Awakening Into Nothingness (Part 5)

The final experiences that would shatter the mind forever.

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I’ve been intensely seeking my entire life without realising my mind was the overlord of my reality. Everything was always about what’s next rather than what’s now, and I couldn’t see past the deathgrip of its rigidity.

I came from a position of placing little value on feelings, emotion or intuition, and placing all value on data, cold hard facts and science.

Lately though, that’s all changed.

This is Part 5 (the finale) in a series I call Mind Is The Enemy.

• Part 1: A Bug In The Deployed Code (My Backstory)

• Part 2: An Encounter with Consciousness Itself

• Part 3: Expand Love & Freedom

• Part 4: These Parts Ain’t Loyal

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In this final part, I’ll be recounting two of the more ‘mystical’ events along my journey while reflecting upon what might’ve taken place, and then I’ll be wrapping up with how this ‘awakening’ has set the course for the rest of my life, including some of the struggles and insights I’ve been through in hopes it may serve someone, someday.

Before we get started, I want to note a few things:

• These experiences were direct and deeply felt within my own inner-world and although I will do my best, words simply cannot do them justice.

• The first thing people ask me when I speak about this is “did you use psychedelics?” and the answer is nope - I’ve never tried them! People seem to be genuinely surprised by this and I find that interesting. Guess I didn’t realise how common the use of them were - both now and throughout history!

• There’s an infinite number of avenues one could take to describe these events, so what I am going to do is provide an ‘exciting explanation’, but then also my own ‘grounded explanation’.

P.S. It’s not necessarily that the grounded explanation invalidates the exciting explanation, I’d say it’s more that the exciting explanations simply sound more… well… exciting, especially to westerners who typically aren’t used to being exposed to Eastern or spiritual teachings.

Anywho, let’s get into it.

Oneness By The River

Right after the therapy session in Part 4, I went to the river in the city to lay down, read a book, and just be. I know that’s what the part I encountered during somatic therapy said it wanted to do, but I was in such a trance during that moment that it didn’t actually occur to me until days later.

As I was laying there by the river reading a book and listening to some nice music, I notice how calm my mind was. There was no urge to pick up my phone, worry about work, think about my future, or even to think about anything else. But in this moment, all I wanted to do was nothing. Nothing? What’s that? I ALWAYS had to be doing something. In fact, the only time I ever did nothing was when I was sleeping (if I could get my brain to switch off), and that’s still doing something. I wanted to do nothing so much that I didn’t even want to read, so I put my book down and just laid there observing how the sun reflected off the water, how the trees stood tall and swayed in the wind, and how the ducks scurried for food around the river.

In what felt like an instant but an eternity at the same time, I lost my sense of self and mind, and just fell into complete oneness with the contents of my experience. I visualise¹ an upside down tree² with an infinite number of roots, and it was in this moment which I understand everything in existence is a unique expression of consciousness acting as a vessel for life to experience itself, and that the way life evolves and expands if by interfacing with itself through all of these seemingly separate appearances. This was all happening as I lay there completely enraptured in feelings of love, peace and bliss. It was like all problems were solved and there were no questions that needed to be asked, because everything was everything and with that, life itself just made total sense.

The tree I lay under by the river pulsates with energy as the sun reflects off the water.

Exciting explanation:

This was a form of spiritual awakening, samadhi or satori.

Samadhi - transcending the intellect and reaching a state of equanimity which unites the person with the highest reality.

Satori - the experience of awakening ("enlightenment") or understanding of the true nature of reality.

Grounded explanation:

This is simply the most basic and natural state of the human experience which has been distorted by layers upon layers of structural mind conditioning over centuries of existence. If we did not have all of this conditioning, there would be no spiritual awakening, samadhi or satori to be had, there would just be life as it is, undistorted in all of its beauty.

