Is this All There Is?

All There Is

Start with right now. This is all there is, ever will be. Whatever comes is just rearranging the furniture.  And we are afraid. We have fear at the root of our being... that this is all there is, the thought brings fear. We won’t go there, we’re afraid to, so we make plans and activity and fear and anxiety to escape, to move on. But nothing changes. We seek the Promised Land as a thirsty person seeks an oasis in the desert heat.
We imagine, when we get there, driven by our fear, our desire, we will be free of fear.

But there is no Promised Land out there. We can’t travel to a place that doesn’t exist out there. That fact we are dimly aware of, but we repress it, we’re afraid to face it. We know, at some level, that to Journey to the Promised Land, the land of bliss without fear, we must journey inward. A lonely journey, all  alone, with no guide. We  must find our own path. Perhaps, we will not find the path, will not arrive. We carry the fear of that, of what we might find, the difficulties of the journey. We are afraid we will find we don’t exist. if this is truly all there is, then all our activities produce nothing, no changes, so, we don’t exist. So we don’t go there.

All we do in life is make memories. All we see in life, unless we are Mystics, are memories. Everything we see, encounter, feel, we cobble together from previous memories. They don’t exist. We would rather make the same memory, over and over again, like hanging the same suit of clothes in the closet every day, than journey into our fear, than journey inward, seeking. We fear the Minotaur in the cave. We won’t go there. But the only way to the Promised Land, if there is a way, is there, on that path, the journey inward to the source of our existential fear. Abandon all the the old memories, everything we think we know, or have experienced, and determine to daily put together new memories from pieces of the old, on a path we’ve never yet travelled, the inward journey. And we may arrive at some instant, to a point where all the labels, all the names, all the thinking, all the memories, drop away and we see what truly is, and we are surrounded in bliss.... and yes, we don’t exist, any more than a drop of water in the ocean, which knows it is the ocean.

Donato Jan 2  2013