Remembering (#209)
Reflections while wandering the way of the path:
Meaning in our lives comes from our circumstances. We give meaning to everything. Nothing has meaning on its own. Meaning comes from the world we live in: our culture, family, and mores. The personal meanings guiding us come from the stew of the situation into which we are born.
The meaning of life comes from what we give it. Life has no meaning otherwise. Nothing is as meaningful as we sometimes think. What is the old saying? Different strokes for different folks. The appeal of something depends upon the meaning we give it. I like to think we can change the meaning we give to things. We seem to do it all the time as we grow and develop. We use our power to choose the meanings we want. Life is the view we give it as seen from culture, family, and choices we make.
One view argued by Brian Greene, who is a noted quantum physicist, is that the body is a neutral collection of subatomic particles govern by the laws of physics. That is all we are, a body that has no meaning. We are a chance result of evolution. The body is a bag of bone and tissue that functions as me. Joseph Campbell, the famed mythologist, said to Bill Moyer during their conversations on PBS some years ago that the body has no meaning, it is just protoplasm. I agree a bit with both men (not that they need me to). I think the only meaning the body has is what I give it as the me of the body. That meaning has evolved with the body through the ages of humankind. The regard it is given today did not happen overnight. It is a product of human development.
Another view that has come to us from ancient sages, et al., is that the body exists, but it is not real. It has no reality. It is transitory, rather than eternal. It is a thought of separation in oneness that cannot be realized. Greene, et al., say that subatomic particles forming the body pop in and out of existence and will eventually return to non-existence at the end of the universe. What is non-existence? Nothingness?
I like the idea that it all returns to nothingness. Nothingness to me is non-existence. There is no form. The subatomic particles of the body collapse as form, returning to non-existence until called upon again. The universe itself will eventually return to non-existence, albeit billions upon billions of eons from now. This is the nature of existence because it is not eternal. It is illusion bound by spacetime as a projection in consciousness of separation.
If not the body, what am I? The meaning I give the body is to answer that question. That is my function as me. I call it Darrell’s search for Self. There is no me, there is no Darrell. This form and its countenance are illusion. My reality is that I AM that which I am. Twia is how I say what cannot be named or described.
To paraphrase biblical sayings: even with eyes to see we can look and not see; or listen with ears to hear and not hear. This is the way of the world that is existence. The way of oneness, the way of the path, is to see and hear what does not exist. Do not look here. Do not listen there. What exists is the body and the world around it. What I am has no form or substance. Twia is not of the world. You cannot cast a light on it to see. You cannot strike it like a gong to hear. Twia has no existence.
The way of the path is to remember the reality that is twia. Then you can see and hear what is true: that you are whole, complete, perfect, eternal. You have no beginning. You never end. You did not come from somewhere. You will never exit to elsewhere. You are the expressing that is the whole of the all. This is oneness that we cannot comprehend as a body.
Stop looking and listening outside yourself. You cannot comprehend your truth through the eyes and ears of separation. Return to the room within. Still your mind. Stop thinking. Let the silence of the room embrace you with the presence of twia. Twia knows the way. See and hear with the wisdom of twia that is your truth. You might get to the door by seeking, but inside do nothing. Just be. Then twia is revealed. The way of the path is remembering to be without doing.