The freedom to be exactly as you are

Just This, As It Is

We’ve had some gorgeous spring days here, delightfully warm but not yet hot—white blossoms falling through the air turning the pavement white, the first green leaves appearing along with the treacherous ground wasps. The first two giant horseflies have found their way into my condo and died here, a pair of Canada geese have arrived in the nearby pond, perhaps to nest, the frogs are chanting.

In recent weeks, I’ve experienced the most severe flare-up in a very long time of the fingerbiting compulsion that I’ve had since childhood (I bite the skin, sometimes quite severely, never the nails—google “dermatophagia”). My fingers are bandaged as I type.

I’d love to be free of this compulsion, and when it falls away, as it sometimes does for weeks or months at a time, it is a delightful relief. But so far, it always comes back.

I’ve quit alcoholic drinking and heavy cigarette smoking, but this compulsion is far more tenacious. I used to feel shame about it. I took it personally as a sign of how unenlightened and hopelessly fucked up I am, but thankfully, that storyline has disappeared in the realization that life is a choiceless, impersonal happening like the weather. If this compulsion shows up off and on for the rest of my life, I’m at peace with that. And I’m grateful for having had this compulsion—it has taught me some of the most valuable lessons and given me compassion for those whose compulsions are much more terrible.

I can’t tell you how many times friends and readers of my books have offered explanations and cures for this compulsion. And believe me, I’ve tried just about everything you can imagine. I’ve worked on it with a succession of therapists, acupuncturists and somatic workers, along with several spiritual teachers. And it has indeed gotten much better. It happens less frequently, disappears more often, and the wounds are significantly less severe than they once were. But still, it flares up and is often completely uncontrollable.

We love to try to explain things and find cures, all of which has its place. But spiritual liberation points to the possibility of not needing a cure or an explanation—simply being awake as the unvarnished bare actuality of just this, exactly as it is, rough edges and all.

THIS, in fact, is all we ever really have—present experiencing, the immovable here-now, this awaring presence, just as it is, which is always right here, right now and yet never the same way for even an instant. No one is ever actually separate from this. No one is in control of it. There are apparent choices and what sometimes feels like having or not having control, but all of this is arising choicelessly. We cannot decide to do anything other than exactly what we are doing (or not doing) in each moment. The apparent thinker-decider who seems to be steering the ship is a mirage. This can sound frightening, but in truly grokking it, it is immensely freeing.

Cause and effect, time and space, self and world are all abstract conceptual overlays on an ever-present immediacy that cannot actually be divided up or pulled apart. There is infinite variety here, but if we look closely enough, no actual boundaries and no separate and persisting “things” can ever be found.

As I’ve often said, what appears is like a tumbling series of kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots that the pattern-seeking mind is always reifying and interpreting—labeling, categorizing, weaving narratives around them—and presto, the apparently solid and fractured world appears, the world with “me” at the center of it.

In the conceptual picture of cause and effect, it certainly appears that people make things happen. We can seemingly control some things, such as opening and closing our hand, but not other things, such as the functioning of our spleen. These relative differences cannot be denied. We are conditioned to believe in free will and in our responsibility to accomplish great things, be a good person, do our duty, and so on. We habitually judge ourselves and others, compare ourselves to others, and think that we (and others) should be better, stronger, smarter, wiser, more compassionate, more successful, more attractive, more something than we are.

But we don’t actually get to choose the role we are playing in the movie of waking life. No one can simply “decide” to be Martin Luther King or Ramana Maharshi, or to not be Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot if that is the part we’ve been given. Even if we seemingly “choose” to change such things as our name, gender, career, hairstyle, religious affiliation, or anything else, each of these “choices” is a choiceless movement of life itself. Every apparent individual is the result of infinite causes and conditions—the whole universe is moving as each one of us and as everything that happens, and no form ever actually persists for more than an instant. You are not the same as you were when you began reading this article—the whole universe has shifted.

It may seem that you are choosing to read this right now, but if you look closely as choices seem to happen, it may be discovered that there is no one calling the shots. Thoughts arise unbidden and suggest actions or claim authorship: “I must do this,” “I should do this,” “I shouldn’t do this,” “I will do this,” “I will stop doing this,” “I did this,” “I could have done something else,” or “You did this and you should have known better.” But when we look for this apparent captain of the ship, what do we find? As someone once said, the self is like a clenched fist—open it and there is nothing there.

