Monday, May 12, 2008

Meaningfulness

At a certain point on the spiritual path, it is far more interesting and entertaining to see what has lost its meaning, than what has become more meaningful. Surely it is a sign of just how much play the ego has had.

When the ego falls, the house of cards falls. The cards drift away on a breeze of laughter and wonder. The ego's tentacles are vast long tendrils, that when cut off from the source, leave the former person in free fall. But it's the kind of free fall where you spread your arms, and enjoy the ride.

Egos are busy trying to find meaning. Could it be that the basic unreliability is somehow known? Do we frantically look for meaning because at some level we know there isn't any?

We are afraid to look directly at the source of the insecurity. We always look away. Anywhere but here. The mirror is a deadly place isn't it? So we look anywhere and everywhere else. If we are lucky, or if we meet the right teacher, we stop and look.

We see that the supposed special person has built a house on sand. The foundation is a mirage of specialness. A smoke filled room of manipulation and avoidance. So when we really look in the mirror, we see that the "special me" is pile of crap.

The "special me" is a run from the truth, head in the sand, fake. It can be a shock when we first get a glimpse of the pile of crap we've been calling "me." The first glimpse may cause us to try all the harder to prove our worthiness. But this is just a bigger step on the brown brick road of ego.

When we trip again, and are face down on the brown brick, we just might take our time and take a good look at what tripped us up. We see the road we've been on, and see where it's going, and finally, with maybe a bit of humility, we step off the road.

This can be scary at first. This is unchartered territory. "Ah, but the air is fresh." We brave this new territory even if we have no insight into the weather. Stumbling around on real earth at least gives us a chance to see that there is no path.

Now we are the jungle hunter. We develop our own internal machete to hack a the undergrowth. It's our own labyrinth we are cutting through. Our personal jungle is always unique, always pathless.

However, having been told that "Truth is a pathless land, "by such as J. Krishnamurti, at least we know to keep hacking. With a commitment to truth, we hack our own way through our own jungle. Eventually, we find we too had no path. All that was needed was to clear the land.

Now we see there was nowhere to go. It's all one great land. We're already there. We just took the detour called "Ego."

1 comment:

I-Robot said...

Love it! Nice post Maury. I agree. It's much more fun when you stop trying to steer the contraption every moment of every day and just take your hands off the wheel, especially when you realize that the wheel wasn't even doing any steering anyway.

Some detour huh? ;-)