Hidden in Plain Sight

The true nature of reality is that nothing remains the same. Everything changes. We see this everywhere. People come into our lives and then they go. Jobs come and go. Our interests wax and wane.

We search earnestly for the truth in science, religion, politics, Hollywood, and literature, every aspect of our lives, and yet we don't see the truth right in front of our eyes. We even do this right now--the only time and place that we can truly see. We consider the here and now but we are caught up in our thinking, rational minds. How can we see the truth while we are paying attention to our thoughts, the home of our fears, neighbors of our anxiety, our desire, our paranoia? That's not where truth lives. That's the realm of the shared delusions that we pretend is reality.

We have individual delusions too. We have our personal story line about who we are and what we do and why we matter. Most importantly, we adopt prescribed roles that tell us what to accept and not accept. Doesn't matter of course. What we accept or don't has nothing to do with what actually happens, except that we feel obligated to approve and reward what we like and become stressed, frustrated, aggravated and depressed over what we don't. We get so absorbed into what we think, that we become virtual prisoners to it.

When we look carefully at what we actually experience, we will realize that it's not a world in constant flux, it's rather the constant change that we experience. There is nothing to experience if there is no change. Reduce every quantum probability to zero and, presto, nothing to experience.

If our hope lies in finding happiness in the realm where everything is constantly changing, then we are running on empty promises and we are essentially hopeless. The only source of hope and of happiness is in this eternal moment, where we are free of impermanence, for it is in the moment that we have our only existence. The only way to get there is to get passed our conditioned mind, beyond our desire and our fear, away from the realm of thought and into a place of open awareness. I know of no other way to do that than through meditation.