"Happy 4th of July. Reminder: don't make the mistake of expecting
America to give you Independence and Freedom. Rather invent for
yourself the possibility of being independent and free regardless of
the circumstances, and you'll really be onto something."
The offer extended in this essay's title "Come Back To Being" is a
heartfeltinvitation
from me, the form of which is
analogous
to the ancient
meditation technique
of coming back to the mantra - that is to say it's like coming back to
OM (as Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha may
have said). But that's where the
analogy
ends.
Standing in transformation, this is it.
There's nothing to get.
There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do except be. So if there's
anything to (be
invited to)
come back to at all, it's being. With that said, coming back to
OM as an
access
to being, may (however well-intentioned) actually put something in the
way of just being.
Said another way, coming back to OM may effectively get in the
way of just being with all of
this,
exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, with nothing added
(OM is added, yes?) and with nothing taken away (this is it,
all of it - perfect, full,
whole and complete,
exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't). So this essay's
invitation
then, is to try out doing away with the middle-man - or at
least to invent being without the middle-man like a possibility.
That's an
access
to being.
Let's inquire into this further. Let's
consider
there's actually nothing substantive to come back to - and there's no
need to come back to anything substantive either. This is
it, and you're already here (actually, more than you're
already here: you're already it also - but
that's a subject for another
conversation
on another occasion). So if you must come back to anything at all (ie
if you absolutely have to come back to something) then come back to
being. Just being. In other words, just be.
Now watch: there's a crucial difference between "Come back to being"
and "Just be", and it's very subtle. When you come back to
being, that's an
access
to being ie that's when you can just be. Wait! Don't gloss that
over too fast or dismiss it skeptically like it's trite, a truism, a
flippant bon mot: it's actually really profound. When you
come back to being, you can just be. When you just be, you can come
from  being. When you come from being, you've transformed
your life. Literally. Really.
Coming back to being calls for a transformational shift, a
contextual shift,
an
ontological
shift which happens in an instant out of time. And watch:
transformation as an
ontological shift
gives a
context
to ongoingly be, not something to do, nor something to have. So beware
the tendency to turn this
invitation
into a suggestion to take on yet another
discipline or a practice or a
belief system or a religion,
all of which will risk ruining any
authenticexperience of the ontological
shift
by driving the idea of it deeper and ever deeper into the
background
as an unexamined concept of "there's something to get, and some other
way to be, and some other place to get it, and some other time in which
to get it" other than now, and other than
this,
and other than who we are, and other than here, and
under these very
circumstances.
For many of us, all of the foregone
conversation
is little more than a review, a validation, a confirmation, a
verification of our own already always experience. But if it's a
stretch for you, then listen: you're in good company. It's
always been a stretch for many more of us human beings
with our predilections and concepts,
disciplines and practices and
belief systems and religions,
especially for us who for centuries (literally) have been convinced
there's something else to get other than exactly
this.
"With all this
manure,
there must be a pony in here somewhere" (as James Kirkwood
may have said).
I'm sorry,
but there's no pony, and there ain't no pony coming either. There's
just
this.
And it's WYSIWYG (what you see
is what you get). Perhaps even more
astutely than that, it's WYBIWYG
(what you beis
what you get).