Liberation LU interview with guide Delma
Hello everyone, I’m Lisa Kahale and I’m here with a chat I recently had with Delma, one of the original members of Liberation Unleashed. Delma went through the “gateless gate” several years ago and is now a committed LU volunteer, helping to guide new members into seeing through the illusion of the self. In addition, Delma is active in the LU social media platforms and conversation groups; conversing with spirit and openness, often inquiring into fresh territory simply for the joy of discovery. As part of the backbone of our ever-growing community, Delma assists with our day-to-day running, helping to make it a viable and on-going resource for anyone who knocks on the LU door.
Lisa: Hi Delma! Thanks for letting me interview you, for taking the time and being willing. Please say a bit about yourself and your background. What is the story of Delma? Whatever you wish to share would be great.
Delma: So, what’s the deal with Delma?
The story goes like this…. It wasn’t long into this world that I figured out, “Something really WEIRD is going on here.” And then I spent the next few decades on various intellectual excavation projects to figure out just exactly what that feeling was about. Because it persisted. Worse, it was nearly nourished by two things:
First, a dad who was entirely fixated on the elusive concept of conventional Truth and seemed to be very tortured by his failure to find it. Secondly, being born into a family from an island country no one outside of our small social circles seemed to realize existed. Enter the fact that this culture, very similar to all cultures created with the help of nomadic sailors, had no fixed racial or national ties or identity. Ta da…. the perfect conditions for a tortured seeker were born.
It took years of sloshing through all sorts of conceptual mud, however, before I actually ever heard about ideas called, ‘enlightenment’ or ‘awakening’, and that happened in the early spring of 2011. At least that’s the time-line I’m able to reconstruct from rummaging through old emails, my first connection to any of the many online nodes of the awakening community. I guess you could say that I’m the product of a wholly digital awakening process. And yes, I use that little “I” concept quite lightly.
L: What was this “something really WEIRD” that you felt was going on? Was it present for you in childhood or noticed later?
D: It was ALWAYS present. And it was permeating, like a felt sense of something not quite right with the way things were but also it seemed that a lot of times adults did things that just plain didn’t make any sense. I could see that there was the world as it was and then the accepted way the world was supposed to be viewed. Although I had no words or concepts for this feeling it probably led to lots of interesting conversations with adults because I remember more than one of them saying that some deep seated truth I thought I’d just delivered was “a little weird”. Except THEY were the weird ones, I thought. They lived, it was clear, in a world of appearances; of shoulds and of sorries, spray starch, shoe polish, lemon pledge and rules. But the permeating undercurrent I understood was that they had an odd resentment of all of that damned spray starch. I could see that what they said and what they did were often opposed and when I tried to map these things out, could never keep the rules straight.
Finally, I think I decided that it was too hard to keep track of the map and declared to my family that I just wanted to become a nun. They laughed and asked, “Have you ever seen a black nun?” It was another rule I’d lost track of apparently, and was doubly confused because until then I hadn’t known that I was black. The effect was that I quickly got over the cloister idea which was likely for the best because a nunnery really would have set forth some rules and appearances I’m sure I would have had no hope of holding onto.
Luckily, what my family had actually done with that teasing remark was to give me a real head scratcher of an inquiry!
L: So seeing life through the eyes of others and having it not make sense to you was a trigger for deeper questioning. And is that the inquiry that followed you into adulthood? And what was it about at that point; where did it lead you?
D: “Oh, the places I would go!”, to put it Seuss-ly. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t questioning, from being a pain in the neck kid who questioned adults on anything and everything they created, did or made, “Why are you drilling the holes that way?”, “Why does the bread need to ‘rest’?”, “Why do you call that lady ‘bananas’?”; to the only kid questioning the bible in Catholic school. That was the beginning of my challenging reality, but a series of dreams surrounding my dad (who by now had passed) and his repeatedly pointing to the number Eleven had me wondering whether an investigation of the number just might reveal a synchronicity UNDERNEATH the world. Remember, my dad was my first exposure to the idea that there was an overarching truth which must be found. Due to that conditioning, I had no doubt that an answer was somewhere out there. I just needed to figure out what the mystery of the number 11 was. Or so I thought.
