{"id":4244,"date":"2025-06-03T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/?p=4244"},"modified":"2026-06-16T15:18:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T14:18:32","slug":"the-gift-of-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/2025\/06\/03\/the-gift-of-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I often dream that I am another person in another period of history. These dreams can be any time in Western history and I can be any age, any gender. Often, such dreams come as false awakenings: I dream that I wake up and start going about my day as some other person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is through such experiences that I have realised how much we identify with our mental ‘clothing\u2019. These are restrictions that society has placed on us that have been internalised. Usually, these are positive traits, like the reluctance to cut in a queue. But there are other traits, like low self-esteem that comes from not being pretty, which are not positive. Each of us wears hundreds of these weights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I am thinking about a false awakening in which I was a woman in an abusive domestic relationship. Even though I wouldn’t tolerate such a situation in waking life, in the dream, my awareness wore all the weights of that woman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt I was not a particularly worthy person. If it weren’t for abusive and controlling relationships, I’d have nothing. The only people who cared about me controlled me and belittled me, but they cared enough to do at least that. Other people just moved on. Those relationships provided me homes. Otherwise, I’d be cast out on the open market to fend for myself. I already knew I was not good at fending for myself. So, if my waking self were to say, “Just believe in yourself, you’re worth more than that,” in the dream I’d say, “that’s great, but those words do not give me a place in this world.” My prison is not merely of my own making, but of the making of every important person in my history. Without my history, I’d be nothing. I’d be less than I am now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is upon awakening from such dreams that I realise that I can exist as a person who is very different from my waking self. There is someone \u2014 or something \u2014 that is independent of identity. I realise that the person who is writing this text is not particularly me<\/em> either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read essays written by people in search of their identity, their ancestry, their femininity, or some such thing, I am dumbfounded. Why would anyone want to renovate her prison? I think such people have the wrong relationship to prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have at other times had no weights at all. I have had mystical experiences in which I experienced from amnesia so complete, I lost the ability to think in my native language. I can image how someone might find it distressing to be alone in a black void with no memory. However, those moments were the most liberating experiences I’ve ever had. I was flying without altitude, without destination, without origin. In fact, I have never had any profound mystical experience without amnesia. I seemingly cannot fly with the weights of an identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If my waking life identity is false, I needn’t wonder who I really<\/em> am. My intuition is that awareness simply is. If you start to experience either of these phenomena \u2014 exo-awakening or false death \u2014 I would recommend just enjoying them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An identity is a mobile prison for awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4244"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5373,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions\/5373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}