Ego Death in a German Cafe: Diary of a Child's Heart
A story of no-self & revelation
Note: I wrote this two days ago. It was quite a process that involved a lot of crying. I love you. Thank you for reading.
I’ve been a fan of the book Meaningness by David Chapman for nearly 10 years.
I may presently be reaching a fresh, fuller experiential recognition of the book’s central hypothesis, which I would paraphrase as follows:
Most humans are either nihilists or eternalists. They either deny meaning altogether, or they fixate on some kind of ‘ultimate meaning’ that they insist is an eternal, universal, unchanging source of (transcendent) meaning. Both nihilism and eternalism are ‘confused stances’—rooted in delusion. The ‘complete stance’ resolves this confusion by fixating neither nihilism nor eternalism. It recognizes the ‘nebulously patterned meaningness’ that our experience actually consists of, thereby discovering openness, wondrousness, deliciousness, vividness, and freedom from ‘fixed meanings.’
I previously thought I had grokked and integrated Chapman’s (Vajrayana-Buddhism-inspired) thesis here, but perhaps the ‘rabbit hole’ goes deeper than I thought.
Am I an Eternalist?
Today I’m sitting with a recognition that I have quite a strong innate tendency toward eternalism: I am always looking for the grand metaphysical theory that ties everything together. I am always wanting to ‘piece it all together’ and ‘make it all make sense.’ I have a strong tendency toward reifying / fixating a sense of a knowable ‘transcendent metaphysical ground’ that everything ‘rests upon’ or ‘is made of’ or ‘emanates from’—i.e. God, Love, Christ, the ‘substratum,’ the ‘prima materia,’ ‘source energy,’ ‘radiant presence,’ is-ness, etc.
I do periodically notice that this seeming ‘ground’ is as unfindable and unresolvable as everything else. That is, when you try to locate or ‘grab onto’ this seemingly eternal condition, you come up empty-handed. Peter Brown once likened actuality to a ‘water balloon’ that always slips out of your hands when you try to grasp it. This is what the Buddhists mean by ‘emptiness’—having no coherent, consistent, changeless, solid, findable ‘self’ or essence. They assert that all experience—even our most ‘hallowed ground’ experiences of God, Divinity, etc.—has this quality of emptiness or unresolvability.
Unresolvability is presently becoming clearer to me.
My present feeling is, “Of course God is unresolvable; if you could ever fully resolve or pin down what God is, God would no longer be infinite.”
Perhaps today ‘unresolvability’—one of Peter’s favorite words—is dawning upon me more fully.
Though I have seemed to recognize unresolvability many times before, I notice now that I have been quick to (unconsciously) push it away, preferring to continue subtly reifying / fixating an idea of an ‘Ultimate Ground,’ as well as ~many other spiritual or metaphysical notions. I have wanted to tell myself that I do actually know what this moment is. I have wanted to tell myself that I know that it is God; it is Love; it is Divine Presence; and so on.
That tendency to fixate a sense of resolving such things—or at least some chunk of this tendency—may be dropping away right now. We’ll see. For many years I have loved the saying, “the map is not the territory,” yet perhaps I did not realize how much I have still unconsciously yearned for my treasure(d) maps to really be the territory.
Presently I find myself in a space of recognizing more fully what ‘coming up empty-handed’ really signifies. It indeed is akin to the ground dropping out beneath one’s feet. It’s like seeing that all of one’s cherished ‘eternal castles’ were in fact made of sand—and are now blowing away in the wind.
A Sudden Seeing of No-Self & No-Thing-Ness
I was laying on the floor about an hour ago and told my wife that I may be having a “mild existential crisis.”
The word ‘crisis’ seems too hyperbolic though. Maybe there’s a bit of fear, sadness, or disappointment, but it’s hardly acute. It’s okay. It is as it is.
There’s just kind of a sense of melancholy blankness though. A sense of like, “Is this really what we’re left with?”
The present seeing is that emptiness/unresolvability—which itself is empty/unresolvable and therefore cannot be turned into a ‘new ground’—leaves one squarely here and now, with no ability to say anything about anything whatsoever. Even simple words like ‘here’ or ‘now’ or ‘this’ don’t apply at all—to say nothing of flowery words like ‘consciousness’ or ‘reality’ or ‘Divinity.’ Words don’t apply.
