Fred’s Journal, 2.24.18: What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

Hello, everybody!

Betsy and I are on holiday this weekend. We drove to a nursery this morning to look at plants for the backyard. Betsy is a Woman of Many Plans. At the bottom of this post you’ll see some photos that I’m about to drop into the About page that represent a couple of those.

Among those photos you’ll see our own version of Thoreau’s cabin, which is in our backyard. We inherited it when we bought the house. It looks very much like a Swiss chalet, complete with lots of surrounding stonework, which the previous owner installed. That part of our lot also feels very much like you’re secluded  somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.  We’ve just completed having it repaired and painted, bringing it into excellent condition. It’s on the Someday List, because we want to eventually turn it into a guest house.

Ask yourself this question: “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?”

A lot of people come to spirituality to hide from the world. Upon awakening we find out that there is no hiding from the world, because the world is not other than our Self. Nonetheless, You – meaning That which is prior to consciousness – are in no way limited to being the world exclusively. You own the house of consciousness, but the house certainly does not equal You. Consciousness and oneness are essentially synonyms and they arise within and to You.

Units are appearances within consciousness. They are neither true nor untrue. They are exactly as true as anything else: They appear, they are experienced, but how much does an illusion weigh? How tall, or how old is an illusion? How about this: What does an illusion have for lunch? Of course these are all nonsense questions. Here’s another:

Can an illusion have free will? 

My dear Awakeness, the character you (very likely) believe yourself to be is not a free agent “living ‘your’ life.” Your character does not actually exist. It’s a make-believe center that has spontaneously arisen from a set of cooperative patterns and to consciousness. You, Awakeness, are nowhere to be found in this dream of being a being, whether divine or human. That unit is a sensing device for You. It’s an avatar playing out in virtual reality, or, per a conversation I had this past week, it’s a fleshy robot that’s very alive-like. 

It’s remarkably alive-ish, is it not? But that alive-ishness is borrowed from You. You are sentience itself and you are experiencing. This dream is how you do that. You are experiencing experiencing. There is only experiencing experiencing experiencing.

So then why on earth are you so fearful of what might befall that unit if instead of hiding it was to open up? As I told a student recently, “I find lots of people who are willing to ‘die to’ this teaching – briefly! But I can hardly find anyone at all who’s anxious to live this teaching – right now!” It’s really just a reframing of mind, a reorientation to your truth instead of your dream.

I don’t know what’s happening with the other 7.5 billion units, but the two you know as Fred and Betsy are having a damn blast! Against all odds, these two units that were both slated for an early and miserable death are instead happy and useful.

So, the question that begs to be asked is, “How did we do that?” Simple. We didn’t. We couldn’t. We’re illusory. Plain and simple, these are lucky units apparently hurtling through apparent time and space, and this is the shape of Oneness just now. What a hoot!

We cannot fail. If we appear to fail, that will simply be the shape of Oneness at that point in no-time. Neither, of course, can we succeed. There is no such thing as “we.” There is an experiencing of a “we” which is quite convincing until you grab the thread and pull, thus unraveling the whole sweater.

For example, when I started my original blog in the summer of 2011, I knew what was what, and so did Betsy. Here I was, a lifetime ne’er-do-well, a known criminal-type guy, setting myself up as some kind of spiritual teacher thingy. What a joke! What a ridiculously ridiculous idea! It’s insane! Or at least it was if the teaching were about that unit.

Well – wait for it – it’s not. The unit is about I, Awareness, and I am off-planet!

Betsy and I talked about it. My record was going to come up at some point – there was no way it couldn’t, unless I took a “stage name,” as some other teachers have done. I could have posted my picture with the words Bob Smith under it, and no one would’ve been the wiser – ever. But I told Betsy then what I’m going to tell you right now: I knew in my heart that this teaching-happening was not about hiding. It was not about dying. It was and is about living – openly, freely, with the present, unadulterated conditions. 

I never ran the specifics of my ugly past up the flagpole to see if everybody would salute it. I already knew that they wouldn’t. But neither did I hide it. I couldn’t fail, I just didn’t know what absolute success was going to look like. I didn’t know if it would fall within this unit’s preferences or not, but Life is not about this unit’s preferences – or yours either. Life is about Life. 

No unit has the capacity for failure. It’s always in the right place at the right time, looking just right as it does just right. This truth cannot be seen by a unit. The true view is exclusively that of Conscious Awakeness. Why not accept What Is As It Is and (appear to) live Life large? It’ll feel very much like the character is doing it, and it can have a blast knowing that it’s back is covered by this cosmic law: Everything counts (within the dream), but nothing ultimately matters (because it’s a dream).

Betsy and I paid a scary and ugly price when the details of my story floated to the surface some years ago. But I never stopped teaching. I never even slowed down. I couldn’t, because there’s no Fred here to do that. There is only this, which includes this unit, and teaching is what this unit does, that’s it’s job, both cosmically and practically. Do I really, really care what a bunch of empty-headed units think-they-think about this empty-headed unit?

It’s all just the totality playing out As It Is. There’s nothing personal going on here, folks. What were the odds of this teaching arising through this highly flawed, badly karma-ridden unit? 100%. What are the odds of you stumbling across this article? 100%. What are the odds that you and I will do what we do tomorrow, and that the day will unfold as it does? 100%. Events – there are nothing but simulated events, including the event-happening that’s writing this and the event-happening reading it – are not cast in some future stone, they unfold spontaneously.

Ah, look at that, I’ve broken 1,000 words. If I continue any longer, these journal entries will cease to arise for us. Get what you can get from what’s already been written. There’s never an end to any of this anyway, so get used to it.

Bonus quote: 

The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say ‘Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah!’

Leonard Cohen

Bonus quote #2, just for having scrolled all the way to the bottom. 🙂

“As a man’s real power grows
and his knowledge widens,
ever the way he can follow
grows narrower: until at last
he chooses nothing,
but does only and wholly
what he must do.”

~Ursula le Guin
 A Wizard of Earthsea