It occurred to me this morning while Recording and Listening how grateful I am not to have “God’s” job. Given the task of unfolding each moment, I would surely do the unfolding from the limited perspective that is mine. How could it be different? This perspective is the only one I have so, of course, I would choose what manifests now through that lens. This might (or might not!) work well for “me,” but “others”? Well, they’d just be left out of the mix as I have no awareness of “them,” beyond those in “my” immediate sphere.
What followed is the rather obvious insight that, given my extremely limited perspective, it really makes no sense at all to hold any opinion whatsoever. This arrived—apparently—simultaneously with the quote by the Third Patriarch, “Do not seek after enlightenment, simply cease to cherish opinions.” (They do go together rather perfectly, don’t they?)
Opinions are negative. Period. They are positions held by an ego, by an illusion of a “person” that is separate from (at a distance from, other than) Life.
Is it bad to hold opinions? No. Is it wrong to hold opinions? No. But it is the cause of suffering. How so? Negativity assumes/implies that there’s something wrong, and we suffer when we identify with a something-wrong espousing ego
The habit of looking to conditioned mind makes the pull to opinion/negativity constant. After a day of living in the constant “input” of ego opinion/negativity, the assessment of the day ego offers is along the lines of “that was a really hard day.” The voice in the head moans about being exhausted, worn out. The stress of the day is so great that the only “kind choice for me” is escape into some form of unconsciousness.
But was it a difficult, exhausting, stress-filled day? Probably not. The day was overflowing with beautiful, interesting, exciting, challenging situations and people, but if ego was there framing it as hard and stressful, the human being missed the whole spectacular show.
If for the next 30 days you will record (one recording each hour) what is actually true, what’s actually happening, you will prove this to yourself.
In gassho,
ch