Why my life (and yours) is only RELATIVELY important!

I kind of like watching old films or TV shows that were made way before I was born. As I’m watching, I realise that I’m seeing a world that existed before I was born and, although I am the locus of my own little world - the centre of the universe as I perceive it - it’s really rather humbling to see that, shock and horror, the world, the universe - and life itself - really did just fine before I shuffled onto this mortal coil. The trees still grew, the sun still shone, the seasons still progressed in their cyclic rhythm and people still lived and loved and ate and sleep and endured all their own particular joys and sorrows. In short, the world did just fine without me - and I have no doubt that once the journey I’m on here ends it will continue to do just fine.

This might sound quite obvious to you, but if you think about it, it’s quite an important realisation. Each of us is the centre of our own particular universe and all too often we get unconsiously inflated with our own importance. Our problems, our difficulties, our fears and opinions, likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams are endowed with an ABSOLUTE IMPORTANCE that, in reality, they simply don’t possess. We take ourselves, our thoughts, our beliefs and our determination to manipulate the outer world in a way that makes brings it in line with our personal preferences so very very seriously.

It's one of those things that is sometimes easier to see in others than in ourselves. I'm sure you've encountered many people who take themselves and 'their lives’ so very seriously that they base their every waking moment under the delusion that the world will spin off its axis if they don’t get their way, if they can’t resolve their particular difficulties or make life conform to what they think it should be? Living life with this intensity and seriousness, always struggling and striving and viewing your internal map of reality as being ABSOLUTE truth rather than merely subjective truth...well, it can’t be good for your health, can it? And surely it also strips the joy out of life? When we’re so busy trying to make things happen, trying to force life, the world and others to be what we think they ‘should’ be, we miss what life actually is. Go out for a walk somewhere - anywhere. I guarantee you that you'll see lots of people that are walking about, present in body but absent in mind. You can just tell by looking at these people that their minds are completely elsewhere, no doubt worrying about various problems and constructing mental scenarios and re-running arguments in their heads. And it doesn’t matter how beautiful a day it is, or how gorgeous the scenery; that person isn’t taking in any of it. They are too busy worrying about their ‘life’ that...well, they’re completely missing life!

I guess what I’m saying is that we all need to lighten up. We tread so heavily upon the earth, always wrapped up in our mindstuff (or ‘mindcrap’ as I often prefer to term it), totally believing that our thoughts and difficulties have the utmost importance and the universe will abruptly implode on itself if we can’t get things to work out the way we think they should. We struggle and fight against life, always trying to make it adhere to our own opinion of how it should be, unconsciously believing that our mental conceptions of reality and our fears and hopes have an ABSOLUTE IMPORTANCE...when in fact, they have only a very RELATIVE IMPORTANCE (relative to us, and perhaps a few people in our small sphere of influence).

I got caught up in mindcrap this week and it dragged me right down and triggered the emotional chain-reaction that tends to perpetuate and feed it. Heavy, negative thoughts, when invested with an illusory ABSOLUTE importance and sense of ‘self’ (for instance ‘I think this’, ‘I think that’ - a conceit in which we mistake the essence of WHO we are as being synonymous with mere thoughts or concepts) generate painful emotions, including fear, anger, depression. The body can’t distinguish between an imagined threat or an actual threat, which is why it produces the same emotional responses in either case (to test this, start imagining that someone close to you has died - and you’ll begin to elicit the emotions of sadness and grief as if that person actually had died. That is the power of the mind!). I kicked it, however! I recognised that all the problems and worries I was getting so anxious about were really all just in my mind - thoughts of ‘what if’ and ways of interpreting current situations in a negative light, forgetting that events in themselves are always neutral - it’s our interpretation of them that renders them 'good' or 'bad'. This ability to step out of a heavy depressive state by questioning the mental content that is generating it is worth more than all the money and gold in the world. I hope that by sharing this, I might in some way help others to do likewise.

My basic message is to stop taking the content of mind so seriously. Recognise that all your thoughts, beliefs and interpretations of reality (including how you think things ‘should’ be) are a fabrication of mind. The ABSOLUTE IMPORTANCE you attach to your hopes and fears and your attempts at making life what you think it should be is also an illusion; these things have only RELATIVE IMPORTANCE and, really, in the grand scheme of life in all its infinite and eternal complexity - not very much importance at all. As I said before, I like to remind myself that life ran quite smoothly before I was born (and proceeded to assume a role of supreme importance as the centre of the universe, as most people tend to do!). And there’s every evidence to suggest life will continue to do just fine once I’ve gone.

In the words of Walter Hagen:

"Don't worry, don't hurry. You're only here for a short visit, so be sure to stop and smell the flowers."

