Ernie Thayer

When you come to realize there’s nothing you can do to “get free”, “wake up” or the like, the (at first unwanted) implication is that you are of no use in such matters.

This is the end of time, whether accepted or not. In this case, time is a seeker’s illusory urge toward some desired or yearned for fulfillment, which is always later, never now.

Also, this implies the end of ‘me’. There isn’t really any inside “person”, there’s only movement in time or hope, which is time. Yet there do remain skills, propensities and conditioning which appear in time doing whatever by their nature they are drawn to. Nobody home. Or at least only a useless one. That’s a good start.

The true agent of change is “seeing”. If thinking intervenes before seeing is complete, there will be ideas about the matter, but no complete seeing, and transforming change will not happen.

So, for instance, if one is contemplating fear while wondering if it can cease: one might see how it necessarily flows from the belief in time, especially the future in this case. The seeing brings clear-eyed intelligence to the matter. Belief in time can be revealed to be false and so collapse. It is only from thinking’s point of view that it seems real. Seen for what it is, fear eventually ceases and the nervous system returns to its naturally relaxed state. But if thinking intervenes too soon (our conditioned habit), the “obvious” evidence of time’s reality will cloud the seeing. It will distort seeing into some idea of how to proceed (in time) in order to address fear, will try to understand what is being seen in its own context and try to deal with it. Thus the intelligence of being will be supplanted by ‘my’ will, the weaker energy of thought. Effort returns and peace is abandoned.

By it’s nature, thinking divides wholeness up into parts: in this case a ‘me’ and a problem – fear. It cannot do otherwise. This is perfectly natural for thinking to do. But the split is apparent, not real. The activity of an illusory ‘me’ is futile but causes much distress. When ‘me’ is taken as real, there is anxiety, hope, fear, etc, by it’s very movement. Whatever it does only tightens its bonds. ‘Me’ is merely the activity of thought-as-a-person-moving-in-time. This is the default human perspective, consensus reality, only it isn’t true.

All of this can be seen as it happens. Seeing, clear-eyed apprehension, registers the truth about the false (to the chagrin of ‘me’). Clarity sees the imaginary splitting up of itself (allness) into ‘me’ and everything else (the world), each taken to be real from thought’s point of view, but never actually so. Seeing this spontaneously destroys the belief by revealing its nature as thought doing its thing. Belief is absolutely undercut by seeing what’s actually going on. Intelligence now reigns and belief is revealed as false in its light. Change (transformation) then follows spontaneously, even effortlessly. No one does this, it’s a natural effect of clarity. Only clarity is real.

Often what’s left is an emotional attachment to being ‘me’ which remains for a while, supported by the habitual fear of not being someone (psychological death). This fear is generated by the belief in the first place, but seems to have independent existence. So emotion keeps us unconsciously in its thrall, and we fearfully hold on. But it will fall eventually under the weight of the insight. Fear is the gut anchor to the belief that generates it. This begs for a kind of courage to stand as seeing, over against emotion’s insistence. Of course the whole world supports our sense of independent existence. So we fear social isolation too. It dawns on us that these feelings are actually a form of suffering – isolated, insecure, hoping, anxious. The clarity of seeing is asking all that to stand aside.

The implications are immense. The entire premise of what it means to be human is upended. If I’m not ‘me’…!? If whatever ‘I’ do is futile…??

On the other hand, there’s freedom! Hmmm

Many of us are stunned at recent events and the seeming madness of it all. And that’s the key – “madness”. We fail to recognize madness in our own lives and are often shocked to see it out there in the world.

But the world is us. It couldn’t be otherwise. The worldly conflicts are the gross reflection of our own inner conflicts en masse: wanting this, fearing that, chasing happiness while others block us, hoping for love, ease & joy but being disillusioned instead. As well we need be. Disillusionment is what we sorely need. Because we are blindly at war with ourselves, we live unsustainably, awaiting the next great conflagration and hoping it won’t touch us, all the while unconsciously contributing to it. Yet the world stage tells us exactly what we are doing and what it portends. We are living in illusion – which is madness. Should we miss it, the headlines remind us. We are wise to listen.

So what’s to be done? Wake up to the madness, especially our own. Let disillusionment take its full course and take us down as separate, wanting creatures wreaking havoc. Our weapon is ruthless curiosity. Un-judging curiosity. Curiosity about the madness, our madness. To wake up isn’t to get somewhere lovely, it’s to leave the craziness by seeing it for what it is and what it brings us. The source belief? I am a separate self, “Me”. I must make my way in this world. Everyone told us so and we bought it early on, innocently. But it’s not true. It causes madness. The world is our mirror.