During the past six days, something strong and complex has been ruffling my feathers. First, inexplicable anger that was not anger so much as a rampage of force and energy without the need for fulfillment. Next, grief and frustration and overwhelming ire, as if watching an opportunity for some tender connection ebb, except that I don’t feel disconnected, which makes me wonder where such feelings are coming from. Finally, a looming heaviness with a hint of panic. I sense elements of my conceptual daydream of the world struggling to hang on, creeping like weeds out of the cracks of my driveway, the luminous, open awareness.
If, throughout our lives, the majority of our pleasure and pain is evoked by our conceptual replica of the world, then anything that happens in our conceptual reality is the final word on how we shall feel, on how we shall experience this existence.
If, however, the conceptual replica of the world is simply dropped… no longer manipulated, no longer finessed, and no longer driving efforts to rearrange the real-life building blocks that seem to affect it most, the tidal waves become nothing more than waves of pure sensoral energy.
Instead of the conceptual replica, there is this vast undulating being, the cosmos.
Why am I drawn into my conceptual replica of the world?
Construction and maintenance of the conceptual replica is fueled by the desire to know. We want to know everything that is happening and how it might affect the survival of this little self, this little piece of the whole.
“Be willing to be blind, and give up all longing to know the why and how, for knowing will be more of a hindrance than a help.”
~ From The Cloud of Unknowing
Then, more importantly, there is the high. Manipulating our conceptual world offers many opportunities to hit on fantasies and knowings that fill the body with euphoria and that “all is right with the world” feeling. It’s addictive.
Yet, being without the conceptual replica, simply being, imparts a peaceful, euphoric equanimity unlike any hair raised when one uses a concept to stroke the senses.
Something compels me to grasp. Grief. Longing. I can’t put my finger on it right now. I’m not sure if it’s mine. I sat on my cushion by my big window looking out at the sunny field of trees and let the grasping come. Without adding anything to it, the clinging, clutching, wretching, roaring feeling loses pain and quickly transmutes into energy.
Adding nothing. This is being with the remnants of conceptual life without making more conceptual life, demolishing the “my world” replica without creating a miniature wrecking ball replica. Just letting it dissolve, unmourned.
The unknown, the what is, allays the loss by reminding the body that there is no actual loss. Unknowing is the methadone of concept addiction.
The energy shakes me all over. I still feel like roaring and running down the street, but it doesn’t hurt any more, and I’m okay just sitting on my cushion. When the daydreams stop, and they almost never do without a specific desire for it… I’m talking about even those daydreams which you think are the actual world, which you take to be perceptions or knowledge about your world… when you see them all bare just hovering in your mind, the body is liberated from its virtual reality and enters the cosmos.
Wow, I love the idea of “add nothing.” That could be such a cool concept for a book or blog post or poem, or….