Completion
The prize for the fortunate is the sense that time is gone, life has vanished, and space is not—and yet what remains leaves nothing whatsoever lacking. This gift that comes like a spontaneous blessing out of nothing at all eliminates everything known and, indeed, the structure of knowledge itself, but leaves behind only that which makes all of this real, that which makes the truth true, that which makes life alive, that which sparked every idea simultaneously so that all of this unfolding might be possible. To the very fortunate, that moment of grace, that penetration into not the form of reality but its is-ness, comes completely unbidden, spontaneously arising in spite of every seeming obstacle and contradiction. And what is it, then, to be fortunate? What does it take to become so lucky? It is not a matter of virtue; it is not a function of purity; it is not a reward for accomplishments; it is not a consolation in defeat. This moment is not reached by the body perfecting itself, is not granted out of any sense that some are good while others are not yet good enough. This holy moment is given to the fortunate, and by that I mean only one thing: I mean those who are finished. It is the instant arising out of completion, the knowing that has no mind left to know, the deep experience of reality in which there is no one there to experience it. It happens because you allow things to come to a close. If you have been reaching, if you have been consuming, you let yourself feed all you can and then you let it be over. And if you have been terrified, you cross that threshold and walk, at last, right into the arms of whatever would destroy you. You lay down your pride for that, you stop fighting and you let yourself be consumed so that that cycle can finally be complete. At the end of things there is always an open door into what is real. Ultimately, you will give up the very person who seems to have been doing all this reaching, all this fighting, all this living and all this dying, so that, at last, even that grand notion that ‘I am’ is allowed to end. And without that ‘I’, time departs, space is meaningless, life is no longer an interplay of forms, and instead, there is reality only, there is essence only. And so the fortunate are really just those that let things end. There are so few, but there will be more because each and every day, if you pay attention to your own life, you will see that things are trying to come full circle, everything is trying to end: your illusions, so unstable to begin with, are trying to crumble, your hauntings are trying to overtake you so that they may pass through you and finally rest. Your joy can’t stay at that perfect pitch you so prefer; it leads always into its own closure. And the pain you have hurts only in its trying to be free; it wants to hurt only long enough to fulfill itself, so it, too, can move, and dissipate, and end. And so, every day, everything within and without you is trying to make its beautiful way toward that moment when reality can be seen, at last, for itself and not in any of its disguises. And that blessed moment is always waiting, always just on the other side of your insistence that things remain. Allow it all to come full circle. Allow the story you began to complete itself, the experience you avoid to run through you, and the illusions you think you need to be shattered. We are so lucky that none of it lasts. We are all, truly, the fortunate ones.
04.04.16