Defining Nothing

An absolute simplicity exists that I cannot experience as an "I", pointing to and defining myself as something apart from the world. With that first split--me/other--the complex dream begins. Plots thicken, chapters are committed to memory, and endless subplots are revealed. Next thing I know, I'm a character in a story, which, if it is to have any consistency, I must react to and behave in. Crazy, huh? And quite painful, if I forget my origins, because all my complex elements share a common characteristic, just this side of utter stillness--they ceaselessly shift and morph, devolve and evolve.

All this motion and change happens in "spacetime", sometimes patterned and sometimes chaotic...or so it seems. It can be overwhelming to a consciousness which believes it is somehow apart from experience, and is trying to follow and "make sense" of it all. A natural response is to attempt a withdrawal...take the body away from the story, run to a monastery, shut down the senses, numb the emotion. I say such a reaction is "natural" in the sense that every "thing" seeks (and springs from) a point of balance or rest, no matter what the physics. The "water" in the body, mind and spirit must be allowed to find its own level, at some point, undisturbed by fight-or-flight. Formal meditation is one way to relax and let go. (A good meditation period might be better described as a "mediation"--that is, placing any sense of conflict into the relaxed hands of neutrality, and resting.) Any activity, though, which involves doing something for its own sake is a way to rest, even when the energy output is high. "Resting" is simply dropping the sense of identity for a time.

The ability to let go of the typical sense of identity is crucial to a sense of peace in the surface world. I don't mistake a Facebook profile for an actual human being; ironically, at this point in my story, neither can I believe that I am "an actual human being". I've seen the other side of the truth, and thus understand that my identity can shift from acting as an insignificant iota in a meaningless universe, to utter inclusion of all in a boundless Self. These are, you see, exactly the same. There is nothing I can really do to escape what I really am--nothing I have to do, nothing to prove, nothing to reach. What is beyond language holds hands with the tiny self of garnered fact. In daily life, this a kind of refuge; in deep peace, all need is gone--even for wholeness. Not because I am wholeness, but because I am nothing. No-thing.