One Shots || Horror Edition

Haunted Universe

The universe you live in is haunted. Perhaps you have noticed this.

There are things happening that cannot be explained. Maybe you have never experienced anything like this. Maybe you have never questioned the very reality that appears before your eyes. But you should.

Because something is roaming out there in the silence, haunting this universe. Its origin is from the very beginning. Its power: the animation of existence. The consequences of its discovery: the end of life.

And it is not far from you. Maybe you have felt its touch? The icy prickle of the void.

There have always been those who throughout time have known of this haunting. They have sensed that just beyond the boundary of what is understood as life there is something dark and powerful.

Having approached the boundary they have felt this haunting. Eerily silent, infinitely empty. And having perceived this haunting, if only vaguely they have turned away from it in horror.

Those that have turned away do so instinctively. They sensed the danger, they felt the risk. They knew innately that their very being was in peril

But there are some who have not turned away, who have dared to cross that boundary, to master their fear and move forward towards the essence of what haunts this universe.

They too have felt the fear and the horror of what it might mean to move forward, but the pain, anger, depression, and hopelessness of life demanded that they know if there was an answer, some final answer to the questions that plague humanity.

Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a god? A person can only live so long in a dream before a nightmare must emerge.

And once that nightmare emerges and dominates the field of consciousness the urge to awaken manifests. Like a sleeping person who sits up suddenly in a bed and shakes off the effects of their nightmare, so a waking person seeks release from the nightmare that they have now recognized as life.

But as the sleeping person will wake from their nightmare, and in that waking the dream world they had previously inhabited will vanish. Not so for the waking person. The waking person must be aware that the nightmare that is their daily life, will not vanish.

Instead, in real Awakening its the "dreamer" that vanishes. When people finally begin to move beyond themselves, when they are finally ready to cross that boundary and confront the ancient darkness that haunts this universe, it is then they will know that the dream never ends, it's only "they" who will end.

It is not the dream that has deceived them, it is they who have deceived themselves. As they stand in the midst of the dream, the experience of Awakening is not the dissolution of the fabric of reality around them, but instead the vanishing of themselves.

The dream glows with increasing brilliance at the same moment as the individual becomes dim and insubstantial. It is at this point that many will do all in their power to remain, to reenter the dream, to keep from fading.

They feel the cost of full Awakening, the full Enlightenment, and it's a horrible thing. It's not the bliss that was promised or the job they hoped for. Instead, everything they knew and loved is going. All their hopes, all their aspirations, everything that made them uniquely them are vanishing.

They are dying. No, it is more than dying: They are being annihilated. And this annihilation is final. They have directly perceived the true nature of reality. And its destructive power is irrevocable.

But in the midst of this destruction is experienced the surprise of Awakening: With the death of the individual, it is learned that no individual has died.

There never was a dreamer. Nothing has been lost. And it is suddenly clear now what haunts this universe. The universe is haunted by silence, by emptiness.

There is only activity without author, manifestation without mind. A dream without a dreamer.

What sages from every era have come to understand is this simple truth: All that happened in this universe does so spontaneously, perfectly, and of its own accord. Yet simultaneously and equally true in this spontaneous manifestation that is the universe, is the knowledge that nothing is random; everything emerges exactly as it has to.

The great sages have learned this not by theory but by direct experience. You know this is true. You feel it.

You may deny or distract yourself from the feeling of it, but if you sit quietly and really listen, you will hear what the sages have heard: the hum of the machine, working endlessly, blindly and perfectly. This is the Ultimate Truth, the revelation that none return from.

To the one who discovers Ultimate Truth, who becomes enlightened, such a one will realize that they have changed tremendously and that everything they have ever lived or valued is gone forever. Yet, they simultaneously know that in this happening, everything is exactly the same; not one iota of existence has moved one speck from its previous one.

The Ultimate Truth reveals that the only thing going on in the universe is a spontaneous manifestation. Perfect, automatic, machine-like emergence.

The substance if this emergence is consciousness. The very fabric of space/time is consciousness.

Consciousness is all there is it ever could be. Remember this equation:

U = C

(Universe = Consciousness)

They are one and the same.

Consciousness is not a perception, a sense that allows you to ve aware of something. There is nothing like that. Consciousness is the Universe. The Universe is Consciousness. Try are on, they are the reality - the only reality, the Ultimate Truth.

There isn't, nor will there ever be, any "one" or "thing" that is "aware".

It has been said, "Life is but a dream." The universe is an ongoing dream without a dreamer, a grand play with no performers and no audience.

Enlightenment is the sound of a pebble rolling down a hill on a planet in a star system that you will never know. This is how it feels.

•••

deep down yoυ ĸnow тнιѕ ιѕ тrυe,
yeт тнeѕe тнoυgнтѕ нorrιғy yoυ.

нorror ιѕ a correcт ғeelιng.