stepping out of character
Peeling layers of an onion and stepping out of character are two analogies for the waking-up experience. I came across the following text shortly after writing the below monologue.
All those things that define a person–career, community, family, and so forth–are all just pre-defined roles that one steps into, animates. In a very real sense, they’re all acts of abdictation, but who is abdicating? What is being abdicated? Those are the real questions. What is left when all context is dropped? What is left when you remove church, job, relationships, hobbies and everything else? More layers? Nature? Nurture? Perinatal influences? Okay, but what’s beyond those? That’s the process of stripping away layer after layer, like an onion, until all that’s left is…
But an onion is only layers.
So is ego–self–only layers. Remove all the layers and no-self is left.
– “Jed McKenna” in Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damndest Thing
When the illusion of an individuated self is clearly seen through, even momentarily, your life begins to change. This process, which I’ll call “awakening,” is fascinating and terrifying. If you’ve ever done acid, it’s kind of like the come down when it feels like you’re pulled between two competing worlds: consensus reality and the awakened state. In consensus reality, you are the main character in a play, with many other characters playing their roles. In the awakened state, it’s as if you were playing a character in a theatrical production, but you stepped out of character while everyone else maintained their fictional personas. Regardless of your view, the play continues.
I feel like withdrawing more and more. I want to do the bare minimum, to go with the flow, and not to try and exert my (illusory) will on the unfolding of the world, but that is easier said than done, especially when I think about my work character (CEO, social entrepreneur, leader). The work character is more seductive than the personal character, at least in some regards.
Observing is more important than action. Withdrawing is increasingly scary because, at this point in the theatrical production, my character has constructed a hierarchy at work in consensus reality. He’s the leader of other characters in the play. What happens if he exits stage left? Will his awakening cause the entire production to be jeopardized?
The play of life is entirely constructed around the notion of becoming. Awakening is altogether about being. The difference between reality and delusion is between the becoming self and the self. The gateless gate thing makes a lot of sense.