Look for it, and all you find is an ever-changing stream of thoughts, sensations, memories, mental images—and maybe a contracted thought-sense of being “in here” inside this body—and finally, as the only certainty, the undeniable knowingness of being here now, present and aware, not as someone, but as this boundless awaring presence showing up as the whole of present experiencing—with no actual findable boundary between inside and outside. The “me” who seems to be authoring my thoughts, making my decisions, living my life, observing and managing and evaluating it, is a kind of mirage.

Science looks at things objectively, from the outside, and comes up with theories. This is second-hand knowledge. It certainly has its place—it has given us modern medicine and gotten us to the moon. But what I’m always pointing to is direct experiencing, direct knowing. Science can tell us that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, and that can be useful information. But direct experiencing is something else. It is not theoretical or abstract. Direct experiencing or direct knowing is drinking a glass of water, seeing the ocean, swimming or bathing in water—that direct experience of water requires no learning or belief. It is undeniable, immediate, direct. It cannot be doubted. Any explanation, description or interpretation of this experience can be doubted, but not the bare experiencing itself. Direct knowing is non-dual. There is no experiencer apart from the experiencing. That direct, immediate, non-conceptual knowing cannot ever be put into words in the way that second-hand scientific knowledge can be. Direct knowing, which is synonymous with being, cannot be grasped, and yet it is vividly present.

To the me-identity, all this may sound dreadful. No choice. No control. Being nobody. Nothing actually here but a flow of kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots that can never be grasped, pinned down, explained or understood. What could be worse?

But all this only sounds scary from the perspective of the mirage, the me-identity, who seems to be a separate fragment in a divided up world. That “me” is trying desperately to survive as “me.” It fears death—not just instinctually, as when a hungry tiger appears in front of us, but psychologically. Knowledge and being able to pin things down conceptually seems to give us control—and in everyday reality, this makes sense in many ways. Control promises security. No control sounds terrifying, like being in a speeding car without a steering wheel or brakes.

But we’re not actually separate from the car or the whole universe. Our ability to drive a car is a happening of the whole. You can actually feel this as you’re driving—you can’t begin to say how you turn a corner, merge across a busy five-lane freeway, or steer through a maze of traffic. It happens all by itself! If you tried to think about it, you’d crash the car or be immobilized. If you’re an anxious driver always second-guessing yourself and white-knuckling the steering wheel, you are much more likely to crash the car because those me-centered thoughts are interrupting the undivided flow in which you and the car and the traffic are one whole happening. Of course, nothing can really interrupt the flow, and even anxious thoughts and traffic accidents are nothing other than this indivisible seamless flow. There is no findable beginning or end to anything.

We can see all of this directly for ourselves if we explore present experiencing with careful open attention. As we watch the natural world perpetually dying and regenerating, eating and being eaten, evaporating and raining, we may get a sense of the indivisible wholeness running though all these changes. When we cling to a particular form, we suffer. Whether that form is “me” or a particular way of doing things or someone we love, we cannot hold onto anything. Of course, not clinging doesn’t mean not caring deeply about the people, places and things we love, or not grieving or feeling sad when they perish. All of that is part of the flow.

The more clearly we recognize the undivided choicelessness and wholeness of being, the more at ease we feel. This recognition is the end of guilt, blame, self-judgment, and the stress of trying to “be somebody” and do it right and get somewhere and make something happen. It doesn’t mean action no longer happens—we might still be organizing a political movement, trying to find a cure for cancer, training for the olympics, working to put food on the table, seeing a therapist to undo some of our painful conditioning, disciplining our children, or whatever else we are moved to do—but it no longer seems like “me” doing it.

Seeing the illusory nature of the separate, independent self, relaxing and opening the tight fist of self-contraction, being this openness that we are and that Here-Now is, is the freedom to be exactly as we are in each moment and for everything and everyone else to be exactly as they are. It all belongs. It’s all included. And all of it is disappearing as soon as it appears—no-thing ever actually persists.

Again, that doesn’t mean passivity. But all action is the action of the whole. And there is no separate chooser, no “me” standing apart from life. That recognition brings peace, but it doesn’t mean always feeling peaceful—it means being at peace even with upset and apparent conflict. Not needing it to be different. Seeing from wholeness rather than from a fractional perspective, being this one bottomless moment that we actually cannot ever not be, this awaring presence that has no borders or seams. Being just this. And it’s always already so. There’s truly nothing to do other than exactly what is happening. This is it!

with love to all…