I have to confess I haven’t been using the process nearly as much in the last month as I have been in the ten months before hand.
Why?
The egg that I’m draining is so large and so overwhelming that it doesn’t even seem like the process exists. Using it feels like the emotional equivalent of using a small stone to stop a whirling typhoon. And that whirling typhoon is the most glorious experience of all in this limited created consciousness we share – love.
Let’s back up a bit.
For the last year I’ve been living a sheltered life. In New Jersey in my parents basement I weathered things like the economic crisis, my own issues with depression, and the rocky take-off of Phase 2. Living in Phase 2 was much easier when I didn’t pay rent and I could honestly do whatever I wanted to do.
Now in the past month I’ve moved back to California, become homeless and jobless, and have spent all the money I had previously saved for a Phase 1 plan on vacations to Vegas and Puerto Rico. Ah to be young…
Believe it or not none of this bothers me. In general, I feel better than I felt my whole life when I was running the achievement treadmill faster than the next guy at the life gym. Why? Because I know for a fact that this is just a story and that I’m already taken care of. You see, I’ve remembered. I’ve begun waking up and having direct experiences. Yet now my ES has decided to proclaim “the Phase 1 tour is not over yet – we’re just getting to the good part.’
So when is your story not a story?
When you’re in love.
The Problem
Alan Watts talks about a great zen koan that masters used to give their disciples to figure out. Once they did they would open up the doorway to Nirvana. A koan is a sort of a seemingly unsolvable problem. E.g. this classic, “if a tree falls in the forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Here is the riddle that most describes my situation:
There is a goose trapped inside a bottle. You must get it out without breaking the bottle or killing the goose. How do you do it?
We’ll come back to this…
So I’m not using the process frequently. Not because I don’t want to. Not because I don’t think it will help. I just haven’t. I suppose maybe it was actually true joy in disguise. I didn’t use it because it wasn’t necessary to do so. After all, the process is part of the illusion as well. Maybe in this part of the storyline I took a time out from the process. Life was no less amazing, magical, and far more relaxed.
This was akin to finding a leisurely ridge while mountain climbing before running smack into a cliff of solid ice with no conception of how to climb it.
All of a sudden Phase 2 dissolved and took the shape of Phase 1, warts and all. I’ll spare you the details but the simple problem is this:
I’m in love with a woman who is my best friend (of 10 years) – the kind of “in love” which will not go away, no matter how much I fight it. She does not feel the same way as me. We are going to get a place together in Santa Cruz. Financially, it is really my only option. My two damned if you do, damned if you don’t, options are:
1. Bury my feelings for her and live together.
2. End our friendship and any future together.
It’s amazing how everything about Busting Loose can seem to disappear when dealing with matters of the heart. I had found a problem that couldn’t be solved by the process or Busting Loose. Little did I know it was that zen koan dressed in shiny new, emotionally naked clothing. It wasn’t until a couple days ago I emerged from my aching stupor with the clarity of this riddle.
So which do you do?
Break the bottle or kill the goose?
To be continued.
It’s good to see you posting again.
How about option #3:
Live with your friend temporarily until you’ve saved enough money to move in with someone else. Maintain the friendship from a distance and slowly come to accept that your feelings aren’t reciprocated and that you deserve a romantic partner who loves you as you love them. Your love for your friend won’t disappear, but it will take another form.
Good luck buddy!
PS: Where in California are you?
Hi Christopher,
Thank you for sharing your story! It seems like you have found yourself a huge egg!!
Maybe it’s time to go back to the “Expansion Chamber” and working with the Process. Even if it feels useless. Remember that everywhere you feel discomfort, there is power for you to reclaim!
Instead of thinking in solutions – focus on the discomfort and Process it. Just keep doing it, and see what you feel inspired to do…
It is a great support for you what you experince right now!!
Best regards,
Claus
Ahhn . . . the “in love” story is indeed simply that . . . a story . . . a very potent story
for so many of us . . .
Your being taken to a beautiful opportunity . . . get your drill ready . . .
😉
ps . . . there is one option that, in my adventure, trumps all others . . . simply doing
as one’s moved to do . . . even if it changes minute to minute . . . not necessarily having
to play out the story “on the field” but from a higher (no judgement) perspective . . . using the tools
to reclaim power in consciousness . . . this option has been so supportive in my journey . . .
Hey Chris…The Goose trapped in the bottle is the only place you CAN be…The BEST, most powerful place to reclaim your power. Crazy, eh? That’s amazing that you’ve created no other choice but to move in with her.
Also, your friend is you. There is no telling what you could create her to feel once you break through enough cloud cover. Be with her character moment by moment, and be open to things shifting in “you” or in “her” every day. (Or, silly me, do whatever you are inspired to do!) It’s crazy to think, but she could be acting out for you SO many different patterns/people from your “past” in order for you to reclaim power.
…About 4 months ago I created my husband to fall in love with another woman, to drop me like a silly ball, and me to try to drive away into the horizon several times, always coming back, and to contemplate divorce SO often, but to be “trapped” in so many amazing ways (money, kids, shared business, car and land, etc)…These days, the “other” woman has disappeared from my hologram and I create my husband to be committed and loving to me in most ways (there’s still tons of power for me to reclaim, but lately I create my love eggs to stem from some illusionary “miscommunication” between us or “over-reaction” on my part (which I create myself to realize AFTER I spend some time using tools- even though at first it seems like we’re doomed)
Thanks for the great blog!
Sarah
Hi Chris,
Once again your eloquence of story just slays me! Beautifully written, expressed and the riddle….well, just perfect. Remember my friend, whether you are doing the process or not, nothing in the hologram is real or true. All could change any minute! So, anything can change, morph, become a whole other animal, so to speak. The options aren’t 2, they are infinite. Just follow those precious feelings to where they take you and do what you feel is right at the moment.
