Everything Belongs

life as an art rather than an ordeal

I love noticing the subtle shifts of my innerworld, where externally much is the same “mundane” occurrences, I find myself, overtime, inevitably different. There is an odd phenomena occurring within, where everything belongs.

I’m somewhere between desiring to arrive elsewhere while also realizing there is nowhere to be, desiring to become more while simultaneously understanding I am more than enough. It’s such a strange place- here. I’m holding it all, everything. The contrast, the paradox, it’s all existing a little more harmoniously within me. There is less of my usual line of thought: “is it this way or that way?” “which way is the best way?” It’s all the way I suppose.

At times I feel so at home and at peace and other moments I may feel absolutely lost, and I suppose that also is part of the everything too. I’m realizing I am a part of some endless process, where I have neither to lose or to gain, but only to live out.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of Henry Miller lately, in the latest chapter on earth being this enormous womb, there is a quote: “the conscious expands to embrace the apparently conflicting opposites. To be supremely aware, which means accepting life for what it is..”

I cannot claim to be supremely aware, but I’ve on some micro level relinquished a little more of my “control” (in quotes because I’m realizing more and more lately, how much of an illusion it truly is). Life is revealing itself to me more so as an art rather than an ordeal. Where this moment is where things are happening, not somewhere else, and that has made me feel so much more at home in the world. Seldom have I experienced this, I am often elsewhere in my mind- absent.

There is another quote from Miller which seems to correlate with the timing of my inner shifts- “Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement; and the simple reason is: fear.” While I’ve boldly sought adventure and eclectic experiences, which from the outside can easily be perceived as me giving myself recklessly and completely to life- truly living; there has always been the underlying motive that through these experiences I will gain a wisdom that leads me to enlightenment.

I still battle back and forth in my mind on if this is something one pursues. From what I’ve read over the years, it is one's own desire to “arrive” or be elsewhere than where one is, which hinders the actual realizing of enlightenment. So then, one begins to desire to not desire and the whole thing gets messy. But, it’s the messiness of the process that eventually allows one to tire themselves out, throw their hands up and say: “I’m expending so much energy trying, even with my best effort, I have no clue if I’ll ever taste this eternal state. As much as I feel it’s a worthy endeavor, chasing it is not sustainable.”

That moment when we let go and surrender our will, paradoxically, is when we finally taste the truth that this very moment contains more than enough. In our relinquishing of efforts we taste a moment of present reality and experience that we can indeed enjoy where we are now. It seems as though we are all striving toward ideals, this paradise (whether it be enlightenment or retirement), in which we must struggle to obtain. This is simply our attempt to eliminate the grandest of struggles- the struggle to not struggle.

More simply put, it is our lack of acceptance of what is, our resistance to life, which separates us from all we are longing to experience in it. A brief or expansive glimpse back in history can affirm that really, nothing has changed. Nothing will change. The man of 5,000 B.C or 5,000 A.D or the man of the 20th century.. the landscape may be different, the culture and context, but the same man and woman that stood covered in fig leaves is still the same as you and me. I feel just as closely to them as I do to anyone of today.

Despite my opinion of the world, it is the world, it is my world. I can see it as a womb where I am being engendered and brought to life, a place in which I am at home, or I may see it as a tomb. The difference of my experience here is greatly tied to my attitude and perspective toward life. At some point, I fought to experience being alive. The odds of being born is estimated to be 1 in 400 quadrillion. I could spend my precious life absent and in opposition to life itself, or I could surrender and open myself to all that it encompases. The everything, it all belongs.

Maybe I don’t need to be saved or protected from life, reality, the world. I’m not quite sure anymore what there is to be saved from. I’ve come to find that no day or moment is void of boundless love. The world need not be my ideal to be worthy of awe and admiration, I need not be my ideal to appreciate my existence. I can hold both my importance and insignificance simultaneously. Knowing, I am completely incomplete, I have nothing to lose or gain. Why then would I not give of myself recklessly and completely to this wildly precious life?