I woke up unhappy this morning. It has been more than three months since the Pandemic closed the store and I have been working from home. I haven’t seen my friends at work since then, except for WebEx meetings, occasional FaceTime, texts, and Facebook posts. That is a big change, especially since I have no one living with me but my dog. He’s a great companion animal, but he lacks certain conversational skills.
Every week I have routed my calls through a network of close friends as I spend all my time enclosed in a small apartment with a big computer the company sent, taking calls from and working with strangers.
I’m not complaining. I am deeply grateful for the ability to not only stay employed, but grow in a new position I was always interested in trying. As it turns out, it is also a beneficial situation as my dog, Max is his name, developed cancer last month. Thanks fully, I have the means to get him treatment. Still, it would have been difficult to go to work and leave him alone. So he rests by my side all day, while I am “at work”. Nevertheless like I said, I woke up unhappy this morning, with a dozen stories popping up as to “why”, the dreaded story maker.
Happily, years after writing my last blog here, it still works for me and there was a small insight that I thought I would share. Looking back over the blog, I could see that the best piece of it was actually broken up into no less than four posts making a play on the theory of relativity. Search for Nevermind, if you want to review. Discovery can be complicated. Most of LucidChange.com is about discovery, trying, and testing theories. Now that the trying and testing are more than a decade in practice, this one theory has simplified and, I find, it to be the best go-to. So I am giving it its own space in one updated post.
Given the itemized bill presented in the first three paragraphs, it would be easy to see why someone might wake up unhappy, but that would not be the Truth. The truth was that I had certain expectations of how things should be, and the difference was disappointment. I sat down and wrote out the three sets of five, and marked the words that were active in creating my unhappy disappointment.
I You We They This
Always Never Should Could Can’t
Have Think Feel Say Do
The expectation was clear: I should always have___fill in the blank___: the right answer, timely support, easy access to friends and loved ones, that job application I missed, a healthy dog, and more. By writing it down I could see the makings of countless other expectations: You should, and They can’t, the infamous We never, and the faith in something other than the Self — This could: make me feel better. All of these are so active in creating the differences currently present in our world.
I thought about how one or more words from each line sets expectations that inevitably lead to disappointment as they are all impermanent and always changing, even what is always and never.
In the first line there is something very important to see, and that is the I is included. It is not the one using the words, it is included among the tools of creation, non-different from any of the others.
Let me write that again: It is NOT, the One, using the words. The I, is a descriptor that covers NOT, like a glove. Without NOT, the I lays empty on the table. Throughout the original writing of this blog, I struggled with how to express the omnipresence of non-existence. I interpreted the sound of “not” as Naught, the Unconditional life fulfilling all that is, indifferent and non-different to itself. It was a clumsy, complicated attempt.
Over time NOT has become an acronym for No Other Thing to represent the illusion of duality, and Oneness not as a unification of many, but the absence of the condition of many as in we and they.
In Truth, there is only No Other Thing in the appearance of all things. In Truth, there is just no such thing, or No Other Thing, as I. Given that, all that the I is purported to name, equally does NOT exist. That is Oneness.
The three sets of five are the means by which NOT is made to appear limited, the potential source of disappointment, unless we are lucid to it’s action. Then we may, from the Truth of our essence as NOT, observe these as creative tools and, since the human experience is based on these conditions, use it wisely.
The conscious configuration of “I, you, we, they, this” to “always, never, should, could, can’t — “have, think, feel, say, do” puts us in the place of the creator — NOT, choosing to fill in the blank with absolute happiness, love, peace, and joy for no reason other than it is possible.
From that perspective, I am happy enough.
