The death of ‘the one who wants to be loved’

As I experience death of illusion, to wake to what is truly here, or not here as may be the case, it seems that at times gaps can show up between certain people and myself. It’s not really true that this is happening, of course. There is no literal gap. In fact the opposite is experienced. But it does seem as through there is turning away/turning to that naturally occurs, I might just call it “a movement”.  This can be experienced effortlessly, and feel expansive, or it can feel the opposite when there are still some loose identity issues playing around. I have experienced the first many times. But this time it didn’t feel expansive, it felt horrible. Someone had turned away from me, and my deficient self was quite busy creating stories! The identity threatened was ‘the one who wants to be loved’, and she was having a field day as she perceived what was a natural flow of movement as threatening. In fact, the sister/opposite identity was in full grieving mode: ‘the one who was unloved’ had grown to enormous sizes, and had full proof of her victimhood!   ‘The one who (so desperately!) wants to be loved’ was so threatened, that she perceived other’s movements and my own corresponding sensations and reactions as threatening and painful. But are other’s movements really threatening? Are sensations and thoughts actually threatening? What is being threatened? ‘The one who wants to be loved’ was slowly dying, falling into complete emptiness. That’s what my creature was slinking towards, and here is a tiny snapshot of that unfolding: I feel a turning away, and I put words to it. I notice the separation, and because of some remaining conditioning/deficiency stories, I am drawn back in. I feel that sense of separation that sometimes comes with a turning away, from certain “movements”, and I try to make something of it most desperately because I am left with a sense of fear. Ultimately, I fear the upcoming death that is lingering on my doorstep. And instead of just sitting with that fear, letting it wash over me to the core, I attempt to evade it, because it feels threatening. I frantically try to think it away, and there is the meaning making machine taking trying to take over. Some call it ego, or the brain, or the left-brain. I’m not sure about any of that, really, so I call it the meaning making machines- that part of me that so wants to make sense of things!  The meaning making machine isn’t interested in sitting in what’s here, but is instead interested in trying to mentally understand things. As such, I am distracted from truth, from my path, and from freedom, as she encouraging me to wallow in the depths of separation. For a while, I experience extreme vacillations:  the meaning making machine doing it’s thing, then sitting in sensations and bodily energy that arise with the thoughts and images. Then back to the thoughts and images that seem to spring from the sensations. Then back to sitting in the sensations. Then bam, more thoughts and stories (rather convincing too, I might add!) arise. The meaning making machines attempts to take hold over and over. I return again and again to inquiry and sitting with the raw sensations. This goes on for awhile.   When I finally give myself over to the rawness of the energy, there is a release, and resistance fades. Death is here.  There’s really only ever movement and flow, and with the meaning-making machine taking a break, that becomes my embodied experience once again. All I am left with are sensations are in the body, with energy.  In moments, tightness is a word I might use to describe it. Or maybe something called heartache. But the labels no longer hold meaning, and I find myself lost in that raw sensation that reside underneath the labels. When I do that, when I become lost in now, everything changes, and yet funny enough, nothing at all.   The grasping stops, acceptance comes in. Spaciousness is here. Uncertain expansiveness. Curiosity and wonder, with gratitude mixed in. Vibrations of confusion and smidgens of fear linger gently in that expansive unknowing, letting me know that integration is occurring. No threat is found, and neither is the one who wants to be loved or the one who is unloved. Even the phrase “turning way” has lost meaning. I’d say it feels peaceful, but it doesn’t quite because that is a word whose meaning I don’t know anyway.