But I now realize that those synchronicities were not the big mysteries at all. They weren’t magical in and of themselves. (Sorry Dad). I now know that they were just signposts. And the fixation on the number eleven was a beautiful illusion. It was, and still is, the gift of a MacGuffin. At first it had me exploring things like numerology, astrology, quantum physics, knights templar, masons (because my dad was one), magic, alchemy… you name it. I figured that I’d eventually find that they all had a secret and common core, which would somehow end up totaling eleven, being rooted in eleven, or pointing toward eleven. None of them ever did. What they each did was point to the next thing to explore, and that, I now see, was the entire point for the MacGuffin. It serves the purpose of propelling further inquiry. I find that really beautiful.
So fast forward a bit. In the years since chasing the mysteries of the Elevens, I’d gone back to college to complete a degree, met an amazing guy, married, and settled in for what I thought would be a normal life. I had not yet realized that no such thing existed. Anyway, 18 months into the marriage, my husband began to experience a series of life-threatening health challenges. I was, to say the least, distraught. I could see no way to continue to bear the stress and began to follow the elevens to find a secret to the way out of suffering.
To find these secrets and mysteries, I’d been googling for years, but this time came across Byron Katie videos and was thunderstruck. What?!! You mean to tell me there’s an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAY to view the world? I was riveted and watched them all. Not only that, but read the comments. I came across one in 2011 which said something like, “If you think this is good, you should listen to Adyashanti”. So I googled him and he said some terrific stuff but never having heard of enlightenment, I had no idea what in the world he was on about. I figured maybe the number eleven might pop up, and he seemed to be talking about suffering a lot, which was right up my alley. I googled more. As these internet things go, I somehow got to Steve Pavlina’s forum where I found a paraphrase of the Bahiya Sutta. While reading it, could feel a visceral vibration. I had no idea what I was reading, or that it paraphrased a Sutta, but I could not stop reading it over and over. Links in that same thread lead me to RuthlessTruth.com and no-self.com. Now THIS was a revelation. A big one. Because they said that there was no me.
And though I didn’t know how, I KNEW it deep in my gut. They were right.
It took two weeks of reading every thread in Ruthless Truth, and then…. pop. Unceremoniously, but in the middle of a fit of frustration, “I” dropped off the face of the earth.
L: What was it that triggered that, Delma? How did reading some words lead to the “I” falling off?
D: Well, maybe it was the benefit of not having been a seeker. Or maybe it was because I never got exposed to ideas about waking up. So what I did was to simplify, simplify. I read and did all of the exercises on no-self.com and would also read that one forum over and again. Everyone on the Ruthless Truth Forum I was reading was saying “Just LOOK!”. They were screaming it in all caps. They were swearing. So, I thought, “Wait. What’s going on here? Why are these folks confident that it’s really as simple as Just Looking?” I mean these guys were adamant and it’s as if it was driving them nuts that people weren’t following this simple directive. And they weren’t! They were spinning into all kinds of questions and suppositions and stories and every time they did, these guys would cut them off at the knees and say, “Just LOOK”.
So, I did that.
I thought, “OK, I’ll do exactly what they say. Nothing more.” I thought that all of these enlightened people didn’t appear to be superhuman in any way and so waking up couldn’t be something mysterious, it had to be ordinary. Plain. Simple. What’s the simplest thing? Do exactly what was asked.
I looked. I saw a computer, pens, a desk, a lamp, a window, and some dust particles. The dust was everywhere… on the desk, in the air, and floating in the sunlight.
That was it. Pop. I saw that everything, all of the folks on the forum, at no-self.com, and the Bahiya Sutta… they all suddenly made every bit of common sense and I saw that they were all saying the simplest of things.
There wasn’t a single thing blocking the view of the dust, and if the dust could be seen right here, right now, and so close and unobstructed, where in the world was this self supposed to be? Because it wasn’t right here. The computer, lamp, pens, and dust were. EVERYTHING was here except one thing, the supposedly CLOSEST thing. The view was obviously completely and ridiculously Unimpeded. I laughed. I cracked up! This had to be the biggest cosmic joke ever! I mean, ARE YOU KIDDING? Complete openness and freedom is and always was here. I remember that there was a TV show called “Punked” in which they’d play practical jokes on people and thought that this was, as Punks go, the biggest one of them all. It was now May, the year Two Thousand and… yes, Eleven. (laugh)
L: That’s a really vivid word-picture, very clear, thank you! So… there’s no self, not a separate thing labeled me. How did this settle in for you, the day-to-day experiencing of it?
D: Well, I immediately began guiding others to the seeing of this, which was an oddly rewarding experience because I couldn’t figure out who or what was “rewarded”. But it became so amazingly good to see the next person pop that I haven’t stopped guiding. Another thing I immediately did was to go skydiving. It was something on my husband’s bucket list and at the last minute I decided that I would go, too. There’s a video of it and I’m grinning like an idiot the whole way up and laughing like a nut in the photos of the way down.
