It’s a conundrum. I have no idea what is of the greatest value. I find it important to share what is happening in our world, and yet I can’t help but think that the sharing is redundant, that you already know about the world’s depravity, its deep dive into cruelty, its lack of a heart-based compass. This isn’t new. Only the faces it wears change from day to day, from moment to moment.

So, it seems to me that the greatest value I can offer is telling you in thousands of ways that it’s going to be okay, that is already is. Unfortunately, that okayness isn’t in the material realm, unless you are okay with things not being okay, unless you don’t mind what appears.

That is nigh impossible when you still see this world as reality. And honestly, how could you not? It feels damn real. Watching people suffer hurts the heart, wrings tears from the eyes, twisting the gut, and anchoring you materially right here. Holding your breath as a masked man throws a neighbor to the ground creates an absence in your chest, an absence that feels pressurized, about to blow. The mind, that’s another timebomb, ticking stealthily in the background creating stories about what all of this means and where it is heading.

It all feels real. The sensations, the emotions, the mental meanderings, all real and viscerally present. With what is happening, how can anyone be okay?

When the display grabs you, when you feel like you’re spinning inside it, when you need to grab onto the edge to keep from being pulled in deeper, you can rest in the breath, feel the quiet beneath the noise, the energy of life pulsing throughout it all.

But once again, that feels impossible when the trap has sprung and you believe it is the warp and woof of life now. There is a little trick than Anrael and I put into words (as best we could) during our years of inquiry while we were writing ‘The Holy Fool’. I haven’t thought about it for years now, but I have often used its ingrained tools.

The ask: Disbelieve appearances: what you see, the sensations telling you a story, your mind interpreting the story, basically everything the material worldview offers.

This leap of faith sounds impossible at first, but it isn’t and is the only way I have found to see what is actually here, to see the beauty inherent to all humans, the light that infuses everything, the magic in which we play. It’s all here but it requires us to put down childish ways, the beliefs that were handed down to us, and open to not knowing anything.

We really don’t know. We can’t see the overwhelming majority of what there is to see. Even if we consider the material world to be reality, scientists are saying that we can only see .00035% of what’s here. Beyond our evolutionary capacity, a veil is pulled over our senses, blinding us to the beauty, enslaving us within the material stickiness.

If we could see more, we would see there is no such thing as death, that death is dimensional change, that we are far from alone when we are the only one around.

It is common to believe that we know we don’t know, which is nothing more than a type of believing. It’s a safe belief. We can say we don’t know without sacrificing our trust in the visible, in what we take for granted, the givens, the things we damn well know. It’s a pretend knowing, a make-believe agreement that pads the gap between the solidity we believe is present and the glimpses we get of something that is a long way from solid.

Disbelieving appearances is necessary to move from the ordinary, everyday visible (which is made up of our pact with the material world and our concepts and ideas about our place in it) to the infinite invisible (no definition available). This simple movement, genuinely offered, places us on the altar of uncertainty.

Once placed, the trust in appearances begins to dissolve. It wasn’t instantaneous in my case, but it was steady. It was easier to return to the breath, to stop and see the beauty, to remember I have no clue as to what is actually happening, to feel the magic, the buzz, the hum of aliveness … and to recognize and appreciate all that this avatar, the woman playing her role in the material world, does, both by her actions in the world, and as the aliveness coursing through her.

Does it change the outer? Maybe. Maybe not. Love, what this disbelief or unbelief is, cannot help but alter the world even when it is not yet powerful enough, has not yet merged sufficiently with other infinitely alive vessels, to overwrite the hate, hate being nothing more than a temporary overwriting of love’s codes.

It does, however, change life for me. I can be with whatever arises as it is without the grasping, the clinging, the anxiety of good lord! What’s next? In today’s world, that all by itself, is a blessing.

It’s a front row seat to the movies. Sometimes I get taken in and play my role with gusto, yet aware of the incompleteness of this reality. Sometimes I get to go along for the ride not quite in but not quite out, like in a dream. Sometimes I am awash in compassion and sometimes I simply see, see the stories running the stories, running the players.

None of which is possible while in the thrall of the normal way of being, absorbed in the material world view. Seeing clearly, recognizing the play of shadow and light, the dance of mystical and ordinary, the hum of energy dancing in my fingertips, is present, always present, but unavailable to me while I believe in the appearances, while I play my assigned role as we all have been taught since we were born.

It’s not an escape. It offers respite at first, and in time, freedom from the cruelty.

It’s not an attempt to ascend. It offers fully human, fully experienced, fully alive, fully present engagement.

It’s not abandoning the fight. It is recognizing what the fight actually is and offers the ability to act powerfully.

Try it. Genuinely. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to living in life’s exquisitely convincing tale.

Image: Altar, AI WordPress by Amaya

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