"We
have many ways to cope with life, many ways to worship
comfort and pleasantness. All are based on the same
thing: the fear of encountering any kind of
unpleasantness.
If we must have absolute order and
control, it's because we're trying to avoid any
unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get
angry if they're not, then we think we can survive and
shut out our anxiety about death.
If we can please
everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter
our life.
We hope that if we can be the star of the
show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have
such an admiring audience that we won't have to feel
anything.
If we can withdraw from the world and just
entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies
and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape
unpleasantness.
If we can figure everything out, if we
can be so smart that we can fit everything into some
sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual
understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.
If
we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to
do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for
our lives and we don't have to carry it anymore.
We
don't have to feel the anxiety of making a decision. If
we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant
sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we
won't have to feel any pain.
If we can tell others what
to do, keep them well under control, under our foot,
maybe they can't hurt us.
If we can 'bliss out,' if we
can be a mindless 'Buddha' just relaxing in the sun, we
don't have to assume any responsibility for the world's
unpleasantness. We can just be happy.
All
these are versions of the god we actually worship. It
is the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness. Without exception, every being on earth pursues it to
some degree. As we pursue it, we lose touch with what
really is. As we lose touch, our life spirals
downward. And the very unpleasantness that we sought to
avoid can overwhelm us.
This has been the problem of human life since the
beginning of time. All philosophies and all religions
are varying attempts to deal with this basic fear. Only
when such attempts fail us are we ready to begin serious
practice. And they do fail. Because the systems we
adopt are not based upon reality; they can't work,
despite all of our feverish efforts. Sooner or later,
we come to realize that something is amiss."
"We are usually trapped in what we call normalcy, 'the
way things are.' We wait for who we are. We wait for the
truth. We wait for the vision of the whole. We have to
allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space. We have
to move out of "business as usual" and remain on the
threshold where the old world is left behind, but we're
not sure of the new one yet. In sacred space the old
world is able to fall apart, and the new world is able
to be revealed. In this new realm, everything belongs.
This awareness is often called a second
naiveté. It is a return to simple consciousness. The first awareness doesn't know but thinks it does. In
second
naiveté the darkness and light coexist, paradox is
revealed, and we are finally at home in the only world
that ever existed. How do we do it? We stand in the
middle, living and fully accepting our reality, neither
taking this new awareness on from the power position nor
denying it for fear of the pain it will bring. We do not
think ourselves into new ways of living. We live
ourselves into new ways of thinking."
