News

This blog is not updated very often! But you can still go to www.lifewithoutacentre.com which will be updated regularly...

Emergence

Out of the void, a world begins to take shape. Out of absolute nothingness, forms begin to emerge.

And these emerging forms dance and swirl, and boundaries appear where once there was only nothingness, and “things” appear where things have never been before. The shapes are taking shape, and shaping themselves into a world, a world which has no solidity at all, a world is really only a dance of form, a trick of the light, a play of consciousness, no matter how “solid” it appears to the eye.

But really to call it a “world” is to miss the point entirely: there is only this trick of light, this dance of form, this play of the divine, and there is nothing at all that anyone could ever point to and claim “this is a world”.

And the world is always dancing in the darkness, in the void of all voids. And the world is not separate from the void. Indeed the world is the void and the void is the world, and there is no duality at all. The duality only comes the moment we speak of it. And yet, even the speaking of it is perfectly whole.

And so to say “I am a person in the world” is to fall into delusion and therefore suffering. There is simply no separation between me and the world, only the illusion of separation, an illusion which is inevitable for a “self”. Because a self is inherently partial, fragmented, separate. Otherwise, how would he know himself as a self? To know oneself as a self there must also be knowing of oneself as separate, distinct, divided from the whole. For a self to be a self and to know itself as a self, there must be “the other”.

And “the other” haunts the self, it torments it. For the self can never be the other, can never know the other, can never escape from the other, and yet can never exist without the other. The other is always other, always alien to the self. And the message of the other is this: “Dear self, you are not whole, and you will never be whole! As long as you have breath in your body, there will be a longing for completion, oneness, God, call it what you will! I guarantee it!”

Because as long as there is the other, there is a self, and as long as there is a self, there is the other. They arise together. They live and die together. And as long as this is the case, the longing for completion (the human project, so to speak),will always be there.

And yet (and here’s the rub) the longing for completion can never be satisfied here on earth, nor could it ever be satisfied in the “beyond” (because the “beyond” is just the “beyond” for the self, and therefore offers no respite).

And so the poor old self, living in a world that is always “other”, longs for completion, a completion which it can never ever reach, no matter how hard it tries or doesn’t try.

And yet although the self longs for completion, it also fears completion more than anything, because completion is death. Death of the self is not something the self could ever want, because the self is nothing but the striving for the preservation of itself.

Yes, it is the void that the self fears most. The void is seen as the ultimate loss. Nothingness, death, emptiness. And yet the world is nothing but a dance of the void, and so the self is always, inescapably at war with existence itself. In avoiding death, the self perpetuates the very suffering that it is desperate to escape.

But what the self does not and cannot realise is that death is not the enemy, it is liberation, freedom, the end of all suffering.

But the self does not actually want freedom. No, it wants to exist. It wants choice. It wants to make its mark, it wants to be something rather than nothing. And so it invents “free will” and “responsibility” and “self-esteem”, denies the void at the heart of all things, and tries desperately to “establish” itself on earth. It pretends to forget that it came from nothing and will return to nothing.

But all things are impermanent. All things on this earth must die. That is a certainty. And the self knows that one day it, too, will die. And the self could never, ever know when that day will come. It comforts itself by saying “one day, one day, but not today!”.

For the self, death is always a future event.

But the universe screams death from its every pore. Death lurks around every corner. Non-being permeates being, goes right to the core of it. In every moment, death is a possibility. Indeed, life is not even possible if death does not permeate it, go right to its centre.

And deep down, the self knows this, knows it full well. It knows full well that it came from nothing and will return to nothing. It knows the game of being “something” is only temporary, only a momentary distraction (and to the universe how momentary a single human life is!).

Yes, deep down it is known: this life is a dance, a fleeting, fragile dance. A precious, moment-to-moment manifestation of utter emptiness.

To the self, life will always be a problem. But to life, there was never a problem, ever, and the self is just a minor inconvenience. Life knows no problems, because life has no past or future (and therefore no present) in which to have problems.

To life, there is only this: what is presently happening, beyond all words, concepts, ideas.

Only this and nothing more.

And the dear old self emerges out of the nothingness, and believes what it wants to believe, and pretends to choose, and plays at working and works at playing, and really this self has no reality whatsoever, it has no substance, no permanence, no “existence” outside of thought.

And a thought is just a thought.

And the thought arises out of the emptiness and falls back into it.

And really, nothing ever happens.

And the world doesn’t even matter.

And the overwhelming mystery of life, the sanctity of it, the preciousness of it, the wordlessness of it, the silence at the heart of it all, is untainted by the world, by this apparent self, by anything at all.

There is a purity the self will never know.