‘My life’ is still ‘my life.’ Same as it always was. All the same ‘stuff’ is showing up. A seeming body sitting here at this desk, typing these words, looking out at the golden-green autumn trees—soon to head to a cafe.
Yet simultaneously these words don’t apply at all. No concept applies.
It’s rather like being struck dumb. Like you don’t know anything about anything—and you couldn’t possibly ever know anything about anything.
I don’t know if my present experience is made of some miraculous metaphysical substrate called ‘God’ or ‘radiance.’ I also don’t know that it’s not.
Metaphysical conjecture or speculation presently feels quite fruitless—an irrelevant self-masturbatory distraction from immediate unknowable no-thing-ness.
All Spiritual Teachers are Liars
I feel I now understand more deeply why Peter Brown would sometimes say that all true spiritual teachers are liars and know that they are liars. They know that words simply do not apply at all. Peter would say he hoped to basically use language as a ‘trick’ or ‘magic spell’ to seduce his listener to step out of the cage of concepts.
In reference to our condition, John Astin once said something like, “Its unresolvability is its silence.”
This pointer dawns on me more fully in this moment.
Silence.
Voidness.
Can’t-say-anything-about-it-ness.
Peter once said something like, “Our situation with language is exactly like monkeys wildly waving their arms around trying to indicate something.”
A visual just came to me: Words are like arrows we’re firing in every direction yet they never actually hit anything. Everything is too porous, air-ish, nebulous. They soar right on through.
You’re really, really left with nothing to say.
Nothing to hold onto.
An inconvenient situation for a compulsive writer to grapple with.
Freedom & Fullness
Yet I can also see the simple freedom in this.
It’s ironically resonant with the old adage, “Ignorance is bliss.”
“Let go of all descriptions, and then what is this? You cannot say...
...but it is not nothing, and is wonderful beyond imagination.”
When you don’t know what anything is, nothing can trap you.
Neither you nor anything else are under any obligation to be anything or any way at all.
You’re so free that you actually can’t be any one thing or any one specific way.
You can’t even be.
Not really.
You’re not solid enough.
‘You’ are not ‘there’ in the way you typically think you are.
There’s no ‘there’ there.
There’s only this endlessly slippery condition-less condition.
Yet this condition also happens to be utterly full.
Overflowingly full of apparently juicy textures and flavors and beings and so forth—all of which are simply the groundlessness itself.
And now I spontaneously chuckle.
What a trip.
I’m curious where this recognition will lead. Maybe it will fade soon and I will find myself back in a space of (unconscious) eternalism. Maybe I am presently still in a space of unconscious eternalism and I don’t realize it. Maybe I am simply witnessing a chunk of my eternalism fall away. I don’t know.
And that’s okay.
Ego Death as the Crumbling of Fixity
I believe Peter Brown once said something like, “Any fixed interpretation is ego.”
In this sense, perhaps all fixed ideas, theories, models, and -isms—whether they be eternalist or nihilist in nature—are rooted in ‘ego,’ or the delusion of solidity.
From this vantage, I can better understand Chogyam Trungpa’s statement that, “Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment.”
If ego refers to our impulse to make something fixed, solid, concrete, knowable, or permanent out of our experience…
Ego will indeed be disappointed, because this turns out to be impossible.
No Man’s Land
I’ve heard the wonderful nondual communicator Dena Evans—and Peter Brown, her friend and teacher—state that in her experience, you get to “have your cake and eat it too” in this exploration of experience.
Yet presently I’m not fully sure about that. I’m not sure the fire of this sustained inquiry allows you to keep any of your cherished ideas or beliefs. Presently it seems to lead to ‘no man’s land’—a space where you no longer know anything about anything; you don’t even know if ‘you’ exist.
