Pool

Are you still wanting things, deciding how things should be in your life, and in the world? Are you still harboring opinions, getting in arguments about them, being indignant about them? Are you still setting goals to achieve, in order to grow, to be more authentic, to be better and feel better? Are you still on guard every moment as to what needs to be different in your life in order to make it finally, permanently “better”?

Or maybe you got tired of all of that, and you took a good hard look and discovered that “better” isn’t something you can even pin down. That’s a real shocker, isn’t it? All of that striving, for your entire life, and it comes down to this: it never got you anywhere, and it never will get you anywhere. There is no such thing as “better.”

If you don’t believe me, try the exercise I outline in my essay A Few Simple Instructions, and see for yourself. Just for starters, try it right now – see if you can define “better” without ending up back at “It’s just better, that’s all!” You will very quickly discover the trickery of the mind: All this time, you’ve been convinced that “better” was something you would get to have someday. Now you know it’s only a word.

So once you’ve taken a good hard look at opinions, desires, needs, feelings, trying to make things “better,” and all of the other mischief of the mind, and you’ve seen that your prison door has been open all along, you’re free. And then what?

You stop.

Take plenty of time here. Don’t go rushing off now trying to get true nature to reveal itself – the final, the ultimate “Better” – True Nature! That’s just going back to the mind and the wanting. Just stop. Don’t expect anything from the stopping.

You’re still breaking habits – habits of mind and of action. Give it time to wind down. Notice your gradual internal retreat from the steady drumbeat of the thoughts – from the reflexive catering to every urge, every worry, every opinion. Just let it die on its own.

Your true nature will reveal itself. Don’t rush it. It won’t make things “better” anyway, so there’s no reason to rush. Once it is seen that any acquisition – even of the revelation of the true nature – does not ever lead to anything better, all the striving stops. The thinking naturally slows down, and actions take care of themselves, without thought.

And when the thoughts stop coming at such a relentless pace, here is your true nature. It has been here all along. It is what has been simply, quietly, observing, as the thoughts and desires have arisen in your mind for all these decades. This – your true nature – has watched as the imaginary world of your “self” has emerged every morning and gone to sleep every night. This has witnessed your imaginary world and all the suffering it has seemed to create in the mind of the “self.”

Your true nature is unmoved, and you know it right now, without thought. It is as clear as a still pool, never disturbed by any of the movement in thought that happened or is happening now. If a slight breeze blows across it, there may arise some gentle ripples, and then they are gone.

The world “out there” seems to exist. In your mind, it does. But only in your mind. And the still pool knows only a gentle breeze – the breeze is the mind and the “world out there” that arises within it – creating some gentle ripples on the surface, not disturbing the clarity at all.

Your true nature can't be defined. It is nothing mental, nothing physical, nothing emotional, nothing actual. Yet it is conscious. It is consciousness itself – all of consciousness. This is who you actually are.

Rest in the still pool. It is you. The ripples are of no import. Can any ripple make things “better” for you? Don’t bother with the ripples. No ripple ever existed on its own. Even the pool itself is not “actual.”