All meaning is generated by the mind. Things happen in reality and that just is what is. Then the mind comes in, creates a story and says that the story means something. Then we're grabbing onto the story, whatever it is, and if reality goes another way then we're suffering.
But if no story means anything, if nothing has any inherent meaning, then what's the point of life?
To the mind, there must always be a point, a purpose. Otherwise, what's the point?
Clouds float across the sky. They don't have any meaning. They are not trying to get somewhere or accomplish some purpose. They are just being what they are, as they appear and disappear across the sky.
Thoughts and feelings appear across the inner sky in the same way. When we see that they have no meaning, they become enjoyable, like watching a good movie. We can watch without buying-in, without identifying with them.
And suddenly, realizing this, having no meaning becomes a wonderful place. It's like falling endlessly in space with nowhere to grab on to.
To the self-concept, this sounds like a really bad idea. How else will it keep going if there's no purpose and no meaning?
But in no purpose and no meaning, then there's just a vastness in which flowers begin to appear, and action just appears.
The mind would like us to believe that we have to think in order to live. But like every other concept, it's empty. Life flows more naturally when the energy is free to just go where it wants to go in our life, when action is not preceded by thought.
There's no need to "figure anything out," because the moment will figure itself out. So there's nothing to do. Yet action still happens. The energy just moves, and the dishes get washed or the call gets made or the environment gets worked on.
Then comes the discovery that the most sacred, important story of all, the story about how we exist as a separate being, is also empty.
From the perspective of the infinite, there is no separate somebody conducting a personal life. There's just itself, and it's doing everything.
The ungraspable doesn't wait for us to realize that it's doing everything before it does everything. So when we realize that it's doing everything, nothing changes. Action goes on as before. The kids still get taken to school. The groceries still get bought. It's just that there's nobody doing these things. They're just happening.
We've been solidifying the "I" concept for a long time. We do it with thoughts. Notice that most of our time is spent thinking about "me," this separate existence, and how we can be safe and secure and get what we want.
The tremendous consensus reality all around us, in society, in the media, everywhere, is that there's this multiplicity, that there's all these separate entities. There are even labels for everything, which proves how separate they are. That's a tree, this is a table, that's you, this is me.
This self-concept about a somebody, who's conducting a personal life, is inherently painful. Often, especially in the west, we can arrange our lives so that they have many pleasant motions; yet deep down there's this sense that something's missing, that something about life is dis-jointed.
There's always gains and losses on the surface. But this deeper sense of something being not quite right isn't caused by events. It's inherent with the buy-in about the personal self. It's a package deal.
This being so, no journey of personal growth can deal with the pain of living as a "self," because the journey presumes the existence of the very thing that's causing the dissatisfaction.
Seeing this, the emptiness of all separate phenomena and all meaning about them, it becomes more difficult to take our thoughts and feelings and cravings seriously. In that moment without a thought there's more presence with whatever is in front of us. We're more available to whatever wants to happen.
No need to reject the beliefs and concepts, identify with them, or do anything at all with them. They're not even personal. They come on their own; we don't ask them to come, they just come by themselves and leave by themselves—like any other natural phenomena, like those clouds coming and going across the sky.
When we don't grasp onto thoughts, they get to do their thing and we're just aware of them but not sucked in. In that moment we're more available to life, to this person in front of us, to our senses, to whatever life wants to bring.
Then we just do whatever is obviously next, without trying to figure it out first. The energy moves, and it goes wherever it goes, which it's always been doing anyway.
Then the ungraspable uses our humanness to appreciate itself everywhere. And the immense love of the infinite for itself is itself ungraspable, but real.
—jim sloman, 1/23/01 for Jan 23
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