NOT MY WORLD.
There is one world, but that’s not the conceptually ‘worded’ one we believe we live in, just as the word ‘glass’ doesn’t hold water – the ancient symbol for ‘truth’.
I woke this morning not gradually but with a startle. I was, unusually, immediately transported into the reality of my small, sun-filled, richly furnished bedroom; the light, white and brilliant, reflected off the mirrored door of the old French armoire and the painting pictured below. The whole space was welcomed and welcoming! And O so obviously real.
The dream-in-sleep from which I’d suddenly awakened was not that of a distorted nightmare, with its terrors and monsters, but of that mind-made world in which I used to abnormally live.
~”Which world are we talking about?” Nisargadatta
You know, the psychologically conditioned, interpreted ‘world’ of everyday personal, fretfully planned living that oft goes awry; our private, bubble-world wherein I sat with wearied others going somewhere on the bus and somewhere else in my head. 😉 All in all, that dream was like I used to live; conflicted and confused in minor and major ways; distracted, tripping now here, now there, doing things and going somewhere but not really ever arriving, just endlessly running circles like a dog ordered to go, seek…find. And the tail that wags that dog is desire; what gives it teeth is fear – not related to physical survival, which is natural, but to the unrelenting demands of belief in being a separate ‘me’.
Still, it turns out that seeking is normal and necessary to grow in the world we’re apparently living in. While J Krishnamurti often stressed that “You are the world and the world is you,” it seems a long journey for a rare few to confirm that. It further seems that K’s pointing was a first but not sufficient observation; that the mass consciousness all humanity shares needs to be directly seen in oneself. That inner seeing of the common bondage of one’s own wholly conditioned consciousness is all that’s necessary and sufficient for transformation, for living in fidelity with reality well and truly.
~ Sitting here now writing this in that same sunshine with tea, in a room filled with all sorts of simple delights – sounds of a puffing kettle, the clinking of dishes, my wife Alla gliding about the kitchen – all truly normal facts and functions and feelings and flowings of the day, with one main characteristic that is not a dream: clarity. That includes and openly, fully, welcomes what is, in the freshness of this living nowness.
There’s a gentle watching of the ‘Horse of the Mind’ contradictions, fabrications, implications and other passing parsings, but really it doesn’t matter. All that IS, is happening now, fully, freely, without a ‘me’ that’s supposedly in attendance. The ‘world’ is me but not mine; there’s no owner, no ownership; no control, no controller in it. There is a functional ‘I’ that’s grounded in the sense of ‘I am’. This world is not personal, not perturbed and confused with plans, aims and wishes. It IS. There’s everything in it and nothing to it. One is truly in it but not of it. There is a certain peace in knowing that one infinitely IS, and in not knowing, or needing to know, what one is. That’s the wonder. 😊
There’s no winning in one battle after another. Fighting is a habit; peace is our nature. Step outta the ring, take a quiet walk.
~ Painting: an oil momento from 2006, emblematic of frenzied living – symultaneously hanging on, going ahead, looking behind – running around ‘my’ apparent world more or less frantically reacting with many mountings of boots, saddle, to horse and away! 😉 Artist unknown.
