The Moment Awareness Woke Up To Its Self

The Darkness Before Dawn

During the summer of 2014 I was going through a terrible crisis of identity. My life was a shambling mess of a thing, and I was actively hiding from it; doing my best to distract myself from the day-in, day-out dramas of my own inner conflict. For years, I'd been lying and exaggerating, manipulative and controlling, selfish and self-centered. I put myself first in all things – and made sure everyone around me knew just how important, and intelligent I was. If you didn't do things my way, then you were a complete idiot – and there was no getting around how right I was about everything. And if you didn't agree, or you had thoughts of your own, then I'd respond with anger and vengeance – in a very subtle and passively aggressive way – chances are, you would never know what hit you.

Meanwhile, on the inside, I was terrified of everything and everyone. I had no idea of who I really was – I was so busy trying to protect layer upon layer of massive denial that I didn't have time to be me. Instead, I watched TV, played video games, and disappeared into the world of tabletop roleplaying. There was so much guilt and shame in my life; so many reasons to hate myself – I had absolutely no interest in being with myself – everything I did was about escaping me; about taking my mind off of what I was hiding from. I had no friends, was completely disconnected from my family, and used my romantic relationships as my only anchor in the world – but still kept even those at an incredible distance from myself.

I'd been living in Seattle for several years – since leaving the Air Force in 2000. I'd tried Buddhism out for about a year or so in 2004, visited with a couple of mental health professionals, taken antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications, tried different diet and exercise regimens, become vegan, and attempted a host of other things; all in an effort to 'figure out what was wrong with me' and 'find some semblance of peace'. Nothing really worked. At best, I was told I was suffering from 'perfectionism' – at worst, I was told nothing at all. No one seemed to have an answer for me – no one seemed to have the solution that I was looking for. And so I remained caught up in a world of self-limiting defeatism that, outwardly looked like it was working, but inwardly was eating me alive.

The Turning Point

It was during the August/September timeframe that I really started to notice just how dark my inner world had become and how miserable I really was. I owned my own information security consulting firm at the time and had just wrapped up a huge contract. There was money in the bank and all of my bills were paid in full, so, as I often did, I decided to stop working for a while. I would sit in my office at home and play games – games that were meant to include social interaction – but I just played them by myself. Sometimes I would play so late into the night that I wouldn't go to bed. Instead, I'd just crawl into my office recliner as the sun was coming up.

When I wasn't playing games, I was watching TV. And I was watching some really dark television programs. It was actually the television programs that started to clue me in on just how lost I'd become and how much I was hurting on the inside. I was actually enjoying them. Not just their entertainment value, but their darkness in general. I found myself deeply disturbed by this revelation and something inside me began to ask 'is this really who you want to be?'

So in September, I began to look more closely at my behavior – at both my internal and external patterns of thought and expression. I began to understand that what I was experiencing wasn't just a personality flaw or character defect – it was a deeply wounded system doing everything it could to protect itself. The masks I wore, the manipulations, the need to be right, the isolation – all of it was serving a purpose. All of it was trying to keep me safe from something I couldn't yet name.

I was horrified by what I found when I looked honestly at myself. But at the same time I was absolutely determined not to remain trapped in this pattern. Something inside me cried out 'I will prove them all wrong' – whoever 'they' were. Whatever it was, I decided then and there that I would do whatever it took to get better.

Facing the Wound

Several things happened all at once. I located a psychologist in the area who had experience treating deep psychological wounding. I found a book on neuroplasticity and our innate ability to heal our brains. And I started to pay very careful attention to my thoughts. I remembered some of the breathing techniques that I'd learned during my stint with Buddhism and began to practice them – but not actively, which was quite interesting. The breathing technique just sort of came forward on its own – and it was very different than it had been when I was practicing it before. Instead of meditating on the cushion, I would just find myself doing things around the house and in my life, watching my breath move in and out at the tip of the nose. It just felt natural.

