Wednesday, March 7, 2012

More on Getting It

Scott Bradley


Always my mind comes back to one fundamental assumption about the nature of my reality: Ultimately, whatever I "am", I am (or am not); there is nothing to become; I am already whatever I might be. There are no conditions to meet.

There are several corollaries to this assumption.

"Getting it" does not mean obtaining something; it means understanding something. And that something is precisely that there is nothing to obtain, since it is already true of 'me'.

"Getting it" does not imply an understanding of the Truth or truths about Reality; there is no specific content to this understanding. I do not know what "it" is. I do not know what "I" am. Getting it is not contingent on knowing something.

All is well. Reality being unalterably what it is, there is no known cosmic project afoot to which I must accede and hope to participate to my betterment. No salvation is required or possible. "All is well" is an acknowledgement and acceptance that Reality is as it is. It is agreement.

"Getting it" is thus a kind of surrender, an alignment of the heart with the nature of things, without knowing what that nature is. It is harmony expressed in openness. Because nothing is known with which to harmonize, harmony is not the agreement of content with content, but the rendering the heart empty of content so as to flow with contentlessness.

"Getting it" speaks to the qualitative enhancement of the human experience, not to the attainment or achievement of a 'higher', ontological state of being. The realization that no salvation is required liberates, not as salvation, but in the subjective experience of life.

Returning to that fundamental assumption that Reality is already fully expressed and realized in 'me', it must be acknowledged that this act of assuming is already an expression of surrender, harmonizing and agreement. These responses are without intellectual foundation; their only basis is as an expression of what the heart discovers as an expression of itself. In this sense it might be described as a mystical experience, yet it understands that there is no experience which is not. There are no other foundations than those which experientially arise.

I would that I could present this as other than an intellectual exercise, but I cannot. One must decide to explore and experience it for it to have any real meaning. As for myself, it is mostly just an inkling, and a sense of a gate yawning wide before me.

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

1 comment:

  1. As reality is already in it's natural state, ie "fully expressed" why do humans deploy vast quantities of energy to Protest, Occupy, or otherwise express an opinion about events?

    Is the event the "natural state" & therfore to Protest/Occupy will be a pointless exercise or is the "natural state" the balance of event & Protest (eg Arab Spring, Worker wages & poverty lines, Cosatu & Toll Gates/Labour Agents) & humans are forever bound by the balanced cycle of events?

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