(This is Part 14 of a continuing series. Go back to Pt 13.)
Reality is a trip. Because it's not what it seems. What it looks like is a lot of separate entities running around doing things. And those of us with rational brains have what we imagine to be a personal self, an "I" with which we "make decisions" and "run our life" as an independent entity.
It's a very interesting perspective, one shared by almost all of us human beings. Yet it's also become clear that this perspective is wholly fictitious. It has no more reality than a movie playing on a screen, or to be more accurate, it has exactly that kind of reality, a kind of show played out on a screen which we call the world.
The catch is that there's only one player in this show, Reality itself. And Reality has no parts at all really. There's no separation in it at all; it's the same thing everywhere. The seeming separation is for the purpose of lela, that is, divine play.
And this single Reality is doing everything. All is happening from, and as, this one energy.
In this way of looking at things, there are no personal "I"s. There are no decisions being made by anybody. There is nobody there to make any decisions; there is only the appearance of a separate self, the appearance of a personal existence.
Our sense of a personal existence, our sense of a separate "I" is something that we have to learn as infants. When we come into the world we don't have this concept. It's quite a leap when we first formulate the concept of "Mommy" and then "Daddy." These constitute our first recognition that something separate exists.
Following upon the heels of these first concepts, we now as infants leap to the really big one, the earth-shaking formulation of the "I" concept, the most important concept in our life, the one that tells us that we exist separately, the one that tells us that we have a personal existence.
A bit later, we formulate the first important corallary to the master "I" concept, and that is that we have "choices" and make "decisions." We "run" this thing that we think of our personal life. In this process we and other people can sometimes make what we call "mistakes," bad decisions.
The thing to notice is that all of this is an accretion of concepts, one building upon the other, and this is our monumental achievement as infants, this putting together of the self-concept which we didn't originally possess.
Once we possess the self-concept, we then think that we have to "make our way" in the world, "look out for #1" and so forth. And we enter on this gigantic merry-go-round where we spend our life looking out for this personal "I" and filtering almost all "decisions" in terms of how they will affect our personal "self."
In turn, all these "decisions" affecting our "self" reinforce our self-concept, our belief in a personal self, and it builds and builds until it seems very, very solid and real, until the self-concept seems like reality itself.
The only problem is, this personal self isn't real. The whole idea of this separate entity who makes decisions and all that is just that—an idea—a story, a concept, a belief, a a fairy tale that doesn't actually exist.
Consider for a moment that perhaps you've never actually made any decisions. How could you? In the first place, you don't exist (as a separate thing), and in the second place, it's all just being done. Reality is doing everything, and always has been, and always will be. Another way to put this is that everything is happening automatically, on its own.
Consequently, there's no decisions to make, ever. If you want to know what your "decision" is about something, just look to see what happens. And that was the "decision," but there was actually no deciding or choosing, only the appearance of it. Everything just happened. Everything just happens.
To see this is also to see that it's impossible to make a "mistake," because nothing could have ever been any different than it was, and no decisions were ever made. In particular, your "personal" life could not have happened any differently than it did.
In other words, everything is just playing out. It's just going however it's going, and it's going to go that way no matter what we think we "decide" or "choose."
To realize this is to take a huge weight off your shoulders. When we really get that there is no personal "I," no personal "soul," no personal "spirit," no personal anything, it comes as a great relief. And conversely, buying into the whole "I" concept, even for a moment, feels like putting on a heavy suit of armor.
When we see that the world is running by itself, we see too that no "decision" needs to be made about anything. Rather, we simply find ourselves doing various things. "Oh, so that's what I decided."
There is a great relaxation behind this seeing, yet it also contains a paradox. The paradox is that, knowing that it's all running itself, we still do whatever we can to serve, knowing that anything we do or "attempt" to do is pre-determined anyway.
And yet we still "choose" to go in that direction, we still "incline" to serve in any way we can, while knowing that it's not actually a choice at all and only has that appearance. I'm afraid words are breaking down completely here, but the heart can and does understand.
Because everything is simply a playing out from one instant to the next, in that sense everything is pre-determined. Yet it's also more or less unpredictable too because of the immense complexity involved.
Simple events like the movement of the planets can be predicted, but complex chains of human events become essentially unpredictable because one would need a computer containing all the details and variables of reality itself in order to really predict with certainty. In that sense, reality is its own computer, "computing" from its countless components what the next instant is going to look like.
And yet in the midst of this complexity, the essential oneness of Reality is also ever-present. Another breakdown of the logic-structure, yet the inconsistencies of logic disturb our 3-pound brains only, and do not in any way disrupt or alter the essential oneness, harmony and ongoing magnificence of reality.
And in this ongoing process, reality itself is the ultimate arbiter of what is "right," what is "supposed to be." We can tell what is supposed to be simply from looking at what happens. What happens, reality itself, is always how it "should" be. Reality is always right.
Knowing that we cannot know the ultimate outcome of anything, we surrender this fictional "I"-ness to the incomprehensible majesty of the reality that moves the stars and the atoms and the flowers and is all those things too, moving itself, greeting itself, recognizing always itself in all "things" everywhere.
(This is the end of Part 14. Go to Pt 15.)
—jim sloman, 1.18.03 for 3.27.03
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