One purpose, one aim: Step out of Life's way.
A paradigm of inner, spiritual purpose to empower and inspire the high-mileage seeker.
Everything is something.
Life is never doing nothing. Life is never giving me nothing.
The idea of ‘waste’ is delusion. Life uses everything.
Everything is something.
The above idea has expressed its self-evident Truth to this being a number of times beyond count. Every day is a living exercise of remembering that Truth, and applying its message in real time; in the moment in front of me.
Life knows so much more than i do. One day at a time, I learn to let go of (the hilarious delusion of) control a little better than the day before. A muscle, like any other, that requires daily use for improved function, conditioning, responsiveness, and strength.
This morning, while speaking with my cosmically brilliant and beauty-full best friend, wife, life partner, and accomplice,
, a distillation of all I have been seeking to create with this ‘inner connectivity’ concept came into crystallized clarity:Life itself is the only Truth. This means the only means of saving ourselves is to ask the question: How best can we put ourselves in a position for Life to operate, least-impeded by our ego-self? How best can we allow Life — The One Truth — to simply be Itself?
The nature of Life is Perfection. The nature of Life is Completion. The nature of Life is Infinite Benevolence.
Thus, I realized this morning, the entire spiritual path can be crystallized into the following self-query:
How can I allow Life the space to simply express its nature, with the least amount of ego interference possible?
How can I allow Life the space to ‘do what it does’, with the least amount of ego interference possible?
Not the usual trope.
I am not saying the usual trope of, “Oh we are so small and unworthy blah blah blah….” No.
We are part of Life. Human beings are part of Life. Humankind is not some separate thing with Nature and Life ‘over here’ and Humanity ‘over there’. Humanity is part of Life. Life is the only thing Humanity can ever be.
The amazing gift humanity possesses is the gift of our free, conscious will. Humanity does not have to live enslaved to its biological senses and base survival instincts like much of the rest of the animal, plant, mineral, and bacteriological kingdoms appear to be. As humans, we can use our will to broaden — consciously, deliberately broaden — our consciousness, our understanding of the world.
We can transcend our biological survival instincts, wake up in the dream consciously, align ourselves with Life and its infinitely benevolent principles, and live an experience of inner harmony so profound that it cannot help but overflow our being and become an outer harmony as well.
This^ is what can happen when we use our free will consciously. Like all things in our realm of duality, however, that gift comes with a light side (see above paragraph) and a dark side; a heads and a tails. A new and an old.
The above-outlined experience of the inner and outer harmony would be new to many people. It would certainly be new to our world as a whole. This process is how world peace is simultaneously both achievable and effortlessly sustainable. When the peace and harmony comes from within each individual, what other world can we have but a peaceful and harmonious one?
That’s not pie-in-the-sky, head-in-the-clouds woo-woo. That’s bedrock, obvious logic.
What, then, is the dualistic alternative to the ‘new’, outlined above?
The old.
The old does not need any further amplification of its detail. We all know what the old is. We are living its demise at this very moment in human history.
The old is what we get when we use our free, conscious will to live enslaved to the biological senses and base survival instincts of the body and its eternally-re-populating list of needs and wants.
We get a planet full of people with no purpose except to eat, work, shit, sleep, and die. This is what the old gets for us.
We must move from the old to the new.
This is true maturation. The old is childhood and adolescence — regardless of bodily age. The new is adulthood — regardless of bodily age.
When we live in the old, our willpower is used for all manner of creative selfishness — all in the name of survival, ultimately. There is nothing innately wrong with this, survival is part of Life as well.
But just because there is nothing innately wrong with this doesn’t mean there isn’t something better readily available.
The vehicle that carries us from the old to the new is Change.
Get in the car. The world the new can build for us is so much better than the world the old has built for us.
How can I allow Life the space to ‘do what it does’, with the least amount of ego interference possible?
The ‘ego interference’ referenced is the ego of the old.
