When we’re fed up with all our painful, unwanted conditioning, when we want our life to fundamentally change, we can tie ourselves up in knots trying to make it happen, trying to reach some longed for idea of ‘freedom’.
“Why should it be so difficult?” we might ask.
Because the supposed ‘me’ that’s trying to solve the ‘problem’ is the cause of the ‘problem’ it’s trying to solve! No wonder we feel overwhelmed.
What if we just drop it all?
All the strategies, the reasoning, the spiritual concepts, the idea of destroying our conditioning, the hope of some kind of miracle resolution, of a permanent level of ‘higher functioning’, of becoming some super enlightened being—all of it—and fall into total and utter abandonment, with nothing left to hold, not even the remotest idea about what anything really is.
Can we simply stop and be here with nothing?
Beyond all our motivations and definitions, beyond the labels ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘this’ and ‘that’ we find the visceral throb of life: colours and forms dancing in never-to-be-repeated steps, an impossibly elaborate symphony of sounds, the whole experience saturated in sensuality. And what if we even let go of those descriptions? There is a happening happening. There is THIS. And through fresh, childlike eyes—without the divisions of belief—whatever is aware of THIS is utterly inseparable from it. THIS is our true body.
Life is turned inside out: what we really are is not an isolated unit, exposed and under threat, but the edgeless fabric in and out of which this whole play of experiencing is made.
With that realisation the labels and definitions are all welcome; their seeming divisions no longer disguise our wholeness. They are simply more characters in the play. Illumined by the light of understanding we see the whole mechanism of ‘me’ play out: the ‘unwanted’ conditioning rising up, the fear, the terror, the feeling of overwhelm, along with whatever thoughts flood in to the ‘rescue’, that try to numb and distract us from the rawness, that wrestle for control, that fight to keep us from ‘danger’.
And in that unconditional openness, rather than warring with ourself, there’s compassion; compassion for this antiquated mechanism that’s still rattling away, still trying to save our life, still running on the old misbelief that we are but a limited self under threat.
