Blinded by the Lights

What is there to say really, that hasn’t already been expressed in one way or another? Adding another rendition to the pile doesn’t necessarily increase the resolution but rather risk contributing to the entropic chaos that is already bewilderingly confusing. Perhaps that is the reason for a two + years hiatus? Or maybe there are other reasons, you are very unlikely to find out…and according to my assumptions you are even less likely to have been very bothered by this page not being updated for a while. If it had upset you, I would have heard from you, but I didn’t. Which validates my assumption.

Everything we do is a distraction. This life, how we live it and how we choose to occupy ourselves as it keeps on going, would without us getting so involved with things be just time passing, or a rather natural process running its course. Whether we feel like it’s something we have been given, offered or laid upon us like a burden to bear, it, the process, will do what is in its nature to do; arise and pass. 

We tend to get pretty heavily involved though and allow ourselves to become entangled with elaborate ideas of how to best spend this limited time to our best capacity. So, we do things. Things that stimulate our senses in one way or the other and as we allow this stimulation to go on, time passes in the background. It’s not uncommon for us to run a narrative about our experience as it takes place and since stories are best understood when there is a linear logic running through them we often motivate our doings with reasoning that fits the narrative we have created. Even if the possibility to act and do almost infinitely different is always there, we tend to build upon the image of ourselves that we are already familiar with. There is undoubtedly a sense of safety in that which is known. This isn’t to say that the baseline is that we don’t try new things (although this happens too) but rather that we stick to the known narrative, we come to identify with our choices and allow them to support the self-image we have come to build and identify with. For our mind to make sense of the narrative, this linear logic seems to be necessary

So, we do stuff, and that’s ok. Many have figured out that doing certain things makes the experience all that more enjoyable. And it is indeed a very stimulating thing to be alive, literally quite sensational. It is perhaps that as we go on with our doing that we get a bit overstimulated, to the point that some senses become less sensitive and eventually begins to go numb. The automated response to this is to increase the dosage, more light, louder sound, more taste, harder touch and stronger smells and often with increased intensity. As this happens, the place of not feeling anything, the dark uncertain void grows in the periphery and becomes a place no one really wants to visit, or even acknowledge. It’s becomes the awkward person in the room that no one really wants to talk to or even recognise. Yet, he’s there (or her but most often just an it), patiently and quietly standing in the corner and just won’t go away. This is what we distract ourselves from. The silence and what it says. The stillness and what it contains. Instead of inviting it in and allowing it to present what it has to offer we stare wide open into the bright lights to block out whatever darkness looms in the periphery. If we keep doing our thing for long enough, perhaps it goes away.

It is almost as if we genuinely believe that there is something that is asked by us to achieve. As if there was somewhere we needed to get to. When everything that could every possibly ever be in this moment is already there, or here. Nothing could be any different right now, regardless of how much you enjoy it or not. It doesn’t stay like that way for long though, it never does actually, that’s the thing with processes they tend to process and you just happen to be a part of it. In every single moment of its going about processing. We all have the ability to tune into this and allow our senses to take full stock of what it has to show us as it expresses itself through us and every other living being that is part of it. It just becomes a little bit more difficult when we are numb. The contrasts becomes a bit rougher and as such the void while in the periphery will absolutely seem like an empty space while we are staring into the lights of our own creations. But it doesn’t take much to find out what really goes on in that place, a quiet moment, a deep breath, a space to just sit and be with it, rather than do something. There is more than a lot to find there and it’s completely free and always there. So perhaps that’s why many of us put it off for later, knowing that it won’t go away and will still be available once we are done with the cycles of filling and emptying our cup. Or perhaps we are so convinced that it requires us to do something that doesn’t fit within our narrative in order to get what is there for the taking. Well, it’s neither my friends, there is nothing there for the taking and there is nothing that is needed to be done. Quite the opposite, once you disentangle yourself and retreat into stillness, there is nothing to do but to allow what is there to reveal itself. And the narrative, well that is consumed by a whole different kind of light than the one you are staring into right now.