Wednesday 1 June 2011

The Illusion of Wrongness (or: it is as it is and it is as it is.)

Earlier this evening I crashed my car, again. I’d just pulled in to an extremely tight spot on the opposite side of the road, and was congratulating myself on a job well done when I suddenly went all discombobulated and threw it full force into the car in front.

The woman looked horrified; as indeed, she might.

“Are you drunk?” she demanded.

“I wish I was,” I replied.

After giving her my details we turned our attention to our respective front ends. Hers just had a few minor scrapes; mine was a hideous leer of deformed plastic and dead metal.
            
            “Typical,” I thought.

I haven’t had this car for long. I crashed it the day I bought it by driving into the front of a friend’s house. That didn’t do a whole lot for its looks: it knocked off one of the wing mirrors and lowered the front end almost to the ground. I was stopped by the traffic police later that evening as I hit Winchester at ninety; mirror flapping wildly like a partly severed limb; sparks flying madly from the bumper as it thundered across the floor of the dual carriageway. The police also asked me if I was drunk.
            
            “I wish I was,” I said.


The first time I crashed the car I was kicking myself for several hours until I remembered: it’s a car. That’s all.  It’s just stuff. And as you’re very probably going to crash it at some point in the future, why not crash it now and get it out the way? And, while you’re at it, investigate the attachment you’ve developed toward this particular object, and renounce it.
Because you know that lasting happiness is not to be found in objects or experiences. Therefore let go of them; instantly and forever.

Everything is a gift from God; regardless of how it appears to me. I can fight against it all I want; I can convince myself that whatever I’m experiencing shouldn’t be happening; I can choose victimhood if I want: but that’s all delusion, and as futile as drunkenness. Why?

Because it is as it is.

The idea that anything is wrong is an illusion. It is identification with thought, which is nothing more than unconscious matter floating through the mind. It is the point of view of limitedness, of separateness, of isolation; rather than the point of view of wholeness, of completeness, of oneness. If I believe that reality is wrong, I’m going to be a very miserable bunny. The secret of happiness is to be ok with whatever happens.

Because it is as it is and it is as it is.