But then comes every day life, right? I can only describe it as the same life as before, except that I’d dropped a load of baggage and no longer carried it around. The self thoughts came up (still do) but they are seen for what they are and the time it takes to see through them gets ever shorter. It’s now just about immediate in most cases but if something really bothersome comes up it takes a bit longer. Nothing lasts more than an a few moments and if you didn’t realize what was happening you’d think I had really wild mood swings (for the better). Truthfully, what had happened in the moment of realization would take a couple of years to unpack. It’s still sorting. I began inquiring into other aspects of waking up….thoughts, time, space, matter, emptiness… and each inquiry would drop more and more layers. It’s at the point now where the line between being awake and asleep or dreaming has become very diffuse. Odd feeling, but the process should be trusted. Now the realizations aren’t big and earth shattering (shattering TIME was shattering) but they come with a sort of flash of insight that’s a physical feeling of “Eureka”! And then you realize that the insight you’d just had is impossible to put into words because life is still pretty ordinary.
L: So you guided at Ruthless Truth for a while, and then came to Liberation Unleashed? How did that come about? And what is it that keeps you there, at LU?
D: I actually guided at no-self.com, Ruthless Truth, via email and on my blog, at Truth Strike.com and also at Liberation Unleashed. For a long while, I didn’t guide at LU at all, but always stayed in touch. It’s the community and the fact that no one runs the show. Do folks lead? Yes. But LU is a collection of guides who volunteer their time and are unimaginably dedicated to turning around once ‘through’ the gate, to make sure they grab as many hands behind them as possible.
You really can’t beat that, now, can you?
L: Nope! It’s a great system; still going strong now after three years. Let’s talk about that for a moment. Exactly what does a guide do, how does one-on-one guiding work, in your experience? Perhaps the real question is how is it that an on-line forum, using the written word in chat format, can do this; can assist others in the realization that there is no actual self, no solid “me”?
D: What does a guide do? We hold a mirror. We have you look at the thing called self. What we find is that the image that comes up is a description of a body that you “have”, some historical events that happened to that body, ideas about a future for this you, characteristics of personality this you is supposed to “have”. Then we often talk about concepts of a you which have been fed back through family, friends, teachers. We may get to hopes for the you. Dreams for the you. People sometimes begin talking about “my”soul, or “my” spirit… And yet… no actual you to which all of these things apply. We find no central entity to which the body, brain, personality, soul, spirit belongs. All of the assumptions about these things being owned by something just don’t pan out.
How mysterious!
How is it that an online forum can do this? Lots of people decry the internet, but the benefits to working on this process via the internet are many. An individual can come to a forum or email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can be completely anonymous, which means that lots of things they’d never talk about in person… the true ideas of “who they are”… can more openly be discussed and examined. And most of all, once the process is done, they are completely free to disappear. Those three factors are what helps to propel the success of Liberation Unleashed. The amazing thing is that so many DON’T disappear. They stay, to pay it forward. Beautiful, isn’t it?
L: Very. So guiding works and is rewarding, yes? Let’s look at that for a moment: Why do you volunteer at LU, how is it rewarding for you to assist others see that there isn’t an actual, solid self?
D: Whew, what a question! I have absolutely no idea why I volunteer, but then that’s in keeping with this, isn’t it. The amount of time I spend in the community is probably enough to equal a full time job, but it feels absolutely nothing like a job at all. It’s just a joy. Joy with no reason, no cause. And the feeling of reward is kind of tough to describe because we’re used to taking that personally. We can pat ourselves on the back for accomplishments and have been conditioned to do so. But this is wholly unique in that while the label used to describe it is “rewarding”, there’s no one being rewarded. There’s just a feeling of fullness that comes up when someone sees this. It can be described as “happiness” but that too is a label that’s ascribed to the personal. There’s nothing personal at all. It’s a recognition, a familiarity. It feels like coming home again and again. And that may make no sense to some, but there it is.
L: Oh yes, “there it is”; like coming home again and again. Lovely. How is this experiencing for you now, in your day-to-day life other than guiding? Are there obvious differences between what it was like “before” and how it is “after?” Was anything particularly difficult that time?
