The tagline on my website used to say, ‘exploring present-moment awareness’ which sounds okay on the face of it, but the truth is I’m not exploring at all; I’m observing, witnessing. I’m not going anywhere or doing anything, I’m not plumbing any depths, I’m not even responding to anything; I’m just here, watching ‘the world’ go by, taking notes as it passes. I don’t need to know, but knowing shows up too. Knowing comes and goes. Doing too, that comes and goes. Being? Well that’s where I am and what I am. Being is am-ness, is-ness. Before even aware-ness.
Maybe.
Who could say such things, who could know such things? Better to keep quiet, we don’t need to know. What a relief that we exist prior to the need to think or to know, that I AM and need ‘do’ nothing.
But the mind bounces between Two Truths. “I’m tired today” it says. And that’s true too. True enough. True on its own level, in its own way. Not untrue, not to be dismissed or gaslighted away. All that is is Truth, capital-T. Don’t deny it, but don’t project permanence on that which passes, don’t expect it to stay, certainly don’t demand that it does. I mean you can if you want, but good luck with that.
Mystery means that which is hidden, but the truth isn’t hidden at all, it’s just unnoticed, ignored maybe. But it’s right here, always. Not deep, not behind anything or inside something. It’s just here, this. But for most it’s habitually overlooked. It’s a blindspot. Most people see reality in a partial manner, conceptually selecting from a list of pre-judged portions of reality. The bits we don’t like are ignored, rejected, denied. We let the ‘good stuff’ in.
But when we leave bits out reality stops making sense. We start wondering why it’s not working properly, why things aren’t going the way we expect them to, but it’s because we’ve rejected some fundamental but inconvenient truths about the way things actually are. For example we don’t like the fact that we’re not in control so we excise that. We don’t like the fact that EVERYTHING is temporary and impermanent so we reject and ignore that. Then we wonder why we can’t hold on to something, or why our clinging and grasping is painful and ineffectual.
It’s like standing in the ocean and saying, “why doesn’t it just stop moving?! I want it to stay put!” At least there we know better. We don’t demand that the unreal be real. And yet the whole field of phenomenal life is an ocean of change and as long as we expect it to be otherwise we suffer.
But when we let go of that need to control or to fix life in place, something opens up in us, some greater freedom, a dawning recognition that we ARE the ocean, and that while all the various individual forms come and go, the ocean itself is constant. We find that an unchanging, ever-present essence is always there, always Here.
So letting go is a leap of faith in a way, but the more we let go the more the truth is confirmed that we don’t need to hold on. Until we find we don’t even bother to grasp or resist, and openness itself becomes our Wayless Way and freedom our living truth.
– Martyn
