A friend wrote to me:<\/p>\n
When I get glimpses, my problems disappear, but as soon as I return to myself they are still all there. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I replied:<\/p>\n
It’s the other way around. When your problems disappear, but consciousness remains, that’s you. What you call “returning” is leaving.<\/p>\n
If you continue down this path, I think eventually you’ll see this. <\/p>\n
Years ago I said the same thing you said here to a teacher. His reply made me laugh out loud. I wish I could remember exactly what he said so I could say it to you now. It was something like, in a sarcastic but friendly tone, as if he was laughing with me, not at me, “Okay, if you want to keep pretending you’re something you’re not, I won’t argue with you.”<\/p>\n
I’m picking this one detail out of your email and addressing it exclusively because for your happiness, and for where you are now, it’s the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n
Freddie <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Actually we can’t really leave ourselves no matter what happens, but I think the way I said it in the email has the best chance of resonating with my friend at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend wrote to me: When I get glimpses, my problems disappear, but as soon as I return to myself they are still all there. I replied: It’s the other way around. When your problems disappear, but consciousness remains, that’s you. What you call “returning” is leaving. If you continue down this path, I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1Iu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6602"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6608,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions\/6608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}