Oneness in action: Liberation edition

A bit of spiritual-emotional transmutation in realtime...plus a magnificent method for rising out of that hole in your sidewalk.

Portia Nelson was once asked to sum up her own spiritual healing journey in a single written page. She responded with this now-famous poem, which insightfully describes the human learning journey of emotional liberation:

There is a Hole in My Sidewalk

1. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

3. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

4. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5. I walk down another street.

Another street

Not long ago, I knowingly stepped into a hole in my sidewalk that goes halfway to the center of the earth. (It’s ok; I meant to do it.)

Here’s how it happened.

Lately I’ve been experiencing in realtime, the breaking off and dissolving of great big chunks of my egoic structure—the shredding of my personal veil. It was happening spontaneously, easily. Pretty much all by itself.

I’ve been talking about all of this for ages, right? How the veil no longer has any structural integrity of its own. How it’s only our own individual refusal to part with our painfully limiting beliefs, that keeps the veil on life support.

So it felt pretty cool to witness some of that dissolution of illusion—aided by my own higher knowing, as it quietly stepped forward, again and again, at random moments to show me the possibility of life through a very different lens. In each case I was offered the choice to see a familiar emotional pattern of my own, or even to see another person, through different, blank-slate eyes. Each time easily saying yes to that choice, and delighting in the clarity and freedom that resulted.

So clean. So good. So unveiled.

Lest I get too carried away with the coolness of it all, I quickly remembered the no-nonsense wisdom of Jacqueline Hobbs (one of my all time favorite, fully embodied way-showers) who once spoke on the topic of temporarily experiencing the firsthand truth of divine love.

Yes, she said. You’ve felt real divine love throughout your own being. It’s amazing. But then the transcendent experience is over, and you go right back to your life as you’ve always known it. So the only real value of that beautiful divine moment, is that it shows you what the rest of your life isn’t.

(Yeah, I know. Her hard-nosed embodiment of divine love may not be to everybody’s taste. To me, she’s a sharp, clean breath of pure fresh air, in a world where that’s a rarity.)

Anyway, these moments of veil collapse felt a bit like that: Don’t get too self-impressed with these palpably radiant experiences of partial veil removal. They’re only here to show me what the rest of my life isn’t like yet.

Well ok then, let’s do something about that. Because, if not now, when?

So a spontaneous heartfelt prayer-vow arose. I declared to the universe that I’m ready now, whatever it takes, to ‘remove all remaining blocks to the awareness of love’s presence’ (if you want to put it into A Course in Miracles-type language).

What I actually said was probably more like: I want to live my full divine potential as a human being, on behalf of all that is.

Mind you, I was all too aware of what some of those remaining blocks to love actually were. 35+ years of dogged bushwhacking the spiritual jungle, means there are few undiscovered regions of egoic ick.

So I knew this was nothing to take lightly, this particular core set of blocks to love’s presence. It’s baggage I came in with. It’s always been with me, forming the underlying landscape of my reality. Who could say what my life, with such a radically restructured landscape, might be like without it.

Yet none of that mattered now. I added to the prayer-vow, I don’t mind whatever it takes. Let’s do it.

So (in case you’re wondering) this is the kind of prayer that always gets answered, pronto.

Helloooo, multiple core survival issues. Up they came out of long dormancy, rearing their heads out of nowhere. I could probably have ‘handled’ one or even two of them. Three, all woven together? Nope. Down, down, down the sidewalk hole I went. Into the abyss.

I knew perfectly well what this was all about: I knew it was a prayer answered. So in principle at least, I didn’t mind it a bit.

Day one was spent in that all-too-familiar, existential fear-pain—but it was somehow also tempered at the same time with joy and real excitement. Excitement, because after all these years, I was finally going to dissolve the root of this thing. Somehow or other.

Day two: No joy. No excitement. Just my own existential crap. Ugh.

I was determined not to spew any of my stuff onto anyone else, during this immensely uncomfortable root-dissolution process. But beyond that newfound bit of self mastery (in which I took great care not to spread the agony around) I had little control over the proceedings.

Day three: Molten, incendiary rage. Rage at others for inadvertently poking at my core wounds; rage at myself for 35-odd years of spiritual work, yet still unable to climb out of the damn hole and stay out. Piled on top of all of that, primal egoic rage to boot—because it sensed its core was in the process of being dismantled.

That went on for a few hours, until something curious happened. Higher knowing quietly arrived, to try something new with all of that blistering rage. (Higher knowing is me, by the way. ) How about if I’m just the compassionate crucible that simply holds the inferno. No inward or outward targets for my anger, in other words. Let it burn cleanly, until it extinguishes itself.

So I did, and it did. No more anger. But I still couldn’t climb out of the hole.

