The Force of My Own Being

  

Each day appears to be somewhat the same. 

Part of this is because I’ve established rituals; part of it is because the casual events of life repeat themselves rather consistently. Only when there’s a huge shock such as a death or a move away from one’s home or some other major change in life circumstance do the days separate themselves and become more distinct for a brief period. 

But even this doesn’t last. One can even get used to being in prison.

This accommodation with sameness is part of what causes me to lapse. I get bored. I occupy myself with idle things. I don’t set myself my own task and have my own being. I’m a parasite. My work is a parasite. I want to read about other people’s aims and tasks; I want other people to give me aims and set me tasks. 

How is any of that my own?

If I really want to grow up there is a point where I have to put the diapers away and toilet train myself. 

I have to want to work. My work has to be my own work, not the assignment the teacher gave me. In fact life itself, of course, is the teacher, and it doesn’t want to give me assignments. It wants me to undertake assignments on my own. It wants me to be so interested in my own life that I am there for it and I don’t become hypnotized by the sameness of it.

I don’t understand how sameness and hypnotism are part of the same function. Hypnotism relies on repetition to make me comfortable with sleep; and then, it can get me to do anything it wants. No wonder I’m not interested in life.

Yes; I’d rather be hypnotized. Even when it comes to my own inner work, hypnosis seems to be preferable to awareness. How do I change that?

I have to be interested enough to undertake some things on my own. How can I do that? Certainly not just by reading about things or relying on the crutch of a group meeting to be the one time during the week where I profess to actually care. If it’s like that, I’m just showing up as a liar. I ought to care enough to have done at least something; and if it is my own, rather than what the teacher told me to do, so much the better. It's in the development of an independent effort to work that everything ultimately rests. And if I am not keeping that as my aim and asking the questions I need to ask about that every day, I might as well hang up my hat and do nothing except lie in the sun and dream about life.

What I don’t see is how decisively and thoroughly I need to insert my being into life, such that it is a living force of participation. I can’t afford to be passive about this. I can’t let the sameness lull me into the belief that things are actually the same. All of the real differences that I might discover in this “same” day are differences that arise from being, not from external events.

I need to concentrate the force of my being without the expectation of result. 

The force of my being must become independent of associations. 

The force of my being must become independent of the results.

 To the extent that this takes place, then I'm working.

The daily romance of my associations is worthless. It’s garbage. 

My attention, on the other hand, has a real value. 

I need to see the difference between the two, Not as a theory I pursue, but as an experience that I live within the moment.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.