Suffering. Google says it’s the number one search term people use to find this blog. Next up are ayahuasca and vision quest, suggesting – appropriately enough – that this website is a destination for people seeking a way out of their pain.
If you’re one of them let me save you some time. Looking back over the five years or so since my own existential crash and burn I can safely say this: ayahuasca, vision quests, sweat lodges, crystals, chakras, scripture of any kind, smudging, meditation and so much more are all highly useful in an analgesic kind of way. Which is to say, they’ll temporarily mute the pain, but they’re not going to heal what ultimately ails you.
Looking for a mind-blowing experience? By all means head down to the Amazon and gag down some ayahuasca. Want some intense one-on-one time with yourself? A Vision Quest is a terrific approach (with the added bonus of shedding some unwanted pounds). I’m just saying don’t do these things expecting that life – and your suffering – won’t be waiting for you when you get home.
At this stage in the game it seems pretty clear to me that only one thing works: a complete and unfettered embrace of the truth. Just be careful with that word because it’s very likely not what you think.
For years I erroneously imagined that phrases like “the truth shall set you free” simply meant I had to be honest with those around me. You know, don’t shake the hand of your business partner with one hand while screwing him with the other; don’t cheat on your mate; don’t tell your kids one thing but do another; and so on. By being scrupulous with my word I could walk with head held high, clean conscience and all.
So far so good, right? But remember, we’re talking about humans here, which is to say, human truth is disturbingly malleable. Your truth may not necessarily be mine and vice versa. Human truth is cheap and abundant and constantly being edited, redacted, and improved upon. Look no farther than the Bible for evidence of how rapidly and constantly human truth evolves.
How many times have you wagged your finger at someone truly “knowing” something to be true only to discover through, say, the accumulating wisdom of age, just how wrong you were? (Personally speaking it is a wonder I don’t have carpel tunnel in my wagging finger.) Scan down to the comments section of any online news story and you’re instantly hip-deep in every imaginable disagreement about its content and meaning. A married couple of 40 years still cannot agree on any number of truths that govern their lives.
Here’s the problem: The “truth” for each of us is based on a mind uniquely conditioned by its environment, history, education, family, peer network, and so on. As a child living in India I remembering taking the T-bone scraps from my family’s dinner out to a pack of wild dogs my brother and I had unofficially adopted. As I searched for the dogs one of the children from a particularly poor local family approached begging me for the bones. Despite his entreaties I fed the bones to the dogs. When I returned home I shared the story with my mother who scolded me for not giving the bones to the boy. “His family would have made soup out of those bones for a week,” she said. But…. these were table scraps and in America we don’t feed humans table scraps! But…. the Indians don’t eat beef because they view cows as sacred and India is awash in cows that they won’t eat so wasn’t this boy denying his own religion? But…. the dogs needs to eat too and if they can’t even get scraps how will they survive!?
You can see the challenge for an 8-year-old brain. Lots of competing human “truths” each mired in their own contextually-based, conditioned thinking. Now let’s ratchet it up a bit and talk about race, abortion, gay marriage….
So here’s what has been discovered on this end of the wagging finger: the determined pursuit of your mind’s truth may leave your ego feeling good about itself but, like a well-intentioned sweat lodge, it ain’t going to heal what ails you. After all, the world is filled with painfully honest people who are still suffering miserably.
So what kind of truth really does “free” us of our suffering?
Real truth (I know, I know, the irony!) starts and ends with you. It has nothing to do with the world around you and could care less about the truth of your neighbor, priest, guru or spouse. Indeed, it forces you to decouple from your mate, children, parents, government, friends, community, church, nation, and all the other little dependencies you’ve spent your life associating with and “stand naked before god.”
This kind of truth doesn’t give a damn what you think or believe or feel because it knows that all those thoughts and feelings have been inherited. Indeed, it has but one commandment: question everything.
Which helps to explain why 99.9999% of humans avoid this kind of truth. We don’t like examining and eventually seeing through our labels because we are, in essence, letting go of our very existence. I mean, if I truly recognize that I have nothing to do with this body, that the thoughts popping in and out of awareness are not being prompted by me, that the entire story of me including the very language with which I tell that story is inherited/learned, what is left?
How can I continue to engage in my little dramas, gossip about and judge others, love/hate anything, if the whole thing is seen to be as insubstantial as a dream? Or, apropos to this site, how can I suffer if it is seen that there is no “I” there to suffer?
Today, a few years removed from my many adventures in Amazonian shamanism, vision questing and other spiritual exercises, I am really only interested in discovering the truth of “I.” What else is there?
