Image by Usman Yousaf
We get mighty upset when the world doesn’t comply with our demands, don’t we? When it seems to mock our wishes and slight our earnest advances. We feel deeply hurt when someone rejects us or abandons us. We explode when, despite all our remonstrations, the people in our lives refuse to cooperate and behave the way we want them to. We despair when our efforts do not bring us the results we want. In short, we get mad when the world doesn’t do as we tell it to. When it doesn’t do things ‘MY’ way.
You see,
deeply embedded within us is the belief that THE WORLD OWES US, that we are ENTITLED.
Now, this belief doesn’t come without conditions. It would be great if it did! But there are conditions.
The conditions are that you learn to play the game and here are some of the rules:
That you be nice, that you don’t always say what you mean and don’t always mean what you say, that you put in enormous effort and importantly, BE SEEN to be putting in enormous effort. In fact, one of the RULES is that you MUST STRUGGLE. And there are other rules such as dressing a certain way and speaking a certain way and not being greedy and not expressing your talents fully and especially when in the company of those who may be less talented. And not accepting complements without the usual deflections – Oh, that was nothing OR Me Beautiful?? I hate my nose. My bum’s too big.
Or we play the roles that we have also downloaded from the Collective Unconscious – mother, father, husband, wife, girlfriend, employer, child, leader, counselor, doctor…and we have these ideas about how each of these roles need to be played and we try our hardest to stick with them because any deviations could risk the relationship.
But you know, all this is simply unsustainable. Why? Because
all these demands OF us and BY us are made in a world of CONDITIONALITY and when there are conditions, the human spirit which is naturally unbounded, free and UNCONDITIONED must eventually BREAK FREE.
The question that we need to ask ourselves is this: WHY DO WE PERSIST IN LIVING IN THIS WORLD OF CONDITIONALITY AND MAKING DEMANDS OF IT WHILE ACCEDING TO ITS DEMANDS?
Why do we do this?
Why do we do this when we KNOW there is another world, another state of consciousness which is unconditional, which is free, where there are no ‘games’ or rules, where the expressions of consciousness, of life, of love flow freely and unconditionally? Why do we do this even when we have experienced a little bit of this world even if only in very brief and small doses?
It’s because the World of Conditionality, the World of Games and Rules IS COMPELLING. In Buddhism, this is known as SAMSARA. It’s a beautiful sounding word, isn’t it? SAMSARA. And it is compelling because it offers us REWARDS and like trained monkeys, we have learned to live for REWARDS.
The World of Conditionality, the World of Games and Rules, IS COMPELLING because it REWARDS our neurosis, our habits of self-judgment and struggle. The problem is that this return on investment is shockingly low and at the cost of our wellbeing and freedom.
And although these rewards never fully satisfy, even though they may come at great cost to our personal freedom and self-expression and even though they are subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns – you need more of the reward and more frequently to derive the same degree of pleasure/satisfaction that it first provided – you continue to play the game in this World of Conditionality. Because deep down inside, you’re still harboring the belief that this World OWES IT TO YOU. This World should comply with your demands and wishes.
But at some point, and that point will arrive sooner (if you’re lucky) or later, you get tired of playing, when your spirit is sufficiently worn down by the rules of this world, by its CONDITIONS, you’ll erupt.
You throw a tantrum. You curse and swear. You blame. You lash out. You stamp your feet, you scream and rant, you play the bully or the victim, you explode or implode, you cry for sympathy, you get depressed, you banish someone from your life or you pick up the ball and go home. All this because the Ego or the Conditioned Mind is screaming:
WHY CAN’T YOU ALL DO IT MY WAY!!!!
After all, you played by the rules, didn’t you? It’s only FAIR that you get the rewards. Right?
Sadly, no. You see, the World of Conditionality, despite its voluminous RULE BOOK, is itself subject to the Universal Laws, Laws by which the Universe is organized. And the first of these Laws is that
THERE ARE NO LAWS OTHER THAN THE UNIVERSAL LAWS.
In the Christian tradition, this is described as:
I am the Lord thy god and thou shalt not have strange gods before me.
We could rephrase it this way:
I am the Law of Love and thou shalt not have strange laws before me.
And given that Love is UNCONDITIONAL, all laws of conditionality that the human species has created and imposed upon itself are in direct conflict with this first Law or Principle of the Universe.
Now, some people, being so well trained by the system of Rules and Rewards of the Conditioned World, will equate UNCONDITIONAL with ANARCHY. Their argument goes something like this:
“If we didn’t have rules, if we didn’t follow these rules, there’d be anarchy. Everybody would just do what they wanted to do and that means there would be murders and thefts and rapes and all sorts of other evil things and we would have no control over them.”
And yet, when you stop and consider the world as it is, you will see that it is naturally LIFE-GIVING rather than life-destroying.
The very fact that you are here, that all of life as you see it is here is testament to the LIFE-GIVING nature of the universe, the creative rather than DESTRUCTIVE nature of the universe. We call that nature and its creative force LOVE or GOD or INFINITE INTELLIGENCE…
So that, when we allow ourselves to step into this nature, our TRUE NATURE, which is LOVE, which is UNCONDITIONAL, which is FREE and LIFE-AFFIRMING, we can dispense with rules. We can stop playing the game. We can stop training for crumbs of rewards. Instead, we entrain with the abundance, the fullness, the majesty, the beauty, the joy, the power, the infinite possibilities that the natural, creative force of LOVE, of LIFE expresses so poetically and uniquely as you, as me AND as the collective and all-encompassing ‘I’.
So that, when we return to the World of Conditionality, of SAMSARA, of Games and Rules, we return with a deep and unshakeable CONFIDENCE and POISE, of natural POWER, of deep KINDNESS and COMPASSION, of SPONTANEOUS JOY and UNFATHOMABLE PEACE/
And we are no longer prone to judging the world, no longer prone to making demands of it, no longer dragging our NEEDINESS, our HISTORY, our REASONS WHY OR WHY NOT, our SMALLNESS into it. Instead, we return as the full and free, the unconditioned and unconditional expression of Life, of Love.
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