In the construct of time – some years ago – it all shifted. Not that this has been a single event nor had it a beginning and was evolving. It was not something you would imagine or expect it to be in such a context. Not like that. Because the idea of this shift – that some might call “enlightenment”, or less charged with meaning “awakening” – is usually associated with something “positive”, like liberation, or self-realization.
I never felt “not awake”, but I found growing up in/as this human lifeform with all its programming through trauma and cultural conditioning quite demanding. I rather strived for numbness and intoxication, but actually, there’s no way to numb aliveness. Aliveness can take the form of numbness, and it can be intoxicating. It has manifold appearances.
During my life, I’ve been open to a lot of ideas what life might be about, who am I or am not. Where I did come from, where I do belong to. I had this lifelong longing to find “my tribe”, and this longing was just amplifying my feelings of aloneness, of not belonging. Realizing, that the gap between “me” and “the other” can never be bridged, even when concepts and beliefs, about “reality”, are mutually shared. The void cannot be filled through concept and projection. Ultimately, we remain unknown to each other.
When the shift happened, I found myself in what some call a “full-blown Kundalini awakening”. My ideas of this “event” have been about turning into this otherworldly being, that transcends all of its worldly attachments, including this body. Bliss and satori and divine union. Shiva and Shakti.
And actually, I have been showered in bliss, again and again. But I also drowned in an abyss that felt like annihilation. “I” and “this body”. Instead of transforming into a radiant, gracious fairy, my body developed severely disabling symptoms, that have eventually been diagnosed as an “incurable disease”.
Now there I was, part of “me” in satori, but the vessel apparently broken. My spiritual beliefs and concepts were shattered, wiped out like a sandcastle being swallowed by a devastating ocean wave. I haven’t fully recovered yet, neither from satori nor from disability.
“Enlightenment” didn’t take “me” into that other, higher dimension, not to the promised land, not to nirvana, there was no ascension. It was rather sober and clear, where the glitter became seen for what it is. And it is raw. Sublime. Aliveness became raw. Not that it had been any different “before”, but in its rawness I often couldn’t recognize its pure and bewildering vibrancy. I wanted to have aliveness beautiful, exciting, uplifting. Aliveness had to be healthy and happy. Full of power and radiance. Aliveness was the opposite of grief, sadness, anger, fear, war, illness, decay, suffering, death. I wanted it to be a neverending spring and summer, a forever conserved blooming, a neverending love and light story. Immortal.
And then in my own lived experience, I realized how the lifeforce is unattached to any appearance. How it is any appearance, without preference, without judgment. It is just what it is, no matter how it is named, labeled, boxed.
There’s no struggle with what is anymore, no desire for anything to be different or better than it is. And whenever it is there, then this is what is.
Aliveness is not exclusive. It is in and as all.