D: Everything is different, though quite a lot of that is due to my husband’s health issues having resolved. The desire to escape unpleasant thoughts and circumstances isn’t there, just because of events which have changed for the better. But on a day to day level, there are decided differences as a result of seeing through the self. There’s just no good way to take this self seriously. There are reactions to events, sure. There’s sadness, frustration, sure. Both dissolve pretty quickly as they come up, but they still come. There is this wonderful openness to everything, and a poignancy too. Color, sound, texture… it’s all so much more rich and immediate. Experience itself is free and clear of the filter of a me, though it’s sometimes very subtle and I realize that I’ve nearly forgotten what it was like ‘before’. The best part is that thoughts don’t have anything to grab and so they flow, popping up when they do, dissolving or disappearing when they do.
Another thing that’s different is memory and time. Memories aren’t important at all, and the days don’t seem to actually ‘pass’. There are just immediate moments where thought seems to stop the clock just by noting experience. Without that noting, there’s no time at all.
Relationships are improved because full focus is on the person talking to “me”. They’re heard and can’t not be heard, actually. More than this, the time spent on emptiness inquiry has meant that I can see many sides of a situation and can see multiple perspectives. The effect is increased compassion not because I can picture myself in the other’s shoes, but because there are no other shoes, and there is no right or wrong way to view a situation. All appearances are a network of dependencies rather than a single static entity. In that case, who is there to blame for anything at all?
It’s actually odd how we draw an imaginary line around people.. for instance we might say that a thief steals because of their environment and conditioning have led them to a certain way of life, when in fact the network and circumstances which appear as “thief” are not separate and are not limited. The act of thievery is everything manifest. All circumstances and conditions, *everywhere* and *everywhen* have led to the exact circumstance which culminates in that appearance. There are no exceptions and in that moment, it could be no other way. That doesn’t mean that it can’t stop, because additional conditions can appear which mean that theft doesn’t occur again. To understand that nothing is separate and that life is a network or web is the definition of compassion.
L: How do you actually do this guiding? What I mean is, how do you know what to say, what questions to ask? What’s difficult with this process for you as a guide; what’s fairly simple?
D: It seems that guiding was much simpler when I initially began because I had the kind of energy that can only be described as being similar to the burst you get when popping open a shaken can of cola. I was pretty much relentless and took on several clients at once. If a client took more than a week to get through the process, I was likely to just push them right over the cliff, knowing that they’d be OK, and they’d fly. Interestingly, the more insights or realizations “I” experienced, the more this energy mellowed. And the more it mellowed, the longer and slower my interactions with clients became. I now take on no more than three clients, and I’d prefer just one at a time, to be honest. It’s because I cover a lot more than I did in the early days, and do exercises to look at thought itself. More than getting to the gate, I focus on ensuring the client understands how to employ the basic tools to get them through any type of inquiry, one that can be used for a lifetime.
So yes, recently I’ve been more apt to take on self-described “hard cases” in which we work together for months. This is usually done via private emails which are more like talks. At least twice I’ve worked with people for a couple of years, especially when there is a lot of suffering such as anxiety, or when their life circumstances mean that the “selfing” thoughts are prominent. There was a time during which I knew how many people I’d guided to the gate, but I’ve long ago stopped keeping track. And with the folks I work with via email, and recently in person, we cover other topics such as space, time, thought, and objects. Our dialogues don’t have the same urgency as a Gating guiding session and we are apt to have lapses in conversation that can last quite a while and then we just pick it back up whenever the client is ready to resume. The ideal scenario is to do a mixture of both; hard pushes to the gate, and then for those deep in suffering, longer and more gentle dialogues. Each client is so very different and the key is to pay careful attention to what they reveal with each response. Every clue a guide needs about where to go next is given. If a guide isn’t trying to teach and only trying to listen and point, this becomes easy.
As for knowing what to say during exchanges, I’ve got no idea! The responses just come, and the tone and pace just comes. Guiding is often described as a dance. The client can choose the pacing and number of steps, but it’s the guide who leads because we know the terrain and have an eye on the gate, while the client is more likely to become mired in the map.
In some guiding threads or emails, I can inject a lot of dialogue, and in others I’m very curt. It depends upon whether the client is heavily involved in their story to the point where it interferes with inquiry. When that happens, my responses become very short and direct, and I try to create a sort of distance between us. While that can seem less than caring, it’s actually comes from compassion. There is no way I want a client to rely on me for answers because that would be a complete disservice. So, instead, I step back and allow them to walk on their own, even if they wobble. I know that they will be just fine and if they learn how to sincerely do in-depth inquiry on their own it becomes a lifelong tool they’ll be able to use again and again.