The first time I was supposed to see the psychologist, I bailed. I was simply too afraid and hadn't worked up enough courage yet. A week later, I tried again. I remember sitting in that chair, in an almost statuesque form, unmoving and unflinching, filled with a terrible dread. It was like an hour long panic attack, but I refused to get up and leave. I absolutely had to get better. So, for the first time in my entire life, I threw off every shackle and dropped every guard. Through a rain of tears, I opened up about everything and didn't hold anything back. Absolutely nothing was left on the table. I answered every question, admitted to every falsehood, revealed every secret. I felt completely open in that moment – and it was the most freeing experience I'd ever had.

Suddenly my world began to open up in a brand new way. I dove into reading books about trauma, neuroscience, and the healing power of the mind. I also started to practice what I called 'radical self-honesty' within my own inner world; examining the content of every thought that came through my mind and asking myself where the thought was coming from. I started to look at how I was behaving and what I was doing from the position of an observer studying – almost scientifically – the inner workings of my own mind. I took stock of the masks I was wearing, and, no matter how painful it was, I started to ask myself who I was behind each mask. Within the space of about a month, I began to experience myself in a radically different way.

At that point I had already started writing, openly, about my experiences. I was participating in online forums for people working through similar patterns of wounding, and was documenting my entire journey on a website. I wanted to have a way of sharing my journey of inner exploration with others who were suffering in the same way I was – even if I didn't know where that journey was going to lead. More than anything though, I wanted to offer hope.

As this process continued, I began to have these moments of insight and clarity that were deeply profound, each one lifechanging in its own small way. I called it 'the popcorn popper' and every day I was seeing new kernels blossoming into form.

And then came the day when I finally faced the childhood trauma that started it all. I called my mother and spoke with her, at length, about my life, my suffering, and what I'd been going through for all these years; and I asked her what happened. You see, when I was about 7 years old, my father was in the navy and we were living at the naval base in Cuba. My parents divorced and we moved to Florida to live with my aunt. It was just me and my little brother, thrown into the turmoil of parental discord – with no control over anything that was happening.

One day, we were heading to New Jersey to visit my grandparents – a day I remember vividly. We spent a week or two there and had a good time being together as a family. Then, when it came time to leave, my little eight year old heart was shattered. My mother kneeled down in front of me and told me that I wasn't going home. That she was taking my brother back with her to Florida, but I'd be staying with my grandparents in New Jersey. And then she left. So here I was, eight years old – I'd just lost my father and now my mother had given up on me too. No one wanted me. No one loved me. I was stuck with my grandparents and my other aunt – and as much as they tried, there was nothing they could do to put humpty dumpty back together again.

I lived in New Jersey for a year. By the time my mom had me come back home again, the damage was done. What I began to refer to as 'the oldest wound' had been opened and become infected. As I spoke to my mother, at the age of 42, about this experience, she was completely devastated. For her, it will forever be the greatest mistake of her life – but there, in that moment, in our sharing, we began a process of healing that nothing else could have touched. She told me that none of it had anything to do with me – told me how much she had loved me, how dear I was to her and how hard it had been to leave me behind. She admitted to her own reasons for doing so – and she set the record straight on everything that I'd been holding onto for all those years.

And something new opened up in me – a new kind of willingness and understanding – a new call for love within myself – something completely different from anything I had ever experienced before. In the days that followed, the popcorn popper went into overdrive, until it finally exploded. There were a number of other things happening in my life at the time, and healing was coming from every possible direction, but that one phone call got right to the root of everything – to the sense of abandonment that became my insecurity and my unworthiness – that became my entire inner world and all of my protective mechanisms.

The Day Everything Changed

Entering into the first couple of weeks in October, I was a changed man. I started to challenge myself to rise to every occasion – and to let go of my old patterns of thought and behavior. On a cool fall day in mid October, I was bringing that newfound sense of intensity to a couple of important chores that needed to be done around the house. There was a floor transition that needed to be installed in the entryway of the house, and there was some work that needed to be done to readjust a doorframe in the bathroom. No matter what, I was going to get these two tasks completed while my girlfriend was at work. I started to work on the floor transition – it was difficult work – and historically, when I encountered 'difficult work', I would just quit and go watch TV or play video games; but not this time.

