The journey inward, if earnestly pursued, begins to reveal a hideous truth: that I, and all others, are one and the same thing. There, just at the edge of my perception, I begin to see that aside from the window dressing each of us calls ‘my life,’ there is nothing. All of the characters and settings, the adventures and dreams, are imagined imaginings signifying nothing.
These days I see that I am poised, as it were, with one foot in that old life, the other tentatively considering a wholesale plunge toward the next. But it’s a terrifying prospect to this old Doug, the one averse to new tricks. Who am I in the absence of I? Yes, it’s a kind of living death, a ‘dying daily to this life.’
The thing is, I am so conditioned to the idea of taking up grandiose life changes. You know the kind, new relationships, jobs, exercise regimes. Even spiritual tactics.
But this is not any of those – this is abandoning all that has been known, standing naked before God and fully conceding, ‘thy will, not mine, be done.’ It’s a commitment to a living suicide.
It’s also the ultimate horror story – Stephen King has nothing on this kind of terror. For even in the grisliest of deaths, don’t we breathe a bit easier knowing the deceased has ‘moved on’ toward a reboot in the afterlife (or for the pretend atheists, a permanent power outage). Meaning, the suffering is done, the victim may be gone, ‘but at least he/she is no longer suffering,’ no longer a confused inmate in this unrequested thing called existence?
Letting go of this life, fully surrendering it to the Power That Be, is wholly different. I am asking for bodily death, for complete dementia, for my identity to be wiped clean like a tired old computer.
And there is no choice. There’s never been any choice. It’s not just that something has got hold of me and inexorably pulling me toward what, exactly? It’s that it’s fairly clear this was planned from the beginning. When I gaze back over any of my life’s chapters, the blueprint was there, I just couldn’t see it, being hip-deep in it and all.
A new life wasn’t merely conceived those many years ago, the entire life was conceived. Every breath of this journey has puffed wind into its life’s sails, propelling it toward, again, a destination not just unknown but, if the sages are to be believed, inconceivable.
We are all on the same journey, of course, some moving backward, some stagnating, some lurching and stumbling two steps forward and one back, still others – a tiny fraction – crossing the line. “Many are called, few are chosen.”
At the same time the game is still being played, the Doug thing still operating to code. As with the spiritual journey, that journey too goes unbidden, unrequested. But there is some real separation now, enough at least to see the inane folly of human existence and a growing allergy to being a participant in it.
Robert Adams told his followers that each of us is ‘effortless, choiceless, pure awareness.’ Sounds right. At least the effortless, choiceless part. It’s like that Ronald Spiers quote in Band of Brothers, the one where he is attempting to comfort a terrified soldier huddled in a foxhole: “The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead.”
I suppose that’s what I’m talking about here. I’m already dead. All of us are. Because we were never really alive. Or as the sages said, there is no birth, no death, only BEING. Effortless, choiceless, pure awareness.
But because Doug remains, Doug is an impediment to the recognition, the realization of this truth. So Doug must go, if not in this life, the next. To reiterate, the Doug thing has no choice. Never has.
There is some good news in this choiceless picture, some good news for that quaking, terrified ego desperately trying to keep the charade going: there is no choice. In other words, yes, lacking choice is terrifying. But it also can be liberating.
In the final scene from the film, My Life, the dying protagonist who, like all of us, has spent his life mistakenly imagining itself in control, managing, hanging on, at last surrenders to what is, arms raised triumphantly on the rollercoaster that for so long terrified him.
I’m still hanging on. No mistake there. But it’s increasingly clear I can’t. Well, I can, but it makes for a miserable ride.
Why do I – why do we – hang on? Because – at least to me – we are asked to surrender to the Unknown. Isn’t that why we fear death? Scary stuff.
So both journeys continue, two feet spread-eagled, one foot attempting to remove itself, the other to plant itself forward. I’m just hoping the owner-operator of this ride goes gentle – for us all.
