The It Is
This is going to be here for a few days. It is at the core of our responses and reactions.
It is a rather simple thing at first glance, but it penetrates the whole issue of the character and identity of the self that it takes on as it constructs the reality it creates for itself.
“What do you perceive “IT” to be? Is ‘It’ what you observe?”
Do you see “It” as “It” is?
What are your responses to the “image”? Are you attracted or repulsed?
I want to go to the fluid dreaming of “It”. There was something about it, like a Zen realization that I am in a space where I experience an awakened place of being, empty of any hold on what I “wanted” or felt. It was more of an empty nucleus where whatever comes into me is something that I choose to include in myself. It doesn’t define me nor does it belong to me. I include it or not. It is like a conundrum of exchange in a flow of what is. The ”is” is outside me and yet includes me like I was swimming in a lake.
I felt totally separated from my being and having nothing to do with my being it. It was outside me. A real detachment with identification. I felt I could ‘wear’ it or not depending on its nature.
The next thing: I was walking on the beach thinking about what it was that I was seeing and realized it was what it “Is” and not something I wanted it to be.
I felt totally free and understood that all we interpret about what “is”, by way of the totality of our consciousness and character as a human being walking the earth, it was not that it was an illusion, but that I create illusion about it.
I bring the ”Is” as my character, being human, with or without the skills of consciousness and awareness.
The next thing I was walking towards a group of four or five men. Some came and went in my awareness. They were talking among themselves.
As I approached them I saw a small, square piece of metal in the sand away from the path like someone had thrown it away. I picked it up and examined it. It had some combination of symbols etched and carved on its surface that I didn’t know how to read. I thought it to be something someone had as a kind of lucky charm or spiritual token.
I put it in my pocket and walked up to the men. We greeted each other and after a pause I asked, “Do you know what “is” is?”
I didn’t wait for a response. I felt I had to say more. “Most of us want to change what “is” to what we want “is” to be. We don’t listen or look to see, or even give our attention to, knowing what “is” is. Instead we respond with what is embedded in our learned habits of what we “think” we know it to be, or what we were taught to believe it to be.”
I continued, “Then there is our response to what we feel, think or know about it with either acceptance or rejection. Seldom is this reflected on at the moment, nor is it considered to be right or wrong, we simply react unconsciously with our habits of responses, especially unexamined responses. We interact according to context or circumstances. This is pretty universal among human beings everywhere. It has the effect of bringing forward conventional images to be used to define what “is” in unconscious belief, bypassing rational reflection.”
I paused. I felt I was losing my audience when one of the men who looked to be about 30 years old said, “Where do you get this stuff? Do you think you are some sort of guru or something?”
I knew this kind of interactive experience well because I know that stepping beyond what is conventional is not what most people are used to. It also disrupts the conventional frame of being in the social matrix of interaction, because the dialogue is generally not a dialogue, but rather an affirmation of what the culture promotes to be what “is” and “is” supposed to be.
This also disturbs the psyche’s sense of comfort and balance.
“No, I’m not.” I replied. I could feel his accusative intensity, “I am looking at how to look, to view the “is” and read it for what it is rather than accept or reject it in denial or judgment without knowing. We do this habitually all the time. We do it about all and everything, and then we hold on to our unexamined opinions.” I stated forcefully.
“What’s that?”, he demanded. I had taken the token out of my pocket and was holding it in my hand.
“That belongs to my friend!” he declared, then demanded, “Where did you get it?”
“I found it.”, I stated flatly.
“Liar!” he claimed, “He was a very spiritual man and would never have given it away!” He was angry, self righteous, indignant, “You stole it!”
I hadn’t said anything to him about how I found it, and I could see and feel that he wasn’t going to accept, in this circumstance, what I had to say about what this “is”.
I turned to face him declaring, “You won’t believe me no matter what I say. Your feelings have obstructed your ability to see what “is” and you closed the door of perception with your conviction that I had something to do with it or him.”
I continued, ”This is a perfect example of how we block our vision of what “is” because we do not see what we bring to the experience that prevents us from rational vision in objective distance from ourselves and of what “is” is.”
I thanked him for providing the perfect example of what and how we use our self interests to obstruct our vision of reality as it is vs the reality we have come to expect, want and believe.
I turned and said to him, “You are blocked by your feelings and nothing of this is getting through to you. One doesn’t have to be a guru to know how to face the reality of what ‘is’. “
His friend threw away the token because he realized it blocked the view of the “Is”.
There are so many ways we block our vision of what is, especially when it doesn’t do for us what we want it to do. Consider the “heroes” of some of the idealized images of what we would like the “is” to be, that we feed to our self image, good and bad, and then accept and embrace their ideal. This is yet another story.
I didn’t want to ‘explain’ to him about how I came upon the token. If I had tried it would have turned the subject from the “is” to it being used for the purpose of self justification. This wasn’t about me, it was about what “is” and how we meet it, with or without objective distance. We must seek ways to demonstrate it so that others develop the skills of objective observation of themselves and how to escape feeling based distortions of the reality of what
IS.