People have the tendency to make things complicated. Great saints usually have a simple message, but often within a generation this simple message is hidden under a carpet of more or less rational considerations.
In order to find our way in life, while not drifting off into deviations that are detrimental for ourselves and ultimately for humanity, we have to go back to the most simple observation we can make with the rational abilities that we have as human beings.
This is the observation: “What is” is “What is” as “What is”. This is an open door that we often forget to take into account. The sentence has two parts is: “What is” is “What is”. The second part modifies what is observed in the first part with: as “What is”.
The First Part: “What is” is “What is”
The first part indicates that you are always in the situation that you find yourself in. It is logical that you are in this situation. You may not be able to draw the right connections and you might not understand it, but it is always what you are at this moment.
Your past is always the past as recreated at this moment. In the same way the future is the assumption made at this moment. You are always in Now. What matters is that this Now is not only a realisation, because it is not other than what it is, it is all right.
You are what you are now, you may not like it but that does not change what you are. Everything that you do and that you think starts in Now. You may change and your thoughts may develop but you are always in a Now.
In their self-analysis of themselves, even in Now, people rely too much on their consciousness. They want to understand what they are, but most of your living is unconscious. We may be conscious of 10%, while the 90% is still fully the living that you are, and thereby constitutes what you are.
Self-analysis in a psycho-therapeutic sense has little value for the endeavour to search for optimal living. It helps much more to take the Now of this ‘I/World’ that you are as a starting point. This is called Peaceful Acknowledgement. You acknowledge that you are this “What is”, most of which you cannot consciously know, and you are in peace with it.
This peace is not a peace of agreeing with it or judging it as acceptable. It is a peace of realisation that “What is” is “What is” and not something other than what it is. Of course it is more than we can consciously grasp, but that does not change it either. For me as a human being the Now is always what it is.
Peaceful Acknowledgement engenders two attitudes that are like guiding highways through living. The first highway is Gratitude and the second highway is Patience. Gratitude is not ignited by a judgement of satisfaction. It rather says: Yes!. Yes, it is what it is and Yes I am responsible to make something of this Now.
There may be situations in life that are very difficult to be grateful for, nevertheless they are what they are, so your opinion does not change the situation. In such a situation it is good to cultivate Patience.
Because you are this ‘I/World’ in Now, and because you were born in Ignorance with the Task of transforming it into Wisdom, which is no other than optimal living, you have a Responsibility for this living. With the Attitudes of Gratefulness and Patience you generate the optimal psychological environment that allows you to turn each instant of Now into a generator for Optimal Living.
The Second Part: as “What is”
The second part of the observation is: as “What is”. This modifies profoundly the first part. We may smugly assume that we know it all in our Peaceful Acknowledgement and our ‘Yes’ attitude. However it has always been so, and it has been proven by research that what we see is determined by our seeing and not by what it is.
This is true on all levels of being. What we see is determined by the quality of our eyes. What we see is also determined by our being conscious of it. Without the proper training we cannot see a piece of metal for what it is, for instance a part of a machine. Our judgements about “what is” is entirely dependent on previous Soul impulses of memory, and coloured by our moods and most of all by our aspirations.
I could go on but for our transformation into Wisdom it is paramount that all living is fundamentally subjective. Nothing is true in any definitive sense. Whatever we arrive at in Peaceful Acknowledgement is determined by the World that we are. This means our culture, our DNA, our education, our past experiences, in short everything that has gained a degree of timelessness in Soul as Memory.
No scientist would have come up with the idea of the Big Bang, if we did not have some conscious or unconscious remnant of the six day’s creation. Darwin would not have come up with the idea of the survival of the fittest if Malthus had not developed his unsavoury ideas about population. And Malthus would not have come up with his ideas if his employer, the East India Company, would not have asked him for a ‘scientific’ justification for the ‘management’ of the colonies.
I would like to see this ‘I/World’ that I am as Experience as a programme within an infinity of potential. As a metaphor the internet is useful. From the user’s perspective it may seem infinite, but from our observation point we have made all the links that allow us to navigate adequately. ‘I/World’ as an individual user of the net, is like a concentration of resonance within an infinity of resonance.
The Task of Human Living
The Task of Human Living, which means the transformation of Ignorance into Wisdom, is the way to discover optimal living by means of careful observation and management of a regularity of Cause and Consequence that has always positioned me in Now.
When we realise that everything we think about our living is determined by how we are as the Consequence of what we were before and that everything we believe or have opinions about is contingent and determined by what we are, this naturally generates Humility.
Like Gratefulness and Patience, Humility is a fundamental Attitude that generates the best environment for shaping your life from the starting point of Now with the aim of reaching Optimal Living by means of the transformation of Ignorance into Wisdom.
A Powerful Instrument
“What is” is “What is” as “What is”, was called an observation at the beginning of this text. It must have become clear that it is much more than that. Internalising what it means is a powerful instrument to shape the basic attitudes for reaching the Attunement to what we are, and from that perspective evolve our transformation into Wisdom.
9 July 2023
