Dissolving Where Identity Once Stood

To Be Seen Fully Is to Vanish into the Infinite

To be seen fully is not to be recognized as a person, nor acknowledged as a role, but to be reflected beyond every layer of identity. When someone sees you in this way, what is recognized is not your history, your character, or even your spiritual progress; it is the unconditioned essence that lies before all stories.

Most encounters leave us clothed in roles. Friend, teacher, seeker, parent, child, each gaze places a costume upon us. Rarely do we meet eyes that do not add or subtract, but simply reveal. In that rare encounter, the ordinary scaffolding collapses, and what stands exposed is not a “self” but the infinity in which all selves appear.

This exposure is not humiliating, nor is it affirming. It is dissolving. To be seen fully is to be unmasked of both failure and success, of both sin and virtue. The illusion that we exist as a separate someone collapses. What remains is a luminous absence, the infinite without centre or edge.

There are moments when presence itself becomes the mirror, so clear, so unconditioned, that no reflection remains, only the source shining through. The eyes of one who abides in truth can serve as such a threshold. Passing through it, you do not become greater; you vanish. And in vanishing, the fullness of all that is floods through.

To long for such seeing is to long for disappearance, and yet disappearance is not annihilation. It is the end of confinement. It is the recognition that what you are cannot be held by name, cannot be fixed in form, cannot be grasped by thought. What you are is the infinite itself, already free, already whole.

The paradox is that this vanishing does not strip life of meaning but gives it immeasurable depth. When you are no longer the centre, everything becomes the centre. When “I” falls away, the song of existence sings itself without obstruction. Love, compassion, and clarity are not cultivated; they flow.

To be seen fully is to vanish into the infinite. To vanish is to return home.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Highest Peak That Erased Itself

I have spent years trying to describe what happened to me, and every time I speak about it, the words become more suspect.

Language can outline an experience, but it cannot contain it. At best, words point like the crooked finger of an old monk who knows he’ll die before finishing the sentence.

What happened felt like the culmination of every practice, every prayer, every insight. I thought I was climbing a mountain of understanding, reaching ever-higher plateaus. The views grew wider, the air thinner, my confidence stronger.

Then there was nothing.

Nothing to stand on.

No summit.

No climber.

Not even a fall.

Awareness no longer rested on any subject or object. There was no watcher, no witness. The entire machinery of spiritual seeking—so intricate, so earnest—collapsed without fanfare.

What remained didn’t feel like a state. States come and go. This had no coming. No going.

No arrival.

It wasn’t some radiant oneness to bask in. Even calling it oneness implied there could have been twoness.

It wasn’t emptiness in the Buddhist sense, the elegant doctrine that everything is dependently arisen and thus without essence. That too felt too architectural, too systematic.

It was simply nothing that needed explaining.

Not a blank.

Not a void.

Not a silence that replaced noise.

Silence and noise lost all difference.

Thoughts continued—because why wouldn’t they?

Breath moved.

The world appeared precisely as before: sounds, colours, forms.

Except no one stood behind it all, calling it mine.

No vantage remained from which to call anything anything.

The sense of being a person—so carefully cultivated over a lifetime—dissolved like salt in water. But even that suggests a process. The truth is it never had any reality to begin with.

This wasn’t annihilation in the frightening sense. It was astonishingly gentle. The self didn’t die screaming. It simply wasn’t found.

Where had it gone?

Nowhere.

Because nowhere was needed.

There was an uncanny intimacy with everything. Not the intimacy of closeness, but the absence of distance.

A bird calling outside wasn’t outside.

A passing thought wasn’t inside.

Nothing was outside or inside.

Without a center, there was no periphery.

No boundary defined what I was or wasn’t.

There was no I to define.

This wasn’t bliss in the usual sense—no narcotic wash of pleasure.

No ecstatic union.

Ecstasy requires an experiencer.

There was no experiencer left to feel enlightened.

And so the phrase “I had an enlightenment experience” is a lie spoken for convenience.

Experience implies an owner, a timeline, a sequence of events.

This wasn’t an event.

Events happen in time.

Time didn’t stop; it lost its claim.

Past and future stopped being places to travel.

What about now?

Even that lost its centrality.

This was so direct, so unarguable, so empty of specialness.

No claim to make.

No badge to wear.

No insight to hold.

No teaching to give.

Nothing was revealed.

Nothing hidden remained.

No questions answered.

Questions fell away for lack of a questioner.

The sacred and the profane lost their separation.

There was no vantage from which to prefer one thing over another.

Life went on.

Dishes washed.

Conversations happened.

Traffic lights changed.

Anger arose.