The floor transition needed to be installed in concrete, which was quite challenging. I did everything I could, tried every trick I could imagine, watched a lot of YouTube segments, and yet nothing I tried worked. I was getting angry with the project – feeling a familiar sense of rage rising up within me. It was a telltale sign of my old emotional content. If there was something I couldn't do, or something that made me feel 'lesser' I'd skip right past angry and into an earthshattering rage. The reason I often quit doing things that were difficult was in an effort avoid this rage, because it was not something I wanted to experience. It was easier to give up than to feel things. But this time was different, because, somehow, I was experiencing this rage at a distance, mindfully; a mindful bodily rage.

And so there I was, doing my best to complete a project that was obviously beyond my skill, but unwilling to give up until it became clear that there really wasn't any way for me to finish the install on my own. I needed help, which of course just made things worse – but I wasn't really concerned about it – I just needed to do what I needed to do. And so I switched to the door frame. It had shifted out of alignment and needed to be reset. Continuing to be with my mindful bodily rage, I began to take everything apart and engage in the adjustment process. As I was trying to shift the frame into its final position, it cracked. My rage doubled – and yet it did not consume me. I calmly assessed the situation and determined that we'd need to replace the frame. But my rage was right there – being witnessed.

With both projects ending in failure, and this intense, mindful, bodily rage burning on the inside, I decided that I needed to find a way to deal with my rage. I tried a couple of things, but they didn't work out, so I went to the bookstore to get a book on rage. It was quite common for me to buy a book on any topic that interested me or was troubling me, but as I was walking into the bookstore, seething with rage, my only hope was that no one would talk to me – I wanted to be able to hold on just long enough to get out of there without losing myself to the monster. Luckily I did find a book on rage, but then remembered that a friend had recently recommended 'The Work' from Byron Katie, so I found an audio CD of hers called 'Your Inner Awakening'.

I made it out of the store and back to my car. I was still completely caught in my mindful rage, but I'd met my goal. I put the CD in and started driving around. As I listened to Byron Katie talk about her own life before her 'Inner Awakening', I heard her talking about my life. What she was describing was exactly what I'd been experiencing – albeit hers had its own unique flavor – but it tasted the same. All of the pain and anguish, the self-loathing, the shame and guilt, the inner and outer struggle – it was all right there. As I drove around, I felt like I'd found kinship with someone who knew what it felt like to be me – and I was listening intently to what she was saying. All I remember now, is that I was turning the corner, a block from home, as she was talking about her family's problem with socks.

The Flip of a Switch

By the time I walked in the door of our home, my rage had subsided – replaced by sheer exhaustion. All told, I had spent a full six hours in a state of mindful bodily rage that was on the verge of consuming me at any moment. So I went outside, into the back yard, and sat down under our small covered porch. Without thinking about it, I closed my eyes and settled into a state of deep absorptive meditation. Suddenly, everything inside of me fell away. There were no thoughts, no sense of identity, no sense of self. There was simply awareness – and awareness of awareness. My mind was completely empty – my inner and outer worlds had both disappeared – the 'me' was gone – there was only this awareness – and me, as awareness, aware of my awareness. That's all there was – awareness, aware of itself, as awareness.

There is No Switch

I have never been the same since that moment. That was the end of everything and the beginning of something completely new. Who I had spent my life as, suddenly and irrevocably, died in that moment. Something wondrous was reborn in its place. It was an experience of such incredible and profound intensity that it will be with me for the rest of my days. It was my initial opening into what would become my life – the first real and tangible step into Self-realization; something I knew nothing about at the time. I was not a spiritual person and spirituality had not really been of any interest to me. In fact, I joke, to this day, that I was both an atheist and an asshole. So imagine my surprise when I found out just how wrong I really was.

