Part Nine: LIVING HERE – The Invention of Me and You.
Ah, the Great Assumption! The self-sense of being a critter called “me” and “you”, is a fiction – a story invented with a learned language of symbols and images about reality contrived by mind and supported by feelings like fear and hope. Psychological fear is a man-made invention of course, and not to be confused with our natural survival instincts. Hope too, is an invention…both ensue from a mind in search of security. A mind looking to delude itself that there is, despite a few pesky uncertainities, a certainty that it hopes and fears is beyond doubt. So our minds constantly invent and reinvent according to their schooled understanding – an understanding that does not, and never will, “understand” that mind is limited to the adroit use of concepts.
As centuries of sages have said: all labeling, describing, identifying and otherwise interpreting of phenomena is – vaporware! It is conceptual thought that makes up our 7.2 billion separate views of a world that, in truth, is one and undivided. Pure spirit.
Indeed, “other” is another invention; one that immediately complicates and creates differences that don’t exist. We are creatures of our own scheming, creations of our individual and collective dreaming. But never mind, it’s in the nature of us humans to repeatedly invent our self. Until we don’t. It’s also our normal condition to not recognize our invention – to mistake our self, to “think” our self to be an actual person doing a life. And so the mind-choreographed dance of our life begins in early childhood – a dance that keeps us unnaturally on our toes with more or less suffering, more or less misery. Indeed, we chase happiness in ways that guarantee misery.
Fortunately, life itself is not of our inventing! And while thought may indeed, entertain and amuse us for a while – if not a lifetime – ideas and ideals prove themselves to be ultimately, like a bag of Frito Lays chips, “less than nourishing.” That meal (and life!) we thought we had in the bag may be found to be mostly imagined! Here again, we fortunately come into contact with that which we didn’t imagine – good old reality! And then and there, we may be graced to discover that life itself is not a story; that life itself is aware and living love, with and without our inventions of “me” and “you”. And what’s more, that love is not between a me and a you, – there’s no separation. In truth and in fact, as always, we are that love.
Plan or no plan, life -reality- looks after its own interests, and we may discover that it’s not so much about getting there as it is about being here.