The Fool's Word

One time we were talking about a certain point of view regarding knowing the truth with a friend, when he said to me that I have the “easy answer”. Which is that the only thing you really have to do, is to understand that we're 'it' and that it's a game. That's it. Nothing else is required. And because it is an easy answer, we shouldn't settle for it. But just because it is easy, does it make it the wrong one?

It took me a while to realize that there is nothing easy about it. Because, nothing is more difficult than accepting the fact that we are it. “It” being Tao, The Absolute, or what have you. We can think of endless ways of postponing the understanding that that is so. And even when we do understand it, we still think of ways to cover that information with something else. We always seem to move away from that point. And this is of course the entire game that we're playing.

Furthermore, if it is an easy way, how come we have such elaborate systems to make a person realize it? I mean, if you just told someone that hey, you're it, and that actually worked and the person would see it, there wouldn't be all these different religious and philosophical systems in place.

And yet in realizing that the game is a game brings no relief from anxiety to me. Why not? Because I choose my ego over that fact. In other words, I insist on playing the game on its most fundamental level. And yet that level has no basis in reality. And since the discovery of this, I've come to realize that you cannot get out of the game. You have to keep playing it. But there is a sense in which you can choose how you play it.

So that your attitude to it becomes one of compassion and awareness of the fact that nothing is ever missing from the totality. And that you are that totality. And there is not a single grain of sand in this cosmos that is ultimately in the wrong place.

Keeping this always in mind, there is nothing to worry about. The feeling of “the more it changes, the more it stays the same” is very fitting. Because we go around in circles throughout our lives. As one philosopher once put it to a woman asking if we're stuck: “Going around in circles as you may have realized by observing the night sky, is what the universe is doing.”

But you still want a problem instead of an answer. You insist on it every moment. And so long as you do, you will suffer. Because you project an artificial construct over your thought process. By thinking that because something has been, it has to be so now, and so might be so in the future. And nobody can remedy this for you except you. You know, there is no way of arriving where you are now. One has to realize they were there from the beginning.

I know all this is a lot of nonsense. And yet it is nonsense I enjoy talking about from time to time. There is no description, only experience. That's the only clue that one really needs. That words are and always will be short of the actual thing. They have a way of setting barriers for our mind. And yet they can induce a genuine experience. Whether that experience actually happens because of the words themselves, or by some other power all together, I cannot say. The only thing I can say is, all words point to something else. But what that else is cannot be explained sufficiently, ever.

They say that good things come to those who wait. But I say it depends on the style of waiting one does. If you go with the style of expectancy, it will be excruciating. But there is another style. That is that you let go of the whole thing. And this is the true meaning of faith; faith is not that one clings fervently to something, but that they surrender it and let it be.

Now, can one realize the truth by just waiting and seeing what happens? That is the big question. It would seem like going against everything that our cultures have ever produced, in all their variety of systems that have been carefully perfected for the conditions for it to occur – and yet that is exactly what a certain philosopher once said.

Since learning more about it, I've come to sense intuitively that 'all roads lead home'. Meaning that it doesn't matter which road you pick. Because as my best friend said to me, you experience truth at every point and moment. And as you are awakened, the entire world is awakened. Because everyone is a manifestation of your self, existing in your consciousness.

So I view all the different ways of life as being analogous to different plants and animals. Just as one does not think of a flower being grown in the wrong way, one cannot really judge people for choosing their particular paths – they go with the rest of the world. This has of course rather interesting ramifications.

For one thing, the idea that one's religion or philosophy is the 'correct' one. This idea is archaic thinking to me. It does not really answer anything by itself – it needs the other points of view. And this something a lot of people are not usually aware of. That for them to know what their particular practice is about, they have to contrast it with something other than itself. One doesn't know really that they're the good ones unless they know who the bad ones are.

But what does one know really, and how can they be sure about what they know? Well, I don't have much of a foothold in Western philosophy in general but one can easily see that if one's perception of something is distorted, than obviously what that something appears as will not be the truth. One can then argue that there is no such thing as the truth. Because it depends on where you're looking at it from.

So I see the truth being completely subjective and tailored to each being who observes it. Of course, I also think that the true state of affairs is rather non-dual – and that seems like a self-contradictory statement. However, it's just the way I see it, because I distinguish between the relative truth and the absolute truth. The relative truth is anything we can observe or perceive in this universe, and the absolute truth is one which the observer can experience directly through something I will call the Principle.

The Principle is what a large number of religions and numerous techniques are ultimately concerned with. How to bring about a shift in one's perception on a fundamental level and change it to knowledge. And here I am arguing that every system to make the shift is useless – instead offering the easiest way possible for it since the invention of the knife.

Now, an easy answer to something does not necessarily make it the wrong one. But a lot of people will say we shouldn't settle for it. And that is of course expected, because they don't feel like it will make them pay a sufficient price for the truth. And this is the whole thing about masters and gurus and paying a price for the truth.

The way they've arranged it is that you are below the teacher, and the teacher is higher up – because they know something you supposedly do not. And so they set up a false system of control with so many steps and so many stages for one to pass. Of course, we are all teachers and students to each other. And many times a direct teacher is necessary for some people.

But the problem of authority needs to be addressed here and now, because I think it is important. Every system you pick out, is your opinion. It is your opinion that the religion you choose to follow is not simply a project to build an expensive building. It is also your opinion that the holy books or the teachers you choose are not full of it. And so it rests on you, in the end, the scripts that you subscribe to. So you are the authority when it comes to all matters of the spiritual. You bought it.

And so we make our own systems, and every system needs each other. This is just one of the countless ways out there to arrive at the same place. But there is a saying: “There is no path,” which can be interpreted the wrong way. Some people might think that there is no way of arriving to the truth. But the arriving is exactly that which doesn't exist. One is already there. But it takes some people to the farthest reaches in their quest to make them realize that they were there from the very beginning. And so “you don't have to do anything” means exactly that. The only thing that is required is to understand, that one is 'it', or in other words, the universe.

T.F.