I am trolling a Facebook page. I am. I admit it and confess it. One part of me can’t help itself, the other part doesn’t want to.

Why? Why am I doing it? Because … because what is posted there is sooo … incomplete. So incomplete. It is about life, seemingly it is about what we are, but it isn’t really. It is about fear. It is about the desire to disappear, to hide, to fade into the background and let life live itself.

I know this desire well. I shared it with this page’s administrators for most of my life. I wanted to be invisible, I wanted to drift through my existence lost in my head, lost in books, lost in emotions. I did not want to step up, step forward, step into reality.

I know this trauma well. I worked with it, struggled and wrestled and made some small progress out into the world, out into life, out into myself.

I experienced myself. I felt myself. In life, in the existence, in the oneness that is everything I felt myself distinctly and uniquely, and I saw my life as an expression of what I am. I saw reality as an expression of what I am.

This is why I troll this page. Because when I read: “There is no “I” making it happen. Actions arise on their own, too. There is no doer deciding what to do, even thought it appears as if there is. Doing happens, walking happens, speaking happens – no doer involved.” I do not hear wisdom. I do not hear bliss and happiness. I hear fear and trauma. I hear the desire to disappear, to not be here, to not be real.

And I still struggle and wrestle to remain present with this trauma It icks me and hooks me whenever we meet. And so I am trolling a Facebook page.

When has it begun? Some years ago. I remember the house I lived in then, the beautifully scoulpted grounds of Krotona Institute just around the corner. It was summer, I believe, though it is hard to tell … it’s always summer in Ojai.

I remember feeling bad, confronted, scared maybe, there must have been some pain because I was going to call the wizard and ask for a session to fix it, and then I though: no.

No.

“I will not call him and ask him to guide me through this” I thought. No. I will deal with it myself.

It was a disconcerting thought. I had no clue whether I could “deal with” anything on my own. I’ve never tried. I knew I won’t do it nearly as effectively, as quickly, as deeply as I would if the wizard was holding my hand but that was not the point. The point was: it was my life, it was my issue and it was my responsibility. The point was that, at long last, I was willing to learn how to walk on my own. On my own two feet.

I dealt with myself that day, by myself. I dealt with myself ever since and yes, I still played with the wizard now and then but our relationship begun to shift until, years later, I could no longer call him my teacher. We have become friends. Allies.

Just about the time when the shift was completed I learned that the wizard was leaving. “What a great timing!” I thought.

“I am such a coward!” the realization struck me in the head, hard. It hurt.

I promised, I chose and I decided that fear would not stop me. I did that a long time ago. I run into the ugly teeth of my pain, of my trauma, at full speed, ever since. I did things precisely because I was afraid to do them and the blessed, idyllic life I was supposed to achieve as a result did materialize.

Here I am, living whenever the fancy takes me, loved, cherished and supported, entirely free to do whatever I want and … and I don’t do what I want. And I don’t know why. Or rather I didn’t know why.

What I want I do know, I knew for quite some time. It is interesting, enticing, exciting, thrilling to my imagination and yet I just … don’t … do … it! Why?! “Well, maybe it’s not abut doing” I begun to think, maybe it’s about being, but then I was asked “what do you do?” by a casual acquaintance and I felt attacked, defensive. Why?

And then I looked, and then I saw: I am afraid. I am afraid and I indulge this fear. I am afraid and I don’t recognize this emotion as fear because it is a fear of a different kind. There is no pain in it, it is not about failure, it is not about survival. I am not afraid of ruin, loneliness, starvation, contempt and judgement. I am afraid of myself.

I am afraid of myself.

The pain was swirling around my mind. It was dark and uncomfortable, and I squeezed my body tight to escape, to hide. It didn’t work. I could not hide from myself.

Reclining, comfortable on comfy cushions in a quiet, sunny room, guided by a gentle voice of the wizard I pressed through the thick mist of trauma, trauma, trauma.

“Open,” the wizard suggested. “Yeah, right!” I thought. It was all I could do to stay alive.

Slowly, as the ages and eons passed within seconds the formless gloom begun to coalesce into shapes. Male shapes. My father. Sharp fear stabbed me, then resentment, then anger and, in the mind shaken out of the torpor, a bright thought appeared: “how interesting how I organized all this for myself! How interesting that I chose this man as my father, that I chose this situation to be born into, to grow here, to develop here, to open here.”

Interesting, how I organized my life for myself.