Messages From The Universe

A few days later, I took my journal, a pen and my headphones to a table out in nature to write. After I wrote my first piece and newsletter, I didn’t really have a true grasp on what I was going to write about next here on the newsletter — all I knew was my life experience up until this point and what had just happened to me felt profound.

Different day, different time, different table, same vibes.

I sit down, chuck some music on³, and start writing. I didn’t have a goal and I didn’t know what I was writing about. As I’m staring at the golden sun as it weaves through the trees and begins to set, the same feelings at the river strike my soul. I found myself writing words on the paper, but I wasn’t thinking them. This completely freaked me out… how was that even possible?

I’ll share some lines from it. It was kinda poetic (well, to me anyway because I’ve never seen this kind of thing from myself before!):

The mind is a tool, yet a limitation at the same time. It thinks. But I am barely thinking right now. Every so often it comments, but I do not listen.

The mind wants us to think we and it are one. Because if it can think, then it can try to control. The mind can never be calm. It will always overthink into chaos unless it is directed and guided by something much more powerful….

…I imagine a life where I am entirely me. And no one else.

Because me is not “Roc”. Roc is an avatar that was created and shaped by everyone but me.

Me goes much, much deeper.

I am awareness who has remembered who it is and where it came from.

I am the infinite intelligence of the All. All knowing, all expanding, all seeing.

After this, I found myself asking questions to whatever it was that had been seemingly writing on my behalf. The messages I received were about the future, what I am here on this planet to do, and how I can help contribute to the greater good. There was one point where I freaked out and thought to myself “what the hell is going on here… what if I am crazy?”. To which I immediately write the following response:

The mind is the one that lies. Out here, there are no lies. Out here, there is only truth.

So, what happened?

Exciting explanation:

This was a form of automatic or psychic writing, sometimes also referred to as channeling. While people often use vibrant language when discussing souls and spirits, these are essentially just words describing what I believe to be a latent or long-forgotten human ability.

Grounded explanation:

I see this as simply connecting to the organic/true Self. In modern society, many of us are often so conditioned that we lose connection to our true nature, so any reconnection after never connecting or long periods away will feel significant.

Then What

While these experiences have gone on to set the tone for greater expansion and a newfound perspective for my life, they were also completely jarring… especially during the weeks shortly after where I experienced things like:

• Feeling apathetic for many things in the modern material world of which I seemed to have unlimited ‘drive’ toward previously like my job (don’t tell my boss), investing for financial freedom, or any other form of seeking.

• Fearing I was going to ‘lose’ the expanded state of awareness I seemed to be in, which only served to flare up the problems of which are commonly experienced from the perspective of the ‘separate self’ or ‘ego’.

• Feeling like the ‘separate self’ or ‘ego’ was barbaric and something that needed to be discarded at all costs (thanks modern spirituality content), rather than embraced, which only fed into the point above and caused more of the same.

• Feeling like I wanted everyone around me to understand this point of view, and then feeling frustrated and lonely because it seemed like no one could relate, which rather hilariously looked like the beginning of a new type of spiritual ego.

• Fearing I’d be destined to give up all my worldly and material possessions and would need to resign to becoming one of those monks that goes to the cave and never comes back, because it wasn’t possible to reside in the modern world while being spiritual… right?

• Feeling kinda angry, annoyed and flabbergasted that they don’t teach you this in school, and no-one else did either! Kinda sounds important that we know the true nature of our being, right everyone? … No?… Alrighty then.

It is said that when the separate self know its days are numbered, it often flares up in an attempt to hold on for dear life. This likely describes my experience here, as the integration and balancing of the body-mind takes time to adapt to the new paradigm of seeing the world. Despite this though, these ‘negative’ experiences ultimately guided me towards greater awareness and balance.

Now What

Well, now life goes on. I’m not superhuman, I didn’t become a monk, I haven’t sold all my possessions, I haven’t 100% completely healed myself and fixed all my problems and I still feel like me… so that’s pretty cool. Here are some of the insights I’ve had since:

• Life isn’t as serious as I thought it was #1: Where the world seemed more like a separate, competitive and fearful place to reside, it now feels more like a fun playground to explore, create and share love and happiness with the world.

