This is in reply to Katrine's early postings in this thread; I haven't had time to read through all postings yet.
As you walk this path, all your latent fears and desires are magnified. That's universally warned about. Silence acts as an amplifier on fears and desires, and the more silence you cultivate, the greater the amplification.
Fortunately, while fears and desires get bigger and louder, they also grow less substantial, more transparent. They hold you less tightly in their grip...unless you choose to take the bait and fall back into the delusion of separateness and control (in which case you will be gripped tighter and tighter until you're back utterly caught in the thick of all that).
You describe fears and desires as growing, yet they're weirdly otherworldly, as if you're given a choice. That's precisely it.
Here's why it's happening. You're nowhere near as surrendered as you think (I don't say this with any derision or condescension...I'm in the same boat). You've surrendered some, but you retain mountains of samskaras (latent propensities and impressions accummulated in this and - if you believe in that - previous lives), MOST OF THEM SUBCONSCIOUS. These subconscious patterns and attachments are the source of the fears. They are the meat of this unknown woman you refer to.
You can have very profound experiences and deem yourself almost fully unattached, unaware that lifetimes of mud still weigh you down just outside your conscious awareness. There is vast work to do for all of us. It's nowhere near as quick as we imagine. A bit - or even a lot - of awakening and awareness comes relatively soon in the process. But then it's a long slog and a big dig.
Example: you first deny the existence of any "ladder", then do an "aw shucks, I'm not so high up the ladder", and then point out that even those as high on the ladder as you have issues. That's an example of an egoic samskara playing out from behind your conscious awareness - an emanation from the strange woman who's fearful, resistant, controlling, etc.. We all have multitudes of these unconscious samskaras constituting the strange selves in our subconsciousness. If we can be just vaguely aware of their quantity (right now, you're only noticing the ones absolutely screaming at you...imagine how many quiet ones there are!), it's a useful reminder of the mud still covering the windshield.
It's not necessary to consciously hunt them down, analyze, catalog, and exterminate them. As Neem Karoli Baba said: rather than try to figure it all out, it's better to just see God in everything. But he means absolutely naked to the bone, even the parts far from the composed shiny center of your vision - the nicely presented place where you've already done plenty of dusting.
You can clear an area in the center, but until you let go with every cell in your body, the projections of these samskaras will keep amplifying and tugging at you...in your sleep, in the back of your mind, etc. (to clarify, you only notice the projections; the samskaras themselves are unconscious). You have two tools: AYP, plus the fact that the fears and desires will become more and more transparent even as they crescendo. By choosing not to inhabit these ghostly projections - by detaching and viewing them from silence, and by meditatating to increase that silence, you are doing the work that needs to be done. Commendably, that seems to be mostly what you've decided to do.
In the light of the above, consider this statement:
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"I don't want control. All i yearn for is to melt into the presence. I don't understand why I am so afraid, when this is what I want most of all."
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No, Katrine. You want all sorts of control. This thirst may be somewhat reduced, at least in your conscious narrative, but your nooks and crannies - the caves of your unconscious - crave control with drooling greed, and resist melting into the presence with demonic tenacity and fingernails dug in. That's the "other woman" you write about. It's not another woman, it's you. You've cleared out a spot - from which your protagonist voice declares her policy positions on life and love. Less familiar parts of you cling and resist and feel very much at stake. There is a vast amount of letting go still to be done, and while it may be invisible to you, it's not really hidden. You've always been really full of you as you've glowingly disavowed your youness.
I'm having the same problem. We all are. It helps to at least recognize the problem, because it's humbling. And I hope this posting helps. Though if it annoys you, that'd be helpful, too, because that which is annoyed is that which is still hanging on (
http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/index.php?topic=1137). Anything that illuminates the darkened target is good (n.b. you missed that opportunity with my Marilyn Monroe analogy).