What’s simple about guiding? Well, the truth of this doesn’t waiver, and it’s directly evident. That means that I really don’t have to work at all. I just need to keep pointing.
L: How has this new way of experiencing affected your relationships, if it has?
D: I have not been able to have a decent nor long lasting argument with anyone in a long while. That didn’t immediately start after seeing the truth about the me, but has slowly evolved over time. Mostly, it was the Buddhist emptiness teachings which helped and specifically discussions and contemplations prompted by time spent in groups with some great online folks like Greg Goode and so many more. For me, it made realizations more well-rounded. The inquiries resulted in realizing that not only was there no separate self here, but nothing has a “self”. What I mean is that there was no inherent center to anything at all, including concepts, ideas, and opinions. Suddenly, there was utterly no ground to stand on at all and so to take a position “for” for “against” became more and more difficult a task. I could see all sides!
Compassion and empathy greatly increased, and my online interactions began to greatly improve. Debates in spiritual groups became a thing of the past and I could laugh at my own conditioning or position on any topic. I sometimes think that people are so used to getting push-back that equanimity can be seen as disingenuous. Sometimes I believe people are frustrated by it. It’s sad, in a very real sense. There’s a wish to see people come ‘unstuck’, but then there’s also a very real sense that my perceiving them as ‘stuck’ is not a truth either.
The latest ’rounds’ of realizations was surrounding the advaita/nondual debate. Is there a Self with a capital “S”? Is there no self at all? Is there awareness? Consciousness? Those questions have resolved. It’s not because I’ve found one Truth, either. It’s because any position is seen to be a position. And there isn’t footing under any one of them.
Thoughts flip flop. A lot. (laugh)
L: How do others respond to you now, any differently?
D: I wonder about that a bit. There are a range of responses depending upon the interaction and I think family and friends are getting used to some new things. I spend a lot more time alone or outside and have heard lots of people say the same thing about their response to silence or nature. Overall, I think they may be a bit puzzled because there don’t seem to be overt changes but a simple drop of some old habits. An example is that I haven’t been to a mall in months, and don’t really enjoy shopping or acquiring things as much as I used to. And then there’s the way in which I may seem to waffle on points because I can see different sides of the coin. Or maybe it’s the amount of time I can spend in a park or at an empty beach. I’m definitely more of an Aloner, though not a Loner.
When first seeing through this, I started guiding under a different name at Ruthless Truth. I was pretty hardcore! The biggest change in response may have come from those who knew me from that forum and couldn’t reconcile that person with the calm and reasoned individual I now appeared to be. It would be great to go back to ask some of them whether they respond to me differently now.
One of the interesting realizations was to see that there is no specific way anyone actually *Is*, though we make that mistake all of the time. While there are patterns of personality, there is no separate self to behave in any fixed sort of way. Expect the unexpected, I say!
L: Do you talk much about your experience, this new way of being with and seeing of life with others; family, friends?
D: In the early days I talked about it with my most immediate family but it didn’t really go over well. They politely listened and then probably tried to determine whether I’d gone off my rocker a bit. Once seeing that nothing really seemed amiss, they relaxed. Now they just roll their eyes whenever the topic comes up. It’s in good natured fun and we laugh. I’ve long ago stopped talking to them about it, and over time have let the subject come to me instead. There are no friends and family who are interested in talking about it, but there are plenty of people on the internet! Lately, I’ve met a few people who seem to find me through the Liberation Unleashed contact page and it’s so good to be able to discuss this in person.
For a long time I kept this out of the eye of my extended family, but have slowly grown my social media circles to include them. I’m sure they have questions about some of the stuff I post but have never verbalized them. I imagine they just find me odd.
What’s been most interesting to me is that I’m better able to talk about lots of other topics. This new way of being or seeing… I’m never sure how to phrase that… means that there’s a sort of meta or high level view here. I can see lots of points of view and there’s no getting caught up in a personal stand. Nothing is at risk and when someone offers an opinion on a topic, I see it as such and can freely discuss it without taking anything personally. That’s one of the best changes I’ve noticed. Every and any topic is enhanced by being able to see from this view of the whole and also from being able to see our human condition so much more clearly.
L: That prompts me to ask: what might have been difficult for you while you were adjusting to all of this new experiencing?
