The human animal is fascinating, complex and incredibly wrapped up in its definition of itself, when operating through the possessing/rejecting, judgmental filter of ego. Our individual and collective commentary on life is our story, our current default identification. For most people, this language carries on as the reactive "noise" within and without...like a subliminal program which seems to be always functioning, always telling us what to run toward or away from.
Is this what it means to be human?
I can imagine a time long past (or far into the future) when it was easier to drop out of the layer of insistent chaos; when there were much longer gaps between news events and much less advertisement of everything that is supposed to make one an ideal example of the species. In spite of inundating ourselves with goods, services, information and all kinds of technology, we live in a culture of perceived scarcity, which we help to create by believing those messages screaming that, not only do we not have enough of anything, we aren't enough, either!
It is the special talent of marketing experts to create a kind of fear, emptiness and lack of trust in our own world, which then must be filled or resolved with some product. Being the pattern-loving creatures that we are, we as parents, teachers, clergy, and salespeople of all kinds have attempted this kind of influence upon our children, charges and friends in the name of whatever we feel is "good for them"...so perhaps this tendency is just one of those interesting human traits, taken to an extreme in our society.
The whole business today can be exhausting. It feels like an onslaught of voracious insects accompanied by a tremendous drought. But there is nothing "real or true" about it. When did being human become a control issue, a sales position, a currency? Why do we feel the terrible, aching need to either pursue or defend? And why do we insist upon interpreting the activity of "other species" or the movement of events through our own grasping or fearful language? Is it something that just can't be helped--a biological "drive", a viral replication of an invasive thought?
No.
I'll stand in that "position" as a human being until I drop dead (whatever that means!).
If I could sell what my body/mind/heart "knows", I could pay off my suddenly challenging mortgage today, and buy an island tomorrow...but this brand of being resists all labels and is literally priceless. So instead, I cram this writing into a demanding schedule out of sheer, overwhelming love for the process (words can be fun!) and the barely-hidden fragility evident in my people, in my species. I suffer and laugh with you, as you and me.
Walking on the beach or in the woods or down the sidewalk, I listen to the rhythm of the body and the pulse of the mind. Noise falls away; soon it is evident that underneath the clamor, there is a mute energetic motion, which lurches dumbly and blindly in fight, flight or fascination. And underneath that, there is a kaleidoscopic, shifting, ordered-and-organic, geometric-and-spontaneous patterning happening. And underneath that is an entirely uncommon world, although I easily feel it beneath my feet and breathe it in and out of these lungs. It's an "experience" in which I am no longer "human"--I am unspecified, unclassified, undone. I am absolute, immediate and so thoroughly perfect that there is no lack, no need, no transformation required. The concept of having or being "enough" does not even arise.
This is not dead silence or blank mindlessness, either. This is a dropping of an illness, a disease, a total shedding of a thick, itchy skin. What emerges is vibrantly colorful and prone to singing. The clarity of total health reveals the necessity, the fitting-in of the unconscious disease...which is known at once to be dreamlike.
There is no want in that "state". Every need is fed, even within the feeling of hunger. It is not a practical way of being in a society set up for competition...but wandering into that range of being (as opposed to "achieving" it) is the same as discovering a vastness that has always existed, dwarfing the idea of "human potential" as sunlight pales a candle flame. Really.
Also present is the understanding of absolute limitlessness, a total lack of boundary between anything and anything, because I am all things, all states at once. There is nothing to be said, no urgent speech required, and I am communicating as communication-in-essence.
Sitting in the sand or on a tree stump or on a park bench, I am a cosmic dimmer-switch, and can dial myself fully open or down, down, to the level of balancing my checkbook or struggling with a relationship. The full range of choice becomes available, but the reality of light remains. Who chooses is an unnecessary speculation. It is obvious. All the thousands of years of mythical and legendary god-becoming-man-becoming-god, all the shapeshifting and alchemy taking place behind the scenes makes perfect sense, to both the logical mind and the mind alert to rampant beauty.
Exploitation is not possible.
Shoring up an ego is a total "waste" of energy.
Common sense is, if anything, strengthened by the vast increase in sensitivity to the flow of events. Therefore, nothing is problematic.
People have asked such things as, "If this is true, why stay in the typical world? Why go back to the mortgage and the daily issues? Why even bother yourself?"
I am voluntarily attached, while also knowing I am free. I make no excuses for this attachment or disinterest...it became voluntary when I realized that I am responsible for everything, and response-able to everything. Oddly enough, there is nothing left to justify. For every effect, there are myriad causes.
I see some people calmly wander off when they trip over the true extent of themselves...maybe they return, maybe they don't. They are motivated by love. I see people throw themselves into whatever they feel constitutes complete service to the "betterment of humanity", out of utter compassion and love. I see people pointing to the very limiting (if comfortable) blind stupidity society exhibits while it panders to fear--the pointing may be done through humor, serious warnings or creative action. But it stems from love.
Whatever route the attempt at communication and opening takes, ego (as a valid method) takes a back seat, becoming a purely logistical function, a practical tool, a way of negotiating the consensus dream, if that's what someone wants to do. It takes a back seat because love becomes the driver.
Maturity appears to be a process of opening to the actual, which includes rather than rejects and loves rather than denies. What is real is all-encompassing. It attends to all the dynamics of a situation, is aware of itself as occupying both "sides" in any apparent conflict. Resolution is a natural thing. Sometimes it isn't peaceful or painless...but mature resolution has no need for excessive suffering.
Perhaps one of the landmark signs of maturity is the willingness to exchange a highly developed and sophisticated sense of identity--and all its righteousness--for something much more flexible, pliable and easy. Anything else is in opposition to the Nature, human and otherwise, that we are. This kind of fighting isn't implicitly wrong, but just the long way home...through a wasteland full of very harsh lessons. Necessary, maybe, up to a point...past that point, true suffering sets in as the final call to be real.
What does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to be?
What does it mean?
What does it?
What does?
What!
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