By Amaya Gayle Gregory —
There are some things we simply know, even though we squirm a bit putting that knowing into words. It feels more accurate to say what it isn’t but even that is filled with potholes … deep potholes, lose your car in them, deep.
It seems to me that reality is so much more than I am capable of thinking, while being much less, simultaneously. Can anyone say paradox! What is real? That’s the million-dollar question and the answer shifts with how you define ‘real’.
My definition, the standard operating definition familiar to most every human alive, was obliterated years ago. Being the creative force I am, I’ve been playing with words, like a game of Love Scrabble ever since, painstakingly drawing out vowels and consonants to piece together definitions, but as soon as I have one it goes poof!
Every time I contrive to assemble a pretty smattering of words, I end up laughing at myself, at the insanity of wordsmithing reality. It feels impossible to say what this is, what reality is, but I play the game anyway. What else is a girl with no momentum to do anything gonna do? I’ve come up with hundreds of What This Isn’t renderings, but with infinity’s built-in traps, you know, those ones that send you down a chute, off in a different direction just when you’re getting close, I end up giggling on the floor. Silly me. Good thing I find me, and my life, quite funny.
As soon as I say, reality isn’t this, I am already wrong, bonked on the head and left for dead. Reality isn’t any ‘thing’ that can be named, or is it? Either way it isn’t what we commonly thing of as ‘is not’. It is, but not at all what ‘is’ used to mean. The playdate with words ends up being a perpetual joke of circular logic, and if I took it seriously, but why would I, I would suffer.
I find humor to be a great antidote, for life is nothing if not a burlesque dramady show, all dressed up, make believe making believe, with a little Marcel Marceau and the Three Stooges thrown in for good measure.
Bloody hell, this is so not what I thought not that long ago. I was such a grave Gayle, certain that I would figure it out if I just remained focused. Vigilance! Don’t let up for one minute! God no! Don’t crack a smile!! If only I’d known then what I know now. Life could have been a lot more fun. Ah … but I wasn’t, and that’s kind of funny too.
There is a story my first teacher taught me. It is a story of The Two Doors. Door number one is the door to the spiritual party. Walk through that door and you get to play with crystals, explore ancient religions, astral travel to new dimensions, aspire to ascension. You can play with whatever you find attractive. Depending on which one chooses you your definition of reality will adjust to fit your experience. You can even discover techniques to help you do your inner work, to meet your shadow. Hell, you can find enough new things there to last lifetimes. In fact, you have.
Door number two isn’t very interesting. Most don’t bother to peek inside, let alone walk through that door. It looks like nothing. It is quite void of allure. You don’t choose door two, it chooses you. To see inside, you literally have to trip into it. As my teacher said, the key isn’t to choose door two. You can’t. It’s to know that door number one, regardless of the trappings you’re into, is a trap.
I stumbled into door number two totally unawares. It appeared when all hope of altering my experience died, when I surrendered, not of my own volition, but because there was literally nowhere left to go, nothing left to do. Tripping through that door, my experience of life was instantly blown apart, taking every last concept and idea with it, and curiously has continued to deconstruct the attendant physical crystallization ever since.
One moment I was a person, living in a world, struggling to survive, the next I was watching myself doing my thing, but no longer identified, not just with myself, but with anything at all. To say it a bit differently, I realized that life, the world, me, you, the ten thousand things of Taoist tradition, was some sort of cool simulation, and I was not the one in the sim, but awareness of the sim. There was no longer any pull to experience the sim as reality.
The sim goes on. I simply have no skin in that game anymore. Well … that’s not exactly true. The character in the sim called Amaya, mows the lawn, feeds the dog, loves the little pup up, smiles and laughs, giggles a lot, and easily discerns sim believers from those who have been set free. She even gets her buttons pushed but they don’t stay pushed for long. Shit happens. It’s life. It just doesn’t hold the same charge as it used to. The decisions made don’t feel like choices, even while they are being made. That one is hard to explain, easier to live. It’s more like action – reaction, living moment by moment, event by event, without trying to figure it out in advance or afterwards. No berating myself for what I did or didn’t do, just simple basic doing grounded in the underlying recognition that I did what I couldn’t not do.
I used to be tied up in being right, addicted to finding the answer, and now I see fear hidden in the grooves. It’s more than a little sad because it is normal everyday life for those still believing in their character’s action-reaction-ability. It’s not easy or effortless at all. In fact while wrapped in belief we will fight for the right to fight. It’s a tough life. Living the way most do is beyond hard.
I used to live that way. I don’t anymore, so my definition of reality may not be yours.
In the sim but not of it; in the sim and of it. Both realities are accurate concurrently. That’s why a definition is so hard to pin down with words. Laughing now. Words automatically choose sides. Reality – sim reality, or awareness of the sim reality? Both are in play, never not in play. Paradoxes are unavoidable.
None of this matters, it’s just a way to pass the time, a game to play, a fun diversion, no different from life, all of life. It doesn’t matter and it matters absolutely. It’s not real and yet it is. It’s what’s here, and so much more. Life however you define it, is priceless.
Like this, and want to read more? Check out my latest book, Actuality: infinity at play. It’s designed to repair the severed link between the splendor of our experience and the mystery of Actuality. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY
Image: Ramona Cruz-Peters
