Living the Lie

Scott Bradley

I typically awake each morning to find myself still here. You probably have a similar experience. I start a fire in the stove, make coffee and return to the warmth of bed. Then begins the process which leads in part to a post just like this one.

The mind immediately gets to work thinking about stuff, but I try to curb its appetite for a few minutes and experience life without words. Success varies. In any case, I am soon back to thinking.

This thinking seems to require a lack. It is just as water requires an empty space to occupy if it is to flow, and it always wishes to do so. It always involves a process of becoming. Some things need to be done. Some things need to be thought. There is a life to live. It won't live itself, will it?

Often my thinking is scattered and unable to focus on the task at hand, namely framing a 'spiritual' context for this day. This enterprise is itself indicative of the sense of lack. I must become something. Thus I return to what is for me the starting point for my understanding of the nature of things: All is well; there are no conditions to meet; there is nothing to become. I will most certainly return to the exercise of becoming, but at least it will be in the context of this more fundamental view.

This is how I live the lie. This idea of being someone in the world with right and wrong ways of being there is the essential lie. It's all imagined. I sincerely believe that were I to the depths of my being understand what it is that All is Well, then all this striving and becoming would come to an end. Peace and rest would reign. But that is not the reality I actually live. I live the lie.

But there are different ways of living the lie. A lie which is believed is truly a lie. A lie that is understood as such is something else. Call it a myth. But if the lie is a myth, then so also is the 'truth' which attempts to see through it. All is Well is also a myth. Yet seeing this, the heart is ever opened and awakened to a vastness empty of lies, myth, and truth.

"The Radiance of drift and doubt is the sage's only map." Call it openness.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, I live the lie and contemplate 'spiritual' strategies to live it 'well'. This is my experience; I can only embrace and affirm it; ever filling, ever emptying; never fixed.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.