Ram Dass Now

I don’t know how long these changes will last. If they are something you come back from. It doesn’t feel like it now. Can’t go back to human once vampire. No more caterpillar, eh moth? Further. That’s the course of this transformation.

Who can say when it started? If you want to bake a yogini from scratch, first you have to create the Universe.

Parts are dying away. Some parts are not going quietly. Others are already gone, gently dispersed. The peace that buzzes within keeps me from going completely crazy. From being admitted to the mental hospital with the rest of the boys who’ve seen the light. I’m more likely to freak out and melt-down at life circumstances, not the fact that I’m shifting into unfamiliar territory. It is, in fact, the life circumstances that provide the grist for this proverbial mill of awakening.

MAGIC THEATRE

FOR MADMEN ONLY

PRICE OF ADMISSION

YOUR

MIND

(see p. 102)

Take it. I know I have no choice. It’s a sweet way to live, not having to make choices. I mean, instead the information is obvious to me when it needs to be. The only choice I have to make is to wake up, moment to moment. But am I even choosing that?

All grace. All grace.

It’s a trippy life. But this is how it is for me. I wouldn’t change it, even though people are dropping away because I really only want that satsang, and even then, only on the fringe. And really only those who are going where I’m going, and no one really can go where another must go (“That path is for your steps alone.” Right Blake? Right Zach? Right Jerry?)

I’m in an interesting position where I’ve just had a massive love-infusion ~ that continues in my heart and via Skype ~ all occurring during this massive tuck-in I’ve been doing over the last several months. I feel loved and supported greatly from the Universe and feel very little need or desire for human interaction. Well, maybe little desire is the best way to explain that. I do feel craving for it at times, but I just can’t bear the small talk. And I’m not speaking the same language as most people I know right now. As most people, across the board, I’d say.

It’s one of the things I love about my mate. He doesn’t stir my mind up with head-spinny chatter, dramatic or otherwise. We just get to be. I can carry on with my shape-shifting, he can carry on with his zombies, and we’ll meet on the couch at ten for the next disc of The Wire. He gives me love and support all the while contributing to a grounded stillness in my being. And I don’t really have to talk to anyone else.

I’m grateful for the cocoon.

Remember the days of travel before cell phones, internet, email, Facebook? One could head out on a journey, a pilgrimage, and not be in touch all that much. Liberation! I realize even as I type this that the sense of not being liberated to go out-of-touch is as much a false construct as anything else.

Does it require a gentle apology? Friends? Family? I don’t know what to say because I feel that I don’t know how to put it in language — verbal or otherwise.  I’m just doing something different right now. The hero’s journey is always a solo one. I don’t use that language to dramatize, only to draw the metaphor. We all have our version of it. And once the seed has been planted . . . you don’t have any choice! (p. 101)

You gotta die to be born. (p. 98)

Parts fall away. Into the nothingness out of which they arise. The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

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By the time you read this I won’t be here now. Was I ever here? Or are these words just appearing on the screen in front of you? Did anyone really write them or are they all simply arising in your consciousness in front of you right now?

Right now it seems as if my fingers are hitting warm, plastic keys, sometimes my finger tips, other times my finger nails. My boyfriend’s sitting next to me and I’m seeing the movie “Knocked Up” for the second time today.

I played it early this afternoon and fell asleep on the couch. I needed it.

Last night I had a bad dream. And it ran well into the morning. I had about seven hours of what appeared to be food poisoning and the experience was just how I’d heard it described. You feel like you’re dying – or like you want to die.

I lay in a stupor wherever I could, spending a lot of time on the rugs on the bathroom floor, pulling them together so my body wasn’t burned by the cold tile. I could barely stand and could barely stay in one place, just uncomfortable everywhere and at the same time totally exhausted and needing to sleep. And just praying that the next shit or puke would be the one that would relieve the monster in my stomach.

It was weird.

And eventually I did have that moment when the relentless feverish scraping- my-belly-from-within relented. Annica. Changing, changing, changing.

But, man, when I was in the middle of it, I only reached for the word “equanimous” [sic] once, and it flew away so quickly, I didn’t bother again. I was just tripping out and needing relief.

I heard Eckhart Tolle say today, “Why make another problem and say that you should let go of desire?” Yo.

My fear was not that I would die, but that the brutal tummy ache would go on and on. Death is surely more chill than food poisoning.

So, now, did that happen now? It’s not happening now. (Though the girl in the movie just threw up in the trashcan – pregnancy, not food poisoning.) Oy.

Why am I talking about puke?

This is just what’s up for me right now. I don’t feel the need to dig deep into a spiritual conversation because they are not separate from the experience of typing these letters (am I actually typing letters?) or throwing up or begging God for relief or masturbating or snoring.

I’m not sorry for the vomiting. It didn’t surprise me at all. Lying on the bathroom floor I thought about last week’s vampires and the “sickly and painful process” of transformation they go through. And then, after all that purging, we are clearer.

It’s been quite the day, week, month. (Did any of that actually happen? Did I write these words, or are they arising right now in your consciousness?)

Too tired to say much. Just lovin you and chillin out this evening. May the moments you read this . . . well, how are they?

For more writing from Carin (aka Carina ShantiOm), please visit www.nowstayopen.com