Conditional Bliss

I often hear people on a spiritual trek speak of the nature of existence, as being pure light and love and joyful bliss. And while this may be great PR, it's not exactly true. This will be a tough pill to swallow, for those who derive their motivation from such claims, but the multidimensional universe is really quite neutral.

How can this be? Could so many “masters” be wrong? Well, truth can be subjective. From the plains, the foothills look quite tall, but from the mountain top, they seem notably small.

To someone whose been lost in the desert, a glass of water will offer the sweetest taste in the world. Yet water has no flavor. One whose been subjected to sound torture (like the 10th back to back playing of a “Barney” video) will think that silence sounds sweeter than a symphony of angels - even though the “tune” is the absence of sound. When a splinter is pulled, that glorious feeling of relief, is the feeling of nothing being there.

People generally live their lives engulfed in a non-stop banter of judging and worrying and scheming and wondering and the million other activities, that happen between their ears. When all that stops, even for a brief second, the open spaciousness, that is the vacuum left by thought's absence, feels like the embrace of heaven. But it's only emptiness.

It takes acknowledgment, judgment and presumption to say what “being without self” actually is. We can only know it, as an immediate experience. And as with anything else that you've experienced multiple times, “being, without doing” becomes normal, common place and matter of fact, after sufficient exposure.

Such experiences are as natural as the sunrise. Awesome and amazing, and as ordinary as air. There, for no reason, other than for the sake of just being. Obvious and apparent, as the only way it could possibly be. Perfect, just as it is, right then and there. Both magical and mundane. Stunningly spectacular and sublimely simple.

The newbie brain's bewildered and bedazzled outlook mellows, as the experience becomes more familiar and comfortable. There's no serenade of trumpets, no blinding white light, no life altering epiphanies, no accompanying permanent state of bliss – just an irrationally comforting equanimity, born of openly imbibing the universe, as it's unfolding around and throughout one, in “real time”.

If it feels like this is taking the wind out of your sails, it shouldn't. Nothing has changed. The goal is the same, as is the feeling while “there”. The only change required is in one's thoughts about, or interpretations of, it.

Now, why would anyone want to burst such a lovely bubble? Do I spend my leisure time stealing candy from babies? Not at all. I'm just pointing out that indulging in sweet thoughts isn't actually very helpful when one's trying to grow into a full and healthy being.

One of the main obstacles to “achieving” inner freedom, is the notion of what that means. People strive to have an experience that jibes with their preconceptions about what it should be like. And the more fanciful the notions, the less likely their realization will be. In fact, since it's created in the individual's mind, the whole concept involves the illusory self having an experience of awakening; when the experience doesn't happen, until that self has dissolved - for, the experience IS the dissolution and absence of the illusory self.

Fanciful notions are for the benefit of the little mind. The more tantalizing the vision, the harder it is to let go of it. And the more communally agreed upon a story is, the more difficult it becomes to accept it as being whatever it is, or may become. So, in one sense, the better the story is, the worse it is for delivering on its promise.

It's a tricky balancing act. On one level we want to motivate people and get them moving in the right direction. On another, we need to avoid filling their minds with fanciful and misleading notions, so that they can successfully relinquish their delusions and bask in the ultimate contentment that arises when we empty out enough to make room for the universe to flow through us, unimpeded.

What the mind conceives of as love and light and eternal benevolence, what it strives to define and aspires to attain, pales in comparison to slipping into the clean clear water of perfect neutrality.