The Trick of Something Missing
El truco de que algo falta
A conversation about how the mind creates a perpetual sense of lack, and how the openness we seek has never actually gone anywhere.
The Trick of Something Missing
A conversation about how the mind creates a perpetual sense of lack, and how the openness we seek has never actually gone anywhere.
And that's the satisfaction and dissatisfaction you were talking about.
There is no satisfaction in the world of that map. Because we keep it permanently in motion, permanently reinforcing the reality of it, it becomes an addiction.
An addiction that we think is satisfaction, but isn't.
Exactly. You imagine satisfaction in the future: "I will be satisfied when, in my worldview, in my map, I get to that thing tomorrow or this afternoon." Then when you get there, the mapping relaxes. You give yourself a little break. You put it in the background and enjoy the satisfaction of simply being. Then you start all over again, and you use that cycle as a way to reinforce the proper functioning of the map. But you don't realize, or we ignore the fact, that the satisfaction actually came from putting the map aside. The satisfaction came from being, from presence.
All of what I'm talking about points to this: you can realize that satisfaction is always present. It's beyond mind. It's before mind.
So it's as though mind comes in and wants to claim that.
The addiction to knowing what we are
No. We want to lose ourselves in mind. The trick is that in mind, we know what we are. A baby does not know what it is. And when we realize our true nature, we go back to that not-knowing. We go back to the awe and openness you see in a newborn: just not knowing, completely being. That hasn't been lost. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's still here, right now, in all of us.
It's just that we layer it and layer it with the knowing of what I am, and therefore I know what everything else is. The key is always the reflecting on "I am what I am," that familiarity. It's the addiction to "I know what I am." And it's not a curse. It's not happening to us. It's not imposed. It's a choice.
Freedom is seeing the choice
The path to freedom is to see that it's a choice. And it's not a choice the mind makes. It's a choice that's happening before, or outside of, the mind. My mind does not choose.
So it's just happening.
Something chooses. The word "something" is a problem because it points to an entity, and it's not an entity that chooses. It's being that chooses. But being isn't an entity. I don't subscribe to the "not choosing" perspective. Something is choosing, but it's choosing freely and creatively.
What we're looking for, what is always present now, is that open beingness you notice in a newborn. It's not gone. It hasn't gone away. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's right now.
That's the trick: not going into the thought that says, "I will get to beingness tomorrow. I will get to be like a newborn tomorrow." It hasn't gone anywhere. And I'm sure that as we talk about it now, you're probably having a taste. It doesn't take much.
You reminded me of when you talked about the awe and wonder of being here. We're talking about infants, and my mother tells a story of when I was born in the hospital. She picked me up, and there were all these other babies, crying or sleeping, but she said my face was just looking around in pure wonder. That's the thing I think about a lot, the thing that I believe never goes away.
Looking past the veil of knowing
You could do that at any moment. Notice any sense that you know what you are and what you're looking at: you're looking at mind. Keep looking further, deeper, closer. Any sense of "I know what I am" and "I know what this is" is a veil of thought.
When that becomes very obvious, then we can invoke the world of mind in a very practical sense, and it becomes very efficient. Because we're no longer doing it to create and preserve this mechanism of knowing, knowing, knowing; I, I, I. Then it's just this beingness, with the mind being accessed for practical things: "Oh, I'm thirsty. I'll grab water. It's over here in the fridge." Very little thinking is necessary. It's like driving a car. It becomes very much a flow.
It's like without touching meaning.
Without having to constantly create a sense of "I know what I am and I know what this is." I'm putting more words on it than it warrants. But it's a position of "I," which, if you observe closely, is a knowing of what I am, and through that, a projection of what this is.
You can look at things you know. You know this is a glass. In the world of the map, this is a glass, and in the reality we are operating in, it serves a purpose. But you can also be looking at it and find that most of the experience is just: wow. There's this beingness to it. Not even "it," because it's just the experience of being alive.
I'm using something simple like a glass as a rather ordinary example, but imagine going for a walk, or watching a sunset. So many ordinary things, because we make them known, we become bored. Boredom is only possible in the mind. And the most marvelous thing of all is another human being.
I say very emphatically: what we are looking for is not lost. It has not gone anywhere. It's right here.
It's miraculous, really.
Yes. That's a word that starts to point to what I'm talking about. It's miraculous, mysterious, beautiful, loving, intimate, always new, always fresh. It can feel like free fall as well, so it feels vulnerable, delicate.
Well, the map tells us we should have a lot of control.
The illusion of control
Right. That always works so well. What you can control with a map is the map. You can keep controlling the idea of control, the imaginary world in which you control. Because that which we believe is controlling is a thought, a concept.
Whenever you have a sense that something is missing, look more closely at now. It feels that something is missing, but actually, there's something in the way.
Which is the belief that something's missing.
Exactly.
The magician's trick
I used to talk about this with a metaphor of a magician performing tricks, because it's something like that. We are the magician, and we're playing a trick on ourselves. But it's actually playful. It's a free movement of playing that trick. Then we forgot we were doing it, so it became a habit, until we start to feel uncomfortable or tired of it.
The first step is to see that it's a trick, not reality. The trick is: something's missing. It really looks like something's missing. It's hard to debate. And everybody is in on it. Everybody believes it, so it's constantly reinforcing this construct.
Once you see it's a trick, you can't unsee it. Like any trick: when you watch a magician, you know it's probably a trick, but it just looks like magic. Then you might notice something that reveals it clearly: the magician does something, and now you see evidence of the trick. You still don't know how it works, but you see that it is a trick.
This is what the mind is doing. What I'm pointing to are different ways in which you can see the trick. Once you see for yourself it's a trick, you really can't fool yourself much longer. The trick is "something's missing." It's very convincing, but still, you can now see it's a trick. Yet you're not fully relieved. You still see the magic. It's still hypnotic because you don't yet understand how it works. You still experience the effect. Until you actually get to understand exactly how the trick works, that's the next step.
Then you're free from it. But at the same time, there is a loss. A certain kind of innocence is lost. In Hinduism they call it maya. More accurately, it's ignorance rather than innocence, but something is lost. And that's what we hold on to: the quality of experience that says, "Something's missing and I'm looking for it and I will find it in my little world. Me, I will find it in my world."
All of that goes poof when we see that what we're looking for is not missing. And what goes poof is the belief in what I was. It becomes very obvious.