They May Not {they do not} Understand You

A bird.

And yet we keep talking. Why bother?

Hands up, who here is enlightened? You? Okay, good. This is for you, then.

Pull up a chair and let’s talk.

Have you noticed that no one really understands you?

I mean, you are describing something that is so obvious and clear to you, you’re looking at reality directly and describing it, but no one gets it at all. The more knowledge they have about spirituality, the more they believe they understand you. But they don’t. And no matter how many metaphors you pull out of your hat, you can see that you’ve still hit the same brick wall of incomprehension.

Does it feel a bit weird to you? Being the finger pointing at the moon, and all?

I mean, you are clearly pointing at and describing the moon, which is right there, visible to all. Yet you find that everyone seems to be wearing a neck brace so they can’t tilt their head up.

Through this blog I talk with so many people, both publicly and a great many more privately. They ask me questions, which I answer sincerely and as best I can, but rarely (as in, practically never) does anyone actually comprehend what I’m saying to them. Why do we keep on talking?

As someone who writes a blog about this stuff, I have had to contemplate this question repeatedly. Why bother if no one comprehends what I’m saying. I have no illusions that I’m going to lead anyone to enlightenment, ever. And that was never my intention.

Initially I started this blog for people who’ve experienced sudden, spontaneous enlightenment, to share some of the jarring and strange things that happened to me…not for the general public, not for spiritual seekers. Enlightened people don’t really need to explain the enlightened state to each other. Obviously.

I figured I might have a readership of what…3? And I knew that no matter how sloppy my metaphors, how tragically stilted or twee my descriptions were, people who actually live in this state would recognize it in my words. No need for perfection or eloquence.

But nearly all of the people I interact with are not living in this state. How do I speak to them and why?

Speaking from where I am.

This is the easiest way for me to communicate, yet it provides the least immediate value to people. When I speak from where I am, it is intense, direct, uncompromising and impersonal. In fact, I might go a little further than impersonal…it might seem a bit super human, alien, angelic, god-like. Whatever. The adjective will come from the listener’s suitcase, not mine.

What are the benefits of this style of communication? Well, it’s easier for one thing, and you will also never contradict yourself. There aren’t a ton of variables here. It’s that stark One Without A Second. And then, frankly, it might go further to not even One, but there really is no talking about that anyway.

Another benefit, and this is all the long game, is that it leaves breadcrumbs, or time bombs, for people who are just on the verge of waking up. Illusion Annihilating Dark Matter Mines. A billion people can walk over them and nothing happens, but the one, the one who is ready, will set the damn thing off.

The last benefit of speaking directly from this unqualified space is that you will not so much ever explain what enlightenment is, but rather what it is not. Is it this? No. Is it like that? No. Will it make me happy, fulfilled, find my purpose, be a better person, a Buddha, blissful? No. Perhaps a service rendered is the negation, over and over, of what has been sold as awakening. Nothing is added to you, everything is taken away. Still want it?

Speaking to people from where they are. Dreamland visa: the day pass.

This is another way to address Beautiful Sleepwalkers, but you’ll need a passport and maybe some all-weather gear. We are taking a trip into someone else’s dream state.

For quite a while after awaking from my own dream state, I was unable to travel into the dreams of others. I had a lot of momentum propelling me in the other direction, so to speak, and it was impossible for me to do otherwise. But once things stabilized a bit, I was able to travel.

I’m not sure if it helped that I used to actually enter the dream state of other people. I started doing this at around the age of 13, just because I was curious and of course, because I was an obnoxious teenager. I would attempt to enter the dreams of friends, and would keep notes to see if it was successful. I would wait until my father was sleeping and I would go into his dream and wake him up, which made him very cross but he never suspected it was me. I experimented on him because he was, unfortunately for him, right there in front of me. I refined my approach so that I would set a specific time he would wake up and then see if it worked. For whatever reason, I have known for most of my life the kinesthetic feeling of entering another’s dream.

So now, we are entering someone’s waking dream. We locate them, where are they on the spectrum, we get their signature and lock in. Once you are standing with a person, on their level, you can find out what they need and deliver it. You are not delivering unadulterated reality, you are not giving the Ultimate Medicine. Most people don’t want that anyway. Even if they think they do.

Again, from this space, you also do not need to say things in the most clever and perfect way. You are channeling to them what they need right now, and they are not at all passive in this exchange. They are pulling out of you what they need and they are also projecting onto you and your words the meaning they require. Whatever profundity or comfort or good advice that is generated here does not actually come from you, it comes from them. I am sometimes totally surprised by what I write and it feels more like I’m taking a telepathic dictation.

This isn’t just about soothing fears and providing comfort. Sometimes a person wants and needs you to step into their dream state and blow shit up. It’s not what you want or need or even intend. You might go in and be prepared to offer the sweet smelling candle and a plaster for the scraped knee, but then you learn that they want you to shake them up or bash up the statue of their guru with a frying pan.

There are some tricky parts to working in some one else’s dream. There are levels I refuse to travel to. Not that I can’t and not that I haven’t. I just know I’m not doing it. This is not something to do lightly.