Photo by NEOM

That night, uncomfortable as ever and feeling hopeless that real change was possible, I stopped arguing with that core root. I let every terrible thing it whispered, be true. Simply because I was too tired for anything else.

In unexpected response, the darkness of the abyss became quietly surrounded by a much larger ocean of soft luminosity. I instantly recognized this gentle light as my own. And within its radiant expanse, came the clear knowing that nothing is ever too big, too stuck, or too tangled up for love to set it right.

So as I rested in the hopeless surrender of ‘it’s all true,’ in the core of darkness…at the same time I was being lit from within by love’s true Knowing of what’s really truly what. Resting in the untruth, while Truth Itself is resonating as me. Extraordinary.

15 minutes, maybe? A lifetime’s entanglement can effortlessly unravel in less than that, when love is present.

The interesting thing about oneness

The thing about oneness is that it’s actual. It’s real. And it’s fully operational right now. It’s not just a spiritual idea, or even an immutable law of the universe that will only reveal itself to you after your consciousness elevates enough. Oneness is working now, all of the time, and it always has—because it’s an intrinsic part of your reality and mine.

So when you blame and attack others, even just inwardly—as I had been struggling not to do for the previous few days, with, uh, mixed success—you simultaneously blame and attack yourself. I’m sure you’ve noticed this phenomenon a thousand times in your own life. Right? How crappy it feels, how tight and sandpaper-uncomfortable your own mind and body are, when you’re right, others are wrong, and they’re oh-so deserving of your blame and attack.

How could it ever be otherwise? If all is one, and if you’re included in that vast ocean of all that is…(it is, and you are)…if all of this is so, how could you not feel the instant effects within, of whatever you project outward?

We’re not talking right or wrong, here, or whether somebody or something deserves our attack. Honestly? All of those judgments, opinions and conclusions we come to, are part of the veil of separation. If we were all intimately in touch with our own oneness (and everybody else’s) we would all be living very differently. Making extremely different choices about how we treat self, other, and planet earth.

To not know ourselves in oneness is actually the deepest suffering there is. And it causes every single one of us to do and think some pretty crazy shit. So finding oneself able to remember oneness—even in small, temporary dribs and drabs—is an incredible gift.

Case in point: I’m not sure how or when the higher-mind inspiration arrived, to let myself join the oneness party.

Sometime the following morning after the night of luminous truth, that divine spark of inspiration found me spontaneously blessing each of those people I’d so recently made the targets of my rage. Not just blessing them: A deep, heartfelt desire that they may know real happiness and true freedom. Whatever that means to them (not what I think it should mean). And then holding each of them in the energetic frequency of that true divine happiness and freedom.

So immensely beautiful.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I was instantly lifted out of that sidewalk hole, never to return to it. Not only did this beautiful inspiration to bless, lift me up and immediately end my suffering—it brought an incredible sense of energetic peace emanating from those others I’d previously struggled not to attack. Kindness and openness prevailed, between us all.

The crisis effortlessly over, I spontaneously began to bless random others who came to mind, and sometimes all beings and even the earth itself, in the same fashion.

That night, the sleepless side effect of all this blessing was a slightly over-the-top quantity of light in my body. A very welcome change from the dismally dark discomfort of the sleepless nights that preceded it.

Since then, I’ve still been spontaneously blessing others whenever it crosses my mind to do so. It just feels so nice. Why wouldn’t I?

So. Did all of this truly dissolve the core completely? Am I actually free now, to walk down another street?

I will answer this way: Many days after the fact, others are still doing things now and then, that (before now) would have inadvertently pressed hard on that core root of pain. When they do…I feel a bit of annoyance.

Or impatience.

As opposed to a one-way trip into the abyss.

So is that root dissolving? Has it gone entirely? Your guess is as good as mine. Time, and the conscious choice for oneness, will tell.

PS

Between you and me, I really had to stop and consider before writing about all of this. I recognize that it’s kind of become my shtick, to teach about spiritual principles through the oversharing of my personal stuff. But (believe it or not) some things about my life usually stay off the table.

I’m aware, for instance, that some readers may feel disillusioned or even a bit freaked out to learn that someone like me with decades of spiritual experience under my belt could still have an abyss to fall into. So I really had to ponder whether it felt important enough to tell this story, given its potential for upset.

But the lessons and (hopefully) inspirations in this article are too juicy not to share: No core root is too deep or painful to be dissolved at warp speed! And, Use your ‘get out of the abyss free’ card, to bless the absolute living crap out of your so-called tormentors, the next time you fall deep into that sidewalk hole!

How could I choose not to share this potentially liberating information with you?

Besides. You deserve my honesty. Because it’s a rare beast these days. So. Come what may, I promise you I will always uphold it here to the very best of my ability. (And I’ll try not to overshare too much in the process…unless it’s really needed.)

I love you. Thanks for reading.

Carrie x