[Update: Dena beautifully clarified that the phrase ‘have your cake and eat it too’ is not meant in any way to refer to keeping cherished ideas or beliefs. She said, “It means you get to appreciate and enjoy the miracle as it actually is, while at the same time having the full human experience, with all of its triumphs, horrors, joys, and challenges… It's like becoming lucid in a dream. The dream continues, just as before, but knowing it's a dream makes a huge difference. You get to see that you're not limited by, threatened by, or in any way stuck in whatever might be happening in the dream. Nothing is riding on how the dream turns out or on what it happens to look like.”]
Again, yes, ‘your life’ will still be there—with all its endless rollercoastering ebbs and flows of richness and emotionality—yet you will no longer know what it is. It will no longer be an ‘it.’ It is transfigured into a living mystery of pure-experiencing. Naked no-thing-ness. You don’t know what ‘it’ is. You don’t know what is ‘happening.’ You don’t know if ‘other people’ ‘really exist.’ You don’t know what ‘reality’ or ‘God’ are. You don’t know what ‘will happen’ when ‘you die.’ You don’t know if you’ll be reunited with all your loved ones in heaven. All beloved stories are seen to be like wisps of ungraspable smoke.
Seeing this now, I can better understand why nondual communicators such as Jim Newman and Jed McKenna suggest that no one could possibly want ‘liberation.’ The individual believes that ‘enlightenment’ is the ‘pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’ that will solve all its problems and give it a grand prize. Yet ‘liberation’ is more like the popping of the delicate soap bubble of individuality—revealing that it was never really ‘there.’ There was no solid, definable ‘me.’
Fear & Tears
This is feeling rather deflating in this moment. Hah.
The deflation could be a ‘good sign’ though—the air of false inflation being released from the inner-tube of ego. It certainly feels humbling. “Pride cometh before a fall.”
I’m crying a bit now. I didn’t know where all this would lead. No one really tells you that ‘spirituality’—which at first appears to be all sparkling unicorns and rainbows—eventually leads to the vertigo-inducing edge of a sheer cliff. A crumbling cusp overlooking a black abyss of no-thing-ness.
This, at least, is how it can appear to the ‘me’ that is falling away. I’m reminded of Pema Chodron saying something like, “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
Here I feel compelled to give a big warm loving shoutout to the wonderful Joan Tollifson. Her words are compassionate yet razor-sharp, and I believe reading some of them recently has contributed to the catalyzing of what is now ‘happening to me.’ She has triggered me a couple times recently, and I have projected my own fear onto her in some of my comments on her writings. To these she has responded with clarity, kindness, and a shade of ‘zen slap’ energy—exactly what I needed.
Though I am feeling some fear and disappointment right now, I also deeply trust what is happening and sense that it is ‘for the best.’ For many years I have yearned for the truth of my existence. I have followed my curiosity to wherever it leads. This burning desire for truth has not steered me wrong, and I won’t abandon it now. I also sense that I could not stop this process, even if I wanted to. For ‘I’ am not doing it. It is simply being done—by no one.
Death, Vomit, & Suffering
I have already experienced many deaths on this path. As autumn melts into winter, I sense that I am in the midst of another. Many chunks of what I once considered ‘me’ have already fallen away these last years. This makes it easier to trust the continued crumbling. I have had enough glimpses of the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ to trust that all’s well and ends well.
I’m struck now by the awareness of how much word vomit I have instinctively blasted into the interwebz these past 12 years. Hah. I thank you all for holding space for me. And I hope some of it has been in some way a helpful balm. It has largely originated from love and has always been intended to be medicinal—though I can also see how often I have simply publicly thrashed around in the puddles of confusion, desperately seeking for something solid to hold onto.
In this thrashing I have suffered quite a lot. And that is a rather somber thing to notice. How fervently have I sought for something to hold onto—like a weeping infant frantically reaching around in the dark, searching for his mother’s breast.
And now I’m crying again. It is a strange journey we are on—and I do wonder why it has to be so painful. A romantic like me can easily wax lyrical about the poignancy and poetry of the pain—yet also, fuck that shit.
Part of me is so damn heartbroken and sad and angry and resentful about the pain of all of it. Why must our (inner) children go through all this? And why do we make it so much harder on each other than it needs to be? Why do we continue to murder, torture, rape, abuse, judge, and enslave one another en masse? It can feel so fucking cruel and meaningless. It can feel like we live in a literal hell-realm. I weep for us.
