Who's driving the bus?
Is it you?
Who is you?
Oops, I nearly forgot.
It’s the ‘me’, the ‘I’, the separate ‘self’.
And you can see why the personal development movement has grown into this megalith of duality and is so seductive. If only we tried a little harder, pushed ourselves to the edge of our apparent capability then the world would be … [fill in the blank].
No one, or very few question this wisdom. If they do, certainly when the dominant narrative is in high gear, there tends to be that odd, quizzical look that suggests they’ve tripped out or are having a crisis — mid-life or otherwise.
As I’ve said already, I don’t have a message and there is no mission coming out of these words to demolish, remonstrate with or debunk the established order.
All there is, is this.
In case you’re interested, the words that challenged my own conditioned self:
emptiness is form
form is emptiness
In short, a pith instruction, fashioned out of the Heart Sutra to question all the questions and to cease searching for the answer out there and, as hackneyed as it sounds, look within.
But of course, there is no one to look anywhere when (sorry to repeat myself) all there is, is this:
the absolute appearing as the relative.
To the separate ‘self’, this is the last message it wants to hear. If nothing else, as I opined before, it’s nihilistic and suggests that there’s no point to anything.
I can see that but that would suggest a separate me — i.e. a homunculus if you like — that ultimately is in charge.
If that’s what you believe that’s totally fine. That’s what’s happening but I’d wager, and I don’t think it conjecture, that there is a small part of you that understands that something is missing — a sense of lack, perhaps — and what you’ve endeavoured to do or become hasn’t quite touched that ‘not-known’ spot. Does that mean you should go running off in search of an even more exotic elixir? I don’t think so. Instead, you might want to look at your actual experience of life, and begin to invite a more beautiful question than those that have hitherto ruled (or is that ruined?) your life.
No, not the traditional self-enquiry line of thinking — e.g. “Who am I?” — but perhaps to ask yourself what’s happening right now?
Take care.
Blessings, Julian