After a lifetime of immense suffering and nearly three decades of all kinds of physical, psychological and spiritual work, something came to an end. All the countless openings, shifts and tastes of wellbeing, emptiness and presence would not compare. There was an indescribable change, a tectonic shift that was exquisitely profound but simultaneously subtle, the recognition of which was immediate and instantaneous, out of time and simultaneously took months and years to begin to articulate.

During meditation in the presence of Francis Lucille, everything disappeared. There remained no notion of a universe, a person, nor any thoughts, memories nor phenomena. There was no sense of time or anything that has ever existed. All had vanished. All that was left was beingness although that is already saying too much, pure ‘seeing’ with no center or ‘I’ experiencing, and nothing being experienced.  

Slowly, the universe began to appear, and with it a sense of I as a person was being constructed. The truth became an absolute knowing, beyond all thought, that this universe and this person were all being created as an emanation, a projection from, and as this empty beingness, the seeing that was realized that I am or what truly Is. 

In hindsight the essential fear of death, of disappearance, with which I had many encounters in my life had been put into question. There was a profound yet almost too-subtle-to-recognize sense of ease and wellbeing that remained permanently in the background, yet gave no indication of what was yet to come. 

Since my teenage years, whenever I pursued something passionately, a tremendous substance would emerge and with it an absolute terror, the sense of directly facing death. All there was was pain and terror in an infinite loop, charged with an energy and a power from a source so much vaster than myself, which consistently and literally brought me to my knees, begging for it to end.

I battled this force, at times barely managing to function, knowing that I had only managed to temporarily push it away. All my efforts in life revolved around facing this and being able to encounter it fully. Tho I was always left with a sense that I could not possibly ever be able to stay with it, surrender to it, nor hold it.

It then came one last time and was recognized more clearly as a seeing of a divine power which I could no longer stop. As I involuntarily went on my knees again, the pain was seen as a deep and horrible shame. And so the more I tried to hide the more that what I was hiding became visible, as this seeing could see all that I could see.

The pain was excruciating and with the sense of imminent death approaching, I saw the root of shame to be the belief that I was my own source, that I had an origin and a will that was my own. The essence of myself, my deepest identity was identical to this, and it was not real. 

This knowing was so total and irrefutable that in an instant the truth of it pierced through me and that which I was vanished, seen to be never-existent. Leaving only a torrent of bliss where there was pain, and an exquisite substance which was emptiness manifesting as everything, abundant, loving and peaceful. 

After this there was a very simple and quiet sense of ‘it is done’ altho nothing seemed to have blatantly changed other than a brilliant crispness which was present the next morning, not completely unfamiliar to me. But over a few months and simultaneously from one moment to the next, the center and ground of identity that was left, fell away leaving behind a clear seeing of what is and always has been. Of which no words could be said but from where there is no higher joy than a lifetime dedicated to the attempt of communicating and transmitting this to those who are interested.

I am immensely grateful for the countless hours of conversations over almost a decade with Lisa Cairns, whom with incessant and patient pointing facilitated a clearing of attachments and illusions.

The empty-fullness became known in the foreground of everything, what in hindsight I see could not even be obscured by the deepest hellish suffering I had endured. A silence and a peace that pervades everything, even the most stressed-out mind states, all experiences of psychological struggle, discomfort, fear and pain have gone to a faraway background, most remain only as memories. 

This has always been the case, unearned, undeserved, and unattained, only to have been discovered as always true and real, here and now, beyond time and place.