My friend,
I’ve read your E-Mail over several times and I’ve let my responses roll around in my mind – sort of like clothes tumbling in a dryer; waiting for one response or another to pop to the top and suggest a beginning response.
But mostly what arises for me is the feeling that I am in a thoughtless and immediate space.
And that I’m watching someone in a thinking space; thinking.
I am here pressed up against the plate glass wall of paradox.
The irony of it almost makes me want to laugh. (not at you, my friend, but at the absurdity of the paradox itself).
Have you seen this skit by Bob Newhart?
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=519168745237080
Thinking about our thinking to try to untangle the problems we feel that we have – because of our thinking.
Does that make you smile?
Or, perhaps, does it makes you want to squirm – and think about it a bit? (smile)
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not being cynical, critical or mocking you. I like you far too much for any of that. I highly respect your sincerity in all of this.
But, you are trapped in a paradox; from my POV.
Of course, you could just lead a life of staying busy and not thinking about things; but that will not serve you. You would get nowhere. And just wake up, decades later, no different than you were when you fell asleep.
But, just as surely, if your strategy is to try to sort things out by thinking about them and trying to understand them conceptually, then you will just end up like a conspiracy theorist. Who, after years of trying to see the ‘real truth’, finds nothing but evidence of evidence born of confirmation bias around him in all directions.
The more we think we can think ourselves into ‘seeing life directly and simply’, the further we will get from it.
But there is a place between denial and trying.
Calling it by one word or another is always a risk; because words can lead us back into thinking about words and what they mean.
‘Being’, ‘now’, ‘this’, ‘here’, ‘acceptance’….
Consider dropping the idea of cause and effect and its suggestion that the way forward is to ‘do things’ to ‘get results’.
Cause and effect, subject and object, this and that, now and then, here and there, and on and on. They will all lead you astray.
They all suggest that ‘this’, ‘now’, ‘here’ are not perfect. and they suggest that ‘that’, ‘then’ and ‘there’ might be better.
Again, I am not being critical. But I am trying to get you to see that the idea that ‘things are not perfect’ leads us to think about why things are not perfect. And no amount of subject-object consideration can untie the knot and the paradox of duality.
Two blonds are standing. One on either side of the river. One hollers over to the other, “How do I get over there?” And the other shouts back, “You are already over there!”
As Bob Newhart says in the skit, “Just stop”.
Say ‘yes’. It is what it is. You are you. This moment and how it is, is OK.
This moment, just like the past, is indelible – it cannot be changed. Only the future can be changed.
But we make too much of the distinction between now and the future.
Saying ‘yes’ to this moment’s unfolding does not mean that you give up all hope of manifesting a better future.
It means that you recognize that saying ‘yes ‘ to this moment cannot help but create a better future.
Your attitude, at the point of acceptance, is one and the same as your attitude at the point of manifestation.
There is no point in time other than here and now. So, there cannot be any other place from which we can manifest the future.
But our ideas of cause and effect inevitably pull us into ‘do this now and get that later’ notions.
But, in fact, accepting joy in your life at this moment creates a future with more joy. You are both the creator and the created; once you drop believing in the world being a cause and effect mechanism.
Like your life and your life will become more likable.
Like yourself and you will become more likable.
Trust the future and the future will become more trust-able.
Trust your instincts and your instincts will clarify your seeing.
Just stop.
Quit trying to figure it out. Accept and say ‘yes’ to how it is. Feel gratitude for how it is.
Don’t engage in trying to stop. Just stop.
Don’t try to stop thinking. Just stop thinking about thinking.
Don’t try to say ‘yes’ to how it is. Just say ‘yes’.
Don’t try to ‘feel gratitude’. Just feel it.
There is the trying. And there is the doing. One is cause and effect and the other is just … wordless, here and now, one thing, inseparable.
Let yourself pool into simple awareness that says ‘yes’. And look at the world through those eyes.