When we live in the new, our will aligns with Life’s, and our willpower is used for all manner of creative selflessness — which ends up benefitting us as well as, again, we are part of Life. What benefits Life benefits everything that is Life.
The ego of the new is practically invisible. Perhaps this is why so many spiritual teachings seem to allude to some ‘dissolution’ of the ego. Like sugar in a glass of water: Dissolution can only happen when the amount of sugar is reduced to a small enough amount.
In other words: The spiritual goal is not to destroy the ego, but to minimize its size and influence to the point where it can dissolve in the waters of the river of Life.
This^ is the ego of the new. It is still present — we are still ‘us’ as individuals — there’s just less of the riff-raff nonsense persona we used to imagine ourselves to be.
In the ego of the new, survival happens as a matter of course, and we realize we were selling ourselves profoundly short back when we were living in the old.
Interlude
Life knows so much more than i do. Why did I not think to apply this earlier, when living in the old? Of course Life would know I need to survive. Of course Life would have a plan for that — a much more effective one than I could ever cook up anyway. Life ‘survives me’ on its way to delivering everything else I’ve ever wanted as well.
Life: “Survival? Ohyeasure no problem. We’ll pick some up along the way.”
Old Me: “But what about this clever idea of kindergarten-level brilliance that is about as shortsighted as the end of my nose? It seems like a good thing. Let’s go this way.”
Life: “Uh. I mean, we can do it that way. You sure? I feel like we could get all the good that way is gonna get you and-then-some if we just go this way.”
Old Me: “Yea, let’s go my way. I’m sure this is gonna be great and I won’t regret this and want something entirely different in five seconds at all.”
Life: *shrugs* “Ok, cool. Your way it is.”
So, how can I allow Life the space to ‘do what it does’, with the least amount of ego interference possible?
And here is where we come to the paradigm shift:
Our world is built on the paradigm of consumption. Every time we look around at life and find ourselves lacking something, we automatically assume the solution is to go out, acquire something new that we did not have before, and attach it to ourselves.
Consumption. Whether it’s material goods, status, relationships, or ideas, we assume we need to consume something new in order to solve our problem.
The actual solution is:
Let go.
The way to change from old, highly-present, survival-based control ego to new, backgroundly-present, joy-based Life-aligned ego is to let go.
It’s a paradigm of renunciation, rather than consumption.
A paradigm of release, rather than receive.
A paradigm of acquit, rather than acquire.
Let go.
The way to success.
How do we successfully let go?
One of the most powerful perspectives we can adopt as we attempt to let go of the old is to understand the following truth:
Progress is more powerful than ‘perfection’.
No need to beat yourself up over a missed moment here or there. Or even a handful of missed moments.
Focus on the small moments. Focus on the small victories. Imagine yourself as beginning a weight training program and you’ve never exercised before.
Lift small weights to begin, until your body becomes used to the new way.
As you continue lifting small weights, ‘bigger weights’ will seem more and more within your reach before long.
As I mentioned in the footnotes of this article earlier, “Ask Michael Jordan or LeBron James what they worked on most as basketball players? Their answers — over years of interviews — have included: dribbling, layups, and free throws. Nothing flashy. The fundamentals — practiced until each one felt the same as tying their shoes.”
Focus on small moments, and let small victories be meaningful. Let go every time you can. Eventually, the moments that feel like “you can’t” will be within reach.
That^, by the way, is also how you measure your progress. When those moments where once you “couldn’t” are suddenly able to be let go? That is what progress looks like.
Let small victories count. Let small and large defeats land, but not linger. Move on. Use these defeats as a small meta-opportunity to let go. Turn last moment’s defeat into this moment’s small victory.
And, if it’s helpful, use the small and large defeats as reminders of your intention to do better next time. Defeats do not define us, they teach us. They show us our limitations at the present moment.
Grow. Grow beyond. Be better. Vow to be more conscious in each moment. Get in the car of change. Recognize that the new will feel different than the old. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Embrace change. Enjoy the journey. Become the You you have always sensed living within. Become You by letting go of all you ever thought yourself to be.
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