I’m going to talk about masks (coverings, casings, cocoons) —
The masks we all wear, each day, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.
Intricately detailed ones, with big, dramatically carved and exaggerated features (‘party mode’)…or simple, plain ones (‘mr. friendly-neutral’), or even completely featureless (‘mr. disappear’).
Here’s the thing though:
Putting on and taking off that many masks gets tiring.
Because no matter how thin, no matter how close a mask follows and resembles the true face’s contours…a mask is still a mask.
And after a while, no matter how comfortable, every mask will begin to itch.
I’m not going to get excessively philosophical here.
You’ve already heard the spiel about how human beings,
As inescapably and inherently subjective creatures,
cannot ever objectively experience pure being —
To directly behold, and thus become one with, the un-masked world.
By definition, two things that are not separated by a barrier are in fact not two things at all, but a single, unified thing.
And yes, consciously experiencing pure essence is impossible for us. Fine.
But then the question becomes: what barriers really matter?
What about unconscious, inherently shared pure essence?
Why then do we live from, and focus on, this self-narrative of severance, of separateness-from-other?
Why not concentrate more on what unconsciously and inherently unites, rather than what consciously separates?
From The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Burbury:
“ To be sure, we cannot perceive this universality directly: that is one of the reasons why so many philosophers have balked at considering essences to be real, for I will only ever see the table that is before me, and not the universal “table” form; only the painting, and not the very essence of Beauty. And yet … and yet it is there, before our eyes: every painting by a Dutch master is an incarnation of Beauty, a dazzling apparition that we can only contemplate through the singular, but that opens a tiny window onto eternity and the timelessness of a sublime form.
Eternity: for all its invisibility, we gaze at it.”
Life is a process of pushing through illusions, imposed by the Self, in pursuit of reality and truth. Death is to surrender to them, to let them take over.
That’s right: that is what Death really is.
We don’t know (and will never know) a damn thing about true death —
that abstract, unknowable, less-than-nothingness that strikes us, ending all.
So the only death we should concern ourselves with is death while still living.
Listlessness. Growthlessness. Stagnation. Boredom. Self-harming stillness.
In other words, ennui.
So yes, masks we wear, and masks we always shall wear: nothing we can do about that.
What we CAN do, however, is LIVE.
To add. To grow. To build.
We’re gifted with these vessels, our bodies, that at their core, give us a continual, unwavering message:
Movement.
No matter how still one becomes, within us, organs are pumping.
Some part of us is ALWAYS moving, no matter what.
That is quite beautiful, in a way.
Our vessels are the best friends of their resident consciousnesses,
Like a buoy that always rights itself, no matter how choppy the oceans.
And that’s not YOU not doing that — it’s all an automatic, effortless process.
The body just says ‘I’ll take care of this, you worry about that!”
The body — a constant co-pilot. Your first, literally closest, and last friend.
What a blessing for all us all, to have this foundational friend, at the very core!
The friend of constant movement, gently nudging us back to our natures.
And then you have the fact that, when boiled down to its fundament,
Movement IS existence.
Even within a slab of stone, atoms are buzzing to sustain it’s corporeal presence.
Even in the vastness and stillness of space — zoom in enough,
and you’ll see, constantly darting about, little particles.
That same movement is within us, on an unquestionable,
definitional level — beyond mortal consciousness, into the divine.
Does that not objectively unify us, inherently, with the supposedly unknowable?
What knowledge is more powerful:
The shallow conscious kind, or the deep unconscious kind?
Can we not therefore say that we all have an automatic, inherent knowledge of God, wether we believe we’re worthy of it or not?
A knowledge that is on a level of consciousness that will never die?
The deepest consciousness, beyond the temporary flesh-bound mental activity which too many of us often mistake as consciousness?
Couldn’t we therefore say that each of us has a DIRECT LINE to the very core of the universe and everything and everyone around us?
And, finally, couldn’t you really conclude that THAT is the only consciousness that REALLY matters?
Wouldn’t you then say that your petty self-clouding and self-nullifying is,
Not to put too fine a point of it, a waste of a miracle?
I’d say so.
When taken into oneself, as a regular part of daily meditation, or simply out of mental muscle memory — this becomes, as it should be for everyone, your one and only guide and premise for life:
Temporary vessels experiencing and dwelling in the foam of life’s ocean, confined to that stratum by physical constraints, yet inherently connected to it’s deepest depths, by virtue of water, wether high or low, being water.
Regardless of shape or temporospacial location…
Deep swell, great wave, sparkling foam, or small ripple — all is water.
All is water.
From Walden, Henry David Thoreau:
“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”
This connection —
The first connection, of when a soul entered a body —
is the true savour of life.
Ennui is gluttony. An overdose of self.
A giving over of one’s being to an excess of mind.
Surrendering to the temporary — to temporal emotions or sensations of any kind (pain, fear, loss, even joy and mirth — all can be escaped into and become excessive and avoidant behaviour).
Surrender, instead, to the eternal.
The eternal is connection — the inherent connection, the inherentmovement that keeps you moving, keeps you automatically aligned.
You are already aligned, my friend. We all already are.
That is the Core.
Life is a process of pushing through, of shedding,
the persistent illusions that outer shapes matter at all, and returning to core.
THAT is the only core matters —
Not the little homo sapien scribble-note titled ‘Core’.
No need to bring all into unison in the realm of illusion.
It is enough that you are.
It is enough that you simply are.
And what you are isn’t still — you’re the outermost wave of a massive, unending explosion — The Big Bang — and we’re all riding the same wave.
Our hairs and nails growing.
Our temporary vessels, self contained universes-within-a-universe,
‘ageing’ — why do we have that word? It implies a kind of slowing-down,
When in fact death is just a further continuation of the wave.
The body’s destiny and purpose — like the cicada — it to eventually give way to the eternally growing being within.
To bear forth a mote-of-universe that becomes too hot, too bright, too big for the husk.
It’s destiny is to transcend this realm. It must do so.
Get with the body’s already-mission. The body’s already-alignment.
No need to give yourself a new one, or many smaller, fruitless ones.
Become who you already are — ally yourself with your deepest no-choice self (you don’t get to choose wether you’re a part of all of existence: you just are.)
Harness this already-alignment, and use it to propel your every action:
In life, in love, in creativity, in relationships, work, friends, family.
Make art from that place (the foam is the ocean.) Be kind from that place (the foam is the ocean.)
Return to self in that place, that always-and-inherently-accesible place,
Every day of this, the vessel-bound part of your eternal life.
And then, just as you prepare to continue the growth-beyond-the-vessel(‘death’), you’ll look back with the only true solace one can experience:
That you lived in alignment.
That you lived free of ennui.
That you lived.
Why not start living, truly living, now?
(part of an article on Medium)
Submitted August 04, 2019 at 01:47AM by AlbertChessa https://ift.tt/2KqsEHE
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