In-Shape
Health
Club Swimming Pool, Napa, California, USA
February 10. 2021
"It's much easier to ride
the horse
in the direction he's going."
...
Life is
dangerous.
Life is risky. Life is uncertain. In my youth I spent a
lot of time figuring out ways to have it be safe, stable,
and certain. When it stayed
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain, I began fervently searching for ie I embarked on
a quest to find
the secret,
the inside
scoop
I hadn't yet discovered which I was certain I would
discover if I searched long enough and hard enough - like some kind of
enlightened,
karmic way of being, in response to which life would
always be safe, stable, and certain. And the more I didn't discover
that secret,
the more I held it as a failure to discover it on my part, so the more
I doubled and re-doubled my efforts to find it.
And then one day I discovered
that secret.
I did. I really did (thank you
Werner!).
Discovering it, blew me away. And when I discovered it, I realized that
the secret
that I took so long to discover, wasn't ever out of my reach. In fact
it was always obvious, always hiding in plain sight (so to
speak) all the time. When I discovered it, I also realized the reason
why I hadn't discovered it sooner. It's this:
the secret
is there ... is ... no ...
secret!
Life actually isdangerous,
risky, and uncertain from time to time - ask the dinosaurs ("Life is
pretty groovy, isn't it Dino?", "Yes it is Fred", "Hey! Is that an
asteroid I see coming toward us?"). So
the secret
is there's no
secret.
Rather than being a failure on my part, it was just my hesitancy to
grasp what I inadvertently knew all those years ago that stopped me
realizing it sooner.
Our hopeless,
futile
yearning for life to be safe, stable, and certain, is our unconscious
hankering for it to be lived (in a word) in homeostasis -
in much the same way as it was for us in utero before we
were born. These days, the best way to live life in homeostasis is to
arrange to be suspended in a bath of tepid
water,
and fed intravenously inside of a concrete bunker. Like all of us I
suppose, I once aspired to homeostasis BIG time. These days I no longer
aspire to it. Indeed, now I have reservations about it, not the least
of which is that aspiring to homeostasis actually misses the
mark in life. Believing life shouldn't be
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain, leads to the false assumption when it is, that
something's
wrong.
And when it is, really
nothing's wrong.
Life just is
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain from time to time.
noun
the ability or tendency of a living organism, cell, or group to keep
the conditions inside it the same despite any changes in the
conditions around it, or this state of internal balance
<unquote>
Rather than hanker for homeostasis in
the face
of life's
danger,
risk, and uncertainty, what I notice now is how I'm being
in
the face
of life's circumstances if they're
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain. That's a smarter, nobler, more pragmatic use of
my life than looking for ways to have life always be safe, stable, and
certain ie than hankering for homeostasis. My ability to
be in
the face
of life when it's
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain, starts with realizing that there's
nothing
wrong
with life when it's
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain. I've stopped hankering for homeostasis. My
circumstances haven't changed. What's shifted BIG time, is my
willingness to include any and all of my circumstances. I
catch myself when I notice I'm hamstrung by
"Something's
wrong
...", and resume including my circumstances, whatever they are.
There's something else which I assert is worth noting about the
futility of hankering for homeostasis and its static, neonatal comfort,
which is this:
Life itself
is never static, is it? That much is abundantly clear. Look around you.
Life never stays long with what's already in place ie with what's
already accomplished.
Life itself
is always looking to see
what's next.
Life itself
is always looking to generate
what's next.
In this regard, hankering for homeostasis is fundamentally at odds with
the direction in which
Life itself
is
inexorably
going. It's this being at odds with the direction in which
Life itself
is going, which in and of itself brings with it its own raft of
trouble.
I used to like homeostasis. A lot. These days I don't like it as much
as I used to. I have reservations now. Going with life in the direction
it's going, rather than hankering for homeostasis when things get
dangerous,
risky, and uncertain, is actually the smarter, nobler, more pragmatic,
and easier solution.