Liberation from the Lie

Yes­ter­day, my wife and I went to a place we’ve never vis­ited before, the Stroud Pre­serve in Chester County, Penn­syl­va­nia about 15 miles west of our home. We like tak­ing walks as far away from the City that is fea­si­ble on weekends.

We couldn’t help notic­ing and appre­ci­at­ing how well the trails were marked. Each of the color-coded trails were noted by a bright and clear sign. There was no way we could ever get lost in this rel­a­tively open and small park.

We decided to take the longest trail, the Red Trail and walked sev­eral miles along a deeply forested area on one side and along broad open fields on the other. These softly undu­lat­ing fields

have been farmed for about 200 years. Before that, per­haps they were home to Lenape Indi­ans who lived in this area prior to the Euro­pean invasion.

After walk­ing sev­eral miles we came to a cross­roads. To our sur­prise there were no trail mark­ers. Had we some­how left the Red Trail? Prior to this moment, the mark­ers were so clear and easy to fol­low. Now there were none.

We decided to walk in a roughly straight direc­tion assum­ing that we were still on the Red Trail and then we came to another inter­sec­tion and still there were no indi­ca­tors of any kind. My wife said sar­cas­ti­cally, “Would it kill them to put up a marker?”

We were lost.

And doesn’t this mir­ror the whole spir­i­tual jour­ney? We read a book. It really res­onates with us. We think we “know” it and the mind eagerly sets out on the path described in this book. We are filled with light and hope. Our con­fu­sion is ended and now the path is obvi­ous. It’s well marked. Oth­ers have gone before us. We know where we are. And then, just as sud­denly, we’re lost. All the res­o­nance is just a mem­ory. We don’t know where we are? Where are the mark­ers? How did we fall off the path?

Just as day inevitably turns to night only to return again and as joy fades into indif­fer­ence but also only to return again, so clar­ity inevitably becomes muddled.

This is just how it is. It’s how it’s sup­posed to be. If we always knew the way, then life would become way too pre­dictable. Get­ting lost is both scary, frus­trat­ing, mysterious, intriguing and fun.

Are we not lost now? And isn’t it equally true that we know where we are. We can see that clar­ity and uncer­tainty arise together if we are truly hon­est with our­selves. We may want to believe we’re clear, but the shadow of unknow­ing always under­girds the cer­tainty of the ego.

The way is now and some­times it’s clear and some­times it’s invis­i­ble. A sense of know­ing comes and goes. Just as unknow­ing comes and goes. Some­times the mark­ers are right in front of us, clear as day and some­times there are no mark­ers at all.

But we can always see that when the per­sona demands or even just wants clar­ity over con­fu­sion, then suf­fer­ing will be cre­ated. It’s not an issue of “let­ting go” of that demand, because that will nearly always be a phony, ego-centric behav­ior, it’s just to see the cre­ative inter-play of what we pre­sume is clar­ity, as opposed to con­fu­sion. Per­haps we are con­fused about the dis­tinc­tion. Per­haps we are clear­est, when we expe­ri­ence the most confusion.

When the mark­ers are present can we always count on them? When the mark­ers are miss­ing can we say with cer­tainty that our direc­tion­less wan­der­ing is truly with­out direction?

Can we trust our­selves and the jour­ney know­ing that we never left our endur­ing home? Can we see that the path and its absence hap­pen in equal measure?

Moods, with­out excep­tion, are objects of con­scious­ness. Like every­thing else they come and go, but no mood is as treach­er­ous as the really good mood and no mood is as insid­i­ous as the indif­fer­ent mood. Let’s take a look at why this is so.

Seek­ers will think they have arrived when a bliss­ful mood arises in their expe­ri­ence. They feel glo­ri­ous, for it is a glo­ri­ous mood. And then they feel any­thing but glo­ri­ous when the mood fades away as does their claim of hav­ing over­come the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of a relent­less ego.

Life really is a bitch.

And when the claim of hav­ing “made it” gets blown away as the mood changes, the inevitable crappy mood fol­lows in its wake and now we feel really defeated.

But actu­ally, the good to bad mood swing is a gift. Because it can be seen as just another object of con­scious­ness that floats by just like every­thing else floats by. The good/bad mood pat­tern is really a sin­gle repeat­ing event.

What is it that notices all of this float­ing? Now that really is a horse of a dif­fer­ent color.

But we will be slaves of the con­di­tioned per­sona to the extent that we don’t notice what is usu­ally present. And what is usu­ally present that we fail to notice is the mood that is in between good and bad and this tends to be our dom­i­nant mood. We can call it the grace­ful name of the “In Between Mood”.

It turns out that this too is just another object of con­scious­ness no dif­fer­ent from the obvi­ous extremes of bliss and mis­ery, but it tends to be over­looked. But it is really the In Between Mood that turns out to be the most inter­est­ing, because it tends to be our pri­mary, set mood. The more you become aware of it, the more inter­est­ing it will become.

Try this in your own life and what time is bet­ter than the present?

Focus­ing exclu­sively on the extremes is life on the spir­i­tual jour­ney merry-go-round, but real­iz­ing the in between mood is the hid­den goldmine.

See for your­self. This is what you will ulti­mately dis­cover, that who you are has noth­ing to do with any mood and this is lib­er­a­tion itself!