Let us speak of human beings for awhile. We have what we refer to as outer experiences here gathering knowledge of the world outside and storing the knowledge as memories. That is a way, one way, to become smarter. Science does this. And is proud of it. We also have experiences within us. We observe, feel, and think. In language, we refer to it as mind or brain or ego or personality or psyche or soul or something else. We identify with that. We all seem to agree we have outer and inner experiences. The two are related. The inner, we think, is who we are even though we know very little about it. Everybody has secrets stored in there. For most, a lot of conflict and confusion abide inside the body. It is another world than is the outer world. It is like we are vertical beings without form who are living in a body in a horizontal world where we all share certain basic needs- food, water, air, clothing, shelter. And we know not who we are nor why we are here at all. The beginning of a journey to recover a balance and harmony for all humans is a deep realization that absolutely none of us asked to be here. We only know we showed up. We have this in common. It is very important to find a beginning we all share. Let us take it with us.
The journeys we take in the outer world require time and space. This journey, to find who we are, is different. It is beyond time or space. And it requires us to go deep into the inner world. To do this requires a lot of courage and determination. A certain intensity is required.
All began as children. Innocent. Open wide. There was no identified center with a name. All that had to be developed through a pattern of identification directed by whom? Other humans. In that manner was an original being locked away in a sort of dungeon never to participate in any important way. The world, as a manufactured center or self will come to know it, will never know the original. Once in a great while an original escapes the fate society intends for all its children. Everyone who meets the original being will have the same experience, “where did that person come from?” The Kid in the story of the Kid was such a being. He did not fit from the start. All others suffered a strange sense of loss that nags with the idea “I am a fake, a phony, they never even saw me”. I have a job, I vote, I am married with children, own a home, drive two late model cars, intend to send my children to college, am religious, respected, decorated even, but I am phony. The important, common thread among all is nobody in memory ever really wanted to find out what I might have had to offer them. They all wanted me to change and become someone they could admire as their own. I am property.
We have noticed there is an outer world of experience and an inner one. We have noticed the center or self or “me” installed in the inner world by society. We noticed the original inner being has been imprisoned below the self never to really live. So, let us consider how deep that may be. Give it full attention.
There is no method for finding reality. Methods, in fact, lead one away from what is there. Methods are aligned with becoming what you are not.
Full attention, like a lamp, exposes the truth that there is no self at the center. Full attention exposes the love which is always there like the scent inside a flower. It is seen the concept of a self at the center has displaced love. Whatever forces one to embrace full attention is mighty. A thunderstorm. A snake. A thrill. A death. A death can reveal “I have been living without loving that person who has gone away”. This has been known to happen when the deceased was a perfect stranger, especially when the deceased was a poor, lonely, forgotten bum. Something there is about a perfect stranger sheds light upon another stranger closer than the veins in one’s neck.
Full attention is enlightened being. Love, which has always been, seems to burst forth for such people. It is everywhere. All there is is love! A monk hiding away in the desert avoiding people never finds this. What this is is the silence inside noise. Not the silence found in the absence of noise. This life we have is all so perfectly natural.
Thinking, that has made a self at the center of the body is constantly changing, contradicting itself, double talking. So, it tries to identify itself with anything that might give it security or stability. Name, religion, nationality, occupation, family, school, and many more are there. None have brought security at all. Yet, the reality of the original being is flooded with the tremendous energy of all life. This freed is so mighty it can do what must be done now. Absent the self at the center, one sees clearly that the basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, etc. are no big deal and there is plenty for all. The idea to fight for “my territory” “my food” would be rejected out of hand. No. We are not going there, thank you.
