Being there. It means many things to many people. Presence and the
ability to maintain it at all times. Enlightenment and the completion
of or the solution to the ongoing inner inquiry. Living the fruition of
our most cherished dreams of how we see ourselves and our lives
eventually turning out.
For many, being there implies waiting until some obscure secret has
been learned. For others, being there implies having undone all the
wrong mental twists and turns carried forward from the past. For me
personally, being there would be living a life which always worked
automatically and would not require much effort on my part (I had not
yet distinguished responsibility then).
But like Gertrude Stein said referring to her razed childhood home in
Oakland "There's no there there" (erroneously assumed to refer to
Oakland itself), there's no there being there either.
There are no secrets. The emperor has no clothes. A master is someone
who found out. There is nothing to get. This is it. And that's hard to
get. We're addicted to "this isn't it". Or at least we're addicted to
"this isn't it - yet!".
We turn to science, to religion, to beer, to stream of consciousness
blabbering gossip for solace to fill the space when the stars and the
moon offer none. This couldn't be it we say. This isn't
the way it's supposed to be we say. There's gotta be
more than this we say ... in the lilting intonation of a
question even though it's spoken as an exclamation.
I assert the source of this state of affairs when we live in a world to
which we do not ascribe this-is-it-ness has more to do with how
we are naturally constructed and less to do with something being wrong
with us or with the world in which we're living or with any situation
or set of circumstances in it.
Consider this: there is a guard - your mind - to look after your Being.
The guard adheres to this formula: to protect your Being it can not
be your Being. Although your mind and your Being are one in the
creature you are, oneness is not a useful distinction for a guard to
make. A guard needs to keep an eye on its charge. To do that it has to
separate itself from its charge.
This is how the illusion of duality and separation is born and becomes
entrenched in the beingsphere.
I propose regarding "this isn't it" not as a statement originating
from your Being nor as a statement about Life. If it were either it
would be patently absurd. How can this not be it when plainly we are
here? Rather it is a statement originating from your mind about your
Being. When your mind says "this isn't it" it's not speaking about
Life. It's speaking about your Being as it distinguishes itself from
your Being in order to guard it. Your mind must say that
because it's built into its function to say it. If it wasn't it
couldn't guard your Being.
The lifeguard with a wary eye stays out of the pool ...
It is the lot of we human beings coming from "this isn't it" to muddy
our pool by making the distinction "being there" in the first place
like a goal to attain or a better way to be. Inevitably the implication
in distinguishing being there is that we are not there or that we are
not there yet, both of which foster ennui.