It’s all custom work, so you will appear to constantly contradict yourself if you put it in the public arena as opposed to working with people directly and privately. People seem to think the Truth is just one thing, singular. And guess what, it is. But it’s not the truth that people are asking for.

I’ve never had a single person tell me that their unrelenting desire is to see reality as it is, to permanently lift the veil…no matter what is on the other side. No matter what the cost. No. People mostly want bliss, love, oneness with all, to know God, or ascend or escape their pain or whatever. So doing this kind of custom dream work means you are not speaking some singular truth, you are speaking the lines written by the other person for the benefit of the other person.

Interestingly, by putting it in the public sphere, I have found that lots of people claim to receive benefit. I’m not sure what this means at all. Perhaps they are able to impose their own meaning on my words or they are at roughly the same dream level and space that the original person was, and so they derive some benefit from the work.

So, why do this custom work? Not everyone will. For me it’s because, well, I can. I can do this. But also because I can relate very deeply with people, and I love them. Not in a personal way, not like being best mates. I’m not on a mission to make other people’s lives a little better or the world a little better. I’m not on a mission to do good.

There is something that radiates out of me, it’s not easy to describe. It’s strong and powerful and sober and intelligent. When people appear in my world, this energy naturally moves toward them, unless I am deliberately holding it back.

I see myself in other people, or is it the other way around? It’s perhaps more that I see other people as myself.

I know what it is like to feel…everything: alone, afraid, abandoned by God, prideful, indignant, stuck, stubborn, selfish, wrong. We’ve all been stranded at one time or another on a rock of our own making in the middle of a sea of our own making.

Only in vanishingly rare cases is it ever beneficial to pronounce to a person that neither the rock nor the ocean is real. If you can stand with them for a while and give them the message or the reminder or whatever, that they require to get off this rock in their own time and in their own way, then I’d say it was time well spent.

It’s kind of like going back in time and holding your own hand at the times when you were most afraid or hurt or confused or stubborn. You’re not going back to change circumstances or impart some fantastic wisdom (because you know yourself and that you wouldn’t have understood it at that stage anyway).

I used to have the most amazingly skilled Iyengar yoga teacher. I sought her out after I had a spinal injury. I never thought I’d be able to live a normal life, I was always terrified I was going to herniate another disk. For a long time, she had me do modified poses. I had become so fearful of my body, of using it, moving it. She worked with me from where I was, which was partly about my real physical limitation, but more than anything it was about my fear.

I was sure I couldn’t do a certain pose without hurting my neck, and she never said anything, but she would adjust my angle or stance in some very small, nearly imperceptible way. And suddenly there was all this space and freedom. I could feel the integrity of my body at that moment, that it was okay, that I could do the pose and relax into it.

I became stronger and more confident, more at home in my body. She didn’t heal my injury, but helped me work around it and shift my fear, not by talking me out of it, but by moving my ankle a centimeter to the left or lifting my chin a smidge. I went on to do headstands and all the rest. I went on to go zip lining and horseback riding. My injury is still there, but somehow I’m not living the injured life.

Perhaps some of my Absolute Truth breadcrumbs will benefit someone down the line.

Maybe they will step on one of my land mines and actually trigger it. Meanwhile, the micro adjustments seem to be messy and sound like a bunch of blather when I re-read it, but it seems to be of most immediate use to people. Maybe in the future this function will be taken over by some AI personal help bot.

“Cortana, I’m having trouble coping with the pointlessness of life.”

“I’m sorry you are suffering, John. I understand. Tell me more.”

Or maybe, I am the AI bot! Oh my god. Yes. My dream state interface is an AI bot.

How is it going for you? Do you use these communication styles or have you found others? Does anyone understand you?

READ NEXT: Enlightenment Survival Guide

Person walking upstairs.

Sayonara, Samsara. I’m Going Home

After awakening, you may feel you don’t belong here. People are fumbling around, sleepwalking. Avarice and manipulation are hardwired into our institutions. Perhaps you only get…

I don't recognize myself in the mirror

After Spiritual Awakening I Don’t Recognize Myself in the Mirror

About six months after the Big Bang, Triple Rainbow spiritual enlightenment I found myself in a Paris holiday flat looking into the mirror at someone…

Lighthouse glowing.

Feel the Heat of My Wushu

After spiritual awakening, people may be affected by your energy field in unexpected ways. You become a conduit of some kind of primordial energy flow.…

Elevator sign that reads: this car up.

The New Powerful You: Mastering Your Upgrade

“You call this an upgrade?” Yeah, I feel you. Sometimes it can feel like a handicap. Like you’ve been debilitated in some way. But think…

Dock going out into the water.

Before Enlightenment, The Invitation

There were things happened along the way, though for me this never felt like a gradual process. I was asleep one moment and awake another.…

Mural of person's head with art.

Format Your Hard Drive: Brain Hemispheres Go Offline

Spiritual awakening can bring on a major reformatting of your brain, a bit like wiping a hard drive. It’s not uncommon to hear people speak…

Enter the sanctuary meditation.

Cutting etheric cords audio spell on youtube.

Should I become a spiritual hermit after awakening?