As I’m adjusting to life in Thailand, changes in how I see the world and myself in it are happening.  These changes started long before Thailand.  These are results of many many years of hard work and investigation into what is real.  So the rest of this blog is going to be about things that are spiritual in nature and difficult to explain because they can only be experienced.  So, if this is not your cup of tea, this blog post is not for you.

I’ve been talking about foggy brain since I got to Thailand.  After a session with my teacher and a friend confirming what I was suspecting, I don’t think it’s just too much sugar or too much rice although those things might contribute.  I think things are rewiring in my brain.  I’ve spent my whole life thinking the world worked a certain way and that things I was taught were true, things we were all taught were true.  My childhood helped me create an ego, a story of how life is and I believed it completely.  I’ve spent a long time digging into those stories and finding how believing the world is unsafe makes it unsafe and it’s a story not a truth.  Finding that I’m my own biggest judge and the judgments are not true, but I believed that’s who I was.  But, if I’m not who I thought I was, if I’m not my ego story, who am I?  Sorry to tell you, I don’t have that answer quite yet.  I have glimpses of it, but it’s still presenting itself and the ego is still trying to put it in terms it understands and make it fit in the old story.  But, it appears to me that a lot of the foggy brain is my ego dissolving.  Up to now, I had just been able to expose the lies and discover the truth.  I became healthier and changed my posture and continue to see life with very little judgement, but some of my identity remained with my story. Now enough of my story has been proven wrong and the rest is just dissolving without me having to work through it.  My brain doesn’t know what to do without the story so it just goes blank and fuzzy.  In a place that is so foreign, where I’m lost and alone, the ego is having trouble finding familiar things to hold on to and it’s grip on my identity was already severely undermined with all the years of investigation.

I had someone make the comment that how can I have gone through this much work and graduated from Awakening to Presence class and still be suffering so much.  I immediately was confused by the question.  I don’t feel like I’m suffering.  So, I thought maybe others reading my blog don’t see the fine differentiation that seems to not be there, but in reality is giant.  Most of what I’m experiencing is challenging and entertaining, but not suffering.  It’s not suffering because I chose this and because I’m not believing it should be another way.  The travel from the US to Thailand were suffering, I’ll give you that.  The challenges here have brought up feelings of wanting to go home, being overwhelmed and other stresses.  Most of that is culture shock and I know that so I’m just holding on waiting for it to work it’s way through.  Just because I’ve done all this spiritual work doesn’t make me immune to culture shock any more than it makes me immune to feeling horrible when I’m sick.  I think maybe I haven’t portrayed that well in my blogs.  I don’t think awakening means bliss, peacefulness and lack of discomfort for the rest of your life.  Sorry to those of you who are seeking that. That is why I signed up for Awakening to Presence class 9 years ago.  And when I finally fully got it that it was impossible, I was crushed.   I also think that spiritual leaders that are portraying their lives as without challenge are not telling you the whole story.  Then again, if I had gotten that in the beginning, I might not have signed up.  But on this side I understand fully that Truth is what I want, not perfect happy all the time.

I have written this blog and many others several times.  Half way through my thoughts no longer can be put in words and gibberish comes out of the keyboard as I realize that this is so hard to explain because it has to be experienced.  So, I ask in the future that if you read a blog and think I’m suffering or “poor Rraine”, ask yourself if that is your story.  Can you see it from a different angle, one with humor and lack of the thought it should be different.  Discomfort, pain, exhaustion, crying and other feelings still exist, but if I don’t judge them as “it shouldn’t be” they are just feelings that come and go.  If I judge them, it isn’t for long before I realize I’m doing it and then I can let the judgement go.  I will try to paint this side of the picture more clearly.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore