Let’s just get it over with and flat out admit that life isn’t a bowl of cherries. It is tough and cruel. It strips us of everything, leaving nothing to chance. There’s a reason we are afraid, a reason we don’t trust, a reason we feel the need to be vigilant, a reason we are expecting the next bad thing. One. Always. Shows. Up. Life, while it might be lovely and kind at times, has a wicked streak.

Can you honestly say it isn’t so? You want to. You want the truth to be something better. You know you do. If you just get it right, if you work harder, think smarter, read the right book, find the right teacher … all those ifs. Has it worked yet?

‘If’ is the definition of suffering, right there along with ‘when’.

Few there are who are willing to stare down reality, let alone feel the actuality of it. To grok the nature of duality, the nature of the light that must have its dark, is to admit it into the deepest recesses of the body mind soul, to finally face life on its terms rather than the fairytale everyone points to, the one that is always just out of reach … for you. Walking into the dragon’s den with no hope of finding a way past, a way out, seems insane. No one would willingly stand a hair’s breadth away from the fire-breathing dragon and die to all the ideas stored within … how you’re going to figure it out; how you’re going to wake up and beat the odds; how you’re finally going to rig the game in your favor. Right?

To stop is to let it all burn down to the ground. It’s going to anyway, so why not now? 

I admit, for me at least, it felt like a total loss, a wipe out, a big fat failure, but it was tricky. It didn’t happen until I reached the point of utter futility, where I unavoidably knew there was nothing I could do, so there was no point in lying to myself, no point in trying anymore. In that sense, it wasn’t something I did, but something I saw. That clear seeing is full. stop. Surrender, nothing held back because, heck, what’s the point? 

At this point 😉 there is still identification with the appearance, but the will to fight life is bleeding out, drop by drop, taking with it the painful misidentification, the separately identified awareness, bit by bit, bite by bite, replacing it with … nothing.

Does that bring a smile or a cringe? It’s really not as bad as it sounds.  

Admitting, deeply admitting, that life is black and white, and every shade of grey, is truly freeing. I suspect it is the only freedom with any staying power there is while we are ensconced in this game of life, but what do I know. I know my story … not yours.  

Putting down my boxing gloves, letting life be what it is, as it is, is a get-out-of-jail-free card, only you don’t actually get out. I’m still in the game, still playing the character in my life’s story. I’m just not as attached to making it better, not as identified with my character’s joys and woes. That sounds less alive, but it is not. If anything it is exquisitely more alive, happily less dramatic, more sweetly understanding of the preciousness of life – all life.  

Life is the game of infinity at play, this that is not two playing at duality. When we are caught in the story we argue with life … and often feel like a loser. There is no way to have a one-sided conversation, a one-sided life in duality. The odds are never in our favor in this rigged game, but seeing that, trusting life to be as it is, takes the stinger out, rendering this game fun — not fun like the separate mind thinks fun should be, but different fun, alive fun, not-braced for impact fun. More like a fun-house ride fun — scary, exciting, all-in totally alive fun. 

Slipping the noose of identity is not what you think or what you’ve been told. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the death of you. It’s not being stuck in the worst trauma imaginable for eternity. I can tell you what it’s not, that’s all. It’s not anything you think it is, anything you could ever think it is. The mystics through the eons have only been able to point, have only used words that were barren scarecrows of actuality. That is literally, supremely beautifully all that could be said.

So … simply notice and feel the pull to avoid life, to see it as untrustworthy, to name and blame it, to step back, to hold it at arm’s length. Notice. Feel. That’s all.