What happens when you bring a bottom feeding fish up to the surface? They kind of explode, in slow motion. Their guts and eyeballs all bulge out of their face, it’s pretty wild. Their bodies are used to a much higher-pressure, high-density environment and they begin to dis-integrate a bit as they come up into the rarefied atmosphere of the human.

So, what happens when you give a human a taste of infinity?

The identity is all-of-a-sudden no longer the centering, orienting force it once was and this can be as much freeing as disorienting. When you once grock the fundamental meaninglessness of existence, and the fundamental nonexistence of your own identity, where do you draw your motivation from? How do you make decisions when there’s no orienting reason to choose anything in particular?

You realize that you do still wanna eat, sleep well, and avoid unnecessary difficulty, but these become mere inconveniences in the face of unlimited suchness, related to the strange phenomenon of having a physical body.

Life can kind of start to explode in slow motion when exposed to the vacuum of eternity.

An idea I am toying with right now, and which has support in various ‘mainstream’ (not really) teachings is the idea that full Integration comes before the boundary line of Realization on any map of consciousness. Integration is like the bottleneck which one must pass through before stepping off of the ledge and into infinity. Far from being constrictive, however, Integration mans that all parts of one’s personality are fully seen and accepted. They are fused together into a cohesive whole.

The idea that the mask has to eventually come off is a good one, but there’s a bit of nuance missing. It’s really the stage makeup, the glue between your true face and the mask that dissolves. The mask is not discarded. It is the attachment, the identification with the mask, that disappears when one realizes their true self. The mask, in order to withstand this un-sticking, needs to be integrated. It needs to be fully cured, dry, hardened, not going to break apart as it is freed, as it is exposed to a rarefied atmosphere. This is because you’re going to have to put it back on again after the whole thing is done and over. You want a strong mask.

So, if you’re feeling a bit lost and confused, unmotivated and awash and this is disagreeable to you. Put full integration as your goal. Instead of continuing to pursue infinity and the release of identity, pursue instead the full integration of your identity. Full, unflinching focus and presence right now. Attention without restriction. Full self-acceptance. Full articulation of who you are as a human being with all the experiences, learning moments, and relationships you have gained along the way right there to inform who you are.

Then your desires come back online. What you want outta life, it’s different from who you were a year, five, ten years ago, but it’s right there.

Another way, if you can pull this off, is to fully open your heart. The truth is that your heart actually knows exactly what it wants. It doesn’t have desires in the same way that the identity mask does, but it does aspire to things. It knows and directs action in perfect ways. Allow it to speak.

There, you’re on your way 🙂 No need to hurry or rush. Just be. One day, when you’re ready, and not a moment before -poof- the mask will drop off and you’ll be totally free. Until then, no worries mon. Ya know?