The Open Cell of Tao

“I have to be careful about what I want, usually what I want is wanted until it’s gotten, then it’s replaced, by another want.” – Soto Zen Monk, Emily M.

Occasionally I find a way to open my cell door. You know, the one I keep closed while I rant on about my freedom. It’s nerve wracking, yelling about being free, seeing freedom just outside the bars, while keeping one hand on the cell door to keep it from opening. (And I wonder why I feel crazy sometimes? Well, OK, a lot of the time.)

Usually I keep the door closed by playing intellectual chess. I’m not free, then I am, but I quickly insert another obstacle, another roadblock, another reason why not. Another “Can’t.” I think it’s out of fear and quite honestly it’s about the freedom not being the exact “freedom” I was seeking. Which leads me to believe that my vision of freedom, that space outside my cell, is more internal fantasy than a desire to be free. Because freedom from something doesn’t mean attaching to something else, freedom is detachment itself, a knowing that all is temporary and fleeting.

Embracing what’s outside my defined cell, the future, the unknown, can be disturbing and anxiety provoking. Well, it’s suppose to be, freedom from here, means to go there, without a clue of what “there” holds. It means to suck it up and generate the courage to step into the unknown, the same unknown future that I’m falling into anyways. How strange it is to fear doing something purposefully that is happening every second unnoticed.

It means letting go of my little cell, my place of security and safety, to ungrip, unloose, unfold, and step out of the cell I made, and into a flowing moving life. And sometimes it’s good to remember the times when life utterly destroyed whatever little cell of safety I had constructed, yet here I am, alive, breathing, and seeing that life is filled with possibilities and probabilities.

Today I ask, what’s my intent? Is that really what I desire, or is it a way to keep reality at bay? Just another way to mentally masturbate my way through another day?

Today is what I have, what possibilities and probabilities will rise today?

Bryan Wagner