I was still smashing mismatched pieces together and hoping they would form a lovely picture of me.

Here's an FAQ:

I am sure you have some questions. Let's get busy.

1. What is the message? What is this truth you talk about?
There is no you. You do not exist. The thought you think yourself to be is a thought, like any other. Some thoughts refer to something real. This one doesn't.

2. But I'm hungry and want a sandwich. CLEARLY I exist! I'm hungry!
No, you do not exist. You don't own the hunger. This is just distraction. Look deeper. You don't exist, regardless of your thoughts on the matter.

3. I already have my truth, thanks. I'll see you later!
Truth is NOT subjective! Something is true or it is not. It is true in every instance, or it is false. There cannot be any in-between in this. Truth does not depend on you or I to believe in it to merit it as "truth." It doesn't need other truths to support it. Truth stands alone and is, pardon me, self-evident.

Understand this first: Truth is true no matter if it is known or believed.

4. That's nice. But I believe in _________ (Jesus, the soul, chi, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.). I'm not going to leave that belief for you.

Those are nice beliefs, but they don't matter at all. To seek truth, beliefs must be set aside--they can serve to obscure truth, so they must be removed from the picture. This sounds very scary, especially to someone like a Christian who stakes so much upon faith.

Now, here's the question to ask: Are you sure that your beliefs are real? Are they truth? Most Christians will say without hesitation that yes-it is truth, and there are no doubts.

If you're sure that your beliefs are truth, then another truth cannot hurt them. If your faith is truth, then nothing can touch it! If you know your beliefs are truth, there is no reason to be afraid of looking at more truth.

Q: If I don't exist then who is reading this message? Who knows that I do not exist?

A: No one. There is simply the process of hearing the message, simply the process of knowing you don't exist. There does not need to be a you for any of this to happen.

Q: But what is the human mind?

A: It is the pattern recognition faculty of the human brain.

Q: So I am just awareness?

A: No! Awareness exists. You do not. You are not awareness. You do not shift into something else and continue to exist. There is no you, at all.

Q: But I have a body!

A: This isn't a question... Yes, there is a body. You do not own it. It is not your body.

Q: How is this truth going to help me?

A: Realizing "no you" doesn't make problems go away. It's a shift in perspective, a recognition of a lie that permeates through everything you do. Find out about this because this is truth, and it is real--not because you want it to fix all your problems. This is not the key or solution to all your problems! This is truth. Truth is important in and of itself. Pursue it because it is truth. You do not exist.

Q: But how will this truth help anyone?

A: The death of ego = death of suffering. Enlightenment on a mass scale. Without the belief in self, there is nowhere for the desire to harm others to come from.

Q: Cogito ergo sum. "I think therefore I am." Doesn't this prove you wrong?

A: "I think __" presupposes a thinker. If the conclusion of the cogito is that there is a thinker, then using the "I think__" proposition is question begging and thusly fallacious. Next.

Pain is unavoidable.  You live, you breath.  You will experience pain.

Enlightenment is not an escape from pain.  It is not a nice calm inner peace that removes all suffering.  Suffering is life.  Enlightenment does not end life, so how could it stop pain?

But yet, I said that the pain I carried with me was no longer my pain.  True.  It's not.  And I don't feel the immensity of the pain, as I did before.

(It's obvious your body will continue to feel pain.  This isn't the pain I want to focus on, although the pain in your body and the pain in your mind are very intimately connected and affect the other easily.  The pain I am talking about is emotional, mental.  Enlightenment does not mean the cessation of pain.)

Pain certainly grasped me firmly before enlightenment.  I would try to leave it behind.  But it always just slipped below the surface, refusing to leave.  It never remained dormant for long; new pain would come, and the old would burst forth again.  Pain waited to overwhelm me; it had never gone.

It's hard to escape these cycles.  We desire for better, yearn for peace.  But if I had been given peace, when my soul was roiling and I was devoid of hope, I wouldn't have known what to do with it.  It probably would have made me nervous, and I would have ran away from it for the comfort of pain.

Pain can be a comfort.  It was, at least, familiar to me.  I knew what to do with pain.  There was a special place for it to gather, and I could always turn to it and think about the tragedies that had befallen me.  Pain was not ambiguous, like happiness was.

Pain doesn't have to be carried around.  There is no you; there is no vessel to collect this putrid filth and try to make sense of you out of it.  Most people experience something and turn around to put that experience into their sense of self.

When bad things happen especially, we want to make sense out of them and give them a reason for happening-or at the least explain what the implication is that it even happened to us.  We analyze the experience.  This happened to you, and it changed the definition you carry of you. 

Enlightenment was the realization that the pain didn't need to be moved about to create the portrait of me.  I did not need to carry pain with me.  There was no me; it was all just illusion.  It was just thought, and it was utter fabrication.  The pain had existed; the past had indeed happened.

But the past was the past.  The pain could remain there. 

It was only after enlightenment that I could bring myself to look fully upon the devastation that had been my life. 

All that pain and torment, all that suffering that had gathered and festered and grown exponentially by languishing in them--it dissolved. 

It didn't sink below the surface to await my next weakening; it was gone.  No more pain to carry with me, an anchor to keep me tied down.

But.  I know there will be pain again.

My heart will break.  I will cry, and I will suffer.  But I will not be lost in it.  I will experience it, it will wash through me, and I'll continue on.  The pain won't be dragged with me through time; I'll leave it where it was.

Perhaps this doesn't seem like a big difference.

Before and after enlightenment, there is still pain.

Yet, afterward, the pain is only new.  The old pain is sloughed off, like the dead thing that it was.  Pain is much easier, much less... painful ...  when it is only a new wound you are dealing with and not old battle injuries.

The difference is mammoth.