• Life isn’t as serious as I thought it was #2: Stuff within our seemingly normal human reality is really all a fabricated construct of which we’ve collectively agreed upon and then embedded into our programming. While this is a complex topic, knowing this has been liberating in the sense that I’ve been able to give myself permission to know myself, to look after myself, to not get so caught up on other peoples frameworks and models, to experiment more, and finally… to create in pure joy and curiosity while having FUN!

• Life isn’t as serious as I thought it was #3: Disidentifying from my 'identity' as Roc, including my system of shadow parts, and external structures has similarly been freeing. When I don’t identify with the idea of ‘me’, it almost feels like putting on an invisible cloak, and then being able to go do the things you love most without worrying about anything or anyone.

• The boundless exploration of the Self (of which there are many layers of depth) has led me to understand that there really are no limits. I’ve transmuted a lot of pain and limiting beliefs (which seem more scary on the surface than in reality) that although my life looks almost no different, it feels entirely different. I’m excited to explore what’s possible for the human experience if I continue to go deeper and remove further layers of distortion.

• People are far more brilliant and bright than they believe themselves to be, but due to all these distortions we accept the reality of being a prisoner of our own mind, and it breaks my heart to think of all the suffering this causes. On the flipside there’s hope as these distortions can be cleared up if one is willing to journey within, and this wisdom can be passed down to upcoming generations.

• Freedom is right here, right now. Freedom is what we already are, and it’ll never be had through attachment to any object of experience. The understanding that you are quite literally freedom… it’s amazing.

• Just from the act of returning to many understandings with a new perspective, I’m reminded of how expansive life and the human experience truly is - which to me is exciting. The journey is truly infinite, just like the nature of our being.

• Although I now believe I know true surrender and as such know moving in accordance with nature (effortless action & wu-wei) or the stillness of being, sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, it still feels like there’s stuff to ‘do’ - even though I know there’s nothing that can be done, because there’s no-one here to do it 😅

Thank you for being here with me along the journey, it’s been a wild ride and it’s far from over!

Although I still don’t truly know where this will lead me, I feel deep inside my heart that I’m here to contribute to something that transcends the idea of me. My life up until this point has felt like struggle after struggle, and now I feel excited to create and ready to give back to the world to the best of my abilities.

I feel like this newsletter is now just getting started, and I can’t wait to sink into some incredibly interesting and expansive topics in hope they’ll serve someone or help them along their journey.

Keep well, talk soon.

Roc 💜

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This piece is dedicated to another person who’s been terribly special and important to me along the journey - Priscilla Clegg. Priscilla has been my spiritual anchor this entire time, and I often wonder if I’d be where I am today or if I’d have expanded my experience in the same way had I not taken the plunge last year to go and see her. It’s funny because when I first saw her around mid last year I truly had no understanding of what we were doing (which was first time I probably ever let go of needing to know), but all I knew was I felt at peace in the presence of her energy and the same after every session since.

Thank you Priscilla 💜

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Thank you for being here with me!

If you enjoyed this, it’d be immensely meaningful to me if you supported my work with a like 💜, restack 🔄 or share to someone you think may benefit.

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1. I use the word visualise but that’s more so because I don’t have a better way to explain it. I didn’t actually see anything in my vision, it was more an inner knowing - almost as if I could feel the visualisation, rather than see it.

2. Turns out this upside down tree appears in the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita and is known as ‘the Ashvattha tree’ of which according to this: “…is a symbol to signify that your origin is the Divinity; the consciousness. That is your roots.” There’s a much more expanded breakdown here.

3. Shortly after this, I put together a playlist of tracks that seem to get me into a relaxed ‘no-mind’ meditative state. You can check it out here if you like.