind of enlightenment that will transcend the world. I want to be awake here in daily life, not to wake up from it. If you can see that all dharmas are empty, then why not fully participate in and enjoy their passionate dance?

II.

The senses open up, revealing expansive spaciousness. The world arises and passes away, buzzing energies blending into emptiness.

The heart yearns to connect and engage. Waves of compassion, joy, and grief reverberating with a poignancy and intimacy never before imagined.

The gripping in your gut lets go, and down you fall into the surging, out-of-control river of life. To your surprise you learn you have a soul, and are astonished at its fathomless depths.

Awakening of head, heart, and hara. Opening, connecting, and deepening….
the never-ending dance of the Goddess.

III.

Awakening of the head is realizing you are the space in which all phenomena arises.

Awakening of the heart is realizing that you cherish and have gratitude for all phenomena.

Awakening of the hara is realizing that all phenomena are divine, and are inseparable from the divinity that you are.

Metaphorically and energetically, my head is immersed in the emptiness and transiency of all phenomena. From here, I see and hear the emptiness of all phenomena through the senses. My chest area, on the other hand, is all about connection. That’s the location from which I am intimate with all phenomena — which I collectively call “the Goddess” so that I can engage in a passionate love affair with all of it. Then below that, in the belly area, there’s a portal to the dark depths, an underworld teeming with power animals, spirits, ancestors, and other ghostly figures. Here, the earthiness of my fleshly body merges with the stirrings of something deeply powerful, resonant, mysterious, beautiful, and poignant.

Truth and Love and Soul.

IV.

Long after the final revelation, everything is exquisitely simple. No angels or demons. No waves of transcendent bliss. Just spontaneous perfection.

Just the sound of my shoes as I walk in the night. A bird fluttering. A thought. A feeling. A drop of rain on my forearm.

Just as it is and nothing more.

Yet, this is enough. This sacred world, just as it is, is always enough.

V.

There’s no subject or perceiver behind perception. And there is no inside/outside or here/there either.

When I listen to a sound, there’s no “I” doing any listening; just sound appearing. There’s no “I” that is experiencing; just nature happening. Birds flying, dogs barking, feelings of feet on the ground, thoughts. These all arise together, everywhere but nowhere in specific. I don’t try to adjust the flow of phenomena in any way. Things just flow, beautifully perfect, of their own accord. It’s all divinely glorious and entirely ordinary. No need to attach to, change, or identify with any of it.

If I invite any of those particular phenomena to become more predominant, they’re unfindable. All perceptions or objects are unpindownable. What I used to think of as “paying attention to a sound” is more like “inviting the sound phenomenon to become more predominant.” When I do that, the sound is there, but also completely unlocatable. Each instant of sound appears to be made out fizzy champagne bubbles. They are ethereal and sparkling, and they pop before I can actually hear them. If I sit still with that experience for a little bit, the fizz merges with the fizz of “vision” and “body sensation.” They merge into a whole synesthetic field of buzzing sensations that’s neither here nor there but also everywhere. Entirely present but entirely unapprehendable.

This flow of experience is also completely intertwined with the way of seeing it, so that the latter influences the former and vice versa. I turn the whole universe into a starry galaxy or a heavenly realm just by perceiving it that way. I invite the Goddess to shine, and her radiance is like sun rays everywhere. Everything is lit from within with an aura of beauty and poignancy. Everything is seen to be her divine dance. Saying “divine dance” is a way of talking about and engaging with the impermanent, empty, nonsubstantial world of phenomena in a way that honors, loves, and takes joy in it but it does not reify or essentialize it. Ultimately, the Goddess in all of her splendor is also empty and nonarising.

At first this was so stunningly beautiful that I was literally overwhelmed by it. However, seeing things this way has become quite “normal.” After years of mystical experiences, big openings, and disorienting perceptual and energetic shifts, it’s now just all become super ordinary. It’s kind of like pre-awakening, minus all the identification and resistance and trouble, and minus that gripping feeling in my core that kept everything I used to do based in fear. Everything is ordinary, but beautiful and flowing and perfectly ok just as it is.

VI.

I have no path, no teacher, no system, no maps, no doctrine. My practice cannot be a model for anyone else, and if I describe it it won’t make sense to anyone but me. I really don’t have any idea how or why it unfolded the way it did, and it hasn’t been a coherent particular method.

I have had a series of mystical experiences that happened for unknown reasons. It would be completely destabilizing at first, and I would have no idea what’s going on. But the mystical experience itself would show me what to practice. When the self dropped out, I investigated the lack of self. When the body dissolved into energy, I investigated the flows of energy. When the Goddess appeared, I investigated how to interact with her. So forth and so on, following, investigating, and engaging with whatever was happening.

