Awakening ("Understanding")

The other shoe finally dropped.

It took nearly thirty years but I awakened. It was effortless. It was painless. It was the last thing I expected and unlike anything I could ever have imagined. Nothing had changed and somehow everything had changed. I was the same person I always was, but yet I was...I was...what?

What was I? What had happened to me? What was it?

And then I knew. Life—my life, your life, our life, real life—isn't comprised of words in books but of flesh and bone and breath and blood. Life, real life, is basic, it's primal, it's the same for humans and animals alike: eat, sleep, procreate, stay cool when its hot, stay warm when it's cold. Any time we point back to words to dictate how we are supposed to behave, to act or not act, to live or not live, to interpret or analyze or deconstruct some 'meaning of life', we are empowering words to possess more substance than the very real substance that makes up the core of our own being. We are literally deifying words, in books, in sacred texts, and indenturing ourselves to them as willfull servants. We surrender ourselves, our essence, our very selves, by subjugating and enslaving the persons we think we are to obey words until in the end we are no longer in possession of our own lives, we are no longer our own persons, no longer real people but word-controlled robots reacting to endless strands of ticker-tape spooling through our heads.

When we surrender ourselves to 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah' we are really handing ourselves over to abstract words because neither 'God' nor 'Jesus' nor 'Allah' are found anywhere in the world we are inhabiting right now. From the day we are born to the day we die we will never encounter 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah' except as words in books. Without the use of language, without words, we would have absolutely no reason to believe in 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah', because as far as our very real lives are concerned religion exists only inside of words and nowhere else. So why are we killing each other in the name of God? Murdering the innocent? Enlisting in the military to go die on foreign soil? Because we've given words—words like 'liberty', 'duty', 'democracy', 'holy war'—more importance than our own fragile brief precious lives. We've empowered words to possess more value and to be more deserving of respect than who we each are as unique and vibrant human beings!

Knowing this I became awakened, and this awakening revealed to me that everything I wanted to do, or thought I needed to do, or convinced myself I should or shouldn't be doing, was complete and utter bullshit.

Everything. All of it. My entire life. Bullshit.

Everytime I second-guessed myself or chastised myself or sought to alter my behavior or set myself straight or get on the right path, whatever I imagined this path to be, I was effortlessly and suddenly aware it was all motivated by bullshit. I knew it. I couldn't help but know it. There was no escaping it anymore. It was bullshit. All of it. Bullshit. Because it was all based on words. All of it. The product of things I was told! The result of things I was taught. Do this! Don't do that! Live this way! Don't live that way! Love God! Fear God! Surrender yourself, your life, your soul, your spirit, and obey the words. You must always obey the words, the words, the words, because if you don't you are a sinner, a reprobate, guilty of malfeasance and pride, rebelliousness and insubordination!

It was like I was seeing myself seeing myself in the dual-reflection between two gigantic mirrors. Everything I thought I was or sought to become all kept bounding away from me in a seemingly endless array, and every image, every stance, every face shown to the world was not my real face, but an illusion, a fabrication, a cultural fable comprised of total bullshit, since I was relying on words and language to define who I was as a person my entire life, how I was supposed to behave, what I was supposed to do or not do, what I ought to be doing at any given moment. And this realization was the real eye-opener.

At first, after becoming aware of my awakened state, I considered I better start behaving like an Awakened Person and clean up my act, but how is an Awakened Person supposed to act? That's just it. An Awakened Person doesn't act, but is simply awake, and that's when I realized that any desire to act or change or 'put on a show' of righteousness is also bullshit because 'righteousness' is itself only a word. It's like my awakening caused a long convoluted track of dominos to start falling where each piece knocks down another piece, and so on and so on, until all I had left were pieces falling away as fast and as far as I could see, and there was nothing I could do to stop them, that anything I thought I could do or needed to do or had to do just became more pieces that were falling away. In time I simply sat back and watched the pieces fall and the universe unfold, and sure it was sometimes loud and noisy, but behind it all I began to notice myself dwelling in silence, in a kind of effortless repose that didn't need to do anything or prove anything or change my behavior or lifestyle. Without working at it, the words would sometimes stop inside my own head, and I found I could go on about my business simply experiencing the world around me without having to refer back-and-forth to an interior running commentary.

I was awake, I realized, because I finally recognized that reality—the real world—is what we experience in the total absence of words.

And that became my personal test: If I could experience it without the use of language, then it was real. If I relied language to experience it, then it was not real. It couldn't be any simpler.

So why did it take me thirty long years to figure it out? Because the entire time I was relying on words in trying to figure it out.

You use a thorn to remove a thorn, then throw both away.

Precisely like all the words that comprise this very web site. They are all merely thorns. Use them, extract whatever needs to be extracted, then throw them all away.

Now, a funny thing happened when I quit playing the word-game, when I quit second-guessing myself, and my thoughts, and all my social and ridiculous emotions. I realized that all I ever wanted out of life was already with me, right beside me, and always had been: TJ. TJ and my family.

With the force of an epiphany to end all epiphanies, I understood that TJ and I were meant together, and that with all my foolishness and stupidity, I had nearly destroyed our relationship time and again. I realized I loved TJ with all my heart and I was a dang fool to ever imagine otherwise.

Too often we're so busy looking for buried treasure we don't see we're already holding it in both hands. Too many times we think we need something, or want something, or have to be or become something, we underestimate the sheer power of nothing, the want of nothing, the need of nothing, the hope for nothing, and so run around in circles trying to satisfy our 'something-ness', whatever that might be.

I'm sorry, TJ. I apologize for being such a fool. I love you, you see? I love you with all my heart. Thank you for having the courage and knowing wisdom to forgive me, even when forgiveness may have been the hardest thing you ever had to do, even when traditional wisdom might have meant booting me to the curb. You saw something in me I didn't see myself, and for that I am eternally grateful. I love you. You saved my life.