The Unraveling

That night, the night of my initial awakening experience, I broke down to my girlfriend and told her everything. I was in a state of rapture that demanded complete honesty – and so I poured my whole heart out to her. I told her about all of my brokenness, my lies, my deceit; all of my inner torment, everything that had led me to this point; and everything that had just happened. Our relationship ended that night, but she understood. Having a master's degree in transpersonal psychology, she was well versed in such things. There was nothing that could be done to keep us together, but it became the start of a completely open and honest friendship with beautiful mutual support as things began to shift, in a very big way, for both of us.

A couple of days later, on about my third visit to the psychologist, I told him what had happened. With tears in his eyes, he was so happy to hear what I had experienced. He recommended that I begin listening to the spiritual teacher Adyashanti. Hungry to understand my experience, I purchased an audio version of 'The End of Your World'. I also purchased a number of books on a broad range of spiritual and other related topics. I couldn't get enough. But as this chapter of my journey was unfolding, there was something else happening in my experience as well – two things really. First, I began to notice the synchronistic nature of my life – not just things happening in the moment, but how my entire life had always been in perfect harmony with itself, even in my misery. And second, I became Jesus.

At this point, it's worth stating that I am not Jesus. Nor do I think of myself as Jesus any longer. But at the time, so wrapped up in my, still unconscious, sense of separation and consumed by a lack-driven egoic apparatus, I had to have something to maintain my specialness. And what could be more special than being the savior of the world. It took several months for this particular delusion to resolve itself. Originally it wasn't even that I was Jesus. It's that I was the next Buddha, the Maitreya. Buddhism was my only active spiritual frame of reference, and as I went through all of the different categories of awakening, I was beyond the Arahant – and so of course, I must be the Buddha. Being the Maitreya Buddha led to being the World Teacher, which led to being Jesus – to being the long awaited one.

I moved out of my girlfriend's house in November and into a two-bedroom apartment right in the heart of Seattle's University district. At the time, I was following all of these amazing synchronicities that were arising in my life and learning to trust in my experience. In my studies, I immediately gravitated towards the new age philosophy of 'manifesting my desired reality'. I was all for it. I let synchronicity guide me – and for the first two weeks in my new apartment the world belonged entirely to me. I spent thousands of dollars creating the perfect home for myself – a spiritual refuge – and a place of seduction. My goal was to be on top of the world and to savor my every desire. And nothing mattered more to me than finding a woman – or many women.

Here I was, thinking that I was the savior, but I was completely consumed by sense desire – which opened up another very real possibility. What if I wasn't Jesus? What if I was the other guy. What if I was the anti-christ? Confronted with the depths of my own darkness and greed, I was thrown into an inner tug of war that forced me to confront myself in a whole new way, which is about the same time when the synchronicities in my life went from being wonderfully curious happenings to a complete and total breakdown of my reality. I entered into a stream of synchronistic experiences that became my entire world for the next several months.

Into the Mystery

To most people, what happened next will sound like madness, but since I already admitted that I thought I was either the Christ or the anti-christ, how much deeper down the rabbit hole can we go? How much was delusion and how much was real? Well, the thoughts and the experiences were all very real. My interpretation of them was a mottled and confused one at the time, but as I can see clearly now, everything that I went though, even this period of deep confusion, was completely necessary. It started with the music. I had a TV in my apartment, but I didn't have any services – and instead would listen to music from my iPad. It was connected to the TV and then to the stereo – and I would play ambient music from different stations while reading my spiritual books.

I cannot pinpoint when I first experienced it, but a couple of weeks into building my new life, I became aware that the music was singing directly to me. This realization was welcomed with curiosity at first, and I welcomed it in, as my teacher – as the Tao. That is where my readings had carried me, into the Tao Te Ching, and so to hear this music and recognize it as my teacher, I referred to it as the Tao. It felt safe and comfortable and absent from all of the religious confusion that was plaguing me. The songs that played would have lyrics that would speak directly to my current mental state, or to a question I had, or to an issue that I was experiencing. In some cases the music would even be instructional in nature; guiding an action that needed to be taken.

