I Am NOT That

I just recently finished a 9 day retreat, and while on that retreat, I somehow became more oppositional than I have ever been. It was so strong that I could hardly sit in the main meditation/teaching hall, and certainly didn’t want to listen. A voice and a power has been arising in me which rejects just about everything. It has been quite intense, actually. The heart of my spiritual practice is one of self-inquiry, of attending to whatever is arising at each moment, allowing and remaining curious to the unfolding of experience. For me, it is the best way I have found to be awake to one’s life. Lately, the arising has been infused with a very strong self defining flavor but the energy has been moving to identify everything that I am not. “I am not this.” “I am not that.” The words have packed a punch too, with lots of F-words thrown in. Anger. Rage. Contempt. Annihilation. Opposition. There has also been a super-charged masculine energy too, both sexual and destructive. I’ve felt at times over the past couple of weeks, in turn, like David who slew Goliath, Goliath himself, The Incredible Hulk (whom I LOVE by the way for his rage and destructive power and capacity – all fueled by his grief and anger), Hulk Hogan (the wrestler who the more you hit him, the more powerful he would become), Godzilla, and even Jesus upturning the money-changer tables in the temple (not in MY house!). Like I said, it’s been pretty intense.

I don’t have much clarity on what I am, but what I am NOT is becoming more and more abundantly clear. In moving through all of this, I learned of the path of Neti Neti, which seems to have arisen through me irrespective of my lack of knowledge of it. It is a path of rejecting all, “I am not that, I am not that, etc.” until we realize that there is nothing that we are, until nothing remains, until perhaps we recognize that we are not definable, that there is nothing that we can truly identify with.