The Joy of Not Knowing, by Ludvig

The day started intensely, waking up in a sweat after a long series of dreams. I often find myself going to sleep within a dream, and a new dream will start, one level down just like in the movie Inception. I was two levels down when I found myself on a very narrow ridge, heading towards a huge black mountain that was standing in an ocean of volcanic lava. I felt that I was to crawl across the ridge to something that was waiting for me further ahead, but I slipped off the edge and fell down towards the lava. I then woke up in a dark room (where I had gone to sleep earlier within the first dream level), and it felt like I was vomiting out the “fumes of hell”, all the horror passing through my awareness in a very visceral way. I thought “this is finally it – it is all coming out now! I’m finally going to allow all of this darkness to pass through me!”. But as the pain and terror increased, I found I could no longer bear it. I started screaming, and soon woke up again in my bed at the Living Miracles community in Spain. As I was trying to adjust to this seeming reality, I experienced a clear knowing that everything I ever experienced in this “life” was equally unreal, and every person that came into my mind seemed to be a 2-dimensional image, without depth. And I was aware that 99% of the time, no matter how much my intellect thinks it understands the metaphysics, I am acting as if all of this is very real. Confusion and loneliness was present in me. The thought “I want to talk to Frances about this” was followed by an immediate seeing that Frances was just another one of those 2-dimensional figures.

The sound of Sam snoring was somehow comforting. I heard sounds from the kitchen, and I found myself getting out of bed, putting on clothes and walking out. Petra was there, moving stuff around. I didn’t really understand anything that was happening, and I followed the motions of this body (Ludvig’s) while it was making a cup of tea. I went outside. The sun was just about to rise. Sitting on a plastic chair by the pool, I remembered that I had several times expressed the desire to get down to the roots of the darkness, since I felt that trying to sort out the surface details of the different upsets didn’t really make anything shift for me. During the days here in the community, my mind is occupied with thoughts most of the time, and even during meditations and expression-sessions it feels like it is rarely still enough to allow the deeper emotions to surface in awareness. But in my dreams at night, every now and then I encounter this deep agony, fear, anger, desolation, and usually the experience will climax and I find myself trying to “get out of it”. I was thinking that it is probably the same unwillingness to experience these emotions that gives energy to the mindwandering during the days – its just a more subtle version of the same mechanism in the mind, to avoid that experience of feeling the agony of the split mind.

I talked to Frances and felt encouraged to keep going. I noticed that this encouragement was already present deep within me, and it was just confirmed or reflected by Frances’ words and presence. I trust her. Later in the day I found myself in the garden together with Craig, and followed an inspiration to inquire about his thoughts and feelings around the idea of death and dying. In the conversation that followed, it was clearly felt that there was lots of mirroring going on, and it felt nice to me to have the sense that we are all on the same journey – together. During lunch I started expressing about some kind of emotional shut-down that seemed to be related to being in the proximity of Ursula, but as I continued expressing it changed into a general sense of using the personality as an armor to shield myself from anyone coming too close. I felt stupid about expressing and shame was passing through. I noticed that something was gently burning in my heart, a very pleasant sensation that I notice more and more often lately. In the afternoon meditation I felt how the burning intensified as I was experiencing a spontaneous letting go into this inner fire. Thoughts came and sometimes I went away with them, then coming back to the burn. It is at times more like a glow, at other times more like a fire.

After meditation, just about to head out for a dip in the pool, I found myself in light conversation with Sam about what seems to be choices of following different paths or teachers, and I said something like “all I know is that I am really happy to be here”, feeling a warm openness within, whereupon Sam said “yes, but where are you exactly?”. I thought about it. “On my way to the pool” was the reply as small bursts of laughter were pouring through the body, feeling that something had suddenly popped open, seemingly from this question. The inner laughter intensified as Sam suggested that I should ponder that question while being in the pool.  “Where am I?” – what a mystery! None of the “normal” answers seemed to be applicable. The laughter was bubbling continuously within me, and I found myself giggling in the pool, attempting to share the experience with the others who were present, but by their somewhat puzzled faces I gathered that what I experienced was probably just for me and could not really be explained anyway. I didn’t understand it myself, but somehow the feeling that I had no idea where I was was absolutely delightful. The giggling went on a while, and I found myself speaking quite freely about my experience without anybody really seeming to respond to it, but that didn’t matter so much. I noticed how I was supremely happy for no apparent reason. And I didn’t even figure anything out at all! I still had no clue about what had happened during the night and day, no real understanding of anything in my mind – no great revelation had occurred. I was just so happy. I noticed that some part of me was quite surprised and mildly insulted at the fact that its understanding of anything apparently wasn’t necessary at all for the experience of profound happiness to be present. But I didn’t care much about that and instead just noticed how easy it was to let that state of mind unfold and express, all by itself.