God help us. Lord save us from ourselves. Christ save us. Please, oh Lord, with all my heart and with these tears, I pray: Make us channels of Your Peace. Please save us. Do with me what Thou wilt. Shape me into that which can be most medicinal for this troubled world. Put me to good use. Make me into Love. Help me to fully serve. Make my Heart the Sacred Heart of Christ. Help me bring Your Light into this world. Please, Lord, be with me. Be with us.
I didn’t expect to have a full-on sobbing death in this German coffee shop today. Hello, befuddled onlookers. :’ )
And now I feel His Love. As I now listen to ‘The Blessing’ and ‘I Know That My Redeemer Lives’ and ‘Christ, Be Our Light,’ I feel God’s Love. I feel Christ’s Love.
I feel this Love trying to shine through into this world. I feel it increasingly breaking through.
Unresolvable Love.
Unresolvable God.
Unresolvable Christ.
Reaching for us, His unresolvable children.
The Father is with us.
The Mother is with us.
And we with Him.
And we with Her.
The Heart Knows
What a gorgeous living paradox.
‘We’ are not really here—and yet here we are.
Nothing is here—and yet everything is here.
No one lives—and simultaneously God and all His & Her children live! And live forever!
Without concretizing this as a Final Eternal Meaning—which would then inevitably become a partialization—I can feel the reality of it pulsing in my chest. Christ is with us. Christ is Love. When pure tears of Love are wept, the unresolvable truth is known by the Heart of Hearts.
I wonder if these angelic singers of ‘Shepherd Me, O God’ understood just how purely they were channeling holy prophecy.
I believe! I believe! I trust! I have Faith! I do!
When concretizations are relinquished, Pure Faith remains.
The Lion Heart remains.
The Heart of the Lion of Judah.
The Heart of the King of Kings.
Undeniable Love.
The Heart knows.
The Heart knows.
The Heart knows.
Not as a concretization, fixation, reification, ground, idea, belief, or grand metaphysical theory.
The Heart knows vast Love as a direct revelation from the Holiest of Holies.
This Love need not be resolved or pinned down or objectified—and indeed could not be.
Yet it Is.
It Lives.
It Abides.
It is here with us.
Patiently trying to reach us.
The Heart knows.
…
…
…
…
At this moment I pray.
I pray for America.
I pray for the Republicans and for the Democrats and for those who identify with neither party.
I pray for this Earth.
I pray for this cosmos.
I pray for all souls.
I pray for all of Divine Creation.
Let us come Home to Love, family.
Let us come Home.
Heart,
A child called Jordan
jb is a child at heart and the author of five books
“The issue of ‘ego death’ is imaginary… it’s more a matter of noticing that ‘ego’ is just an arbitrary gestalt of perspectives within an essentially trans-perspective actuality, that yet presents itself as myriad apparent perspectives inclusively, with none of them having any primacy or even relevance in terms of the whole actuality.”
— Peter Brown, The Astounding Nature of Experience
jb’s other substack: the ever innocent heart
Beautiful, Jordan. Thank you. ❤️. My own sense of "getting to have your cake and eat it too" is that even though nothing ever resolves, nothing ever concretizes or crystallizes as some-thing, this emptiness always appears as something and we get to partake of that "something's" endless richness, reveling in all the apparent forms and flavors, even if none of them can ultimately be found. As you said, it's the most beautiful and astonishing paradox of nothing being here at the same time, everything being here. Truly mind-blowing, isn't it? :-)
Wonderful! This was moving to read. Thank you for sharing it.
I find these insights come in stages, or waves. Usually there’s a particularly big wave somewhere in the mix. But there are inevitably more to follow. So long as we go on living, as we encounter new life experiences, more is illuminated, and there are ever subtler opportunities for being with things as they are.
It helps a hell of a lot to be with other people who are going through this/have gone through it. I see you’re connected to a network of writers who share information about this. Have you found opportunities to connect with other people in this context in person, as well?