By many of the comments my posts receive or messages that are sent, it seems that a lot of people see me as a bit of a paradox. The questions that float in the air are understandable. Heck, in fact I’d be surprised if they weren’t. Minds want to understand even though that is impossible, and when they don’t they default to thinking that they do.

So here’s a medley of the questions, paraphrased of course: Having realized what life is, what you are, why would you write about the mundane things in life? Why write about humanity at war with itself if there is not two? Or the existence of pain and suffering when nothing actually exists? Why do you bother attempting to light the path for the troubled to follow? Why do you try to help people recognize what they seek when it is what they already are, and is as you say, that which cannot be found? After all, if there really is no ultimate control, if life is doing everything and nothing, if there is no me or you, what’s the point … unless of course, you are trying to convince yourself, unless you haven’t actually realized what you are.

They are truly kind of funny comments, to me at least. Guessing not so much for those who wrote them.

What if there isn’t any point? Writing happens. Words appear. I rarely know what is being written even while the writing is taking place. If there’s a point, it’s not one I know about.

The character I play, the one you see as me, hasn’t realized anything. She is a character in the play of life, in leela. She feels love and anger, compassion and heartbreak. She lives and dies. So you are absolutely right about Amaya not realizing anything. Although you’d be mistaken to believe that I am trying to convince myself of something. 

Who is this one who realizes, or on the other hand, is at best, fooling herself, at worse, a con woman, a grand fake? What if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, but isn’t actually a duck? See, that’s what the mind can’t get. If the mind sees a duck, it’s a duck. It damn well better be a duck. It quacks. It even has feathers, but that little duck ain’t what you think. Nothing is what we think it is.

Minds will never get this. Minds can’t get this because mind is part of the illusion. They expect things to make sense, for the church bell to sound when they tug on the rope. It’s the Zen koan, what is the sound of one hand clapping? They want meaning and purpose, right and wrong, actions and predictable results. They can’t tolerate illogical, pointless uncertainty. They believe in extraordinary and mundane, spiritual and secular. The idea that they are both the same, both the seamless sameness, both are and are not, is a hill too far, a hill the mind is willing to die on.

Nothing exists in the way most think, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is nothing. That nothing is far more precious than any prize you can imagine, any goal that you believe is out there. This is stunningly beautiful, indeed, stunning the mind into obeisance, silencing the ego’s prattling, opening the heart so wide it can never ever be closed again. That we (who aren’t) are given to experience a world (that isn’t) is life’s true miracle. See that and nothing, absolutely nothing, stands in the way of bottomless love for the entirety of creation, even when it appears that something does, that judgement exists, that preferences abound.

What’s the point? I am laughing now. Why do I do what I do? I don’t have an answer, and I am okay with that. I don’t need one anymore. That would have driven the previous me bonkers.

I love the question, if there is no me and you, why do you ___? That one kind of has the answer built in but you don’t see it when you’re wanting to be right, when you are trying to make your point. In that context, who is this me who is doing something. Life does. I am the appearance of life life-ing and in this case, of life writing. My words are part of the totality, just a few data points that come together with the totality of experience, yours, mine, and ours.

I don’t choose what to write. Life does. To the character it seems like I choose, like I have preferences, but in reality the choices have me, as do the preferences.

The only difference between me now and me a few years ago is the solid certainty, the buy-in to the material world view, the plague of seriousity that consume most lives. The words that come through may seem serious, may even appear like they’re important at times, and maybe they are. I don’t know if that is true or false, and that not knowing sets me free. I am not a prisoner to the play. While I’m in the play, a character playing her role, whatever that role may be, I am consciously aware I am not and have never been.

Amaya Gayle is the author of 6 books, the latest Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY

Image: Stockcake.com Mystical Duck