Friends and Questions

Just got back from a nice walk with kpio and his dog opsbi.

Just prior to the walk, I was in the tub, watching the ebb and flow of awareness, and being in touch with what I AM.

Interesting, though, to watch what happens when I engage with others. In this case, my I AM disappeared to the background, and the little i am came into the foreground. In this case, 'i am' was:

Intellectually engaged
Wanting to be accepted
Narrowly focused
Contracting
Questioning what I thought i was

Some fear there too. Moving from a place where I know where I am am and where I am coming from to questioning some of that, while I was in the small place.

Hard to put into words.

I am moving out of a self-constricted space that has dominated me for the last 10 years or more, where I was anti-social, contracted, waiting for the SOMETHING the becoming, at whatever level, that would let me engage in social circles from years naught that otherwise frightened me with their legacy and pain. How could I go meet high school friends when I wasn't? Wasn't: musically, personally, or creatively 'there' yet?

And yet, realizing non-dually where I have been along, it was easier, cognitively - let's make that no effort at all - to think of getting together with friends from the past. Realizing that there is no separation, the gap in which fear resided disappeared.

And so, I got together for coffee and a walk. And yet I constricted. Still have a bit of it in the pit of my stomach....

What it was was a piece of me, connecting with him.

As our dialogue went beyond people and memories from the past into pure ideas - Gladwell; change being an absolute; anthropology and population control - the small I dissolved into the idea space. But still limited, looking back in retrospect.

The big I awareness is:

boundary-less
without second
without image
without constriction
without contraction
without small I

And then, the paradox...that out of THAT which can be better described using negatives (not this, not that - like drawing a chair just by outlining the space around the chair that is NOT the chair), everything arises.

THAT cannot be discretely articulated, but can be experienced.

Even that's not accurate. It cannot BE experienced, that would denote going from here to there. It IS experience.

So thanks kpio. The fear and contraction, albeit a day later (this post being finished 24 hours after I started it) help point me back to THAT.

Subject.

namaste