Thoughts on life, death and beyond

My grandparents with my Mum, taken in the West Coast of Scotland, Summer 2000

A few nights ago I dreamt of my grandfather, who sadly passed on in 2004. I was back in his and my grandmother's house and oh my god, it was JUST LIKE I WAS THERE. Even in the dream i started crying because i realised how much i missed it, how much I missed THEM and how big a part of my life they were. Every single detail was there, even things I'd long forgotten. it wasnt the happiest time i was there in my dream, either - it was after granny had gone into a nursing home and my grandad was alone and really his whole world had disappeared. it was so difficult. i really miss them both. the end almost seems cruel from a certain perspective and yet, ultimately, all was well.

i’d like to believe they are still here, with us. recently i’ve willingly dismantled all my old beliefs and i dont currently know what to believe. ive even been open to the possibility of nothingness after death. nothingness before death as well - and even during life. in my heart, what do i feel? in my heart i totally believe in a continuity - because i believe that the form, the physical self is only a very small part of this whole that we are. we’re just a speck of dust when compared to the vastness of our true self; our true nature. does that true nature continue in an individualised fashion? I’d have to say YES. I know in my heart that my grandparents are still here. still alive. in fact, more alive than ever. the form can only express a limited aspect of our true nature, very limited, and as the form gradually dissolves that expression becomes narrower and narrower, until it's just like a very faint, intermittent trickle of water; the water being reflective of our essential nature or spirit.

I remember once sitting looking at a painting in a glass frame. In the glass I could see a reflection of the neighbours outside; I saw their car pulling into the drive and them getting out and unloading shopping bags from the boot, before going inside. It was all there, reflected in the painting. I'll never forget the dawning realisation that crept up on me as I observed this. It made me feel that this is perhaps all that our phenomenal world is; a reflected image of something on a transparent medium - an illusion, a pale reflection of something that’s actually happening elsewhere. you might look at the picture and the reflection that was happening in it and see it as the whole truth, the whole reality - but in truth, it was but a reflection of something infinitely greater. the small, limited human mind might zero in on the reflection and think it is the whole truth; but in reality, it's just an illusion and there's a whole universe beyond that phenomenal apparition....a universe that's quite beyond the capacity of our minds to even begin to imagine. this, THIS - all of it, all of phenomenal ‘reality’ is just a pale reflection of an infinitely greater reality.

So my grandparents...they've stepped out of my perceived reflection of reality for now, and yet I still feel them, very close. in some ways i often feel them as more a part of my life now than they ever were and thats rather strange, but nonetheless true. before they were separated by space and time, but now i feel those boundaries are gone - and it’s like they are linked with me even more closely. My Grandad was a gentle, unassuming presence so i ‘feel’ him quite subtly, but my Granny was a force of nature; a strong, dominant, loving and vivacious personality and i feel her very strongly; it’s almost as though i can sense her sharing opinions, and comments and laughter, as well as love and support.

phenomenal reality is a strange thing. outwardly, in the world of form i see so much loss - the loss of my grandparents, of much the rest of my extended family, of friends and health and an ‘outer life’, i can see the encroachment of aging as a reminder of the impermanence of this always-terminal condition we call 'life' - in others and even in myself. i watch as a flower i pick from the garden, radiant with beauty and the lustrousness of life gradually crumples and dissolves into a dry, lifeless husk.

and its ok. waves come and then they dissolve back into the ocean. can i be at peace with it? Well, why not? Would you want the waves to be any other way? they are as they are. we are as we are. life is as it is. flow with it, let it be, let yourself ‘be lived by life’ rather than thinking that we have to be in the pilot seat and ‘live life’ (the ultimate ego delusion and yet so so pervasive and convincing at times!). sitting in the garden, surrounded by a slowly blossoming tree, shrubs and plants bursting into life with fresh, vibrant green; cloudless blue skies, radiant sunshine, a gentle breeze rippling so delicately through the leaves and grass and all the various birds going about their business, singing so sweetly just because that’s what they do...it’s life.

Imagine if a bird developed an ego and got the notion that it ‘had a life’, with things to do, achievements to gain, plans to make and appearances to keep; I guess there’s nothing you could do to convince that bird that all of that mindstuff was ultimately a fabrication. The birds don’t ‘have’ a life any more than the blades of grass - or in fact, us. That would be a mental conceptualisation. Ultimately, we just ARE life; life living itself. If we could really get back in tune with nature (of which we are really a part) then we’d see that it’s pointing us the way back to wholeness, peace, purpose and unity: just BE as you are. Let your true nature emerge and be at one with life; you don’t ‘have’ a life...you are life.