D: I was just talking about this with another guide, that what’s difficult is seeing how we move from a self-centered perspective. Crimes from theft to war are fought and perpetuated from the perspective of a separate self identity. Then there is the hurt we feel when the sense of self is perceived to be attacked, and the lasting damage done to victims of abuse. Within this world of appearances there is a definite desire here to want to tell others who may be emotionally hurting due to those perceived attacks that there is another way. We’re not locked into this paradigm. But an increasingly deeper understanding of emptiness means that I can also see that it’s necessary for those things to be there and that it’s perfect. I don’t mean the conventional sense of perfection meaning pristine, but that everything really does happen as it does because that’s the only way it *can* happen.
This understanding isn’t always immediately available, though, and it can sometimes take a bit to recognize what’s seen. For instance, if I disagree with someone it’s always coming from a resistance, which is just another word for the self. Seeing through that self means that the resistance dissolves. What’s difficult is that the ‘norm’ is to view the world from that separateness, and so though I can get to a place of understanding more and more quickly, that’s not true for everyone. What I now see, instead of selves, is various levels and demonstrations of resistance to what is. It’s not wrong. It’s part of the dynamic that is duality, but it does take some getting used to.
L: What are some of the things you appreciate most about life now?
D: The same things that are difficult are what I appreciate most. The human condition is beautiful for all of its rawness and messiness and there’s a different kind of compassion for humanity now. It’s not pity, but understanding. It’s become evident that everything about life is a search, a movement, a push forward while simultaneously dissolving. This is on a macro and micro scale and in some sense it can be said to not be happening at all. And paradox! More than anything I appreciate that things appear to exist in no fixed way. Appearances come with an And.
Another thing I have really begun to appreciate is time. It’s fascinating to me because I’ve lost the sense of it. Days, weeks, and years don’t make linear sense and the lines are not rigid or fixed. Though I can still be on time for appointments, the way I used to note segments of it has gone. “How old am I?” has no answer and yet I can clearly see the years of change in my physical appearance. Since I’ve always been fascinated with Einstein, it’s no wonder I seem to spend a lot of time on Time.
Then there’s sensory perception which seems greatly enhanced! Since I’ve always been visually oriented, I’ve picked up some of my older creative hobbies through which I can appreciate line and form. I’ve started a photography blog. The images are of just the sky because the variety of appearance seems endless and always surprising. I’ve also begun to look at drawing portraits again.
There’s so much to enjoy in any moment.
L: Anything further to add?
D: There’s so much to add. It’s clear now that all each of us is ever doing is seeking and then finding! I can find inquiry in anything from a TV ad to a book on non-duality, to biblical phrases. It’s just everywhere waiting to be seen with different filters, but only if someone chooses to look. A lot of people who want to wake up believe that it’s a mysterious process that needs to be undertaken with a teacher. That’s fine. And it’s true. For that person, nothing but a teacher will do. For others, they come to it by way of faith in a deity, and others still, through the internet. I say that using whatever means necessary to find the truth about reality and the human condition is the only means required.
In a lot of online spiritual groups… well, basically all of them… there are constant philosophical battles going on around the clock. You will usually find some who are of the opinion that their particular teaching is the best, true, or only way to view this, and that anyone else’s teaching is somehow inferior, no matter how slight the difference. This can be discouraging for someone newly through the gate, and when you still think that there’s a right way to wake up, it’s frustrating to watch. People who claim to have a ‘more advanced understanding’ will warn you of ‘traps’ or ‘getting stuck’. But there’s no such thing as getting stuck. People need to be exactly where they are, until they don’t. And if they appear to be happy with their current understanding, I see no reason why where they are along their path should matter to anyone else. At all. Ever.
A point I wish was emphasized more is about the ‘got it/lost it’ phenomenon that often happens post gate. I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with that one but when it happens it just requires one more step back. That’s it. If there is no one to ‘get it’, there’s no one to lose it. That’s a logical assumption, sure, but it’s true. The flip-flopping phenomenon isn’t a you flopping, and it’s perfectly fine and OK for that oscillation to happen. Ever notice that lots of things come in waves? Ride them!
We’re all constantly seeking. But we’re constantly finding, too.
L: Thank you, Delma. This has been fun and interesting!
D: Much appreciated, Lisa! I haven’t really taken the time to put all of this ‘journey’ into perspective, and this has given me that chance. Guiding is an amazing process and I’m glad to be a part of paying it forward. This movement can only grow and the beauty of it is that this growth is such an obviously organic process. It unfolds.
Delma on the web:
- Photography: delmamcconnell.blogspot.com
- Direct Pointing: thassa.blogspot.com
- More personal stories of awakening: seeingnoself.blogspot.com