The undeniability of it all was being reinforced in every part of my life. I would spend my days listening to my teacher; studying, contemplating and meditating, and then I would go out onto the streets at night. As I would make my rounds, people would come up to me and have unsolicited conversations with me about the very things that I had been shown throughout the day. It was happening with friends and strangers alike; as if the entire world had suddenly been enlisted to aid in my instruction. It became clear to me, as a result of these direct experiences, that absolutely everything is expressed as consciousness – meaning that consciousness itself is the ultimate arbiter of every experience and can reclaim itself and use itself however it desired to break me of my misconceptions.

Things remained quite beautiful, inspirational, and awe inspiring until the day that things shifted again. The Tao demanded to be recognized as Jehovah, and I was thrust right back into an entanglement of religiosity and immense inner confusion. My childhood had been steeped in the Catholic faith and during my teen years I had a fascination with Christ and with the end times pronounced in the book of revelation. I'd read the entire 'Left Behind' series and a number of other religious, scholarly, and fictional accounts of what was to come. All of it flooded right back to the forefront of my experience. In much the same way that I had once been consumed by mindful bodily rage, I became consumed by mindful bodily fear. Who was I? What was I? What was happening? Was I going mad?

Surrender

I spent nearly every single day on my knees, in tears, pleading with God to love me. I was begging for forgiveness – not just from God, but also from all those who I'd loved and lost – who I'd wronged in some way. As I went out on the streets each night for my evening walk, I began spending time with the homeless; offering them food and comfort – sitting with them, listening to their stories, and loving them completely. I gave everything of myself that I could. Every moment that I felt stretched to my limits and thought my heart could endure no more, I pushed on to give more deeply and more fully; incensed by the fact that I could not do more. Time and time again, I was thrust into difficult situations consistent with my lessons for the day that were all meant to help clear my mind and open my heart.

This is the world that I lived in for about five months – from November of 2014 to March of 2015. It just continued to run deeper and deeper, with everything happening in this stream of synchronicities that almost seemed to be toying with me. My two most common conversations with God, during this time were 'I love you' and 'Fuck you'. How could a loving God be so cruel and callous – why force me to endure such pain and suffering? I was supposed to be the savior of the world – why weren't things just easier? Time and time again I was confronted with fear – time and time again I was forced to surrender into my fears – time and time again, I was caught on the other side by a perfect love beyond all reckoning. And yet what was the source of this love? Who was speaking to me? Who was teaching me?

It was a combination of synchronistic events, a willingness to surrender everything, a desire to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha and Jesus, and the terrible fear that I was the villain of this story, that eventually had me sell everything and become homeless myself. Anything that I couldn't sell I put into a storage unit – and just before midnight, on 31 March of 2015, I walked out of my apartment for the last time and entered into the homeless life. Over the course of the next three months, I would push myself further than ever before. My bubble of safety and security was gone – and I was at the mercy of God's will. In a state of complete and total surrender, a willingness to do whatever it took, I gave myself up and offered myself as a sacrifice on the altar of faith.

The Whistler

I found a spot in front of a bookstore on University Avenue – the central thoroughfare of the U-district – where I would sleep each night. In the morning I would gather up my things and take a slow joyful walk to the Starbucks on the corner so I could buy a banana and use the bathroom. I started to watch videos from the spiritual teacher Ram Dass and would then head over to the University of Washington Campus to nap, do street performances with the staff that I carried around with me, and offer free instruction on meditation and the path to enlightenment. For the rest of the day I'd take a little sign that I'd made and sit in front of the bookstore or out on the street, just talking to people. I met so many people who had a profound impact on me.

