When we hit middle age or thereabouts, it's not unusual to begin asking questions such as, "Is this it?"
Before that, we are busy with kids, careers, and all the things that, as we become older, begin slipping through our fingers like water - without our even realizing it at times.
Whatever we are doing, or have done, is only temporary, and this takes a while to sink in. Even the money we have accumulated only buys so many vacations, cruises, or second and third homes; and pretty soon we find ourselves saying, "been there done that" way too many times.
For questions such as, "Is this it?" to come up, something has to slow us down. As long as we can maintain our busyness, these kinds of questions may never come up. "Keep your mind busy, honey," (your grandmother might say), "A busy mind is a happy mind!" Good advice. Because once you begin to question things, busyness doesn't help so much - best to hold off these kinds of questions if you can, (unless you have guts!)
But try as we might, sure as heck something usually happens to wake us up, if we're fortunate, and it usually isn't pretty - usually traumatic actually. Nothing like a little financial disaster, serious illness, or losing something or someone that's very close, to alter our glass-half-full outlook on life!
Of course, the kneejerk reaction to coming face-to-face with these deep questions is to root out some answers from someone else in some book somewhere, or on the web - too much time and trouble to find the answers ourselves! This is a fatal error, simply because the process of the search, and the white beads that you will sweat in finding your own answers, is the only place where true answers can be found.
These questions actually may never come up for people who know everything, or think that they do. If all of their questions have been answered ahead of time by their beliefs, or their philosophy, or their leader, no further inquiry is required . . . and then they are as good as dead! A philosophy or religion will never answer these deep, heartfelt questions.
When the questions come up for them, they can convince themselves that they already have the answers, and then they don't have to look! But they don't have the answers; they have someone else's answers that they have only accepted as truth. They don't have the courage to look for themselves, because looking at these things tears down everything that they have ever believed in the past.
Until we investigate ourselves, we will never experience that hot forge that tempers the true seeker. Without heat, we have only the answers of someone else; an escape, and therefore no fundamental change is made within. We remain a perpetual work in progress, where we continue barking, like hungry dogs, up the same ol' worldly trees, while espousing platitudes of divinity!
If, however, we are fortunate to have something awaken us from all of this; then we can expect the questions to really get dicey quicker than a New York minute, culminating in the classic one, "What am I?"
And only after this question comes up in our hearts do we realize the immensity of our inquiry, and that in time, only a true reversal of how we have been living can take us to our answer.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
Wisdom Of The Ages
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