Be grateful not for what you have but for “what YOU are” that precedes everything long before you could identify with having anything to be thankful for. YOU are the “perceived” but, too, the perceiver. YOU and all that is, is good. Now, gratefulness.
Bozebits
Most searchers are impulse buyers. That is, they have an idea of what they seek and pay the price that such a search requires. Do this or that, and call me in the morning, and if you don’t get the results you’re looking for, you’re doing something wrong. Next, let’s try this, etc., etc.
Few, if any, pay the price to know themselves. That is, “what they are” that lies beneath the attachments to the world driven by bodily desires. You were born without attachments and no awareness of your own body. What were you, then? Do you wonder?
The only thing worth knowing is that which cannot be bought or sold. Paradoxically, it cannot be told either. The price of “knowing” YOU is detachment from desires, safety, security, comfort, and all the other things your body uses to hook you to the world. However, the price you’ve paid for such things is high, and the sellers, who guarantee results if you do as they say, are relentless in keeping you subscribed.
Stop buying and give away what you have bought today or for just a few minutes or hours. The return is indescribable, and you and you merge with the infinite—all at no cost!
Bozbits
The “middle way” described by Buddha is often mistakenly presumed to mean placement somewhere between this way or that, or that “truth” is found between the extremes many humans take sides on. It’s not that at all. The “middle way” describes a “path” that cannot be followed. In other words, there is no way. Most searchers are on a treadmill pounding out marathons of “ways” going nowhere, never realizing that the way they have taken is the reason. Do you see? If you think you know the way or buy into someone’s way, you’re lost and likely to run a long time before figuring out it’s not the way.
Get off the treadmill and go for a walk to no place in particular. Enjoy the sights and nix that conversation by the “stream of consciousness” in your head. You won’t find a “way,” but you might discover that “where you are, is an excellent introduction to what YOU are.
Bozebits
Everything you have learned, know, believe, hope, dream, accomplish, successes, failures, etc., are barriers to what YOU are. You can’t “know” the unknowable, nor can you travel somewhere to find it or go through great suffering to pay for it. What YOU are precedes the observer; thus, it is unobservable.
YOU are the infinite out of which all mystery forms, and not a single thing you do as a human adds to It. Everything in human experience is trivial next to a flight into the unknown. Forgetting all you think makes you what you are offers a glimpse into the eternal and silences all desire to learn and grow.
Let “living” (without mind blather) take over your doing and getting. It’s less stressful and a whole lot more fun!
Bozebits
We like to think we have some control over life through the choices we make and by developing memory skills and other mental processes to improve them when, in truth, we have no control at all.
When you are caught up in your well-practiced “choice-making,” consider every possible thing that could happen under as many circumstances as you can mentally muster. It won’t give you any more control than you already (don’t) have, but at least you are less likely to be surprised when what happens happens.
The reality of living is that anything you do through whatever process you came up with to do it will do. Your “choices” carry anything but your control. Make them (choices) or not; you still live a mystery. Besides, “surprises” are the fun of it.
Bozebits
What most call “newness” typically includes the old descriptions into which anything “new” must somehow fit. Do you see? Humans fancy what they know, even though it stands in the way of what is real and “new.” When you act “because” (whatever your reason), you prevent the beauty of new reflection and undefined awareness from entering reality and, likely, do so under the guise that your old descriptions offer some safety and security. It’s being stuck in words, concepts, and definitions.
Live each moment without your priorly formed descriptions of them. “Newness” is all there ever is, but you will only experience it when you are cleared of all you “know.” In other words, what you know keeps you from knowing! Clear your mind, and your experience is “new.”
Bozebits
It is the nature of Reasonableness; thus, most humans to turn the unfamiliar into the familiar. In other words, we love the safety of familiarity, even if it is wrong, which it typically is. Every moment is a dance with the infinite, and the infinite is a complete mystery even to itself. Your mind is constantly comparing “what was” to the puzzle before you “now” and translating it into something that just isn’t. Reasonableness makes infinity look like anything but “what is,” and that is a tragic loss of this moment’s preciousness.
Throw caution to the wind, be unreasonable, and life unfolds without your resistance; its gift to you will always be a surprise.
Bozebits
Roughly a quarter to one-third of human existence is nothingness, e.g., sleep. You close your eyes, and time ceases, “you” are without any conscious awareness, problems vanish, and then, just like that, you awaken, and “you” appear out of nowhere, and “what was” piles back on to your suddenly realized self.
Where did “you” go when you fell asleep? What are “you” when your body sleeps and consciousness has disappeared? Is this your state before you appeared on Earth? If you can say you don’t know. If you know, you can’t say.
Still, it seems the most incredible peace offered by awareness lies in being completely unaware. Who knows? But thank goodness for those periodic spells of unconsciousness.
Bozebits
The things you cherish cannot be comprehended intellectually, regardless of what they are. You can string eloquent words together, forming profound and beautiful descriptions, but something else tugs on your awareness beyond those descriptions.
It isn’t easy to stay in a state of descriptionless awareness, but you can remain aware that what your mind “thinks” is unimportant folly full of made-up nonsense, all there to keep you from the truly cherished. Shamans call it “controlled folly.” Live as though everything matters, but knowing that what is not or cannot be known on the plain of human experience shakes the foundation of intellect.
Simply, with “mind” (thoughts), you have a lot. Without it, you have infinitely more.
Bozebits
Self-importance is the mountain no one successfully climbs. Its incline is steep, and its peak extends forever in the mind that struggles to reach it. Eventually, you’re in the clouds where you can no longer see anything but your ego-imagined self. There is nothing of value on the mountain of self-importance.
Nothing you do in any walk of life is important. That you are “what YOU are” while walking is. YOU have no measure in human “being.”