When all the threads I’ve described – emptiness, fullness, energy, psyche, and daily life – have been deeply investigated and allowed to integrate with each other, they fall away experientially. After an initial period of marveling at it, we get so accustomed to the integration that we hardly ever think about it. It’s just like I never stop to reflect on how integrated my collar bone feels with my ribcage.

In the same way, the profound recognitions of spiritual unfolding can become so woven into the fabric of experience that they no longer stand out as something to note or call attention to. We don’t go through our day noticing how our liver is metabolizing chemicals or our white blood cells are fighting off infections – these natural, intelligent processes of the body are happening in the background, without a sense of a manager or a “me” orchestrating it all. Similarly, when the reality of emptiness, or the inherent fullness of life, or the constant flux of sensations and energies, or the conditioned and constructed nature of all of it is obvious and fully metabolized, they don’t need to be consciously invoked.

If pressed to put some kind of conceptual framework around it, we might conclude that it’s all just conditioning playing out – the human organism with its particular bundle of genetic predispositions, psychological patterns, cultural beliefs, behavioral habits, and so forth is responding to stimuli and situations based on the entirety of its prior “programming.” There isn’t a separate “self” that is making free choices – every choice is a product of factors and influences that have been in motion long before this particular moment came into existence.

But importantly, this impersonal unfolding is not experienced as being mechanical, dull or robotic. Spontaneous actions, words and behaviors arise in response to each situation, not because a self wills it, but because that’s the natural expression of an organism that is in open, unobstructed exchange with its environment. The flow of life moves through this human body-mind in the same way it moves through trees, clouds, rivers and stars – each manifesting nature in the unique ways made possible by their conditioning.

There isn’t a dulling or mechanizing of expression when the sense of being a doer falls away. If the conditioning of this organism allows for humor, curiosity, consideration and care, those qualities still come through. They simply aren’t felt to be the qualities of a particular entity. They don’t stand out as something separate. They belong to life itself.

Of course, conditioning that is based on misunderstanding or self-protection may fall away or be re-structured when it is no longer needed. Patterns of thought and behavior that arose to defend a threatened and fragile self may not have as much momentum when the core sense of separation has been seen through. So there’s an unknotting of the conditioning that took that illusion to be real. But the entirety of our conditioning doesn’t suddenly disappear. Nor would we want it to, as it’s the very substance and vehicle for the richness of our life.