desires and more.
All this comes from that place which is not, from the same emptiness that we sometimes notice.
Maybe it’s all empty.
Why the truth?
‘Not all people need to know all things,’ as one of my good friends and companions always loved to say, and this still comes to mind when someone speaks about honesty, frankness, pure spirit of the soul, absolute trust, and things of this nature.
Speaking the truth can cause much more suffering than not speaking. Silence about some things, or even gentle lies, may be much more appropriate and polite.
We know thousands of things that really aren’t our business. Someone’s birth secret, adoption, the personality of their past intimate partner, someone’s serious illness, etc. Sometimes somebody trusts you with secrets, and you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone about it. Same story.
But oh, how you would like to share such things. To discuss it with someone and, of course, get the promise that he or she won’t tell anyone about it in turn. It’s easy to see how secrets spread like that.
The media has, of course, greatly amplified this mentality. The private life of every single person is laid out for all to view and review. Pretty creepy. And the justification is still that people want to know...
Well, maybe that’s what they want, but there must be very few things that they necessarily need to know.
Better to live and let others be unaware than burden ourselves and others with unnecessary knowledge. Ripping off the curtain, getting the naked truth may well sell newspapers, but what does it give and where does it lead? We know where it leads: suspicion, distrust, uncertainty.
We need to use knowledge. Useless knowledge only burdens, stirs us up and hurts.
We don’t need to know all things, we can’t understand everything, and we can’t keep up with everything all the time. It’s not possible anyway. This is an illusion, a dream, temporary and transient.
Always, something remains unknown, concealed, and it all changes all the time. There is little benefit to such knowledge.
In fact, there are very few things that we really need to know, that need to be understood and considered. You don’t need to know how many crimps there are on a beer bottle cap or what is the capital of Burkina Faso or how many ångströms in the wavelength of a yellow line of cadmium. This is useless knowledge to most people.
Nor does it matter what you need to care about or worry about. It doesn’t matter what you need to have, what you want or achieve. You don’t have to find out who you really are, what your destiny is or who you might have been in a previous life, what your special qualities are or where you really belong. These are questions of faith, perceptions, wishes and desires; they all arise from self-importance, wanting to be somehow special, necessary and right. We can live, we don’t have to worry. There’s one life, to live.
This is all fine, but surely there are people who also need some secret knowledge, who believe that things are not all the way they seem, that in fact there are conspiracies and secret observers and that we are only being manipulated and lied to. That’s how you get really nervous.
‘What is truth?’ retorted Pilate. (John 18:38)
Yes, sometimes you’re lied to, but you’re going to listen to it, smile and maybe lie back. You both know that it’s not true, but it has yet to be reconciled and settled. That’s the way it is, it’s a courtesy that doesn’t cost anything. Whatever they say, whatever it looks like, just smile.
The truth may be somewhere, but it’s not being investigated; knowledge of it is no use, and it’s not possible to know everything, to understand everything.
Some talk about the arrival of a post-truth era. Why not? Maybe someday we will regard the seekers of final truths with the same kind of amusement as we now look at believers in fairy tales.
You don’t have to do anything; you don’t need anything. Not everything can be found out; it doesn’t all have to be understood. Rather, you may gradually get rid of excessive things, desires and thoughts. You can forget the useless knowledge and the old beliefs. You can let them go and be free.
You don’t have to have anything or anyone – you don’t have to be anyone at all.
Where you look, that’s where you go
Remember how you learn to ride a bicycle? You turn the handlebars too hard at first, before you can begin to steer it, more or less.
But then there is a new problem – you keep riding into the holes and the edge of the road where you don’t want to go.
And why? Because you don’t want to ride into the holes – you’re afraid of them and that’s why you’re staring at them. But where you look, that’s where you go.
We are all afraid sometimes, and sometimes very afraid. We often don’t like a lot of things. At the same time, we also like a lot of other things, we want a lot of things, we desire, we want, we believe, we hope. And we are saddened because we can’t get these pleasant things, or they don’t come to us. We tend to come up with the bad things we’re afraid of.
And why? Because we’re looking at more of those things we don’t like, the things we’re afraid of, whatever’s irritating us, and so we run into them.
You drive where you look – that’s how simple it is. What you’re thinking about, that’s what you get; what you’re afraid of is coming.
To the healer comes the one who is not well, who is broken or at least thinks he is broken. If you admit that you’re not okay, you’re not. To the smart comes the one who isn’t smart, who’s stupid or at least thinks he’s stupid. If you admit you’re not smart, you aren’t.
Who can fix your brokenness or get you out of stupidity?
No one. They can only help you to find out that you’re not broken, that you’re not stupid.
Nor did Jesus exacerbate the paralysis. Oh no, he said:
‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ (John 5:8)
Every living being can be a God, Guru or Master. The more we love them, the more of them we find. Nothing else is needed!
J. Lennon: All You Need Is Love.
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Corinthians 3:16)
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