I Will Always Be the One I Never Was

When life seems to be going well and full of promise, identification with the imaginary self that is living his life increases, he gets swept away on a tide of optimism and forgets to pay attention to what is actually happening. Within no time, the chemicals released in the body by (or as) positive feelings have caused the body to burn out. And so the comedown is inevitable.

Every time his mind wandered into fantasy, he brought it back by looking at the people and things around him and taking in the moment as best he could. Life was a living movie of infinite variation. How absurd it was to want anything besides whatever was happening in that moment, when the moment was so infinitely rich that he could only ever observe the smallest fraction of it. Every time his eye fell on something, he recognized how he could have missed that sight if he had been following his pointless thoughts instead. How much he did miss, every single second!

If we got enlightened tomorrow, how much would our plans change? Would we drop everything, or would we continue just as we had been? Maybe it was time to simply act, boldly, to make decisions, and not be continuously questioning, doubting, and wondering what was best? Weren't we forever waiting for something better to come along, like prima donnas turning down all the offers just in case a better one comes in. And prima donnas wind up sad and lonely has-beens, or worse, never-have-beens.

What made him timid and cautious was when he believed in his story: the story he was busy spinning with his mind with every fantasy, fond memory, and hope for the future. It was only when he invested in that bright future which he was inventing out of the handpicked fragments of the present moment that he lost the treasure that was always before him. In fact, it didn’t matter, because he wasn't really choosing anything anyway. All his mental gymnastics were after the fact. They were a narrative overlay to sustain the illusion of the artificial intelligence of the self, the illusion that he was running the system, rather than being run by it. 

There was no future. There never would be or could be. The future was only the futile attempt of the past to assert itself and make things come out differently. And since the past was dead, the future was forever unborn.

To separate purpose from circumstance was impossible. To try and create perfect circumstances and then to use them as a platform to act with purpose and meaning from — was impossible. It was impossible because he wasn’t some intelligence acting on or in his life. He was nothing but life, one individual expression of it among an unimaginable multitude of individual expressions. And all circumstances were the right ones. That was the problem with all his fantasies. They were irrelevant. If he was lucky, if his circumstances were improving, it could only be because life had a purpose for him. It was up to him to become that, to allow his improved circumstances to generate a corresponding new purpose and meaning to inhabit them.

There were so many things happening all the time. He was witness to them all, yet he noticed only an infinitesimal fragment. He was truly deranged, with his endless immersion in an internally generated dialogue that told him absolutely nothing about what was going on. NOTHING! He could STOP that nonsense any time, and his suffering would die with it. But time was running out, and his impoverishment became more nakedly apparent to him with every passing moment, every dying breath.

DIE DIE DIE!!!

Do it now, while there is still time! After you are dead it will be too late.

Who? Me? I am already dead, dead, dead. Don’t you see? This has to end now! Right now! What? It already ended? Every second it ends. Why? Because, because, because: it never never never started.

This post is my swan song. Nothing will change. I cannot write my way to enlightenment. I will always be the one I never was—an image projected by the desire to be admired. So bye bye. While you are looking and pointing, what is behind the shadowy cloud of this mind slips through the needle’s eye, and Infinity wins again, like it always will.

Bye bye.