We are here to create our stories….just don’t believe them! I see Joy revealing itself.
Love, Pat
You are doing perfect Chris. Just know that, if things feel overwhelming and challenging you are right on course. Just follow what you feel. Remember your friend is you, the house together is all your creation. You are giving yourself a huge gift of potential insight and direct experience. Embrace it. Even if you felt a huge desire to confront her with your love, that would be perfect support. YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF IT ALL.
In money game terms I am in a similar place, no job, very very little money in my illusion. Living with family, but it supports seeing all the layers of judgment I had about being in this place. So in essence I guess one could say I need to be here right now, as do you, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be there. You are ready for it. Know that.
Do what you feel motivated to do, you are not driving the bus, you don’t need to figure it out, you just follow the map of your feelings and see where it leads. Its a suprise everyday.
You will be just fine Chris
Jordy
I want to let all of you know that I’m floored with how much wisdom you/I have.
The goose in the bottle riddle was something that was supposed to take a very long time of contemplation to understand and all of you seem to have had your own riddles in your life.
I will be elaborating on this in the next blog post, but as you already know, the riddle is the answer to the riddle.
@Donovan: I’m back in Santa Cruz
@Claus and Terrence: Yes it seems this experience is the Phase 2 bus kicking into a higher gear.
@Sarah: You must be Zen master already.
@Pat: I agree that the choice is an illusion, behind which is infinite possibility. Well put!
@Jordy: Thanks for letting me remember that this sheer ice wall of cloud cover is where I should be. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be here.
And thanks again everyone for your advice and support.
wowy pat, love it!!!:
“We are here to create our stories….just don’t believe them!”
Wowowowowow. Finally, to hear my story through someone else’s words, with a few twists. Of course, I created you to tell it. Go, me!
I’m in love with a man who lives with someone else. It is one of the biggest eggs of my life…and no matter how much I try to get rid of or change my feelings about him, they WON’T BUDGE! You can’t imagine the gamut of things I’ve thought and felt and said and done…to make it all “go away.” Ironically, it’s not there anyway.
But I love reading this because it’s good to know that someone else knows the experience (gift?) of what it’s like to feel that way…and not see it “reciprocated,” and then to read the responses and realize that there are so many beliefs I have about “deciding,” and options, and the concept of reciprocation…man, I wouldn’ta thought of that.
If you look at my website, it’s my blog in which I write about this very thing.
I appreciate me/you for bringing me a bit of comfort in knowing that we are up to some amazing things in our creations…
I also will write (if I haven’t already by the time you read this) about what came to mind last night about my “doing the process.” Thanks for the reminder that even “the process” is an illusion.
On April’s Fool Day of this year (oh, my ES has such a sense of humor ! ) I found myself shortly after a divorce extremely attracted to a man I would not normally ever considered as romantic, long-term material, even if I was physically attracted to him.
I thought normal Phase I thoughts of a person that has done a lot of ‘personal development’ and New Age stuff as well as Phase I thoughts of western pop psychologically and society (oh, I’m just a hot-to-trot divorcee`looking to get laid AND this is just a fling covering up my true feelings of loss, grief and abandonment, yada yada yada).
BUT, I had already read BL from the Money Game (just got BL from biz game) and, I realized that here was a HUGE egg for me.
Again and again and again, I used the Process. I felt such fear and discomfort of ‘falling in love’ again, even if I knew this was all an illusion/hologram, that ‘he’ wasn’t even really there let alone my own body being here. I just kept on NOT having an agenda as to what I wanted or where this relationship was heading. Afterall, when I meet a woman I think I’d like to be friends with, I have NEVER EVER EVER in my Phase I experience asked myself “Now, just where is this relationship heading? Is she seeing other friends, or will we be exclusive and monogamous? Will this be long-term? Will we live together ” blah blah blah to ad infinitum –doh!
I just knew it was a major chance for conscious expansion and that I was going to take every opportunity when those yucky scared feelings — sometimes jealousy — came up.
Every time he talked about other women that he thought were soooooo hot. Every time he told me about other women that he said were coming on to him and thought he was sooooooooo hot, I used the Process. ( Okay, right after the first thought in my head was “What a dick! “) When he would mention that he had never been attracted to an older woman before (I am all of 13 months older! Big whoop.) Every time he’d do something inconsiderate like show up hours later than he said he would. Every time he would introduce me as “This is my friend, Alyssa” instead of a girlfriend although he spent 5-6 nights at my house out of a week. Every time he would reiterate HE didn’t want to fall in love (I mean, OMG, is that a mirror or what ??? ) , that he didn’t want to hear the ” L Word “, although I did say it a few times to him.
And I never shared really with Any Other Aspects of Me because I felt if I did, I would be doing so from a Phase I standpoint and looking for a reason to walk away or be given validation as to why I should get in his face to confront him.
Instead, “Look what I’VE/ES created” became a running phrase thru my head. And when I had the first opportunity to really apply the Process whenever I got pissed off or insecure, I did. I rarely verbally got on his case or tried to change his behavior, understanding that it was all coming from my ES so why bother doing anything on the external?
Again, and again, he would contact me. Daily.
And then he told me loved me about 6 weeks ago or so.
Yes, it felt wonderful to hear. But honestly, I knew it came from a place within me, so it was more like — of course!
I’m still using the Process in this relationship. I still get the opportunities, but they are becoming less and less in frequency, and less intense. And when I get to the place of “dang, he hasn’t told me loves me today” or when I meet his beautiful ex-wife yesterday and I’m feeling ‘less than’, it’s just another opportunity for me, because I KNOW — it’s all about ME and how I am connecting to Source.
It’s just … all so amazing!
keep up the egg drainage!
hugs