I became well known in the area as "The Whistler" because I was always whistling happy tunes wherever I went. Walking slowly – mediating on my movements; sometimes flipping my staff through the air in beautifully choreographed feats of balance and control. I was an oddity, even in Seattle. This was my life now; and it was filled with a joy and satisfaction that I'd never encountered before in my life. It was all so simple, so easy – a blessing of divine grace. I still felt the presence of fear, uncertainty, and doubt from time to time, but when these would arise, something would happen in my experience that would immediately dispel it. I was no longer concerned with questions about who I was or what was happening – all I knew was that I was completely devoted to serving as a vessel for God's love.

During this time, the core of my teachings began to form. I had a very specific introduction that I would offer to anyone who came to sit with me – beginning with "All things are love, given form, to serve a purpose". I would then talk about the nature of the conditioned mind and how to move beyond it. When asked what people could do, I would offer "These Five Things" the five most important lessons that my experience had taught me. I even wrote the first version of what would eventually become this book. Everything was precious to me – every person, every experience. Even the most difficult and trying times were seen as nothing more than an opportunity to set myself aside and love more deeply and more fully, without condition, without concern.

As I continued to learn more about Ram Dass and his teachings, and expanded to include the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, I found my own direct experience mirrored in everything they were saying. It all made perfect sense to me and offered a new context to operate from. I was no longer interested in being Jesus. I was interested in being free. That was all I cared about – complete and total inner freedom. And so it was that things took yet another miraculous turn when I 'accidentally' found myself purchasing a copy of the book 'I Am That' by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a highly regarded teacher of something I had never heard of called 'nonduality'. I devoted myself to devouring its pages, and so it did not take long for a deeper, soul-shattering realization to come into my awareness.

Perfection

Up until that point I had regarded synchronicity as the current of my life, but as I read the teachings of Nisargadatta, I became aware of a simple fact. These synchronicities were nothing more than my awareness being invited to witness the underlying perfection that is inherent in all things, exactly as they are. I'd been living on the street for almost three months – had read many things and watched several videos, but nothing struck me quite like this did. And in the moment this realization dawned, I was once more consumed with fear – because at that moment, the final remnants of my mind-made self had to confront their own non-reality right alongside the imminent and undeniable experience of being a self; all happening in perfect harmony despite any appearance to the contrary.

Within a few days I made arrangements to leave the streets of Seattle. With great humor it had dawned on me that, this whole time, I'd thought I was the teacher, teaching others. Yet in truth, it was they who were teaching me. It became clear that I am always and forever the student, no matter what role I may be appearing to play at any time. I also realized that I couldn't actually 'help' anyone who didn't want to be helped. All I could really do was work on myself and become the spaciousness of being that allowed others to investigate their own truths if and when they were ready to do so – all of which would take care of itself anyway and there was really nothing for me to concern myself about. All I really needed to do was get out of the way – and even that was being taken care of.

It's really quite impossible to describe this experience – having already moved through emptiness and oneness, into direct recognition of life's absolute, unquestionable perfection. It is important to note though that 'perfection' does not mean that our lives will be 'perfect'. It means that everything that happens in our lives is happening in accord with a divine perfection that goes beyond our individual experience of ourselves and has more to do with what we are at the core of our being, beyond all conceptual limitations.

Life, as we are experiencing it, is not something happening in isolation – but is, instead, a reflection of the totality of all beings – outside of and beyond our notion of time. It speaks to the Oneness of what we are, after emptiness clarifies itself through understanding.

There was still more to come, and a long road for me to continue to walk before 'not knowing' and becoming comfortable with 'not knowing' would establish itself as the hallmark of true knowing, but during those last few days on the street, my surrender became even more complete – no longer just a sense of trust or faith in my own direct experience, but faith and trust in perfection itself. There was a complete sense of peace in this place – all guilt and shame, everything that I had ever thought to be true of myself faded away into the understanding of what this perfection meant – and seeing how it had been at work my entire life. Of course, I am always sure to offer the important reminder that even though everything is always perfect just as it is, this is not a license to be an asshole.

In fact, the next year of my life would cement this understanding as my experiences forced me to discern between love's cleansing fire, compassionate embrace, and playful dance.

~From the Heart of Bradley