Along the way, I would research spiritual stuff and practices that sounded kind of like what was happening to me, maybe take a few practice tips from that. At one point, I thought Headless Way was really useful, then Joan Tollifson, Peter Brown, Awakening to Reality, Rob Burbea’s “Soulmaking Dharma,” John Prendergast, Mary Shutan on shamanism, Reggie Ray, the Radiance Sutras. Each one was helpful for a time but not a system I fully accepted. Some helped me to clear the subject, others to clear the object, others to see that both are empty. Some helped me with re-engagement and re-enchantment, others to tap further into love and bliss and joy and a sense of divinity.

These have all been stepping stones, and I have jumped from one to the next without committing to any. My main commitment was always following closely what was being revealed in the present moment, and never settling for anything being a final resting point. I’m not considering the current situation to be a final resting point, either. The unfolding is never-ending.

VII.

Awareness, consciousness, and mind are all reifications of what’s going on. I might use these terms or others like “field of perception,” “energy,” and “flow of phenomena” for convenience, but I know that these are not substantial essences. There’s just what is happening right now, but these aren’t even really there since everything is like a bubble that pops before you can apprehend it.

The cosmos blips in, and everything is completely fresh and brand new in that moment. The notion that I was there the moment before, or that awareness was there, or that anything was there a nanosecond before, or that there’s continuity across time is all just thoughts.

The blips move at lightning speed, and reality is pulverized into minute particles or little fizzy bubbles that arise and pass so quickly that they are never stable and have no substantiality. There’s no time for thought—or rather, any thought that arises is its own blip, just as unpindownable as the rest.

If I spoke about it from the perspective of a reified subject, I’d say “I’m aware of the flow of these bubbles,” or “consciousness consists of a series of mind-moments,” or what have you. But, to speak directly from the perspective of the current blip that just arose exactly this moment, all these words like awareness or consciousness or mind or witnessing are reifications. There aren’t two things — awareness and what’s being perceived — there’s just an unstable, out-of-focus perception that flashed too fast to even say it ever arose in the first place.

In fact, from this perspective, there’s nothing I can really say about reality whatsoever, because those bubbles are all too much of a blur to be pinned down to any specific thing. Reality itself is a dream-like mirage that never actually arises. From here, whatever comes and goes is all ok because none of it is really real or substantial.

I see reality blipping in and out most clearly when walking quietly by myself as well. In daily life, I forget to pay attention to them for hours at a time, while I’m at work or with the kids or on zoom with friends. However, I conceptually know it’s how reality is working even when I’m not noticing the details, because it’s always how things are working whenever I choose to stop and check.

Once I really knew solidly that reality was just insubstantial emptiness like this, the blipiness of reality isn’t my most pressing concern.

VIII.

I’ve heard people say that you should stabilize so that you’re permanently walking around in a state of total presence. To me, that seemed like a desirable goal for a while, but then I saw that “presence” is just another form of selfing. I realized that “awareness of the present moment” is just another arising phenomenon I’d been clinging to.

Thoughts come and goes as much as any other perceptual phenomena. Thoughts are no more or less of a worry than sounds. Some are loud, some are subtle, they’re always seemingly flowing, but they’re never really there. They are nothing to hold on to, but nothing to run away from either. Even if they dance around in the mind for a little while, and we pay attention to thoughts instead of other phenomena, that doesn’t hurt us or harm us in any way.

The dance of thoughts is part of the Goddess’s mysterious and unpindownable dance — an outpouring of energy and love bubbling up, to be celebrated and enjoyed and let go of. None of it is a problem, just part of the ever-changing miraculous display.

IX.

After objects have been completely seen through, becoming thoroughly empty and non-arising; after the subject is seen through, becoming completely devoid of any observing awareness, presence, or I; after the background has dissolved and then been seen through so that there’s no ground of being or field or permanence anywhere; after all of one’s karma produced in this life and all others has been fully resolved and one’s relationship to all beings has been fully rectified; after one has been the creator of the universe and has acquired a body of light… after all of that has stabilized and integrated, it seems that all the realizations then fall away and life becomes completely and utterly “normal” again.

In hindsight, the whole awakening process seems like a dream or a story that is barely remembered anymore. None of it matters anymore in the slightest. None of the insights can be found anymore. None of the philosophies or phenomenological descriptions that were previously so important are the least bit interesting. Life seems to happen somehow, but who could say how or why, and who cares anyway? The only active impulse seems to be compassionately trying to help others, without attachment to outcomes, but even that just happens automatically. Life living itself without need for or possibility of any piece splitting off to monitor, tinker with, or even observe the rest. Perfectly, utterly ordinary.

After years and years of the most profound insights, realizations, and spiritual experiences imaginable, there’s a return to utter and complete normalcy, with no interest in spirituality or any possibility of calling up states or experiences that previously were so important. There’s barely even a memory of what it all was like.

Mountains really are just mountains again. Just a simple, humble, compassionate, normal human life with no specialness or other spiritual bells and whistles.