“What we are looking for is what’s looking”

     Assisi said that and I don’t think it could be put any better. We have all pretty much heard that yes? Over and over. “You’re already where you need to be.” Or “Being in the now.” Yada, Yada, Yada, over and over in so many different ways. So what does all that mean anyway? We hear it and it sounds great and then we simply go back to our conditioning.

     Modern man lives by acquisition. We acquire people, places, ideas and things. We want to make stuff ours. So who or what keeps trying to acquire? What part is constantly trying to prove that it can only have existence if it is constantly acquiring people, places, things, and thoughts?

     Conditioned ego (CE) needs to have that sense of ownership. Conditioned ego has two priorities. One: To make sure that it remains in the center of our universe and attention. When we add something we return to the center by simply calling it “Mine.” So even ideas, driven by someone else, become mine in the sense that, “Oh, (I) get (it) now.” The subject and object thinking brings CE back to center.

     The CE will use suffering as a primary tool to engage the attention. It will use anything to produce suffering. Results of suffering are things like ongoing depression, sadness, anger, addiction, and constant reaction. CE knows that everything we think we have, we lose. The losing will enable lasting suffering if we are of the mindset that everything we own has some sort of permanence. It doesn’t, but CE likes to pretend that it does.

     CE avoids things like gratitude and living in transience because when we have those we would embrace suffering as a momentary sadness. We would realize that it wasn’t the lost acquisition that we miss, we are simply feeling sad because it magnifies that  we too are temporary.

     Two: CE works hard at developing the illusion that things are permanent. This is where seeking and ownership come to the fore. We need to collect objects and surround ourselves with them as a means to feel permanence and safety. The more stuff, the safer we feel. It feels important to note that it’s, not the SAFER WE ARE but, the SAFER WE FEEL. After all with enough stuff there is no reason for an ending is there? If we can only have enough friends, enough, status, enough material objects, food, drink, and parties then it never ends. Right?

     If we embrace that nothing is permanent then we have a different perspective. We realize that whatever we collect in our lives will only last a while. Most of it is going to last longer than we will. Everything else will be temporary. People, Places, Things, Feelings, and Ideas are all going to exist on a temporary time frame.

     The thing we are seeking most desperately lies within us. The thing we are seeking lies in a different place than:

SECURITY

PERMANENCE

SAFETY

ACQUISITION

The thing we seek?

ACCEPTANCE OF, AND IN, BEING.

     We were never ever taught the value in just plain existing were we? I mean why bother. We all know we exist right? I mean how stupid. Gee, I exist. I am being. Now I need to get back to my paranoid, acquisition seeking, egocentric, self obsessed, state of mind. After all that’s the only way to get ahead. And getting ahead is everything.

Big Sigh

     Have you heard the phrase “THE GROUND OF BEING?” It speaks to me. We exist and flourish first within the grounding of being. As in grounding electricity.  When we live in being we understand that things are only borrowed and never owned. We understand that the number of inter related combination of events and experiences is beyond an individual’s ability to compute. So we start to place huge value and priority on being with the universe instead of living apart as conditioned ego. Out meditation loses tension and striving. We begin to realize that we practice meditation but to live in meditation means that it’s all meditation. We are not sitting to practice meditation we are practicing BEING.

     I believe that the Initial feelings of embracing being are based in relief. There is a sense of living with absolutely no resistance to whatever arises. The next thing is we realize that we can accept everything in its current place. This generates energy to actually do something about the things that require an apposite act.

I hope some of this is helpful.

     As always I am curious about your relationship to what you read in the blogs. What’s your experience? How do you experience the feeling of just being?

I will be starting work on a YouTube presentation and intend to post it early August.

Gassho

Bryan Wagner