Tears fell.

Laughter erupted.

All of it completely itself.

No attempt to improve or transcend any of it.

Nothing to transcend.

No one to be improved.

If anything changed, it was this relentless dropping of all pretenses.

All strategies.

All defenses.

Even the defense of being spiritual.

Especially that.

No seeker.

No sought.

No path.

No realization.

Just life, unadorned.

Not life as concept.

Life as immediacy.

Life with no one living it.

And I see now that every attempt to name this diminishes it.

But that’s the game of words.

Let them fail.

I won’t call this truth.

Truth is too grand.

Too final.

Too proud.

I won’t call this liberation.

Liberation implies something bound.

Nothing was ever bound.

I won’t call this God.

God suggests someone else.

Something else.

Otherness itself dissolved.

This wasn’t merging.

Not two to merge.

No return to source.

No departure.

No source.

Just this.

No this.

And even writing that betrays it.

So here I will stop.

Not because I have finished.

But because there is nothing left to finish.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Moment of Awakening

Everything you see in existence is the product of an enlightened mind.

What happens in the precise moment of spiritual awakening? Words struggle to capture the boundlessness of that instant, but we can attempt to point toward the experience—like a finger directing attention to the moon, though never the moon itself.

All at once, the illusion of separation collapses. The lines drawn between “self” and “other,” between “here” and “there,” dissolve into an unbroken field of awareness. The mind, conditioned to cling to duality, surrenders its grip. What remains is not something new but something utterly timeless—what has always been.

This awakening is not a journey forward but a remembering. The veil of forgetfulness lifts, and the recognition strikes like lightning: everything you thought was “out there” is arising from within you. You see, not with the eyes but with the essence of Being itself, that all existence is the radiant emanation of a single conscious source.

This realization cannot be forced or manufactured. It is beyond the mind’s schemes and desires, a gift that arises when all effort falls away. There is no drumroll or grandiose announcement. There is only the silent immensity of presence—ordinary, and yet so complete that it feels as though the entire universe holds its breath.

What follows is often described as a paradox. You simultaneously feel as though you have become nothing, a formless void, and yet you also feel as though you have become everything. The birdsong is not separate from you. The breeze is not separate from you. Even the sorrow of the world beats within the rhythm of your own heart.

The clarity of this moment cannot be undone, though its intensity may soften as the mind reasserts its patterns. Yet something profound has shifted. You know, deep in your marrow, that existence is not fragmented. Every form and phenomenon, no matter how mundane or miraculous, is recognized as the outpouring of an enlightened mind.

To those who stand at the edge of this realization, clinging to the safety of concepts, there may be fear. The dissolution of “me” feels like annihilation. But on the other side of this fear is a freedom that cannot be described, only lived. The discovery is not that “you” are gone but that who you are is not confined to this fleeting identity. You are the stillness, the witnessing presence behind it all.

Everything you see in existence is the product of an enlightened mind—not as a creator separate from creation, but as the creative force manifesting itself endlessly. Every atom, every star, every fleeting thought is an expression of this unity, arising and dissolving within the infinite expanse of your true nature.

Profound awakening does not grant you something you lack. It reveals that nothing was ever missing. The world as you see it was never apart from you; it was you all along.

Morgan O. Smith

Yinnergy Meditation, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!

https://linktr.ee/morganosmith

The Facets of Ego and Transcendent Experiences

Part One

The journey of self-understanding often leads us to explore the contours of our own ego. The ego, our sense of self-identity, manifests in countless facets that embody our personality traits, motivations, and behaviours. Each of these facets, be they positive attributes like resilience and compassion, or negative tendencies such as jealousy and arrogance, forms an integral part of our self-image.

Picture the constellation of traits that define you. Some shine brilliantly, reflecting your strengths and virtues. Some might be darker, representing the areas we struggle with or seek to improve. These are the multiple dimensions of our identity, as intricate and vast as the cosmos itself.

Deep spiritual or mystical experiences can profoundly alter this constellation. During these moments of transcendence, the negative facets, those shadowy stars, seem to fade away. We are left with only the positive aspects, creating a luminous sense of heightened self-worth, inner peace, and profound connection with the world around us.

But the journey doesn’t stop at this dualistic understanding. As we delve deeper into these transformative moments, we encounter a state of nonduality. In this space, all facets of the ego, positive and negative, exist simultaneously, without clear distinctions or separations. They merge into the grand cosmic dance, each star in our constellation joining the larger cosmos, allowing us to experience the full spectrum of our human existence.

Morgan O. Smith

Yinnergy Meditation & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!

https://linktr.ee/morganosmith