The Softening of Time

Responsibility, Reactivity, and Embodied Nonduality

Who is holding the responsibility of this?

> I am!

Who are you?

> I am Time.

Do you know that you're a construct? That you don't exist?

> What do you mean? I am as real as you are!

Yes, exactly, we co-arise, here, now, together...

> Ohh...(a softening) So, I don't need to do anything to exist?!

Yes, that's right, no reification required.

> Oh, I simply AM.

Yes, exactly.

> Oh what a relief...(big sigh)...nothing is needed…

Yes, nothing is needed. So simple right?

> …(I’m gone)...

...and from there, the release of the aspect was total. Internally I heard a quiet "I'm gone" as the aspect recognized the no-thingness completely. And the contraction it was holding in the bodymind is also gone.

The above is a transcript of an exchange I encountered in direct experience this morning. It came after I experienced the arising of reactivity and contraction in my system a couple of days ago, which is increasingly rare. So, when it happens, I pay attention.

Over the past year or so, the unwinding in the bodymind here has been largely around themes related to responsibility. As the point of reference or a central sense of a “me” has deeply unwound, so too have the habits related to responsibility as a compulsive behavior or orientation at the root of the sense of existence. 

In other words there’s been a shift from responsibility to simple responsiveness. Put simply, responsiveness is when what is needed co-arises with the moment of need. This is how reality functions when we get out of the way and don’t argue with it.

I actually wrote about this topic in my Master’s thesis more than 12 years ago. (And I actually published it on Medium in 2018, though without the full richness of the footnotes and textual organization, if you happen to be interested in reading it.)

This doesn’t mean I’ve become irresponsible, it means that I’m increasingly in right relationship with responsibility and responsiveness because it is no longer coming from any sense of internal contraction or separation. What’s here instead is just openness, emptiness, no-thingness. You could call it more like trust, however even that dissolves at a certain point too.

After processes of realization habits continue until they’ve fully unwound - this is how liberation stabilizes - and in this case the habits flare around the particular theme of responsibility. 

When I experienced this habit flare, I sat down in direct inquiry, as you see in the transcript above, and in doing so this aspect effortlessly released. There was no doing here, no effort, and not trying to get somewhere, just direct inquiry into experience. The contraction is utterly gone because it actually had no substance whatsoever to begin with, just the habit of holding in the bodymind that came from the identification. Sometimes this identification process, and all that comes with it, is referred to as confusion.  

Let me break it down a bit further:

• The questioner in the exchange is pure awareness (crucially, not another part or aspect).
• Everything has an “I-sense” - in my experience, this is the nature of Consciousness before it has recognized that it is non-dual.
• There is a whole spectrum of “I-senses” in the bodymind, from personal parts of the psyche, to components of the physical body (e.g. cells, organs, etc), to ancestral and familial threads, to social and collective pieces from our incarnation and conditioning.
• There are also what we can call past life “I am” voices and incarnational habits all the way down to just raw impulses, sensations, and emotional tones, which are extremely subtle. 
• We’re in the realm of what's called samskaras or vasanas here.

Even though what I’ll call the primary “basis of operation” here has shifted through a series of realizations, habitual tendencies take time to unwind and complete. The way that it has been experienced here, and what you see in the exchange above, is that these releases often follow the same realization arc, but in seconds, rather than in months or years. My sense is that it happens so quickly because the basis of operation is already realized.

What you see above is how an aspect in direct experience, in this bodymind, identifies itself as “Time”. There is an identification process with something other than pure awareness (nondual-knowingness-beingness). The aspect then realizes it doesn't need that identification mechanism, that subtle doing, and releases it. Then it recognizes simply, “I AM”. As in, I am Consciousness. And that actually, nothing is needed to be. And in recognizing that nothing is actually needed, the no-thingness was realized, and the unwinding was complete. Internally, I heard the final “I’m gone” of the aspect. It’s gone and the bodymind here is left without the contraction and the habits that were tied into that identification.

Now, nothing about this was experienced as personal, though it was occurring here, in this bodymind, we call Dara. In the reactivity there was lived history, memory, that came forward and an experience of contraction. However, that contraction didn’t coalesce into a separate me-sense. Instead it was held as pure awareness until pure awareness made contact with itself at that level, and the recognition was instantaneous. 

I brought this exploration of Time and awareness to the Weekly Sit this morning and the recording of that practice is freely available by logging in (once you’ve initially registered for the Weekly Sit).

Lastly, something interesting to note about the nature of completion or release here: 

For a long time, when I moved through processes like these, they were one, experienced as largely energetic, and two, they would resolve into Wholeness. The shift to “goneness” occurred when the primary realization and basis of operation here shifted from Everythingness (or Unity, Wholeness) to Emptiness or No-thingness (or Brahman). (Even though most of what I reference falls more in line with the Tibetan Buddhist and Dzogchen teachings, “no-thingness” is the term I prefer for how this stage of realization was experienced (which I’ll explain further in another piece of writing to come). 

When the basis of operation here shifted to nothingness, I no longer experienced processes as energetic, but rather much more subtle, and instead of the resolution happening with/as Wholeness, it was just gone. 

After this shift to nothingness occurred, for months I heard internally “gone, gone, gone” every time I sat in meditation or brought attention inward. Thousands of “gones” for months on end reverberating throughout beingness.

After about six months in this “gone, gone, gone” state, where everything was effortlessly recognizing its nothingness, and even the Tibetan Lineage who had accompanied me for so many years throughout my journey and up to that stage, was also utterly gone…one day, I suddenly remembered the beloved Heart Sutra mantra:

• Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā
• Gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awakening, ahh wow!

There it was, the living gate embodied. It’s very literal when it comes down to it. And the unfolding that has followed from that point of recognition has been primarily through the realization of the Trikaya and nonduality, which I’ll share more about another time. 😉

May this be of benefit.

With love, 

Darananda