“Oh, that was close!” I realized the day I wallowed luxuriously in my drama.

Oh how seductive it was! How deliciously painful, how excruciatingly special. I suffered, I writhed in pain drawing plenty of attention to my self and being of so very …

special.

Until with the last remnant of presence I saw that, unnoticed in all the fun, there was a choice. I was choosing, all this time. I was choosing the trauma over myself.

“Oh! That was close!” I thought as I saw how very, very quickly the trauma set in, how perfectly it fitted itself back into my life ready to run it, organize it, live it. Ready to call itself Pausha.

“No such luck!” I said, “No such luck. I am not this trauma!” I exclaimed, and followed my choice with the magic words the wizard taught me:

ciao bullishita!

Oh I am such an idiot! A blind one too! Though I suppose the fact that I woke up eventually, by myself none-the-less, does redeem me to some degree. But not a very large one.

It isn’t guilt that I feel, thank God I did not collapse that far, only some shame and the inevitable cringe at what I was saying, what I was thinking!

How could I let it full me — this sense of distance, of being outside of myself, outside of life watching, observing? The growing aloofness, the lack of involvement in the reality around me seemed to be … here comes the cringe … seemed to be a mark of growth. “I am growing” I thought, “I am maturing”. “Oh, how splendid that it just happens, all by itself” I congratulated myself on … on my achievement.

Only this, if nothing else, should have shown me that I am not realized and achieved, but lost and collapsed.

That and … of gosh, another cringe … the things I was saying! Pontificating on the nature of life and universe like an all-knowing master. Ha, I can see now that the look on Chris’s face was not one of rapt interest but a polite tolerance. That, all those speeches, all those stories, should have been a dead giveaway…

And maybe it was for I did wake up. I do not remember how nor when, I do not recall the precise moment, I only remember the sudden awareness of my distance, my — what I thought as — presence, my silent observer being a withdrawal. “I am disassociating” I realized, “I am removing myself from my body, I am removing myself from life. I am scared and confronted, and I am retreating into myself and If I continue – I will leave life all together.”

This I remember, clearly and sharply, better even that the mortification of facing my self-satisfied enlightenment-dumbness.

This I remember: the clear awareness of the observer being a ghost self-removed from life. Not an enlightened being, hardly a being at all.

The need to explain comes from trauma.

She was everywhere. I could feel her in every wisp of mist, in every breeze, in every mind and heart and in every presence she was. There was no place where she wasn’t present.

The wizard showed her to me — an indian saint, but she wasn’t that, there was nothing sacred nor holly about her, there was only presence. An all-encompassing, boundless presence.

“She is everywhere” I gasped in wonder when I felt her,

She is everything.