Dialogue ~ 33

Let’s continue to look at space.

Ah, you say, ‘I don’t want to be privy to any intellectual mumbo jumbo or discourse. I want an experience of an illuminated or enlightened being. I’ve paid my subscription, I’ve attended the workshops, I’ve sat at the feet of sages and still life feels like it’s lost its sparkle, what ‘medicine’ will ‘fix’ this?’

Somebody might jibe you about your ‘monkey mind’ or suggest that you ‘be still and listen for your soul’ but what if after everything that you read and do, nada, nothing? ‘Nothing is there’ you scream at the top of your lungs into what, ‘nothingness’? Right there is what is causing the suffering in the world. The belief that the world as we see it is simply all that there is. Even when we say that we think or hope or have faith that something more exists beyond the boundaries of perception, the biggest obstacle to our crossing that great divide within ourselves is our attachment to life itself.

Nothingness has become equated with death or failure and is pushed away or feared. Life has the greatest value and to that end, we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling our potential in whatever time we have, so as to have no regrets. Even silence has been appropriated and is viewed as ‘something more’ to add to what we already have.

Having exhausted all available ‘quick fixes’, what happens when even silence does not give you what it is that you are struggling to make emerge from within yourself? Do you even know what it is that you want?

What if I suggest to you that even if you can put into words what it is that you think you want, is still not what it is that you really want? Why do I say this? Because that part of yourself that is rooting around and looking for solutions or an escape from confusion or whatever is causing you conflict, well my friend, the solutions that it comes up with are emerging from that same way of thinking about things that has caused you discomfort in the first place. Remember what Einstein said about ‘doing the same thing over and over…’?

Listening is more than being still and waiting for some ‘light to turn itself on’. It is not something that you do. Rather, it is an orientation process. It is a dialogue that you will be having with that ‘nothingness’ that you fear will deprive you of life. Do you have the will to listen?

It does not matter whether you retreat into a cave for solitude or you continue with the goings on of a busy day. The environment that you’re in, the people that you’re with, the problems you’ve identified, none of that is what’s getting in your way. You don’t need to block them out or fix them.

Despite an appearance to the contrary, it’s not really about you against the world or them or it. That kind of thinking makes you look for validation in a world which is of never ending conflict.

When you see reality as if ‘you are in the world’ then you will always find that something is larger than yourself and you will look for solutions as that which can bring you comfort or an advantage over others.

Consider for a moment the perspective that it is not that you are in the world but that you are the world. How does that change your relationship with others or the obstacles that you are facing? They’re simply messages, from you to you and meant for your unique perspective of looking at things to awaken to. Listening won’t provoke a response and indeed it cannot because the dialogue is mutual.

What is that space again, which you had identified as ‘nothingness’ and had sought to push away? It is eternal being.  

Revisit what Parmenides had said, ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’, nothing comes from nothing. It simply cannot exist.

What then of creativity and is anything ever born if it cannot also die? What of the kingdom of which Jesus spoke? Is there not some transcendent space which we can orient ourselves towards?

Of course, we can acknowledge that nothing comes from nothing and we can also observe that what is being has many twists and turns within itself.